Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Late Term Abortin
By definition, pride is an inflated sense of one's accomplishments or personal status. Arrogance is defined as an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumption. God is a God of order in a creation of sinful chaos. Both, the Church and Christians, need to fully understand that balance and order are parts of the nature of God, and thus, we are to reflect them. To be cavalier and enact legislation that seeks to be the sole solution in and of itself without considering, the resultants (ie. the children that will be born because of it into poor environments), is unbalanced. A better solution would reflect pro-life legislation that affords support, care, and services post-birth and for the remainder of that child's life. What we have seen lately is a refusal to acknowledge that balanced, solution focused legislation even exists. All too often, we see the pregnant mother as the problem, and forget the child after birth. Furthermore, while you are a part of the solution, the vast majority are not and would rather protest than be love in action and deed. Simply put, the church reflects God's best in the practical action it takes towards a balanced solution that considers the whole issue. When a democratic society and government chooses end-point solutions, the church should be ready to fill the gap and be the feet and hands of Christ. Amen! I love a good voice of reason. A balanced approach to this entire issue is one that is completely reasonable, logical and faith based. If you want to ban abortions completely, then be the Christian and Church that adopts and cares for all of the unwanted and impoverished children that result from unintentional or unwanted pregnancy. Be the Christian and church that cares for teen mothers and fathers who have made a mistake. When we sit on our hands and feet, and watch as children grow up in the foster care system, live in hunger and disease, face abusive and addicted parent/s, we become a part of the problem. To think that, by banning abortion, people are going to stop having sex and therefore we will not have to deal with this issue, is foolish, unwise and ignorant. To pass laws that are not accompanied by solutions to accommodate, what are known resultants, is foolish, unwise, and ignorant. To do all of this, in the name of God and for the purpose of protecting his creation, when in reality you are not, is a recipe for disaster. Being shortsighted and unwilling to discuss an entire issue, is nothing more than shorthand for being stupid.
Monday, September 2, 2013
125 years ago, Blizzard of 1888 ravaged the Plains
A sudden, fierce blizzard slashed across Nebraska 125 years ago. On Jan. 12, 1888, a howling northwest wind swept across the Great Plains with no warning.
The temperature fell to between 30 and 40 degrees below. The storm raged for 12 to 18 hours.
Blowing and drifting snow smothered the landscape. An estimated 230 people perished, including 40 to 100 in Nebraska. People collapsed and died within yards of their doors, unable to hear pots being pounded to guide them to safety. Ice sealed nostrils in minutes.
Blowing and drifting snow smothered the landscape. An estimated 230 people perished, including 40 to 100 in Nebraska. People collapsed and died within yards of their doors, unable to hear pots being pounded to guide them to safety. Ice sealed nostrils in minutes.
Freezing eyelids tore.
Snow depths weren't extraordinary, but hurricane-like winds caused blinding whiteouts. Arctic air flash-froze the landscape. At Valentine, Neb., the temperature was 30 degrees at 6 a.m., 6 degrees at 2 p.m. and 14 below at 9 p.m.
Historians rank the Blizzard of 1888 as among the most severe to hit Nebraska.
None is more anchored in Nebraska lore. The blizzard's place in history is immortalized in a haunting mosaic near the ceiling of the Great Hall in the State Capitol.
The nightmare mega-storm is sometimes called the Schoolchildren's Blizzard because it caught so many children away from home on a Thursday. Acts of heroism by parents, children and teachers became legendary, especially 19-year-old Minnie Freeman's exploits.
Freeman was a teacher at a sod schoolhouse about six miles south of Ord, Neb., in an area
known as Mira Valley. She linked her pupils with twine and led them through the blinding storm to safety at a farmhouse after gale winds blew off a corner of the school's tarpaper-and-sod roof.
Storm stories gathered by the Nebraska State Historical Society and subsequent books chronicled how the blizzard caught people off-guard. Most accounts agree that the early hours that day were unseasonably warm. Cattle were in fields. Schoolchildren played outside during noon recess. Men worked outdoors without coats.
Then the wind changed direction and a great mass of thick, blinding snow rolled across the Plains.
Then the wind changed direction and a great mass of thick, blinding snow rolled across the Plains.
