Alex Deane Profile picture
17 Feb, 10 tweets, 2 min read
This is the 30th instalment of #deanehistory

My grandfather was a glider pilot at Arnhem, so I have always taken an interest in paratroopers. But the first Allied parachute drop in enemy territory wasn’t by British troops.
The Cichociemni (chick-a-chem-ney) were Polish paratroopers. Cichociemni means “the silent and unseen.” They trained in exile at Audley End, a beautiful stately home in Essex perhaps best known to you because a nearby railway station is named after it.
Our heroes generally trained in secret in Audley End’s grounds, but one foray further afield involved doing a mock raid on the train station. Spare them a thought the next time you pass through it on the way to Cambridge.
They also did a fullblown attack exercise on the local post office, no doubt a treat for Mrs Goggins. Night manoeuvres led to punch-ups with both Essex police & Home Guard units, presumably surprised by these lads charging around their patch. Joined up bureaucracy fails again.
Their first drop was a raid behind enemy lines in their beloved homeland on 15-16 February 1941. They delivered funds & materiel to the resistance, became officers in the Polish Secret Army, & taught guerrilla warfare techniques they’d learned.
They also conveyed agents to be embedded in the underground movement.

The 80th anniversary of the drop was yesterday, and @itvanglia did them proud in a special report you can find online.
The Cichociemni were all volunteers. Britain is proud to have trained them in covert operations, cryptography, intelligence-gathering, sabotage & queueing. 316 Cichociemni were dropped into occupied Poland; 103 died in combat or were executed after being captured by the Germans.
18 more died in action in the Warsaw Uprising.

Raids stopped in 1944 after most of Poland was occupied by the Red Army. A grim sign of their country's future: in addition to those killed by Nazis, 9 further Cichociemni were executed after the war by the Polish communist regime.
Arkady Rzegocki, the Polish Ambassador to the UK, said the Chicochemni’s first mission offered a “glimmer of hope to the besieged homeland that help was coming.”
527 Poles completed their special training at Audley End House. Heroes all. Did you know that this sedate spot in Essex was (in the words of English Heritage) “the spiritual home of wartime resistance” for the Poles?

You do now.

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More from @ajcdeane

19 Feb
This is the 32nd instalment of #deanehistory.Hat tip: @FredTitmus.

Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Hungary. It was the last orthodox thing he ever did.
Whilst he did not complete his studies at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Dramatic Art, I think you’ll agree that what follows confirms a flair for the dramatic.
Regular arrested for theft, he abandoned his course and moved to England where he converted to Christianity & was sent to Germany by missionaries to train for religious orders, a vocation for which subsequent events showed him to be singularly ill-suited.
Read 22 tweets
18 Feb
This is the 31st instalment of #deanehistory.

Adeline, Countess of Cardigan and Lancastre, (not a typo, albeit it's sometimes anglicised) played fast & loose with naming conventions.
This habit may have stemmed from her father’s use in later life of her mother’s cool maiden name, “de Horsey.” Nicer than the apian cruelty of his own name, Kilderbee.
Briefly engaged to a pretender to the Spanish throne, she scandalised society by being out & about with the notorious rake the 7th Earl of Cardigan, without a chaperone – quelle horreur! After the death of the Earl’s wife, they formalised things by getting married themselves.
Read 15 tweets
31 Jan
This is the 22nd instalment of #deanehistory.

If you are of a squeamish disposition, look away now.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Leonid Rogozov served as the doctor on the 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition, September 1960 to October 1961. This expedition established the Novolazarevskaya Station, on the Schirmacher Oasis- nominative false advertising if ever there was.
They’d come by ship from Russia; it took over a month. The ship wouldn’t be back for a year.

Setting up the base was OK; winter struck by February & the dozen men hunkered down to see it out, hoping not to recreate The Thing no doubt.
Read 14 tweets
30 Jan
This is the 21st instalment of #deanehistory.

In this challenging time people are understandably reflecting on things & realising that there are things that they regret.

Looking back, I realise that I was insufficiently rude to two people. The first was Geoffrey Howe.
I partially owe that conclusion, and the existence of this thread, to the brilliant “The Spy & the Traitor,” by @BenMacintyre1, which you should read.
In the dark days of Soviet Russia, Oleg Gordievsky spied for us for a generation. He was blown because of a CIA traitor. Whilst he thought he was probably discovered, he still went back to Moscow from London (where he could have claimed asylum and all would be fine) because…
Read 16 tweets
29 Jan
This is the 20th instalment of #deanehistory.

We’ve all - until these recent, housebound times - enjoyed the occasional “night on the tiles.”

But the Day of the Tiles was quite different & (depending on how you spend your nights, I suppose) rather more painful.
The ancient city of Grenoble was the capital of the old, proud French region of Dauphiny in the southeast. (Possession of the region by French royalty came with the condition that the heir to the throne be called “Dauphin” after it. Obvious parallel with “Prince of Wales.”)
Louis XVI did not have a good run of things, what with being the only French monarch to be executed, presiding over the end of a thousand years of royal rule and so on. But he could hardly have appreciated things would kick off in the southeastern corner of the realm at Grenoble.
Read 17 tweets
28 Jan
This is the 19th instalment of #deanehistory.

Die Hard is the best Christmas film. This truism is well known.

But the phrase “Die Hard” actually has a much longer history.
In the early 1800s, Spain & Portugal fought the Peninsular War against the invading / occupying French. As usual, in any given scrap in the last millennia or so, the British were on board, against the French.
At the Battle of Albuera, quite near the Spanish/Portuguese border, in 1811, a British/ES/PT force fought Napoleon’s Armée du Midi (included some Poles from the Duchy of Warsaw). In sum: heavy losses on both sides, result a score draw. Such conclusions belie the human stories.
Read 12 tweets

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