Michael A. Hammet (right) with Andrew Balcerzak

A copyrighted photo of Allan Hammet can be found here

I would like to direct these remarks to a dramatic story of one participant whose memorabilia can be viewed at the display. This is an account aching to be made into a book or a film. It has everything: heroism, loss and suffering and the confrontation of profound danger, tragedy, recovery and resolution, romance, bravery, admiration, friendship and gratefulness ……… And, above all, it has the human spirit -one can say the ‘‘Australian human spirit’‘- and instinct for victory against-the-odds in endurance and survival.

Allan Hunter Hammet served with honour in the Royal Australian Air Force and also for a time in occupied territory in the Polish Home Army, where he evaded capture behind enemy lines ̶ thanks in great part to the wartime resistance and fortitude of the partisan Underground and a courageous Polish wartime population. It was thanks, in no small part , to the noble, beautiful and extremely brave woman of Allan’‘s dreams to whom he gave his heart; they met and married amidst the disarray and turmoil of Europe at War.

Hammet (“Allan”) was born in Melbourne on 24th July 1921, a son of Sergeant Rupert Allan Hammet, a veteran of Gallipoli with 4th Field Ambulance Brigade. Allan’‘s mum, Edith Elizabeth Hunter, had been a teacher at Melbourne’‘s Scotch College and no doubt contributed to and inspired his educational formation.

Allan excelled at sport, particularly swimming and cricket. He was awarded the Sunrasia District Junior Player of the Year in cricket. The war cut short a real prospect of a foremost career in the game.

Allan attended Red Cliffs primary school and then went on to Mildura High School where he attained Matriculation. After leaving school he was employed as an apprentice pharmacist in Red Cliffs, 15km south of Mildura.

Fr Tadeusz Rostworowski (left) with Michael A. Hammet

Author (left) with M.A Hammet

In 1939, Allan enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and began to train with the Empire Air Training Scheme.

For his further training, in 1940 he was posted to Canada to train at the Wireless School in Calgary and No.2 Bombing and Gunnery School in Mossbank. On graduation, Allan was given his ‘‘Wireless Operator Air Gunner’‘ ‘‘WAG’‘ brevet. As the title indicates, a WAG is a dual-trained air crewman, trained to operate either the aircraft’‘s Radio or the guns /armoury of any of its defensive turrets.

He was promoted to Sergeant and in September 1941 was posted to United Kingdom’‘s 27th Operational Training Unit for further training on the twin engine Wellington bombers. Upon completion of training, Allan was posted to the famous heavy-bomber ‘‘460 Squadron’‘, RAAF. At times Allan flew operations in the now famous “G for George’‘ Bomber which after an exhaustive war career was transported to Australia and is now on permanent display at Canberra’‘s War Memorial Museum.

460 Squadron flew the most sorties of any Australian bomber squadron and dropped more bomb tonnage than any squadron in all of RAF-RAAF Bomber Command. But it was also the squadron that sustained highest losses in WWII with 1,017 dead. 460 Squadron was effectively wiped out five times over in its historic existence, due to such tragic losses.

It was ‘‘cheating death’‘, for any airman to complete one full tour of duty in RAF-RAAF Bomber Command, due to the air-offensive ‘‘heavy lifting’‘ done by the Bomber Squadrons in the war.

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Allan accomplished his first operational tour; and he did so during the most dangerous period of Bomber Command operations. His aircrafts, each time they went to air, sustained the deadly risk of being shot up by defensive/ offensive fighter aircraft but in Allan’‘s case, every time the aircrew managed to land safely. For one such operation in December 1942, when navigation instruments became inoperative due to gunfire damage, Allan was later awarded the coveted Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM). He helped to save the seriously damaged aircraft by repairing and improvising equipment and assisting the navigator to lead the aircraft to safety.

The DFM is a rarely awarded medal. It is awarded for "an act of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying in active operations against the enemy".

Distinguished Flying Medal

In 1943, Allan was promoted to commissioned rank and later to Flying Officer. After completing the first full tour of operations Allan, who had studied French in his matriculation education, was posted to the Middle East Air Command where he was engaged instructing the Free French Army in Morocco and Algiers in signal procedures.

In July 1944, towards the war’‘s eventual end, Allan was posted to 178 Squadron flying Liberator bombers based in Foggia, southern Italy.