John Craig was a 7-year-old farm boy who lived nine miles southeast of Leigh, Neb. He was in a country school when the cataclysmic cold front dropped in about 2 p.m. He later wrote:
“With the suddenness of a clap of thunder, the sheer front of the blizzard crashed against the schoolhouse like a tidal wave, shaking the wooden frame building and almost lifting it from its foundation.''
Many teachers kept their students for two nights until rescuers arrived. One teacher had children ring the school bell day and night to let people know they were safe. Church bells in O'Neill, Neb., tolled and mill whistles sounded at one-minute intervals to guide people lost on the prairie to safety.
It took a few days before the scope of the natural disaster became apparent as word of tragedies and heroics trickled in to newspapers.
Seattle writer David Laskin reconstructed the storm in “The Children's Blizzard'' in 2004:
“For years afterward, at gatherings of any size in Dakota or Nebraska, there would always be people walking on wooden legs or holding fingerless hands behind their backs or hiding missing ears under hats — victims of the blizzard.''
Decades later, storm survivors organized a club and met annually to commemorate the storm. The club published a book of blizzard stories in 1947.
They called it, “In All Its Fury.''
Blizzard of 1888: Stories of heroism and tragedy
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A reluctant folk hero
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Minnie Freeman was a reluctant folk hero.
Freeman's actions quickly symbolized the countless acts of bravery that surfaced in the wake of the Blizzard of 1888, despite her attempts to dismiss national acclaim for leading her pupils to safety when the storm struck central Nebraska.
A musician composed “Thirteen Were Saved,” a song honoring “Nebraska's Fearless Maid.” She received more than 80 marriage proposals. The State Education Board gave her a gold medal. A wax bust of Freeman was exhibited across the nation.
Accounts vary of how many children were in Freeman's sod schoolhouse at Mira Valley near Ord. Some say 13, others 17. A few say 16.
Newspaper accounts detailed Freeman's matter-of-fact explanation of what happened during the storm:
“I took a ball of stout twine I had in my desk and tied the children together, fastened one end to my arm and waited for an opportunity. Then the roof blew off. We started. It was about three-quarters of a mile to the nearest house, and the wind blew in our face ... but we finally got through. I really do not think I am deserving of so much credit.''
The youngest student was 5. Freeman described the journey:
“I told them we would all have to stick together. If anyone was to stop to rub cold hands, all would stop. We went two by two, with strict orders to keep hold of the one just ahead.'' Freeman said that walking into the wind toward the farmhouse where she boarded kept her from wandering off course. Visibility was four or five feet.
“Somehow or other we managed to struggle to that house, where hay was put on the floors, covers brought out and all the children taken care of for the night. Parents were desperate. They thought all had perished. When they found all were saved, they called it providential. It must have been because not far away a farmer froze to death trying to get to his house from the barn only 150 feet away.''
Three years later, Freeman married farmer Edgar Penney. They had two sons, and she was politically and socially active. According to obituaries, she was Nebraska's first Republican national committeewoman, first president of the Nebraska American Legion Auxiliary, an officer of the Nebraska League of Women Voters, president of the Nebraska Federation of Women's Clubs and a member of the committee that selected a new state seal. The Penneys kept their legal residence in Fullerton, Neb., after moving to Chicago in about 1923. Penney was president of a chemical company.
Minnie Freeman Penney died in Chicago in 1943. She was 75. A three-paragraph obituary in The World-Herald was printed on the comics page near “Joe Palooka,'' “Blondie'' and “Orphan Annie.''
Lost children, lost limbs
Other Nebraska teachers weren't as fortunate as Minnie Freeman.
Lois May Royce, a country schoolteacher near Plainview, tried to lead three students to her boarding house about 200 yards away after determining that the school fuel supply would not last the night.
The group lost its way in the storm. The children — ages 9, 9 and 6 — died. The next morning, Royce crawled to a nearby farmhouse. She suffered severe frostbite to her feet, and they were amputated weeks later. Royce eventually learned to walk with artificial limbs, married in Iowa and moved to California.
Emma Shattuck, a teacher near Emmet, found refuge in a haystack, where she remained for two days until discovered by a farmer. She was so badly frozen that both legs were amputated. She later died of her injuries.
Tragedy amid a party
Omaha partied Jan. 12.
Hundreds of people in 400 sleighs and cutters paraded through Omaha and crossed the frozen Missouri River — while a brass band played — to dinner and dancing in Council Bluffs, then a town tucked into the hills far east of the river.
The revelers were celebrating the early completion of a Douglas Street bridge to the Bluffs.
