Polish Boys Trained By Royal Corps of Signals

[Drummajor]

Hi, Forum members.
The, Polish Boys Trained By Royal Corps Of Signals pocket badge is purported to be a very rare WW2 badge, I have seen 1? maybe 2. Do you think this badge is being copied??

Phil.

[mike_vee]

Don't know about fakes but there is a thread showing price difference for exact same badge sold by 2 different sites.

Bosleys sold it in 2017 for £480.00 then it was on Sarmatia Antiques site for £1,250 and finally sold on their eBay site for £1,450 !

https://www.britishbadgeforum.com/fo...h+Boys+Signals


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[High Wood]

Having looked at both threads regarding this badge I have to wonder has its use been confirmed by documentary evidence as something doesn't add up.

If the Polish government commissioned the Royal Corps of Signals to train their boy's (young lads), it was presumably so that they could serve as signallers in the Polish Army. Therefore, one would expect them to have worn Polish Signal Corps badges.

If, in the Polish Signal Corps, there was some cachet in being trained by the Royal Corps of Signals and you wanted to announce it to your fellow Polish Signallers, it would make more sense to tell them in Polish and not
English.

If, you were serving in the Free Polish Forces alongside your British and Commonwealth allies, you had presumably received at least part of your training from the British Army, so why are there not similar badges for Polish boys trained by the Royal Artillery or Polish boys trained by the Army Catering Corps?

Why stop with the Polish? Where are the badges for Free French boys and the Belgian and the Dutch boys trained by the Royal Corps of Signals?

If these badges are legitimate, why have so few come to light?

Something definitely doesn't add up.

[Drummajor]

Yes, a good point.
I have tried to find out some information about this badge, there is hardly anything.
I can find information on Junaki, (Polish Military Schools) but can not find any mention of the Royal Corps of Signals associated with them.
Wouldn't the Royal Corps of Signals history mention that they trained Polish boys??.
Searching by using the inscription on the badge only brings up the badge that has been mentioned in previous threads.

Phil.

[High Wood]

I am beginning to think that the badge is a fantasy item. The sales description states that the badge was issued to those boys who had completed a signals training course in Cairo, so at best it was an unofficial souvenir badge. But it begs the question, what were Polish boys doing in Cairo in the first place?

[Drummajor]

Yes. Thanks for that, I will try and find out more information, but I don't like my chances.
Phil.

[Alex Rice]

No idea about this badge but here is my 2p worth. If they were trained in the UK, why is the badge bazaar quality? Surely it would have been made by a proper badge manufacturer? It looks fantasy to me and I would expect some sort of reference or photos of it somewhere.
Cheers,
Alex

[engr9266]

I am not sure if this helps? Found after a hunt for Polish boys etc
This is credited to whoever published this account

