It felt good today to be shooting portraits again and documenting another incredible story. We really have so much to learn from each other and rarely know the pain someone may have experienced.
Margaret Kennedy, a sprightly widow from Fraserburgh, married to a Polish soldier, Stefan Klinkosz in April 1953. Margaret invited me to her home to record his story after learning about the work I had been doing with descendants of Polish soldiers in the town. I had been really looking forward to this visit and was welcomed warmly with a lovely cup of tea and an assortment of chocolate biscuits.
I learned Stefan had been forcibly taken from his family at 14 to work as forced labour in Germany. His father was allowed to visit him once while he was there, but he never saw his mother or homeland again. One of 10 children, 3 of whom perished in an epidemic that swept the European continent post WW1, the Klinkosz family originated from Gdansk, Pomerania; known as the Polish corridor.
Young Stefan saw action at the front line, sustaining a shrapnel wound to his ankle, but rarely spoke of the war years. At some point he was captured by the American’s and brought to the United Kingdom, where he was able to join the Polish Forces under British Command, training as a Paratrooper.
Unable to return to his country at the end of the war, he married his Scottish lassie in Rosehearty, and together the couple raised a family of two girls and a boy. When I asked Margaret how Stefan Klinkosz became Stevie Kennedy, she told me he had pulled out a British Phone book and looked through the K’s, settling on ‘Kennedy’. Stevie’s friend Henryk Dabrowski did the same, searching through the D’s before adopting the surname ‘Davidson’. The men wanted to avoid the trouble a Polish surname may bring on them; some people were not welcoming of exiled Poles after the war. and they felt a British surname would make life easier for their children.
Stevie was a quiet hero, refusing to teach his children Polish so that they would be assimilated. He was smart and sensible and provided security and stability for his family, although he struggled with change. When he sadly passed away, Stevie and Margaret had been married for almost 58 years.
Margaret Kennedy
Margaret showed me an array of old photographs, pointing out other Polish soldiers who had settled her. Amazingly she still has Stevie’s dog tag, stamped with the name KLINKOSZ, for identification on the battlefield. As we reached back in history in the bright, friendly surroundings of Margaret’s home, I felt privileged to make this connection, record Stefan’s story, and listen to his lovely widow. She pressed a bag of homegrown apples into my hand as I left, making me promise I would return. One of the very best things about the work I have been doing is the relationships I have built along the way, the invitation into someone’s life is something I will never take for granted. Neither, after hearing Stefan’s story, and that of so many others, is the freedom they bought at such great cost.
