Thread: What a Story About the Author of King Kong

I just stumbled across this having apparently missed it on my first time through the internet but thought it was quite interesting and a reminder about some of the the truly unique and as in this fellow's case, larger than life, characters who have served.

Puls Polonii

As you say, Cooper was quite a character, even if a bit of a serial POW: first courtesy of the Germans, then courtesy of the Bolsheviks. And of course, Cooper insisted on being the pilot of the aircraft that finally kills Kong, with co-director Schoedsack (a fellow volunteer with the Polish forces) as his observer.

Incidentally, 303 "Kosciuszko" Sqn's descendents (I don't think there are any of the veterans still alive) are having a Battle of Britain reunion at RAF Northolt this weekend.

'Barely surviving ten months of captivity, Cooper and two Polish prisoners, Lieutenant Stanislaw Sokolowski and Lieutenant Salewski, were able to escape on a night the guards didn't bother to go on duty, because they believed that it was so cold, any prisoner who tried to run away, would face certain death in the wilderness. Trekking 700 kilometres over desolate and mostly hostile country, emaciated but avoiding capture, with Cooper acting as a deaf mute, the three escapees eventually found their way to freedom in Latvia, on the 23rd of April, just 11 days after their break out. '

Well over 40 miles a day??

Originally Posted by hansvonhealing

'Barely surviving ten months of captivity, Cooper and two Polish prisoners, Lieutenant Stanislaw Sokolowski and Lieutenant Salewski, were able to escape on a night the guards didn't bother to go on duty, because they believed that it was so cold, any prisoner who tried to run away, would face certain death in the wilderness. Trekking 700 kilometres over desolate and mostly hostile country, emaciated but avoiding capture, with Cooper acting as a deaf mute, the three escapees eventually found their way to freedom in Latvia, on the 23rd of April, just 11 days after their break out. '

Well over 40 miles a day??

Amazing. While as previously noted, he was a serial POW, he certainly had "pluck."

It reads like the first draft of a cornball film script, especially liked our hero being nursed back to health by a peasant girl, who then gives him her life savings... Of course, no suggestion of this being thrown in to satisfy the adolescent fantasists...