Lieutenant-Colonel Aleksander Stefanowicz
1st Armoured Regiment (Poland)

Gentlemen. Everything is lost. I do not believe the Canadians will manage to help us. We have only 110 men left, with 50 rounds per gun and 5 rounds per tank … Fight to the end! To surrender to the SS is senseless, you know it well. Gentlemen! Good luck – tonight, we will die for Poland and civilization. We will fight to the last platoon, to the last tank, then to the last man.

(Quoted in Roman Jarymowycz, Tank Tactics, 201)

Born on 20 December 1900 in Polewicze, Russian Empire, Aleksander Stefanowicz was a long-serving officer in the Polish Army. He joined in 1919 and fought with a cavalry regiment during the Polish-Soviet War. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1922, and after completing training courses on tank warfare, he became an instructor in the 1930s. After the German and Soviet invasions of Poland in September 1939, he went to France where he became adjutant to General Stanisław Maczek of 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade.

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