The fact that the Polish (and Czech) servicemen were prohibited from participating in the Victory parades in '45 is outrageous. For those immensely brave and committed people to be cast aside like used rags is a bloody disgrace to Britain.
This afternoon I was researching an entirely unrelated matter in a lowland Scottish graveyard and my attention was drawn by a series of Polish/RAF gravestones.
RAF Grangemouth, the site of which now lies under a huge oil refinery and petrochem complex, was a Spitfire training airfield during WW2 (after the BoB) and hosted 58 OTU. The accident rate was truly horrendous. Almost a hundred fatal accidents in less than three years. Pilots from several countries were trained to fly Spitfires from there, but I've spent a bit of time this evening researching just a few of the Polish ones, in the spirit of this thread. The events being nearly 70 years ago, it is quite probable that there are no living people who remember these guys personally in daily life, so I think it's appropriate that a few words about each one of these 'few' be recorded here.
These guys died not by enemy action, but neverthess they had made a commitment in the knowledge that learning and exercising their chosen skill carried a significant probability that they may have to make the ultimate sacrifice in quite short order.
At the going down of the sun, etc, somebody ought to recognise them too.
Pilot Officer Malkiewicz and Sergeant Siemienczuk collided their Spitfires in the circuit on Friday the 17th of April 1942, near the outskirts of Falkirk. One aircraft crashed immediately, the other damaged aircraft attempted to land on the airfield, but the pilot of that one died in the ensuing crash. They are buried together. In Scotland it is very common practice for two or three coffins to be stacked upon eachother in a single grave where there has been an in vivo relationship, not necessarily familial though usually so.
Sergeant Szumski was killed in a Miles Master on Sunday the 22nd of November 1942 during an instrument exercise. He was observed to roll inverted at low level and strike the ground. His crewmate, who also perished, is not buried in this cemetery.
Sergeant Lukomski, who died on the following Tuesday, had been in a formation from which he was seen to break away while quite close to the airfield. He briefly entered a bit of stratus from which he emerged in a spin. He speared in just a couple of miles East of the 'field, just a couple of hundred metres North of the modern Polmont VRP at a spot which was subsequently quarried for aggregate and is currently being landfilled. You can see it immediately to the North and East of J4 of the M9 as you drive past.
Sergeant Samiec flew into a bing 1.5nm West of Winchburgh, West Lothian, in IMC on Tuesday the 4th of November 1941. His allotted training task was to strafe an inshore gunnery target, so it's difficult to see how he ended up where he did.
He shares a lair with Sergeant Szot who had collided with a fellow Grangemouth Spitfire over Dunfermline on Friday the 5th of June 1942. The other pilot successfully baled out.
I'm told that Koch may be a Jewish surname. To have been both Polish and Jewish must have been one hell of a motivational force for a young chap to fight the hard right Nasties in May 1941! Sadly, Sergeant Koch collided with a fellow Spitfire trainee during an echelon right formation practice on Friday the 15th of May 1941. The other pilot successfully made it back to Grangemouth. Koch did not, alive.
Sergeant Ostoja-Slonski, who died on Thursday the 30th of October the same year is co-buried with Koch. Slonski perished when he flew his Spitfire into a hillside near Peebles in marginal wx or IMC.
I bring these few case histories, brief as they are, to honour the many Polish people who were willing to risk their lives to fight for/with us in WW2. These 'few' now lie, not quite remembered yet not entirely forgotten, on a Scottish hillside adjacent to an unglamorous industrial town in lowland Scotland.
I commend their memory to the forum.