So this how Britain repaid your bravery and sacrifices, <br />You came with your fellow refugees to continue the fight, <br />You're fellow Poles and all the others escaping the Nazis, <br />Wanting to free your homelands, <br />You continued to fight throughout WWII until VE Day. <br /> <br />But then came that terrible blow, <br />As we sold-out your homeland to Stalin's Russia, <br />All you're hopes of freedom disappeared, <br />Hidden behind the iron curtain, <br />Not knowing if your families survived the war. <br /> <br />So the British Government homes you across the country, <br />In disused airfields and army camps, <br />To think of all the sacrifices that you made to free Europe, <br />Not able to go back to Poland, <br />The settlement camps became your temporary homes. <br /> <br />Living together in asbestos covered Nissan huts, <br />What a way for heroes to be homed, <br />With twenty or more of you to a hut, <br />In winter the condensation froze as it formed, <br />The little cast iron stoves not able to drive the cold away. <br /> <br />But in the camps at least communities formed, <br />Keeping the dreams of a free Poland alive, <br />Some of the camps lasted a decade, <br />Before they were closed down, <br />But a free Poland was still a long way off. <br /> <br />After we shut the camps down, <br />You had to live with the sometimes hostile English, <br />For the general public didn't understand why you were still here, <br />That the allies had sold your homeland's freedom away, <br />It took fifty years of struggle to achieve freedom. <br /> <br />Fifty long years before Poland and the Polish were truly free, <br />And we have all but forgotten in England, <br />What we did to you after the end of the war, <br />Settlement camps were no way to treat heroes, <br />Who helped so much to keep Britain free.<br /><br />Christopher Tye<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-settlement-camp/
