TIMES ONLINE: Lech Kaczynski, the late President of Poland, returned home yesterday to a country struck dumb with grief and confusion.
The air crash that wiped out the head of state, the chief of the general staff, the chairman of the security services, the central bank governor and Solidarity heroes has left Poland reeling, unsteady and uncertain.
As the red and white Polish flag on the President’s casket flapped in the wind, the honour guard at Warsaw airport struck up the National Anthem. The president’s ashen-faced twin brother Jaroslaw, the Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, and parliamentarians fortunate enough not to have been on the doomed presidential plane, moved their lips to the words of the anthem: Poland has yet to perish/As long as we still live/That which foreign force has seized/We at sabre point shall retrieve.
Then, the casket made its way in a hearse through the streets of the silent capital. Tens of thousands lined the route, rushing in front of the police escort to place carnations on the road, snatching off their hats, dropping to their knees.
The only noise: the revving of hundreds of civilian motorbike riders, waving the national flag, who had decided spontaneously to follow the cortege, like seagulls in the wake of a ferryboat.
“It’s a group trauma,” said a catering entrepreneur, Kaja Burakiewicz, “we’re still struggling to understand.” >>> Roger Boyes, Warsaw | Monday, April 12, 2010