The storm hit shortly after 4 p.m. and caused anxiety among the partiers worried about returning to Omaha across the windswept prairie west of the Bluffs and a river known to have holes in the ice below the bridge.
At least two Omahans died in the blizzard. Cigarmaker Ferdinand Eller froze within a block of his boardinghouse at 24th and Leavenworth Streets. Wixell Beck, 8, left Walnut Hill School to walk a quarter mile home at 3:30 p.m. He wandered lost onto the prairie and froze.
Four years ago, Opera Omaha reintroduced the storm to Nebraskans with the world premiere of “Blizzard Voices.'' The oratorio featured dramatic dialogue by Nebraska poet Ted Kooser.
The day after the blizzard, the Omaha Republican newspaper treated the storm with a one-line comment:
“The local ice crop is assured.''
Dog saves his master
Omaha Indians Charley Stabler and Rough Clouds were hunting and trapping muskrat and beaver along Beaver Creek near Genoa, Neb., with Stabler's dog, Bear Claws. The young men took shelter under a tree, and snow drifted over them.
Stabler awoke the next morning. Rough Clouds was dead. Bear Claws was missing. Stabler could not break out of the tomb of ice and snow.
About noon Jan. 15, Stabler heard his dog whining and digging over his head. They both dug frantically and broke through the crust of snow. Stabler, with the dog at his side, crawled toward a dim light in the distance and fell against a farmhouse door. The farm family took him in and cared for his frozen hands and feet.
Bear Claws went on to the Omaha camp where he whined and whimpered until some of the men followed him to the farmhouse. The dog later led the men to the place where Rough Cloud's body lay. Tracks in the snow showed that the dog had made many trips back and forth, trying to bring help to his master and friend.
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Whose fault?
An intoxicated man in Falls City, Neb., froze his hands so badly while attempting to walk to his house three miles south of the town that they were amputated. The man's attorney sued the saloonkeeper for $5,000.
Trees point way to safety
Wilhelm Glaubius hitched horses to his wagon and drove to a country school southwest of Wisner, Neb. He loaded children and teacher Howard Miller aboard and headed for safety. Glaubius left a note written in German on the door, telling parents that he was taking the children to his home. Glaubius became lost, however, until a lull in the storm provided sight of a grove of trees around his house.
Mom dies looking for sons
Mary Masek of Milligan, Neb., walked nearly two miles to a country school to locate her sons, Charles and Thomas. Finding the school empty, she started back. Her frozen body was found huddled near a cottonwood tree, a short distance from a neighbor's farmhouse.
Older sister tried to help
In Dodge County, Neb., two daughters of the widow of Peter Westphalen started home from a schoolhouse. Their bodies were found lying close together in an open field drifted with snow. The older girl, 13, had taken off her wraps and put them on her sister, 8.
Saddle provides shelter
Mark C. Rich, who later lived in Council Bluffs, was riding horseback in Horse Camp Draw on the Sidney-Deadwood Trail south of the Black Hills in Dakota Territory.
He dismounted, took the saddle off his horse and stood it on end against a large bush. Dressed in an overcoat, mittens, overshoes over his boots and a waterproof slicker, Rich wrapped in the saddle blanket and lay in the shelter of his saddle.
He unfastened one of the bridle reins from the bit, fastened it to the end of the other rein and tied it around an arm to keep the horse from wandering away.
Snow drifted over Rich but he survived and continued his ride to the Z-Bell Ranch about 12 hours later.
Cow leads the way home
A girl named Mary was out with the family cows in an Antelope County, Neb., field of corn stubble.
One of the old cows led the herd, and when it was time to take the cattle in, Mary would hold the old cow's tail to walk home and the others would follow. The old cow started for home when the blinding storm hit. Mary grabbed the tail and was safely guided home.
Blind mare finds the way
Theodore Peterson of Oakland, Neb., had been to the mill at Lyons to grind wheat for flour when he was caught in the storm. He was driving a wagon hitched to an old blind mare and another horse. The blind horse had been over the road many times without seeing it, so Peterson loosened the reins and let her find the way home.
Hotel provides 'chance of a lifetime'
Van Nostrand, the cemetery sexton in Tekamah, Neb., guided his two daughters and four other girls from the town school to the local Brookings Hotel, where the children camped on the floor of the upstairs parlor.
