A Lincolnshire Lad - The Settlement Camp Poem by Christopher Tye

The Settlement Camp

So this how Britain repaid your bravery and sacrifices,
You came with your fellow refugees to continue the fight,
You're fellow Poles and all the others escaping the Nazis,
Wanting to free your homelands,
You continued to fight throughout WWII until VE Day.

But then came that terrible blow,
As we sold-out your homeland to Stalin's Russia,
All you're hopes of freedom disappeared,
Hidden behind the iron curtain,
Not knowing if your families survived the war.

So the British Government homes you across the country,
In disused airfields and army camps,
To think of all the sacrifices that you made to free Europe,
Not able to go back to Poland,
The settlement camps became your temporary homes.

Living together in asbestos covered Nissan huts,
What a way for heroes to be homed,
With twenty or more of you to a hut,
In winter the condensation froze as it formed,
The little cast iron stoves not able to drive the cold away.

But in the camps at least communities formed,
Keeping the dreams of a free Poland alive,
Some of the camps lasted a decade,
Before they were closed down,
But a free Poland was still a long way off.

After we shut the camps down,
You had to live with the sometimes hostile English,
For the general public didn't understand why you were still here,
That the allies had sold your homeland's freedom away,
It took fifty years of struggle to achieve freedom.

Fifty long years before Poland and the Polish were truly free,
And we have all but forgotten in England,
What we did to you after the end of the war,
Settlement camps were no way to treat heroes,
Who helped so much to keep Britain free.

By Christopher Tye