Poland promotes WWI vet, age 112, to captain - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Poland promotes WWI vet, age 112, to captain

WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s Defense Ministry on Friday said a 112-year-old veteran of both world wars has been promoted to captain.

In a statement, the ministry said that Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak visited veteran Jozef Kowalski in a nursing home in Tursk, in western Poland, on Thursday and promoted him from lieutenant to captain.

Kowalski was born Feb. 2, 1900, in what is now southern Poland, but was then part of the Austrian Empire. He fought in a Polish cavalry unit formed during World War I.

Kowalski is the only survivor of Poland’s victorious 1920 war against Bolshevik Russia, according to the statement. It said that after 1920 he studied at a cavalry school but chose to return to his family farm.

In 1939 he returned to combat, fighting the Germans, but spent most of the war a prisoner.