Ella Sloan Young later wrote: “It was a long time before we got to sleep. Six little school girls getting to have a slumber party was the chance of a lifetime.''
Feeling his way
Frank Carney was a 20-year-old night telegraph operator for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway at Irvington. His office was a boxcar parked on a spur along Papio Creek.
Carney later wrote: “By 9 (p.m.) the blizzard was howling down the Pappio valley and the old boxcar, which stood ... broadside to the wind, was groaning and swaying on its tracks at every blast until I was afraid to stay there longer, expecting that at any moment it would roll down into the creek with me and a red hot stove in it.''
Carney telegraphed the train dispatcher in Fremont and received permission to leave his post and walk a half mile to the depot. Carney blindly stumbled along the rails.
“It was like trying to see with my face pushed into a snowdrift.''
He feared not being able to see the light in the depot agent's window and walking to his doom in the countryside. So every few steps, Carney reached out to the north side of the track to see if he could feel the depot platform.
Father, sons pass each other along fence
William Hagemeister, 12, and his brother Frank, 15, started home from their country school four miles west of Bradshaw, Neb., after school was dismissed at 3 p.m.
They followed a row of trees and a fence about a half mile east and a mile south to the family farm. Their worried father had started north to find the boys.
“He was on the east side of the fence and we on the west side. We must have passed each other, not many feet apart, but we did not see each other. We arrived home about the time father reached the schoolhouse. He got back safely, too.''
A boy and girl who had to walk a mile and a half northwest perished.
Whistle of wind guides rescuers
Townspeople came to C.W. Senift's grocery store in Pickrell, Neb., to rescue children from the hilltop schoolhouse about three blocks away.
They took rolls of rope and followed the Lincoln-Beatrice telephone line that paralleled the highway near the school.
They couldn't see from pole to pole but the whistle of the wire in the wind guided the men. They fastened rope to each pole and followed the line back to the store from the school.
Compiled from contemporary newspaper accounts, the book “In All Its Fury” and Nebraska State Historical Society records.
Islamic Spring
Spring of spiders?Spring: The fields are covered by thousands blooming flowers.Life is celebrating everywhere! However if the fields are covered by thorns, flowers are not blooming and the spiders are flourishing. The Arabs unrest results in Islamist parties taking power.Islamists parties agenda doesn't stand against the Islamist ideology pillars of: 1-one religion Islam 2-one government Kalifat 3-one law-Sharia 4:imposed worldwide by an endless war. The western politicians' and media prisoners in their definition of revolution and democracy refuse to listen what is being said in Arabic and not English.Is the free world the spider (Islamists) pray? Will the free world turn to be the spider (Islamist) PREY?Time will tell.--Remember: The Nazi get power by democratic elections. Lesson: Understand a ideology before supporting their power takeover. The price played later opposing the implementation of such ideologies is beyond imagination. USA helped Taliban to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan without taking seriously their Islamic Jihad ideology. The world harvests the terror seeds on daily basis. Remember to enquire Islamist stand for the followings published and said often in Arabic however rarely in English."1:"JIHAD AGAINST NON-MUSLIMS IS OBLIGATORY" Muslim can come closer to Allah by waging jihad against all non-Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists, or polytheists in every possible manner.Total rejection of non-Muslims and of the Muslims who have strayed from the path of Islam Muslim brotherhood ideology pillar: By Dr Ahmad ‘Abd Al-Khaleq in about Al-Walaa Wa'l-Bara. Refer to Muslim Brotherhood Website- Oct 17 2012: Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo's most prominent mosque 2011 Nov 25 attendants vowing time and again, a Koran quote vowing that "ONE DAY WE SAELL KILL ALL THE JEWSs" 3:Muslim brotherhood leader speech in Cairo before 1 million people "HITLER DIDN'T FINISHED THE JOB THE MUSLIMS WILL FINISH THE JOB"
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Why we support Muslim Brotherhood in Syria
The Christians, who make up some 10 percent of the 22 million Syrian population, have shown support for the existing Syrian government, much to the consternation of the opposition, which increasingly is being infiltrated by al-Qaida and other Islamic fundamentalist groups. Among those is the Muslim Brotherhood, which considers the Christians to be infidels.While many Christians regard the Assad regime as repressive and want an open, democratic, inclusive and religiously tolerant society, they realize that there will be no such developments with a change of regime, especially some sort of Muslim Brotherhood puppet government.For the life of me, I can't understand the foreign policy of this illegal administration. We have watched country after country fall to this "Arab Spring" fiasco, supported by the U.S. and the U.N. The truth is, we are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood under the guise of democracy, which is not the intention of the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria is fighting a civil war against the Brotherhood, and instead of us supporting Syria, we are aiding the Brotherhood who's first order of business is to eliminate Christians and democracy. The executions in Syria are not at the hands of the government, but the Brotherhood, and the innocent women and children killed are christians. The Muslims and the Islamists are fighting side by side. If you notice, the Islamists didn't take over a mosque or a temple, they took over a Christian church thus violating one of the most sacred rules governing war. We need to thank God the military government in Egypt has the nerve to step up and keep the brotherhood from taking over Egypt. We need to pray we get this fool out of the White House before he gives the U.S. over to the brotherhood or the Socialist Party, both of which he is a member in good standing.
