Stanislaw and Barbara Sokol

Country of Origin: Poland/England
Ship Name: Aquitania
Port of Entry: Pier 21, Halifax
Date of Arrival: June 1, 1948

Stanislaw & Barbara Sokol arrived Pier 21 June 1, 1948

Stanislaw Sokol was a young forester working in the Bialowieza Forest of Poland. He enjoyed his life but that all changed on March 20, 1939 when he was called up for active service by the Polish Military. Hitler was on the move. He saw action with the 78 Infantry Regiment at Lukow in September and Zareby in October of the same year. He spent time in Radom POW camp but escaped and returned to Bialowieza. After the Campaign in Poland, Brzesc where he was living was occupied by USSR. Deportations to Siberia were starting and in 1940, he was tracked to his house in the forest where he was hiding out, captured and deported to Siberia, Novosibirsk Region and spent the next year working in a gold mine. Life was extremely hard there. One story told of him getting frostbitten feet while he was out hunting. A local family took him in and put him in front of the fire with his feet in snow in order to thaw them out. Anything warmer would have caused excruciating pain. Another story told of him having to walk across a mountain to have a tooth extracted. He had scurvy and survived a bout of dysentery. It is suspected this is where he also picked up tuberculosis. On September 2, 1941, in accordance with the Sikorski-Maisk agreement, he was amnestied by the Chief of the Tisul Regional Branch of the NKVD....he was free to go elsewhere in the USSR.......but had no way to get there. He had befriended a local man who told him to build a raft and take the river south....there was a section where he would be heading straight for a large rock, it was imperative that he not try to avoid this rock......just hang on! You will go under water but will come out the other side of the rock. This must have taken huge faith and nerve but this they did and both rafts survived. On Sept 7, 1941 he enlisted in the Polish Army in Buzuluk, USSR. He was evacuated to Iran thereby coming under British command. He served in the 6th armoured Regiment “Dzieci Lwowskich”, 2 Warszawska Armoured Division, 2 Polish Corps, 8 British Army, #3 Squadron as a tank commander – his tank was Msciciel (Avenger). He served in Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt and Italy where he fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino and was wounded shortly after on May 23, 1944 in the battle for Piedmonte. He rejoined his unit about a year later and continued until cessation of hostilities on the Italian front on May 2, 1945. He was then with the Polish resettlement Corps stationed at Castle Camp in Pickering, N Yorkshire, England.

Pickering is a small town nestled in the countryside of North Yorkshire, England. It is very picturesque and just a short drive from the incredibly beautiful North Yorkshire Moors and Lake District. Sydney and Maud Smith along with their son Edmund and daughter Barbara ran a photography studio, garage and sweet shop in town. On weekends, however, they traveled the area hiking and climbing mountains and taking award winning photos. When the war started a friend of Barbara's joined the WAAF. She came home with exciting stories of her new life. Barbara, being an adventuresome 21 year old who was yearning to travel and do something more exciting, decided to join up. There was conscription but if you joined you had more choice as to where you went and what you did. So she went on the train, had the medical but was turned down because she was ½ inch too short of the 5 ft min. Not long later a letter came in the mail saying that the minimum was now 4 ft 11 in. She was sent to Gloucester to take basic training, went on route marches and became acclimatized. Then to Blackpool on a photographic course for the WAAF. She remembers staying in a boarding house, going to the swimming pool and dancing to the music of the organist Reginald Dixon in the Blackpool Tower ballroom. This was a beautiful ballroom with the words 'Music soothes the heart of the savage beast' around the top of the walls. She graduated and was then stationed at the Central Interpretation Unit in Danesfield (mansion) in Medmenham 30 miles west of London on the River Thames. The mansion itself was reserved for the officers, the rest stayed in barracks on the grounds. Churchill visited once and was close enough to touch. He dropped his cigar in front of them and her friend stooped and picked it up and kept it. They did 3 hip hip hoorays as he passed by. On Aug 14, 1942 the allies raided Dieppe. The Germans knew they were coming and there was a huge loss of life. In preparation for this assault the CIU in Danesfield where Barbara worked, processed hundreds of enlargements of the coastline. In the following investigation to determine if the leak had come from Danesfield, all personnel were interviewed and asked if they had recognized the area in these enlargements.

