Greatest Battles BATTLE OF HILL 262
In August 1944, wave after wave of German assaults crashed against Hill 262 near the hamlet of Coudehard in north-west France. It was here that Polish soldiers held their ground in a resolute stand against odds that seemed beyond all military tactics. Afterwards, the location would pass into history as ‘Maczuga’ – the ‘Mace’.
Following the Allied landings in France on 6 June, the 1st Polish Armoured Division, made of General Stanislaw Maczek’s veterans and officers of the 10th Motorised Cavalry Brigade that had escaped to Britain after the fall of France, was to form part of the second echelon, and relocated from Scarborough to Aldershot in July.
After departing from Tilbury Docks and safely crossing the English Channel, the division arrived in France on 1 August 1944, the very same day that Warsaw, proud capital of long suffering Poland, erupted in the heroic uprising against the occupying Germans. The division would not have to wait very long for its own baptism of fire. Assigned to the Canadian II Corps, forming part of Field Marshal Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, they were soon up against the superior German army’s Panther and Tiger tanks.
HILL 262
The Germans, all too aware of the ever-closing net around them, proved as