Krystyna Skarbek
(1 May 1915 – 15 June 1952) was a Polish Special Operations Executive (SOE
) agent who became a legend in her own time for her daring exploits in intelligence and sabotage missions to Nazi-occupied Poland and France.She was a British agent just months before the SOE was founded in July 1940 and had been the longest serving of all British women agents during World War II. Skarbek was extremely resourceful and quite persuasive. Because of her influence the SOE began to recruit increasing numbers of women agents into the organization.
In 1941 she chose her began using the nom de guerre Christine Granville, which she ultimately legally adopted after the war. Skarbek was a friend of Ian Fleming, and is said to have been the inspiration for the charachters of Bond girls Tatiana Romanova and Vesper Lynd.Krystyna Skarbek was born on an estate at Mlodzieszyn, 56 km (35 miles) west of Warsaw, to Count Jerzy Skarbek, a Roman Catholic and Stefania née Goldfeder, the daughter of a wealthy assimilated Jewish banker. It was a marriage of convenience which allowed Jerzy Skarbek the benefit of using Stefania`s dowry to pay his debts and continue his lavish life-style.
The Skarbeks were well connected with notable relations such as the composer Fryderyk Chopin, Chopin's godfather and prison reformer Fryderyk Skarbek, and American Union General Włodzimierz Krzyżanowski.
The couple's first child, Andrzej took after the mother's side of the family while, Krystyna, second born, took after her father. She shared his love for riding horses, which she sat astride, rather than side-saddle. During family visits to Zakopane in the mountains of southern Poland, she developed into an expert skier. From the very beginning, there was a complete rapport between father and daughter and her penchant for being a tomboy developed quite naturally.
Krystyna first met Andrzej Kowerski her childhood playmate, a her family stables, when his father met with her father the Count to discuss agricultural business. The 1920s financial crisis had left the family in dire financial straits in which they had to give up their country estate and move to Warsaw. In 1930, when Krystyna was just 22, her father died. The financial empire of the Goldfeder family had almost all but collapsed leaving barely sufficient money to support the widowed Countess Stefania.
Krystyna found work at a Fiat dealership but soon had to quit due to illness incurred as a result of the auto fumes. Initially, a doctor's diagnosis concluded that the shadows on her chest e-rays were that of tuberculosis, since her father had died of the disease. She received compensation from her employer's insurance company and followed the advice of her physician to spend as much time in the outdoors as possible. She spent a great deal of time hiking and skiing the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland.
During this time, Krystyna married a young businessman, Karol Getlich but the marriage ended amicably. They were incompatible. Subsequently, she was involved in a love affair, but it was nipped in the bud, as Karol's mother refused to allow him to marry a penniless divorcee.
One day while skiing at Zakopane, Krystyna lost control on the slopes and was saved in the nick of time by a giant of a man who stepped into her path and saved her. His name was Jerzy Giżycki - a brilliant, moody, irascible eccentric young man, who came from a wealthy family in Ukraine. At the age of fourteen, he had quarreled with his father, run away from home, and worked in the United States as a cowboy and gold prospector. Eventually he became an author and traveled the world in search of material for his books and articles. He had visited Africa and knew it well. It was his hope to one day return.
On 2 November 1938, Krystyna and Jerzy Giżycki married at the Evangelical Reformed Church in Warsaw. Shortly thereafter Jerzy accepted a diplomatic posting to Ethiopia, where he served as Poland’s consul general until September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Skarbek would later refer to Giżycki as having been "my Svengali for so many years that he would never believe that I could ever leave him for good."
