D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Eugeniusz Niedzielski

Eugeniusz Niedzielski, Age 100, Polish 1st Armoured Division

Interviewed 17 September 2023

Displaced from his home in Poland following both the German and Russian invasions, Mr Niedzielski became part of his country’s exiled armed forces.

Serving in the Middle East as an infantryman he was brought to England ahead of D-Day to be retrained as a motorbike, car and tank driver. 

"They took us to Southampton and we landed in Normandy in July. The first thing I saw was a Canadian jeep carrying four injured soldiers. Red bandages and everything.

"I nearly fainted seeing those soldiers laying there wounded.

"I was a spare driver and when we got to Normandy a driver got sick and they sent him back to England. And I got a tank, the tank I drove all the way from Normandy to Germany.

"I always called it the iron coffin because once I saw a Sherman tank destroyed and the soldier tried to escape from the top and got machine gunned.

"He got caught by his legs, hanging down. The legs were at the top and his head was down."

Mr Niedzielski was in action in the decisive engagement of the battle of Normandy at the Falaise Gap - or pocket - in which the Allies encircled German forces and captured thousands of enemy troops. He and his crew came under heavy attack at that time.

Eugeniusz Niedzielski was in action in the decisive engagement of the battle of Normandy at the Falaise Gap Credit: ITV Meridian

"Our commanding officer told us we were the cork in the bottle because we closed the German escape. We could see them in the woods with anti tank guns. A Panzer division. Terrible. Bullets flying everywhere. German scout cars tried to escape.

"There was a road to the bottom of the hill, and one morning a scout car came along and they caught them out anyway because there were soldiers everywhere on that hill.

"There were dead bodies and horses and tanks. Everything was laying there. It was a German graveyard.

"And from there we started chasing all the way through the west part of France and down to Belgium. It was the German retreat from Normandy, that is what it was. Our division took pride in it and it’s never been mentioned elsewhere. They don’t mention it in British history.

"We knew we would never return to Poland because they had already signed the partition for Poland before we landed in Normandy."

Mr Niedzielski is thought to be the division’s last survivor who saw action in France.

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