1941 British Denim Smock - Reinvented

The story of the Poles in Italy is astonishing.  Most were captured, not by Germans when Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, but by the Soviet Red Army, who invaded from the east a couple of weeks later in a pre-arranged carve-up of the country.  

Those Poles captured by the Russians were later transported to brutal gulags in Siberia, and only freed once Nazi Germany turned on its brief ally and invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. In an agreement between Stalin and the British government, Polish General Wladyslaw Anders was allowed to muster these newly liberated Poles in Uzbekistan. 

Those who survived their epic 2,000 mile journey south, as well as outbreaks of typhus and malaria, were then transported to Iran and from there to Kirkuk in Northern Iraq. There they built up strength and were equipped and trained by the British. 

In 1943 they moved again, this time to Palestine, before sailing to Italy at the end of 1943. For their first few months, II Corps held a quiet part of the line but in the spring of 1944 were posted to the Cassino front. 

Monte Cassino – or the Fourth Battle of Cassino as it became known – was their very first battle, and one in which they were triumphantly victorious.  They continued to fight heroically all the way up through the leg of Italy.

We think it's a fitting story for a fabulous jacket and we hope that anyone wearing one will pause, briefly, to remember and honour those extraordinary men who endured so much in the fight for freedom.