If you want to wind up a Pole of a certain age, there is no more reliable means than quoting the old myth about Polish lancers charging at German panzer divisions in the second world war.
The story feeds a stereotype about Polish men being hopelessly romantic, hopelessly moustachioed idiots who would actually gallop their horses at big steel tanks.
Even this newspaper fell into the trap less than two years ago, when a columnist described the mythical charge as “the most romantic and idiotic act of suicide of modern war”. We had to append a speedy correction admitting that we had “repeated a myth of the second world war, fostered by Nazi propagandists”.
The most likely origin of the legend is a skirmish at the Pomeranian village of Krojanty on the first day of the German invasion, 1 September 1939. Polish lancers, whose units had still not been motorised, did indeed charge a Wehrmacht infantry battalion but were forced to retreat under heavy machine gun fire. By the time German and Italian war correspondents got there, some tanks had arrived and they joined the dots themselves.
The story was used first by the Nazi propaganda machine and then by its Soviet counterpart, to portray Polish officers (who were killed by Stalin en masse the next year) as absurdly careless about the lives of their troops.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/myth-of-polish-cavalry-charge
That, and saying that Poland is in "Eastern Europe". Big No No!
I had no reason to not believe the Poles were as brave as the Russian soldiers who strapped explosives to themselves and dove under Nazi tanks at Stalingrad.
Or...
How a soldier who feared he missed the war went on to earn the MoH