A month later, the ill equipped Polish Home Army began the courageous Warsaw Uprising against the German forces and badly required supplies.

British Chiefs of Staff were opposed, at this crucial time, to diverting allied aircraft to the extremely difficult and dangerous task of flying more than 1,300km, mostly over territory controlled by the enemy, and dropping weapons and supplies to the Poles in their unequal fight against the might of the German Air and Land Forces.

Stalin would not allow the allies to land in territory controlled by the Red Army, at that time waiting for an anticipated WWII defeat of Germany and poised only a few kilometers from Warsaw. He wanted (as we now understand) the Polish initiative of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising to fail and be beaten back by the German Forces and thus to facilitate an accelerated communist takeover of Poland at war’‘s end.

After much debate among the British Chiefs, the RAF made Liberators from Squadrons 148 and 178 available for the Warsaw Uprising operations.

The supply drops had to be made generally from an extremely low level, and at low speed, creating exposure and navigational nightmares for the particularly courageous Liberator crews.

During the 63 days of the Uprising, the squadrons flew 182 sorties to help Poland’‘s beleaguered Home Army and during that time lost 35 Polish, Royal Air Force and South African Air Force aircraft-crew.

The fateful night of 16th -17th August 1944 was Allan’‘s 13th sortie with 178 Squadron and his third Warsaw night operation. When returning from a near-Warsaw supply drop, his Liberator KG-933 was attacked, near Cracow in southern Poland, by an undetected German night fighter-plane and set on fire. The Captain radioed the crew “She’‘s gone!” meaning ‘‘bail out’‘, before himself being killed by on-going fighter gunfire.

A fear gripped every living heart aboard that the fire would ignite the aircraft’‘s fuel tanks, turning it into a midair fireball from which no human escape could be possible.

Allan had sustained wounds by gunfire/ shrapnel to his side and hands and lower limb(s). Now, in this surreal instant of a death-dealing war, it was his turn to stare Death fully in the face. And, just at this right moment and staring Death down, Allan opted for Life: his training and survival instinct ignited as one. With lightening-speed movement and practiced self-control he managed to harness himself into the radio post parachute and to locate and activate the mechanism operating the bomb doors. The doors slowly but surely opened --which may be accounted a miracle in itself in the plane’‘s stricken condition. Allan then jumped for his life, away from known death in the flaming aircraft, into the black unknown of the Polish night sky below.

Duraluminiowe skrawki "Liberatora"

The plane crashed near the southern Polish town of Zablocie near Cracow (pronounced: “zabwatche”) with bodies on board of Pilot Flight Lieutenant William D. Wright RAF (Captain), Squadron Leader John P. Liversidge RAAF (Navigator), Flight Sargent John. D. Clarke, RAF (Gunner).

Unknown to Allan, two others of the six-man crew survived by managing to bail out. But, unlike the wily and quintessential survivor Allan Hammet, the Germans later captured them. They were Gunners: Flight Sergeant. F. W. Helme RAF; and, Flight Engineer Sergeant L. J. Blunt RAF.

It was the middle of the night when Allan landed. This was in a plowed field. Fortunately, he was apparently unobserved and alone in the midst of the moon or starlit southern Polish countryside. He moved towards cover, probably provided by a nearby hedge or wood, knowing that Germans would be looking in the area for all survivors of downed aircraft. At this point, he was not sure if he was in Occupied Poland or Occupied Czechoslovakia.

With the aid of the Service compass (part of the parachute kit for precisely this eventuality) he chose to head north. For Allan, giving himself up to the Occupying authorities was not an option, He must have known, by deliberation or instinct, that his chances of survival behind enemy lines would be greater in the midst of the courageously resistant Polish people. So, Allan apparently felt, if he wasn’‘t already on Polish soil, in these circumstances, he’‘d be better off going northward, in hope of getting there.

He managed to dress his wounds with makeshift bandage; this stemmed his bleeding. He made some distance over a couple of days, mainly travelling overland by night and staying in the forests by day. He ate raw potatoes for sustenance. But, Allan knew that his condition was serious and time would run out if he did not succeed in getting help. So, under cover of night, he finally risked approaching an isolated farmhouse.

