A proud military history

I've heard a lot of English folk knock Poland and her people, for being an economic backwater nation with no prosperity of her own. Then in the same breath, those same English people whine about how Poles come to the UK and 'steal' jobs (research shows they work bloody hard, often in low skilled jobs that a lot of English folk are too stuck up to take on) and then send money out of the country.

I remember being amazed on learning, in Lithuania back in June, that there was a time (before hapsburgs or Valoises, and long before Britannia ruled the waves), when Poland and Lithuania were centres of culture, famed for their wealth and sophistication, at a time when England was struggling to hang on to any kind of nation in the face of repeated civil unrest and weak kings who lost the lands they'd once held in France. Only a handful of relics from that glorious heyday have survived - although given the ravages of WWII, the greatest miracle is that any of it still exists at all. But their 'east-meets-west' style and sophisticated kit still recalls vividly an era of military might, which protected a political system, culture and heritage of which all Polish people should be proud.