OK, I'm really pushing my luck here and no doubt Pop will be on the scene soon to say, "Now move along you lot, you've all got homes to go to, nothing happening here", etc. However, hoping that he will take his usual kindly stance and allow of the broader all inclusive nature of the thread title rather than the OP's clear intention to limit it to the BoB (sorry fincastle!) I'll chance my arm with yet another old man's meanderings.
EMAH, you mentioned the exploits of Joe Kmiecik. I never met him but his story is very similar to that of Victor Fontes. He was a large (in every sense of the word!) Hastings navigator on my first Squadron, 48 at Changi, in 1963. In a past life he had been a Polish Cavalry Officer who charged German tanks for a living until the ref blew the final whistle. He and a great many others then fled south to the Black Sea. There they embarked and were shipped through the Med to Gib, trans-shipped there to France, disembarking just in time for its fall. Victor then again fled south, this time over the Pyrenees and into Spain. Captured and thrown into one of Franco's Concentration Camps, he escaped and legged it to the border (La Linea) and back to Gib. There he was interrogated by the Brits.
"What do you want to do?", he was asked. "I want to kill F..ing Germans", he replied (his knowledge of colloquial English remained at much the same level to my day). "Well what do you do?", was the next question. "I am Polish Cavalry Officer" he proudly announced. "I'm afraid we haven't any openings for Cavalry Officers, Polish or otherwise". Again, "I want to kill F..ing Germans", meant somehow this loop had to be broken. The British informed him that the only organisation then conducting continuous Offensive Operations against the Germans was RAF Bomber Command. With that prize before him Victor immediately volunteered and became an RAF Bomber Pilot! It was only post war reorganisation that had him change to Nav. As with most of the Poles in HM Forces at the end of the war, going home to a Communist regime in Poland was not an option.
Remarkable as Victor and Joe's stories are, they were par for the course for the RAF Poles. They are often portrayed by us in films as comic and ill disciplined chattering clowns. They were nothing of the sort. They had a burning and understandable hatred of what the Germans had done and continued to do to their country. They were amongst the bravest and fiercest of aircrew in the RAF of whatever Command. Those in the BoB I think had the highest kill rate of any other national group.