(7a) Polish Refugees in Middle East (1942-47)
Narrator Maria – Delegate from the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Polish Govt in Exile
This is an account by deportee Henryk Frank Kustra:
“We embarked for Iran from Krasnovodsk. My brother was suffering from typhus and the Polish
Doctor told him that the crossing would be very rough and that he would not make it. And my
brother said “I know I might die but at least I will die in a free country, not this land here”. He was
permitted to leave, but he didn’t survive. When we arrived in Pahlevi I couldn’t find my brother and I
was suffering from bad malaria. I was transported to hospital in Tehran but by that time I was
unconscious.
When I woke up in the hospital, with white walls, music playing and wearing pyjamas, I said to
myself “I am dead, this is heaven, I must have died”. I saw two Iranian sisters and I watched them to
see whether they had any wings! I called them over but I couldn’t understand them and I said to
myself “I wonder what language they speak in heaven”. They brought a Polish sister and she said
“this is not heaven, you are not dead, but you have been very sick and when you feel better we are
going to send you Kirkuck in Iraq. There is a Polish Army station there.”
So after a few weeks I left the hospital in Tehran. I travelled in a convoy of trucks with Polish soldiers
who were going to Iraq. The Polish army gathered there in a place called Kanakin near the oil fields
From there they sent me and all the young soldiers to Palestine. I went to Kastyna which was the
camp for the young Polish soldiers or “junackie”. Here, we had to reveal our true age. The army
officer said “you were all lying, you even changed your names and you changed your ages. But now
we are in a free country and the Polish army needs young people. We are going to send you to a
British school to learn English, to learn Morse code, to learn signals to learn how to drive vehicles.”
I was very happy in Palestine – we marched, did drills and sang Polish songs. The priests came to the
camp and gave us prayer books and the Jewish committees came in and brought oranges and fruit
for us.
Three British schools were created in Egypt because the Polish army needed trained personnel. One
was for the young Polish airmen, another for mechanics and lastly, one for the Royal Corps of Signals
school. So I went to Egypt and studied in the Royal Corps of Signals school. Here we slept in tents
and also had lessons. A Polish teacher taught us the 7 class that we missed in Lwow because of the
war. British instructors taught us the procedures for radio work and driving trucks/motorbikes. We
also had to learn English.
When I was in Cairo, the Polish Embassy informed me that my brother died the same day that he
disembarked. So he died in Pahlevi, Iran. I wanted to be somebody. I knew now that I had lost my
father, mother, brother. I didn’t know where my sister was, whether she was alive or dead. I had
very good friends amongst the Polish soldiers who took pity on me. They used to say “behave
yourself, be good, you are free” so I looked forward. I wanted to learn things.
Before we left this school General Sikorski, the Polish Commander in Chief, came to visit us and he
said “you are doing a good job. The Polish army of 50,000 strong will be going to Europe to fight the
Germans and they will need you because they don’t speak English. They will need to radio them to
make contact so they will need you”. And when he left from us – he died next day in a plane crash in
Gibralter. We were all crying because we knew he was our leader. General Anders, the Commander
of the Polish 2nd Corps, also visited our school and he said to “learn, learn, learn. Poland needs you”.
From there, we learned that the Polish army landed in Italy and they told us “we are sending you to
Italy straightaway. The army needs you”. There was nearly 250 boys there in that school, mostly
orphans. And so I left the Middle East for Italy.”

[mike_vee]

Originally Posted by High Wood

I am beginning to think that the badge is a fantasy item. The sales description states that the badge was issued to those boys who had completed a signals training course in Cairo, so at best it was an unofficial souvenir badge. But it begs the question, what were Polish boys doing in Cairo in the first place?

According to an article I found , 300-400 exiled Polish officers served in the Royal West African Frontier Force.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25779137?seq=1


PS. Great find Jerry !


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[mike_vee]

Another interesting point is that a "Polish Boys Trained By Royal Corps Of Signals" badge was in 'The Professor Charles Thomas Collection' which was sold in 2018.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/a...e-a8b200d36170

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[High Wood]

Great research Jerry, and if the website selling the badge had offered that level of information I would not have been so sceptical.

I am old enough to eat humble pie without it leaving a bitter taste.

[High Wood]

Originally Posted by mike_vee

According to an article I found , 300-400 exiled Polish officers served in the Royal West African Frontier Force.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25779137?seq=1


PS. Great find Jerry !


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I was aware that large numbers of Polish troops including officers served with the British forces during WW2. I even have the paperwork of some of them in my collection. What threw me was the reference to "Polish boys", which seems to indicate that they were not trained soldiers.

I am wondering if many of them were Jewish which might explain why they were making for Palestine.

[mike_vee]

Originally Posted by High Wood

I was aware that large numbers of Polish troops including officers served with the British forces during WW2. I even have the paperwork of some of them in my collection. What threw me was the reference to "Polish boys", which seems to indicate that they were not trained soldiers.

I hadn't seen Jerry's article when I posted , the details in it shine a different light on the subject.

Originally Posted by High Wood

I am wondering if many of them were Jewish which might explain why they were making for Palestine.

The transcript comes from a Kresy Siberia Virtual Museum page about Henryk Frank Kustra.

His remarkable story (in his own words) is available on YouTube , he ended up in Australia in 1948 and unfortunately died in a car crash when he was 91.

The Henryk Frank Kustra Story


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[High Wood]

Mike,

thank you for posting the links to the article and YouTube. Fascinating stuff, I have always been more interested in the stories that objects tell than the object itself.

The part that the Polish Forces played in the war is not fully acknowledged here in the U.K. and the few items that I turn up always have an interesting story.

Here is an example of one Polish Corporal serving in 1939, presumably captured by the Germans and forced to work for them, by 1945 he was in a resettlement camp in the British Zone, he volunteered for the British Army and served with the Royal Artillery before settling in Shropshire after the war.

[mike_vee]

In the 1970's I used to go to some of the Polish Ex-Servicemen/Social clubs in Scotland . Lots of interesting stories were told and if they liked you the 'special' vodka was brought down from the top shelf !!!!!