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Authors: Benjamin Weiser
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Rembertow, he was promoted to first lieutenant, and was sent back to the Ninth Mechanized Regiment in Pila, where he was made a company commander. Upon his arrival, he ran into Konstanty Staniszewski, the roommate from officers school who had prayed at bedtime beneath the covers. Staniszewski, who had become a counterintelligence officer, had heard of Kuklinski’s troubles with the party. “Your file is thick with lies,” Staniszewski said. He led Kuklinski into his office in the Prussian-style barracks and said that he had gone to his superiors, described Kuklinski’s mistreatment, and vouched for him. Staniszewski had received permission to destroy his file. As Kuklinski watched, Staniszewski lit a coal stove, picked up the file, and threw it in.
In 1953, Kuklinski was promoted to captain and made chief of staff of the Fifteenth Anti-Landing Battalion, which had 300 soldiers, 100 horses, and 18 cannon. Based in Kolobrzeg, the battalion was part of Moscow’s new effort to bolster Poland’s coastal defense, undertaken after Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s daring fall 1950 amphibious landing at Inchon that changed the direction of the Korean War. Moscow, realizing that superior offensive operations could be undermined by failure to defend the rear, had created nine battalions along the length of the 500-kilometer Polish coast.
While Kuklinski was in Kolobrzeg, Hanka remained in Pila, working as a bookkeeper. In September 1953 their first child, Waldemar, nicknamed Waldek, was born. Hanka and Waldek joined Kuklinski in Kolobrzeg, and they moved into an apartment building that had been German barracks before the war. Hanka took a job as a bookkeeper with a government fishing enterprise. In 1954, Kuklinski was made commander of the Eighteenth Anti-Landing Battalion, one of the three battalions that composed the brigade in Kolobrzeg. In March 1955, Bogdan, their second son, was born.
Kuklinski doted on his children, and in his spare time, he loved to sail. He and a group of friends―an architect, a judge, a doctor, several artists, and the local harbormaster in Kolobrzeg―organized the Joseph Conrad Yacht Club, which Kuklinski named after his favorite author. The harbormaster was named president, and Kuklinski was made vice president. The club created a marina in an old Napoleonic fort situated on the Parsenta River, where it enters the Kolobrzeg harbor.
In the face of friendly skepticism from his colleagues, Kuklinski also began to rebuild a wrecked twenty-eight-foot German sailboat that had been sunk in the war. Working on the rusty cast-iron keel in his basement, he reattached the planks in the oak hull with copper nails that he formed out of snips of telephone wire.
In September 1956, Kuklinski began a regimental commander’s course in Wesola, near Warsaw, just months after a workers uprising in Poznan had been violently crushed by the Polish Army, leaving dozens dead and hundreds of others injured. In October a government shakeup led to the naming of Wladyslaw Gomulka, a previously purged official, as party secretary. Tensions between the Soviet Union and Poland escalated, with Russian troops even marching on Warsaw. Gomulka, who had tried to respond to the Poles’ demands for more freedom, ordered Soviet Marshal Konstanty Rokossowski and other Russians holding senior Army posts to leave the country.
In his first few months in Wesola, Kuklinski was thrilled by the prospect of change, and what it might mean for the Polish Army. “Maybe the Army was not the best institution for democracy,” he said, “but we were part of the society, and we wanted to serve the nation, not the party.” He asked a local newsstand owner to save him copies of Po Prostu , the weekly reformist newspaper, and other periodicals. Many of his military colleagues were also upset at Poland’s unequal relationship with the Soviet Union, the presence of Soviet generals in the Polish Army, and the lack of freedom of
In 1953, Kuklinski was promoted to captain and made chief of staff of the Fifteenth Anti-Landing Battalion, which had 300 soldiers, 100 horses, and 18 cannon. Based in Kolobrzeg, the battalion was part of Moscow’s new effort to bolster Poland’s coastal defense, undertaken after Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s daring fall 1950 amphibious landing at Inchon that changed the direction of the Korean War. Moscow, realizing that superior offensive operations could be undermined by failure to defend the rear, had created nine battalions along the length of the 500-kilometer Polish coast.
While Kuklinski was in Kolobrzeg, Hanka remained in Pila, working as a bookkeeper. In September 1953 their first child, Waldemar, nicknamed Waldek, was born. Hanka and Waldek joined Kuklinski in Kolobrzeg, and they moved into an apartment building that had been German barracks before the war. Hanka took a job as a bookkeeper with a government fishing enterprise. In 1954, Kuklinski was made commander of the Eighteenth Anti-Landing Battalion, one of the three battalions that composed the brigade in Kolobrzeg. In March 1955, Bogdan, their second son, was born.
Kuklinski doted on his children, and in his spare time, he loved to sail. He and a group of friends―an architect, a judge, a doctor, several artists, and the local harbormaster in Kolobrzeg―organized the Joseph Conrad Yacht Club, which Kuklinski named after his favorite author. The harbormaster was named president, and Kuklinski was made vice president. The club created a marina in an old Napoleonic fort situated on the Parsenta River, where it enters the Kolobrzeg harbor.
In the face of friendly skepticism from his colleagues, Kuklinski also began to rebuild a wrecked twenty-eight-foot German sailboat that had been sunk in the war. Working on the rusty cast-iron keel in his basement, he reattached the planks in the oak hull with copper nails that he formed out of snips of telephone wire.
In September 1956, Kuklinski began a regimental commander’s course in Wesola, near Warsaw, just months after a workers uprising in Poznan had been violently crushed by the Polish Army, leaving dozens dead and hundreds of others injured. In October a government shakeup led to the naming of Wladyslaw Gomulka, a previously purged official, as party secretary. Tensions between the Soviet Union and Poland escalated, with Russian troops even marching on Warsaw. Gomulka, who had tried to respond to the Poles’ demands for more freedom, ordered Soviet Marshal Konstanty Rokossowski and other Russians holding senior Army posts to leave the country.
In his first few months in Wesola, Kuklinski was thrilled by the prospect of change, and what it might mean for the Polish Army. “Maybe the Army was not the best institution for democracy,” he said, “but we were part of the society, and we wanted to serve the nation, not the party.” He asked a local newsstand owner to save him copies of Po Prostu , the weekly reformist newspaper, and other periodicals. Many of his military colleagues were also upset at Poland’s unequal relationship with the Soviet Union, the presence of Soviet generals in the Polish Army, and the lack of freedom of
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