Thanks, as always Danny. I was taken by this:
"The lone Beau was nominally on "B" Flight, but it was the sole preserve of two refugees from Communist oppression: Master Pilots "Joe" Halkiew (Pole) and "Zed-Zed" Zmitrowitz (Czech)............"
In my teens (1960s) I had a Saturday job working on a farm. They had a labourer, a German ex-POW. I asked him why he stayed on, and he said there was "nothing to go back to". It didn't occur to me at the time to ask if he came from what became East- or West Germany. It was clear enough to this teenager, that having a roof, a job and food on the table was enough. He'd met a girl, married and settled.
Sort of rhetorical questions. How many men were like these? It can't have been purely political for the Poles and the Czechs, the physical destruction was Europe-wide. How many, called into service in their teens, had nothing to go home to? What happened to all the POWs in North America? Were they allowed to stay on?