The countrywoman who opened the door was communicated with by sign language. With immense courage, she took Allan in. It may be said that by God’‘s providence, she was a person well connected to partisans. Sadly, in later months, the Occupying Forces descended on her house, took her outside and summarily executed her, based on their suspicion that she was in communication with/ aiding the partisans.

She helped Allan as much as she could by disinfecting and bandaging his wounds and giving him food and vodka, and for his wounded side sent word to the partisans for a Home Army doctor, Kornel Jan Fojcik. The doctor had some degree of familiarity with English. It is likely Fojcik saved Allan’‘s life by medically attending him and by treating his wounds. For Allan, it had been a salvific Providence to have sought help at that courageous woman’‘s house.

Allan was surrounded by all kinds of assistance by the underground members and, with his natural strength and good recuperative powers; he was soon physically ‘‘on the mend’‘.

In the secret de-briefing to the RAAF upon his return to Australia, Allan remembered these people as being admiring and deeply friendly and exceptionally eager to know about the progress of the war. They were sure deep in their hearts that this madness on which Germany had brutally embarked would be defeated! He recalls how dozens of peasants came to the various cottages where he was hidden. They could not communicate as Allan had no Polish and they did not speak French or English but their smiles of admiration and gratitude told all he needed to know.

In some cases they brought him precious cigarettes and flower tributes. Occasionally, there would be found for him a landowner or a Polish peasant able to communicate using French. Then the conversation would be long and was of course translated to all present. Allan found the hope-filled Poles of every class and level united. They believed in a future, even ruthlessly subjugated as they were and in their present dread of, passive resistance to, and detestation of the German occupiers.

With secrecy and at great risk he had to be moved from house to house to ensure the Germans would not discover him.

The roads and fields were full of German patrols looking for shot down British and American aircrews. On more than one occasion Allan, hidden in a peasant’‘s horse-pulled cart full of straw, would pass a German detachment looking for downed crews. Facing summary execution, how brave were these patriots who did their part in supporting the Underground Resistance!

Meanwhile Allan’‘s parents, back at home in Mildura, Australia, were informed by RAAF authorities that their son was “missing in action” in airspace over enemy-occupied, war-torn Poland. The phrase was dreaded news to the ears of every parent.

Allan ended up on the Estate of Mrs. Jadwiga Wielowieyska nee Suchodolska who among other languages did speak English. Early in the war Jadwiga had become the widow of Estate owner and Polish officer, Jan Pawel Nepomucen Wielowieyski. Jan Wielowieyski was a member of the privileged landed-gentry class. His death left behind him not only his wife Jadwiga but their firstborn, Rosemarie Th́erèse, who had been born just two months before the tragic loss of her father. He was killed on 10th September 1939 in the very earliest stages of the war. He had heroically chosen to take the risk with his soldiers, to be with his men, as they were conveyed in military haste to the war Front. (The Polish troop-trains were bombed by unimpeded German air power over-reaching a largely unprotected border between these neighbour countries.)

The widowed Jadwiga then became sole proprietor of the Wielowieyski Estate, ‘‘Swiecice’‘. She courageously used her favoured position to assist the partisans, as did many brave patriots of the Landed-gentry. Jadwiga also exhibited her courage and patriotism by sheltering a Jewish girl at Swiecice (the daughter of an academic whom the partisans whisked out of Poland to save his life.)

Allan fell in love with Jadwiga. This very beautiful and brave woman, who together with her baby daughter left Poland for Allan, forsook all. They were married, not once but twice: the first time clandestinely in war-torn Poland; and then again by a Catholic priest at Southampton upon their eventual joint survival and evacuation to England.

Allan recalled that at the very time whilst he was recuperating at Swiecice (pronounced: “sven-chits-eh”) the Germans were at times in attendance there. This was mainly in order to carry out ongoing military requisition of Swiecice’‘s primary produce. Throughout Poland, food was at a premium because it was a vital element of Germany’‘s war need/ efficiency. Everywhere with Teutonic thoroughness every beast, blade and gram of produce of the soil was accounted for formally and handed over to the dreaded occupier. Literally, a farmer was liable to be summarily killed for holding back an egg, hiding the birth of a lamb or goat or other deception of such kind. But, of course, the resistant Poles did much in deception of this inhumanly oppressive and ghastly occupying regime.

