Epic day, 10 hours, heavy rain, wind, glorious sun, stuck in a forest, hidden soviet town, a tank, 20 km off road lost, gravel, mud, water, sand, green lanes, Polish ghost town, mad 3 hour dash back for beer.
This is me taking to a forest track for a pee, before I went another couple of hundred yards and got stuck in the mud. Pictures are of the second world war graveyard, also containing graves of POW's, Soviet occupation soldiers, workers and families. There are group graves of unknown persons and a lot of people buried there have no official documentation. The others are a T34 tank and the repurposed old Soviet hospital that is now a modern health care facility.
BORNE SULINOWO – THE BIGGEST FORMER SOVIET MILITARY BASE IN POLAND
Borne Sulinowo garrison housed the biggest group of Soviet land forces in Poland. About 25,000 soldiers stationed here in two military towns (Borne Sulinowo and the nearby Klomino) and exercised on the surrounding training ground of about 18,000 hectares. Borne Sulinowo garrison was a closed military base officially excluded from the territory of Poland.
It was built between 1933-1938 by Germans as a military base with testing and training grounds, soldier barracks and The Artillery School of the Wehrmacht. It was officially opened on August 18, 1938 by Adolf Hitler. Named Gross Born at that time, it had strategic importance for the Third Reich.
Borne Sulinowo was not destroyed during World War II. In 1945 it was taken over by the Soviet Army which stayed here for 50 years. Borne Sulinowo garrison became a strategic part of the Northern Group of Forces. The exact number of Soviet soldiers and military equipment of that time is not known. The spy report to CIA revealed that in July 1981 (5 months before the martial law implementation in Poland) the number of T-55, T-64 and T-72 tanks in Borne Sulinowo increased to 1,000.
In 1968 a Missile Brigade with missile launchers R-300 (the equivalent of the American SCUD) was placed near Borne Sulinowo, in Brzeznica colony. In the mid-80ties this unit had 60 atomic bombs.
The last transport of Russian soldiers left Borne Sulinowo railway station on October 21, 1992. Today about 5,000 inhabitants live in Borne Sulinowo and tourism is the key to its development.
The monument is in the graveyard containing the graves of Soviet soldiers, workers, families and children. There are also a number of graves of POW's and a large number of graves of people with no identification or records.
The tank is a T34 and the nice building is the former military hospital now repurposed as a medical facility. The apartment locks are known as Lenningrads as it was there that they were prefabricated in a factory and shipped out for accommodation, still in use today.
Next stop was the only Polish ghost town, Klomino. It was part of the German garrison before being taken over by the Soviets.