Silent Unseen vet dropping in for a visit
During WWII, a small and little-known unit of Free Polish Army commandos, under the code name Cichociemni (Polish for “Silent, Unseen”) wrecked havoc in occupied Poland. Formed from a group of over 2,000 volunteers that numbered mostly exiled Army officers and senior NCO of the regular Polish Army, fewer than 600 completed training and selection in England. They dropped across Nazi-held Poland starting in 1941, delivering over 600 tons of munitions and supplies to the Polish Home Army (the underground resistance).
Cichociemny Jan Piwnik (Ponury) and his colleagues from the Kedyw unit of the Home Army Radom-Kielce Home Army area, 1944, Photo wiki
Some 344 volunteers made the trip into Poland as well (in 82 jumps!), while others parachuted into France, Greece and elsewhere to fight the Germans and Italians wherever they could. Of those who made it back home under a British parachute, over a third lost their lives. No less than 91 made it to Warsaw to take part in the epic Warsaw Uprising, where they helped lead Home Army forces in a hopeless final stand against the Nazis.
Today the Polish special forces unit, GROM, has adopted the lineage of the old Cichociemni force.
One of the last survivors of that unit, 2nd Lt. Aleksander Tarnawski, is now 94 years old and jumped with GROM last week.
It was his first parachute jump since 1944.