LONDON
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| Frederick Voigt |
With the outbreak of World War II, the couple sailed for London, England, where Skarbek
offered her services to the British Empire. At first the British authorities had little interest in considering her, but were eventually convinced by Skarbek's acquaintances, including that of journalist Frederick Augustus Voigt, who had previously introduced her to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). In 1940 Voigt was working as advsor for the British in the Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries. After World War II, George Orwell described Voigt as a "neo-tory" who expounded on the need to maintain British imperial power as a necessary bulwark against communism and for the maintenance of international peace and political stability.
The prison had been designed in the mid-19th century by Krystyna Skarbek's great-great-uncle Fryderyk Florian Skarbek, a prison reformer and Frédéric Chopin's godfather, who had been tutored in French language by Chopin's father. |
| Pawiak Prison |
Krystyna Skarbek helped to organize a team of Polish couriers that transported intelligence reports from Warsaw to Budapest. Among them, was her cousin Ludwik Popiel who managed to smuggle out the unique Polish anti-tank rifle, model 35, with the stock and barrel sawed off for easier transport but it never saw wartime service with the Allies. Its designs and specifications had to be destroyed upon the outbreak of war and there was no time for reverse engineering. Captured stocks of the rifle were, however, used by the Germans and the Italians. For a period of time Skarbek, had the weapon concealed in her Budapest apartment.
In Hungary, Skarbek met long-lost childhood friend, Andrzej Kowerski, a Polish Army officer, who would later use the British nom de guerre"Andrew Kennedy". Skarbek met him again briefly before the war at Zakopane. Kowerski had lost part of his leg in a pre-war hunting accident, and was now exfiltrating Polish and other Allied military personnel and gathering intelligence.Skarbek demonstrated her penchant for quick-thinking strategy. When she and Kowerski were arrested by the Gestapo in January 1941 she feigned symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis by biting her tongue until it bled. She won their release. Skarbek was related to the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Mikos Horthy, though a distant one at that. A cousin from the Lwów side of the family had married a relative of Horthy. The pair made good their escape from Hungary via the Balkans and Turkey.
Cairo
As soon as they arrived at SOE offices in Cairo, Egypt, they were stunned to discover that they were under suspicion.because of Skarbek's contacts with a Polish intelligence organization called the "Musketeers". The organization was formed in October 1939 by Stefan Witkowski, an engineer-inventor who would be assassinated in October 1941, whose identities have never been determined. Another source of suspicion was the ease with which she had obtained transit visas through French-mandated Syria and Lebanon from the pro-Vichy French consul in Istanbul, a concession offered only to German spies.
Suspicions also surrounded Kowerski and were addressed in London by General Colin Gubbins
, head of the SOE (from September 1943). In a letter dated 17 June 1941 to Polish Commander-in-Chief and Premier Władysław Sikorski, he wrote the following: |
| General Gubbins |
Last year […] a Polish citizen named Kowerski was working with our officials in Budapest on Polish affairs. He is now in Palestine […]. I understand from Major [Peter] Wilkinson [of SOE] that General [Stanisław] Kopański [Kowerski's former commander in Poland] is doubtful about Kowerski's loyalty to the Polish cause [because] Kowerski has not reported to General Kopański for duty with the [Polish Independent Carpathian] Brigade. Major Wilkinson informs me that Kowerski had had instructions from our officials not to report to General Kopański, as he was engaged […] on work of a secret nature which necessitated his remaining apart. It seems therefore that Kowerski's loyalty has only been called into question because of these instructions.
Eventually,Kowerski was able to clarify any misunderstandings with General Kopański following which he resumed intelligence work. Similarly, when Skarbek visited Polish military headquarters in her British Royal Air Force uniform, she was treated by the Polish military chiefs with the highest of respect.
Intelligence obtained by Skarbek through her connections with the Musketeers, had accurately predicted the invasion of the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941). Consequently, when Skarbek and Kowerski's services were dispensed with, Jerzy Gizycki took umbrage and abruptly resigned from his own career as British intelligence agent. (It was discovered only later that a number of Allied sources, including Ultra, also had similar advance information about Operation Barbarossa.)
Skarbek informed Jerzy, her husband that the man she loved was Kowerski. Giżycki left for London, eventually emigrating to Canada. Their divorce became official at the Polish consulate in Berlin on 1 August 1946.
