Hello Geordie, welcome indeed to this the best of all PPRuNe threads. Now that you've broken the ice, let's hear a lot more from you. Dizzying heights of Corporal indeed, for the Royal Air Force relied (and no doubt still does) on that exalted rank for its very day to day existence. Certainly the Flight Planning Rooms and Route Hotels of my time could, and often did, cease proper functioning in their absence until they mercifully returned to bring things again to good order. I've no doubt the same was the case in Tels, and I've no doubt you have many tales to tell of how if it could go wrong then it did go wrong, so let's hear them all!
Molemot, thank you for your two part piece on the Poles in the BoB. They were indeed a remarkable breed. Remarkable in surviving the German onslaught of the German blitzkrieg on their homeland, remarkable in making their escape from there, and often their subsequent escape from France, remarkable in their fighting spirit and success in the BoB when finally invited to join the fray.
As Danny recalls, so many of them stayed on in the RAF as no safe return to Poland was possible under the Communists, thus they gave their lives to the Service. The RAF was the beneficiary of their enforced exile, for they were the creme de la creme, everyone a professional aviator, and everyone larger than life. We are the poorer now that they are gone...