The German Forces were never the wiser that Swiecice, which at times during the Occupation they requisitioned for Military Officers ‘‘R and R’‘ leave, was the secret hiding place of a Jewess, and where needed, a partisan refuge and resource for the Polish Resistance.

Throughout, Allan himself found it a constant source of admiration and wonder that with the large number of farm workers and village people having some real if incomplete knowledge of what was going on, nothing of Swiecice’‘s secret was ever given out to the detested Occupier. This evidenced loyalty to Jadwiga herself, as much as being a profound patriotic and resistant duty. Jadwiga, who daily risked her own life, was in these dire times in perfect lock step with the best of the Polish nation, including the many who actually did lose their lives, often after inhuman and unspeakable suffering at the hands of determined, skilled torturers, for withholding information that would have compromised others.

It was apparent that, universally, resilient Poles were united and brave in National Resistance to their oppression and to the rapacious despoliation of their beloved homeland.

As Allan recovered from his physical wounds he felt, in his admiration for the wartime resistant spirit of these wonderful and courageous people, the urge to identify with and fight for Poland’‘s wartime Underground Resistance.

The Home (or Resistance) Army, the ‘‘Armia Krajowa’‘, agreed.

Allan, after weapon and tactical training, was issued by the Home Army with false identification documents. These were vastly better for Allan’‘s day-to-day safety than the alternative of not having any I.D. at all. But, they would not have saved him if he fell into the grip of a suspicious and determined German interrogator. Indeed, this I D. in Allan’‘s possession could have made things much the worse if he was caught, because he could have been subject to grim and savage torture as a wartime spy and not afforded the protections accorded an enemy airman apprehended behind enemy lines.

The possession of this I.D. enabled Allan guardedly and very limitedly to come out of hiding. And so it was that, at times, he was present at the manor home of Jadwiga during times when the Germans were also present!!

According to the falsified photo-I.D. documents, including a letter purporting to come from Cracow’‘s Gestapo HQ bearing Germany’‘s authentic Teutonic Eagle official stamp, Allan, now “Stefan Erbe”, had been injured very seriously in a railway accident. He was a professional railway photographer who due to his injuries couldn’‘t speak or hear. “Officially”, Allan was recuperating from these accident injuries and, pending full recovery, was temporarily a deaf mute.

Kenkarte na nazwisko Stefan Erbe

Ostbahn Kenkarte Allana Hammeta ps Stefan Erbe

Meanwhile, for the sake of his parents, at some point the Home Army passed a message to England that they had Allan Hunter Hammet with them. The RAAF sent ”top secret” information to Allan’‘s parents in Australia advising that Allan was currently alive and in Occupied Poland. It isn’‘t known if they realised that he was in the Polish Underground and at times actively fighting Germans and Ukrainians.

The Home Army group, which Allan joined, consisted of around 200 trained fighters, both men and women, living in huts and underground shelters in the forest about 70km north of Cracow. They were armed with a small supply of British arms dropped by RAF and anything they could capture from the Germans or Ukrainians – mainly grenades, machine guns and rifles.

Over time a total of five Englishmen, escapees from various German Prisoner of War (“POW”) camps, joined this Home Army Unit. They were brave men and one of them is alleged to have killed a large number of Germans in the course of partisan actions.

Allan’‘s first action was on 20th September 1944 when a detachment of the group raided a railway station with the aim of capturing German uniforms and weapons. The raid was successful and the detachment escaped unscathed.

Allan stated, “owing to the complete unity of the Polish attitude to the Germans, the partisans had all the information necessary for timing their raids.” This was a massive strategic advantage, which was ruthlessly, if selectively, exploited by the partisans.

On 27th September Allan was involved in a raid on a sugar transport near Kazimierza Wielka (pronounced “kazeemeezha vielka”). Allan recalled: “the manager of the mill told the Germans that their sugar is ready for shipment. Then he told the partisans the details. The convoy set out under German guard, who were attacked and killed by the partisans. Sugar was seized and distributed to the local population”. Of course, in brutally rationed wartime Poland, any ingestible food was precious and sugar a luxury.

The Germans made sustained effort to track and mercilessly eliminate this resistant group. In October 1944, a German spotter plane flying at treetop height successfully located the partisans in the forest. The partisans, perhaps alerted by the sound of the approaching plane in the quiet forest, succeeded in shooting it down with small arms fire. But, before his plane crashed, the pilot passed on the partisans’‘ location coordinates to his HQ. The Germans sent out a large Ukrainian punitive detachment that caught up with the partisans near Swiecice. The battle that ensued was particularly fierce. Nine partisans were killed, including two of the five British in the group. The Ukrainians lost around 10 soldiers and a few more were wounded.