Krystyna Skarbek was sidelined from mainstream action. The assistant to the head of F section, Vera Atkins, described Skarbek as a very brave woman, though very much a loner and a law unto herself.
France
By 1944 events had occurred that would lead to some of Skarbek's most famous of exploits. Due to her fluency in French, her services her offered to SOE teams in France, where she worked under the nom de guerre, "Madame Pauline". The offer was timely one - the SOE was encountering a shortage of trained operatives to meet the increased demands being placed on it in the run-up to the invasion of France. Though new operatives were already in training, the process took time to complete. The could not be posted throughout occupied Europe until they acquired the necessary physical and intellectual skills, otherwise their fate as well as that of other SOE colleagues and that of the French Resistance would be greatly compromised.
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| Cecily Lefort |
The SOE had set up several branches in France. Though most of the women in France reported to F Section in London, Skarbek's mission was launched from Algiers, the base of the AMF Section. This fact, combined with Skarbek's absence from the usual SOE training program, has been the source of mystery to many historians and researchers. The AMF Section was only set up in the wake of the Allied landings in North Africa, 'Operation Torch', comprising of staff from London's F Section and the MO4 from Cairo.
The functions of the AMF Section were three-fold: it was simpler and safer to run the resupply operations from Allied North Africa acroos German-occupied France, than from London; since the South of France would be liberated by separate Allied landings there ("Operation Dragoon"), SOE units in the area needed to be transferred to have links with those headquarters, not with forces for Normandy; the AMF Section tapped into the skills of the French in North Africa, who did not generally support Charles de Gaulle and who had been linked with opposition in the former "Unoccupied Zone".
After the two invasions, the distinctions became irrelevant; and almost all the SOE Sections in France
would be united with the Maquis into the Forces Francaises de l'Interieur (FFI). (There was one exception: the EU/P Section, which was formed by Poles in France and remained part of the trans-European Polish Resistance movement, under Polish command.)On July 6, 1944, Skarbek, as "Pauline Armand", parachuted into southeastern France and became part of the "Jockey" network directed by a Belgian-British lapsed pacifist, Francis Cammaerts. She assisted Cammaerts by linking Italian partisans and French Maquis for joint operations against the Germans in the Alps and by inducing non-Germans, in particular Poles who had been conscripted in the German occupation forces to defect to the Allies.
On August 13, 1944, just two days before Operation Dragoon
landings, Francis Cammaerts, another SOE operative,Xan Fielding who had been operating in Crete, as well as a French officer, Christian Sorensen, were arrested at a roadblock by the Gestapo. When Skarbek learned that they were to be executed, she managed to meet with Capt. Albert Schenck, an Alsatian, who was the liaison officer between the local French prefecture and the Gestapo. She introduced herself as a niece of British General Bernard Montgomery and threatened Schenck should any harm come to the prisoners. She reinforced her threat by offering two million francs for the men's release. Schenck in turn introduced her to a Gestapo officer, a Belgian named Max Waem.For three hours Christine argued and bargained with him and, having turned the full force of her magnetic personality on him... told him that the Allies would be arriving at any moment and that she, a British parachutist, was in constant wireless contact with the British forces. To make her point, she produced some broken... useless W/T crystals.... 'If I were you,' said Christine, 'I should give careful thought to the proposition I have made you. As I told Capitaine Schenck, if anything should happen to my husband [as she falsely described Cammaerts] or to his friends, the reprisals would be swift and terrible, for I don't have to tell you that both you and the Capitaine have an infamous reputation among the locals.'Cammaerts and the other two men were released. Capt. Schenck was advised to leave Digne. He did not and was subsequently murdered by a person or persons unknown. His wife kept the bribe money and, after the war, attempted to exchange it for new francs. She was arrested but released after the authorities investigated her story. She managed to exchange the money but received only a tiny portion of its value.
Increasingly alarmed by the thought of what might befall him when the Allies and the Resistance decided to avenge the many murders he had committed, Waem struck the butt end of his revolver on the table and said, 'If I do get them out of prison, what will you do to protect me?'
Skarbek's service in France restored her political reputation and greatly enhanced her military reputation. When the SOE teams returned from France some of the British women sought new missions in the Pacific War, however Skarbek, being Polish, was ideally suited to serve as a courier for missions to her homeland during the final missions of the SOE. As the Red Army advanced across Poland, the British government and Polish government-in-exile worked together to establish a network that would report on events in the People's Republic of Poland. Kowerski and Skarbek, fully reconciled with the Polish forces, were preparing to be dropped into Poland in early 1945. However, the mission, Operation Freston, was canceled because the first party to enter Poland were captured by the Red Army (they were released in February 1945).
