General Franciszek Gagor

The coffin carrying the remains of the Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army will arrive in Poland this evening.

The Russian Echo Moskvy radio station has announced that the plane, which is scheduled to take off from the Domodedovo Airport in Moscow at 14.30 CET, will carry six coffins, including that of General Franciszek Gagor.  

Hear a moving tribute to the general given by Artur Goławski  by military analyst Polska Zbrojna, who knew Franciszek Gagor and many of the other military top brass who died in Saturday’s air crash well. “We lost the best of the best,” he tells Polish Radio’s Magda Jensen.

Because of the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud which is hanging over much of Europe, it is still unclear where the plane with the remains of the Smolensk crash victims will land. At the moment Warsaw’s Frederic Chopin Airport is closed and only airports in the southern cities of Krakow and Rzeszow are open.  

General Franciszek Gagor, Chief of the General Staff of the Polish Army, was a key member of the Polish Armed Forces preparation team for Poland’s accession to NATO and Poland’s candidate for the Commander-in-Chief of NATO. He was awarded several military orders, including French National Order of the Legion of Honour, American Legion of Merit order and the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta. (mg/pg)