PATRONS were bemused when some visitors would click their heels and salute the bartender they knew simply as Stan before ordering their drinks in the Edinburgh hotel.
It emerged the deferential drinkers were troops of the man behind the bar, Polish World War Two hero General Stanislaw Maczek, pictured below.
Read more: Polish war hero who helped guard Scotland tells his story
It is only now that the general known to his soldiers as Baca, or the good shepherd, is to be recognised for the service he and his fighters gave to Scotland and Britain to “put right what was wrong”.
A campaign to honour the general, a devoted family man who took up work in the Learmonth Hotel because he was refused a soldier's pension, with a permanent tribute has entered a new phase in the country he made his home in exile, unable to return to Poland under communist oppression.
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The plans for the memorial seat and statue of General Maczek, who died aged 102 in 1994, took a major step forward with the unveiling of a maquette of the artwork.
Read more: Polish war hero who helped guard Scotland tells his story
Lady Fraser of Carmyllie revealed the model alongside the Polish Consul General in Edinburgh Dariusz Adler at a ceremony in the Consulate in Edinburgh.
The maquette was created by the Polish artist and sculptor Bronislaw Krzysztof and shows the General seated on a bench.
Trustees will commission the full-scale version when the target of £75,000 has been reached, with a third of that already raised privately.
The project was launched by Lady Fraser’s husband prior to his death in 2013.
General Stanislaw Maczek was Commander of the 1st Polish Armoured Division and appointed by Winston Churchill to the role of defending Scotland’s east coast from potential invasion.
Read more: Polish war hero who helped guard Scotland tells his story
When the Second World War ended he was unable to return to his native Poland as it was incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of an Allied agreement.
He worked as a barman in his adopted city of Edinburgh for many years where he lived with his wife and raised a son and two daughters.
The memorial will sit in the Meadows where he spent much time with his family.
Lady Fraser said: "We have raised a considerable amount already and we are now at the stage of putting the public appeal out to the people of Scotland to ask if they will support us.
"Peter felt very strongly that the Scots had missed out on not making this recognition."
Read more: Polish war hero who helped guard Scotland tells his story
Katie Fraser, the peer's daughter and also a patron of the trust, said: "He was very passionate about it.
"His ambition was that this should be from the Scottish people to the general and his men."
General Maczek's brigade took part in D-Day and liberated towns in France and Belgium and also Breda in the Netherlands, where people voted for the general to be made a Dutch citizen.
Many of the 20,000 members of the Polish armed forces stationed in Scotland settled in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Angus and the Borders, where General Maczek's unit was initially based.
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Lord Fraser, architect of the Lockerbie bombing indictment and chairman of the Holyrood building inquiry, found it incredible Poles were banned from victory celebration marches in London after the war for fear of upsetting the Russians and how little is known of their wider contribution to Scottish society.
Trevor Royle, writer, historian and trust patron, said: "This is long overdue and is the chance for Scotland to put right what was wrong."
www.generalmaczek.co.uk
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