All women SOE operatives were assigned military rank, with honorary commissions in either the Women's Transport Service - which was an autonomous, though elite part of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) or the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Skarbek appears to have been a member of both.
In preparation for service in France, Skarbek worked with the Women's Transport Service, but on her return had transferred to the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as an officer, a rank she held until the end of the war.
Skarbek was one of the few SOE female operatives to have been promoted beyond subaltern rank to that of Captain, or the Air Force equivalent, Flight Officer, the counterpart of the Flight Lieutenant rank for male officers. Skarbek, by the end of the war was Honorary Flight Officer, a title that of Pearl Witherington, the courier who had taken command of a group when the designated commander was captured, and Yvonne Cormeau, considered to be the most successful wireless operator.
Decorations
For her remarkable exploits at Digne, Skarbek was decorated with the George Medal. Years after the Digne incident, in London, she spoke about her experiences to another Pole, also a World War II veteran that, during her negotiations with the Gestapo, she was completely unaware of any danger to herself. Only after she and her comrades had escaped did she realize "What have I done! They could have shot me as well!"
In May 1947, she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) for her work in conjunction with the British authorities. This award is usually presented to officers about the rank of colonel, and a rank above the "standard" award of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) given to other women of SOE.
In recognition of Skarbek's contribution to the liberation of France, the French government awarded her the Croix de Guerre.
After the war, Skarbek was left without financial reserves or a country to return to. Xan Fielding, whom she had saved at Digne, wrote in his 1954 book, Hide and Seek, and dedicated "To the memory of Christine Granville":
After the physical hardship and mental strain she had suffered for six years in our service, she needed, probably more than any other agent we had employed, security for life. […] Yet a few weeks after the armistice she was dismissed with a month's salary and left in Cairo to fend for herself ... [Alt]hough she was too proud to ask for any other assistance, she did apply for […] a British passport; for ever since the Anglo-American betrayal of her country at Yalta she had been virtually stateless. But the naturalization papers […] were delayed in the normal bureaucratic manner. Meanwhile, abandoning all hope of security, she deliberately embarked on a life of uncertain travel, as though anxious to reproduce in peace time the hazards she had known during the war; until, finally, in June 1952, in the lobby of a cheap London hotel, the menial existence to which she had been reduced by penury was ended by an assassin's knife.During the latter part of her life, she had met Ian Fleming, with whom she allegedly had a year-long affair,although there is no proof that this affair ever occurred. The man who made the allegation, Donald McCormick, relied on the word of a woman identified only by the name "Olga Bialoguski"; McCormick always refused to confirm her identify and did not include her in his list of acknowledgments.
Death
Christine Granville met an untimely end at a Kensington Hotel on June 15, 1952 where she was stabbed to death by a man by the name of Dennis Muldowney, an obsessed merchant-marine steward and former colleague whose advances she had rejected. After being tried and convicted of her murder, Muldowney was hanged on the gallows at HMP Pentonville on 30 September 1952.
Krystyna Skarbek / Christine Granville was interred in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Cemetery at Kensal Green, in northwest London.
Following his death in 1988, the ashes of Skarbek's comrade-in-arms and partner, Andrzej Kowerski (aka Andrew Kennedy) were interred at the foot of her grave.
A Legend
Skarbek became a legend during her lifetime and after her death, has become forever after immortalized by popular culture. In Ian Flemings first James Bond novel, Casino Royale
, the character Vesper Lynd is said to have been modeled after Skarbeck. According to William F. Nolan, Fleming also based Tatiana Romanova, in his 1957 novel From Russia, with Love
, on Skarbek.Four decades later, in 1999, Polish writer Maria Nurowska published a novel, Milosnica
(The Lover)—a fictional story about a female journalist's attempt to probe Skarbek's story.A Polish TV series has been announced by Telewizja Polska (Polish Television) about Skarbek.
The Krakow Post report on February 5, 2009 that Agnieszka Holland will direct a big-budget film about Skarbek—Christine: War My Love.
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| George Medal |
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| Order of the British Empire |
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| Croix de Guerre (France) |
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