So after the war back in Pickering, the girls swooned over the Poles, they were such gentlemen and so handsome!!!! Mom and Dad met, were married in 1947 and applied for residence in Canada, South Africa and Australia.....the Canadian application came through first. So in March 1948, they packed up their meager belongings and headed for Southampton for the journey overseas. Nothing ever goes as planned and for some reason, they missed the boat. They were too embarrassed to tell the family so stayed in Rougham Suffolk until the next ship sailed. Finally in May of 1948 they embarked the Aquitania and left England behind. Mom was separated from Stan, she was bunked with the women and children, Stan with the men. They were in large rooms with bunk beds. Although they would have preferred to have had a room together, the trip was good and they arrived at Pier 21 on June 1, 1948. In retrospect, it was probably a good thing that they missed the boat, they arrived when the weather was already quite nice......had they arrived in the cold weather, Mom says she might just have turned around and gone home! Mom remembers walking up a steep hill in Halifax and coming across a small store with bananas. She had not seen bananas in years and so they bought some and thought what a wonderful place this was. They were afraid to miss the train (and rightly so) so returned to the Pier to wait for the next leg of their journey. Mom didn't want to sleep on the train because she was afraid to miss seeing something. She was fascinated with the scenery, remembers all the pretty white churches with their white steeples........a sharp contrast from the stone churches of England.

They were to work on a farm for a year but Barbara was pregnant and no one wanted her. My brother Roman was born in Sarnia in Sept 1948. They moved from place to place staying with people until they finally got 50 acres of land, part of which was in a fruit tree orchard about 10 miles out of Sarnia, Ontario. Mom stayed with friends in Sarnia while Dad slept under the apple tree and built a small 2 room house for them to live in. He started building and the neighbour came over and told him that was a wet spot. So they just picked up the house and moved it to higher ground.

He was working at a garage in Camlachie walking the 4 miles each way every day. He finally got a job at Polymer in Sarnia as a labourer and worked his way up to be draftsman. He was studying to become an engineer when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and within 3 days he was in a hospital in Byron near London, Ontario. During this time Mom had to get her driving license so she could continue living at their home in the country.

She would drive 50 miles into London every week with my brother and because children were not allowed in the hospital, Dad would come down the fire escape to meet them. They would go to Springbank Park or the local coffee shop before Mom would drop him off and return home. To keep himself busy and always trying to improve, he studied architecture and learned leather carving during his 2 year stay. They wanted to remove one of Dad's lungs but he refused to let them. Not long afterwards, they discovered a treatment which would arrest the tuberculosis. He took this treatment and was released from hospital. After 2 years of being a single mom, the family was reunited and returned to their little home.

Mom had never experienced summers as hot as in Canada, nor winters as cold, nor thunderstorms as bad. She said that there were times she would have gladly returned to England. She at least had that option, Dad's brother returned to Poland and was never seen or heard from again.

Mom was washing dishes in the kitchen and a storm came. There was a spark about 6 in long just outside the window and she felt a tingle up her arms. It went thru her mind that lightening never strikes twice in the same spot so thought she was ok......then it happened again. She panicked and grabbed Roman who was only a couple years old and hid under Dad's drafting table. She was under the table again during Hurricane Hazel in Oct of 1954 but this time she had a 1 month old baby with her as well. She remembers seeing trees falling, then a calm. Before long, the wind picked up from the opposite direction and trees were falling again. I was born in September of 1954. This prompted Dad to build on an addition to the house. The little 2 room house became a 3 bedroom house with an upstairs dark room and office. Dad also built a 2 car garage, a barn, chicken house and brooder house.....all of which he built by himself in the evenings after work and weekends. One day he came home very excited and announced that they would build a golf course on the property. He felt this would be a nice retirement project. So once again he threw himself into building mode. In 1970 Oban Golf Course was opened to the public, 9 holes, 18 tees. They ran the golf course for about 10 years before the township forced them to close it. The house was severed and the property sold. In 1980 my Dad passed away ......he was almost 65.Mom has kept the house and 1 acre of property and lives there to this day.....at the youthful age of 96!!!