Ketrzyn (Wilamowo)  EPKE

Date of Visit = July 99.

Pilot: = Chris Belton

e-mail = chris@yarboo.freeserve.co.uk

Field Report = Officially it was notamed as closed at the time, but the Air Traffic Controllers at Stettin (Goleniow) got permission. From Gdansk, our course to Ketrzyn passed over the former Prussian towns of Heilsberg (Lidsbark Warminski) and Rössel (Reszel) with their teutonic castles, and Poland’s most famous baroque church, the fantastic Swieta Lipka, standing alone on the shores of a lake. As we approached Ketrzyn, no-one answered our radio calls, and the runway markers we spotted turned out to be silage bags.

Only at the last minute did we identify the landing strip nearby, though we could make out the old concrete matting runways on which Hitler and his ignominious team landed on their way to the Wolf’s Lair, a huge complex of bunkers from which the Germans’ eastward advance was organised, and where von Stauffenberg made his ill-fated attempt on his master’s life. Onward transport for the Nazis was a twenty minute journey along a specially constructed road made of big granite cobbles. On foot, it took us hours, but we passed through a beautiful, old fashioned village. If you can get a lift into Ketrzyn town (we hitch hiked) there is a bus from there to the Wolf's Lair.

Conditions at the airfield were primitive. The water was brown and undrinkable because like much of the water in this part of Europe, it came out of rusty pipes. The toilets didn’t bear thinking about. Of course, no-one, but no-one, spoke English, or even German. However, the security guard did manage to file our flight plan for Bialystok and get a weather forecast - in Polish. All we could glean was that it might rain - or it might not. There is no fuel at Ketrzyn, or officially at Bialystok, but a microlight pilot from Bialystok phoned through to a friend who owned one of the only two private planes there, and he agreed to sell us some.

There was no charge for landing or parking, even though they put the aircraft in the hangar. We got some drinking water (we were camping) from some friendly Germans visiting in a car, and then later from the railway cottage at the railway crossing (1km) which has a well with "good water" (and the old lady's life story, in Polish).