Tape 5 Side 1
Korea: Command and Danger at Sea
Paul describes commanding military operations in Korea, including an incident where the rudder fell off his command boat near the Chinese coast, requiring rescue by a battalion commander. He draws a connection to his father’s 1888 journey through the Yellow Sea returning from Japan, during which the elder Sapieha was also terrified during the voyage.
He describes his father’s subsequent travel through Siberia via Korea, Seoul, Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Tomsk, and Omsk to Moscow.
His responsibilities managing 160,000 North Korean refugees across four or five islands included military operations and raids, providing food supplies (particularly rice and kimchi), and managing communications — the primary challenge. He found working with Major Brown among the American officers particularly difficult.
Japan: Rest and Recuperation
During a ten-day leave in Japan, Paul visited Tokyo, where he slept 24 hours upon arrival, and then Nara, the old capital, featuring pagodas, gold Buddhas, and a park with tame deer.
Fort Monroe and Pentagon Service
After Korea, Paul served at Fort Monroe’s G2 section (March 1954 – March 1955), training personnel and briefing generals on global situations. He later transferred to the Pentagon, where instead of the “special operations and partisan warfare” he had expected, he accompanied a French Infantry Inspector General touring US military camps.
Childhood Summers and Family Properties
Paul returns to discuss the summer holidays of his childhood, visiting relatives at:
Bilcze — featuring the Seret River, resembling American canyons with distinctive geological formations.
Krasiczyn — the family Renaissance castle and ancestral seat.
Pokinye — a Czartoryski family property with a distinctly Polish atmosphere.
Brixen — a Tyrolean spa town where the family took annual three-month stays for water treatments. He notes the 1907 death of his young aunt Esya from meningitis in Lwów, during which he and his sister Mary were sent to Princess Sanguszko’s estate for three months. The Sanguszko family had a renowned Arab horse stud farm.