The Polish Officer

My father Rupert served as a gunnery officer on the North Atlantic convoys. When he was due some leave, he and my mother Patricia would arrange to meet at the Great North British Hotel (now the Balmoral) in Edinburgh.

One day in 1942, Patricia sat waiting for Rupert in the hotel lounge. She was beautiful and was used to being the focus of attention. When she realised that a man in the uniform of a Polish army captain was staring at her she turned away, took out a cigarette and placed it in a holder. The young officer rose and limped to her side, lighter in hand. Lighting her cigarette, he asked if she would mind if he sat with her for a while. She explained that she was waiting for her husband. The young officer failed to take the hint and sat down beside her. They chatted until Rupert appeared.

In the manner of the time, Patricia politely introduced the army captain, whose name was Ludwik Kociszewski to Rupert. The three of them had a drink together, while Ludwik told them that he had been wounded in a battle in the north of Poland on the first day of the German invasion. He had managed to escape but was now confined to a desk job in Edinburgh waiting for his leg to heal.

Our home, outside Chatham, was already a weekend 'open house' for Allied officers needing a touch of normality and family life so Rupert invited Ludwik to visit if he were ever in the vicinity.

Over the next few years, Ludwik became a regular visitor to the country house, which we shared with two other naval families and their children. Ludwik of course fell in love with Patricia. She was used to it and didn't let it worry her. At the end of the war Ludwik emigrated to Canada. He told my parents that he would be returning to his pre-war career as a lawyer.

Forty years later I found myself working in Poland. I felt very much at home and when I mentioned this to my mother Patricia, she suggested that it could have been because Ludwik would often tell me stories of his childhood on the family estate in Poland. We started to wonder what had happened to him, so I contacted the Polish Section of the Army records office.

The records revealed an astonishing truth about Ludwik. He wasn't war wounded cavalry officer. According to his records, he was a Roman Catholic priest, an army chaplain, Captain Dr.The Reverend Ludwik Kociszewski, stationed in Brechin, Scotland. The photograph accompanying the records clearly showed him to be the same man my parents had known, despite the (civilian) clerical garb and dog collar. My subsequent research revealed that after emigrating to Canada in 1946, he became a parish priest.

It is not unknown for young men to dramatise their exploits to impress an attractive young woman but there had to be more to his masquerade that a chat-up line. The Great North British Hotel was a favourite watering hole for Allied officers. If he was really serving as a military chaplain in Scotland, he took the risk of being spotted by a parishioner out of his clerical uniform. This uniform had with silver crosses and purple velvet flashes on the lapels, instantly recognisable.

That Ludwik was, pre-war and post-war, an ordained priest is in no doubt. The former small girl who had known him as 'Uncle Ludwik' became determined to find out the truth.

I travelled to his birthplace near Kiev in Ukraine which was part of Poland before the Second World War, visited the seminary in Lublin, Poland where he was ordained and Canada where he had been a parish priest.

Last of all, I researched the time in Rome during the 1930s when he was studying for a doctorate in Canonic law at the Gregorian University. It was here that I made the extraordinary discovery that the rector of the Gregorian University at that time was an American named Father McCormick who was working for the O.S.S., forerunner of today's C.I.A. Father McCormick's documented contact in Rome was an O.S.S. agent, one Martin Quigley.

It is hard to imagine a priest as a secret wartime agent. It was certainly true in the case of Father McCormick. Perhaps he recruited his student Ludwik to the Allied war effort.

Dr.The Reverend Ludwik Kociszewski was an ordained priest, but not a humble one. His pre-war friends described him as dynamic, aristocratic and elegant. My mother described him as a quiet man who loved music. He certainly loved her. Most of those who knew the truth about him are probably dead.

Unless you know differently.

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