From Poland's dark past - hardly comprehensible by most Poles now, I suppose
On October 15, 1949
the first four Military Labour Batallions (WBP), consisting of 4621 conscripts, have been raised. Until finally dissolved in 1959, this structure was being reorganized and renamed multiple times - taking on its final name of Military Miner Battalions (WBG). At their peak, in 1956, the battalions numbered 35,000 soldiers.
During the period of their existence 200 thousand soldiers-miners served with the military battalions. About 1,000 of them died, mostly in uranium mines.
Order No. 008 of Polish Marshal (and in fact, a Soviet general in Polish uniform) Konstantin Rokossovsky of 1 February 1951 introduced the exact rules for recruitment to WBP. It was to be carried out under the compulsory military service. Based on a special selection - conducted by secret police, informers and party activists - the state's disloyal or hostile conscripts were to be sent to work in coal mines, uranium mines and the quarries.
The basis to qualify a conscript for alternative service is his social background, political and moral attitude, and his political past. Conscripts destined to the alternative service are:
a. recruits coming from environment of rich farmers, expropriated landlords, merchants, owners of industrial enterprises employing hired workforce, owners of larger urban properties and the sons of former functionaries of direct oppressive pre-war regime;
b. the conscripts, who in the opinion of the public security authorities are hostile to the current reality;
c. conscripts whose parents, siblings or wife were punished by the authorities of the Polish People's Republic for political crimes;
d. conscripts who maintain contact with members of the immediate family, residing in the capitalist countries and displaying a hostile attitude towards the Polish People's Republic.
- Konstantin Rokossovsky, Polish Marshal, Secret Order No. 008, February 1, 1951
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