Canadian woman finds roots of family tree in Killearn

Sep 18 2009 by Gregor White, Stirling Observer Friday

A WOMAN who grew up in Canada and moved to the USA got in touch with her Polish roots in Killearn.

Aline Soules also got to touch a piece of history during her time in Scotland in the form of a military helmet by the owner of a farm that is believed to have been the site of a former Polish military camp.

Locals say that during the Second World War Killearn House Farm provided a base for Britain’s Polish allies, including Aline’s father Stanislaus Schyfman, later known as Stanley Stannard.

The helmet was discovered in a burn by current farm owner David Young and is thought to be Polish, although this has not been confirmed.

Aline’s knowledge of her father’s wartime experience is patchy, due largely to the fact that there were many parts of it he was not willing to talk about.

However, she knows that the multilingual electronics engineer, who had an English mother, a Polish father and a French nanny when he was born in 1910, had a harrowing time of it.

He was married with one son before the start of the war but he tragically lost his wife, child and parents in German bombings of Warsaw.

He was later sent to the Russian front before being captured in what is now the Ukraine, escaping and being captured a second time.

Aline said: “When his captors discovered that he was an electronics engineer they offered him a job.

“They gave him a meal and locked him in a bedroom for the night but he opened the window and escaped.

“However, he didn't make it across the field to the woods before they found out and he was shot high in his leg.

“Angry, they hunted him and he hid in the woods for about six weeks, only coming out at night to find frozen and rotten turnips in the field.

“Spring came, the soldiers were sent off to some other front and my father, no longer directly hunted, began a 2000 mile journey across Europe, still with the bullet in his leg.

His amazing wartime existence continued with him being captured by Italian forces before yet again escaping and then making it to Britain, where he became part of the Scottish-Polish regiment.

It was then that he found his way to west Stirlingshire, where it is thought Killearn House Farm provided accommodation for 600 men, though there is still no official record of the outfit’s existence.

Although the camp was dismantled in 1941 and Aline’s father was moved on to Leuchars, the family have kept in touch with the local area, including villager James Simpson whose family returned the site to farmland after the war.

Aline said: “My father had a difficult and dangerous war, no matter how many details we can or can’t confirm.

“He lost everyone and everything at the beginning of the war, was captured four times and escaped four times, was wounded and generally endured many hardships, both physical and emotional.”

Aline was born to her father’s second wife in 1948, and did not even know about the change of family name, which took place shortly before his second marriage, until many years later.

Born in Broughty Ferry and living her early life in Dundee, Aline says she remembers times when he father would wake screaming in the night.

After a year of psychiatric treatment in London he moved to Canada in 1958, with Aline and her mother following later.

She said: “It has always seemed tragic to me that such talent and brains should have been so thwarted by the events of history but I'm sure that many endured similar fates.

“I wouldn’t exist if it hadn't been for the war but there's no question that war is totally destructive, not just of the dead but of the living, cutting off their promise and potential in ways we will never fully understand.”

And she added: “I see our young men coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and I despair of our species ever understanding that we must not subject each other to the cruelties that we have inflicted on each other throughout history.

“Will we ever learn? I don't know. I continue to hope so.”