Janusz Jarzembowski

Armoured Hussars 2 provides a highly-illustrated account of the 1st Polish Armoured Division’s baptism of fire in Normandy in August 1944, from Operations Totalise and Tractable to the victory at Falaise, culminating at the climactic battle on Mont Ormel – the site of this triumph was justly named ‘A Polish Battlefield’ by the Canadians. This album contains contributions written by the distinguished military author and Normandy veteran Ken Tout, who was recently awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit by the Republic of Poland for popularising the Polish soldiers of the Second World War. Serving as a young Sherman tank crewman in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, Ken watched the Poles go in to action on 8 August and witnessed their savage baptism of fire. The album features many dramatic photographs and documents, numbering over 250, from the renowned Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum (PISM) as well as from the author's collection. It is also supplemented by eight pages of colour plates featuring divisional armour, uniforms, maps and a centre page-spread of a close-quarter action on Mont Ormel, based on the memoirs of a regimental commander. Illustrated by the renowned military artist, Peter Dennis, this depiction also features on the front cover. This book will appeal to all who have an interest in the Second World War and the Normandy Campaign, and is a fitting tribute to those Polish soldiers who fought so gallantly for Europe's freedom as part of the Allied Liberation Army and played a decisive role in the defeat of German forces in France at the Battle of the Falaise Pocket in August 1944.

This wonderful album is a brilliant pictorial history of the 1st Polish Armoured Division composed of about 250 photographs, documents and publications largely collected by WO1 Alexander Leon 'Manka' Jarzembowski, a veteran of 2nd Armoured Regiment, as he soldiered for Poland between 1917-1949. The collection lay in albums unseen for decades until recent interest in the Division and its Commanding Officer, General Stanislaw Maczek, caused Jarzembowski's son, Jan, to revisit his father's archive in order to provide a narrative for the almost forgotten Division and for his father's memory. The photographs themselves cover the period from 1939 and the invasion of Poland before moving onto the French Campaign of 1940; the bulk of the images illustrate the story of the Division from arriving in the UK in 1940, reforming in 1942 and then its campaigns in North-West Europe 1944-45 - its pursuit of the Germans across northern France, Belgium and Holland, and finally into Germany. Included are some of the final Divisional parades prior to disbandment in 1947. There are also many interesting photographs of dignitaries who visited and inspected the Division thorough out those years, including General Sikorski. The range of images available in this album is wide and impressive with many excellent shots of uniforms, equipment and armour, which not only provide an aid to historians and veteran's families, but, expertly annotated by the author, are of great value to military modellers as reference material. This album is a tribute to the gallant men of the Polish 1st Armoured Division. General Maczek and his men fought the Second World War from the very beginning to the very end with extreme bravery, but gained nothing for their efforts, yet maintained their dignity and pride to the end of their, often very long, lives.