Stanisław Kopański

After the outbreak of the Polish Defensive War, Kopański remained on the staff of Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły. The staff was evacuated from Warsaw on September 6, 1939, to Polish temporary headquarters in Brześć nad Bugiem. However, due to fast pace of German advance, the headquarters had to be evacuated further southwards, through Młynów, Kołomyja and Kosów, to the town of Kuty, where it was to organize the defense of the so-called Romanian Bridgehead. However, the Soviet invasion of Poland of September 17, 1939 made that plan obsolete and Kopański was evacuated to Romania, a country which at that time was allied with Poland. There, at both German and French insistence, the Polish highest authorities were interned by the Romanians. However, most of the soldiers interned in prisoner of war camps were able to escape with the secret consent of the Romanian authorities; Kopański himself fled the Călimăneşti internment camp, traveling through Bucharest and Constanţa to reach France in late October 1939.

In France, Kopański applied for a post in one of the Polish units being formed in France and Great Britain at that time. Initially, however, the Polish government in exile of Władysław Sikorski held most of the high-ranking officers of the pre-war Polish Army in reserve and instead gave command of newly formed units to officers who had actively opposed the Sanacja authorities before the lost campaign. It was not until April 5, 1940, that Kopański was finally given command of the Polish Carpathian Brigade, being formed in Homs on the border between French-held Syria and Lebanon.

The unit was composed mostly of Polish soldiers who were able to escape prisoner of war camps in Hungary and Romania and make it to Allied-controlled territory, much like Kopański himself. On April 12, 1940, the brigade was officially formed and the new unit joined the French Armée du Levant. As a unit specializing in mountain warfare, the brigade was thought of as a Polish contribution to the Allied plan of landing in the Balkans. It was modelled after a standard French mountain infantry brigade. Although new recruits arrived on a daily basis, the brigade did not reach the planned strength of 208 officers and 6840 soldiers and NCOs.[2]

After the capitulation of France nullified all pacts that country had with Poland and the United Kingdom, the commander of the Armee de Levant, General Eugène Mittelhauser, decided to support the new government of Philippe Pétain and Vichy France. He ordered the brigade to be disarmed and took Kopański as a hostage. However, due to strong opposition within Mittelhauser's own staff, he had to set Kopański free the following day. Kopański then followed the orders of General Sikorski and left French-controlled territory. On June 30, 1940, the brigade defected to the British Mandate of Palestine, where it joined the British forces stationed there. It was the only large military unit of the Armee de Levant to defect as a complete unit, with all of its equipment.

Initially composed of 319 officers and 3,437 soldiers, Kopański's brigade soon grew to roughly 5,000 men. Among the distinctive features of the unit was the high morale of the soldiers, all volunteers. In addition, roughly 25 percent were educated, a thing uncommon in European armies of the time. Kopański continued to train his men in mountain warfare, but also in warfare in desert conditions, completely alien to the Polish soldiers. In August 1941, the brigade was moved by sea from Palestine to the besieged town of Tobruk, where the unit took part in the final four months of the siege. After the siege was lifted on December 10, the brigade joined British forces in their pursuit of the withdrawing Italo-German armies and fought in the Battle of Gazala.

On April 21, 1942, after more than two years in constant service, Kopański was given a three weeks leave in London. On the day of his arrival there, he was appointed by General Sikorski as commander of the newly formed 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division. He organized that division out of his former unit and newly arrived soldiers of the Polish II Corps of General Władysław Anders, who had been liberated from Soviet gulags and then evacuated to Persia and Palestine. His new division was prepared and trained to take part in the Italian Campaign.

Kopański (right) with Marian Kukiel (left) and Kazimierz Sosnkowski (centre), in London, 1944.

Shortly before the invasion of Italy commenced, Kopański was withdrawn to London on July 21, 1943, where he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces in the West. A skilled front-line officer, Kopański did not have much work "behind the desk", especially since, while most of the Polish units were fighting under Polish command, they were part of Allied fronts and armies. Because of that, on October 20, 1944, Kopański tried to resign. However, the President of Poland, Władysław Raczkiewicz, would not accept his resignation; instead, Kopański was promoted to the rank of Division General two days later. He remained Chief of Staff of the Polish Armed Forces until the end of World War II.

After the war the Allied governments withdrew their support from the Polish government, and the Polish forces were transformed into the Polish Resettlement Corps. This was a paramilitary organization designed to allow Polish veterans who were unwilling to return to communist-dominated Poland to find employment and homes in the west. In 1946 Kopański, became commander of the corps, and on 26 September that year he was deprived of Polish citizenship by the Communists.