Allan recollected that during the very cold winter months in the seclusion of the countryside there were present at times marauding “bandit groups” terrorizing and robbing the local gentry and population, often injuring or killing them. In such cases, his partisan unit would attempt to hunt them down and deter such banditry.

Stalin’‘s Soviet Union Red Army reached the area where Allan was in January 1945. The Russians were our allies at this point of WWII. They took Allan and the surviving three Englishmen to a Soviet Brigade Headquarters in Zloty where another two Englishmen joined them. The party walked in some minus 30 degree Celsius cold to Miechow (pronounced: “mi-er-hoov”). From there they mainly walked 100km to Czestochowa (pronounced: “chest-ah-hov-a”), a famous town in Polish history and the location of National religious Shrine dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, where the Soviets had organized a rendezvous point for the liberated or escaped allied prisoners of war.

In February 1945, whilst in Czestochowa, the British Mission in Moscow, by agreement with the Soviets, placed Allan in command of around 900 British, Australians and South Africans.

Allan’‘s wife Jadwiga with her young daughter Rosmarie Th́erèse Wielowieyska of her first marriage were part of the group which was to make it’‘s way to Odessa under Allan’‘s command.

Michael A. Hammet with Joanna Lang of the Museum of Warsaw Uprising

Allan recalled that the Russian soldiers were friendly and happy to help but had nothing to offer this large contingent of virtually exclusively former POWs. Shortage of food was a massive ongoing concern. Allan appealed with success to the local Polish population en route to support his human convoy with food.

He said, “It is thanks to the kindness of these Poles that the troops kept going, most of the time on potatoes”.

On the way to Odessa this large group travelled to Cracow, where another 30 ex POW joined them.

From Cracow they travelled by trucks, trains and walking, over some 3 weeks, to Odessa, which was a Russian port city on the Black Sea. By the time of their arrival in Odessa, Allan was exhausted, famished and dangerously emaciated, and seriously ill.

By pre-plan with the British Moscow Mission, the group met and boarded a ship, the ‘‘SS Moreton’‘, and was repatriated to England via the Middle East. On the ship voyage, Jadwiga tended lovingly to her ill husband, nurturing and strengthening in him the will to survive.

Once in England, Allan and Jadwiga repeated their earlier Polish marriage in a Roman Catholic marriage in the English port city of Southampton. Allan was given the best care possible, in dealing with his several medical and physical conditions. Eventually, after gracious hospitality extended to them while they were in England, including recuperation on a country Estate, Allan and his wife with her six year old daughter Rosemarie together travelled by sea to Australia.

In Australia, at Mildura, Allan and Jadwiga had twin boys, Peter John and Michael Allan, born in November 1946. On discharge from the RAAF in November 1945, Allan had worked locally for a time as the secretary of the Mildura District Repatriation Committee. However, he did not keep, perhaps could not keep, the job: his restless and disturbed/ wounded spirit found peacetime conditions difficult.

Due to his challenging and disturbing wartime experience, it was not easy for him to settle down. Although unsettled, Allan did various jobs with his brothers in the Mildura district and for a spell was a Murray River woodcutter, and also a Murray cod professional fisherman. In today’‘s world, Allan would have been treated for his war related shock, deep-seated trauma syndrome, and emotional exhaustion. Allan with his young family next decided to move to Melbourne where he embarked on a career as a professional cook. He rose to become a hotel Chef, but this did not permanently suit him due in part to the split working hours and the accompanying temptation to spend time between shifts in alcohol consumption.

From the 1960’‘s Allan successfully worked in real estate, mainly in Mt Waverley, Melbourne. This was his main life career, and he rose to become principal of his firm in the late 1960’‘s and first half of the 1970’‘s.

In his later years, Allan moved with his then wife, Lorraine, to the township of Pambula on the eastern Australian sea coast of New South Wales where he took up real estate work for several years before he died aged 60 on 29th October 1981. Allan Hunter Hammet was locally buried at Pambula.

Radio SBS interviewing Andrew Balcerzak