Gosh - where does one start.....
From 72 I recall a trip I did with him in Norn Iron, just before a trappers' visit.
"Teeters my son - you fly with me. We know I can fly but you Training Captains know what these Fokkers looking for."
Transitioning away from a long thin into wind field in Tyrone in a (relatively) benign area. Just clear of the ground, a heavily accented "Clear left?" was rapidly followed (or even preceded) by vast amounts of completely unnecessary left bank, ensuring we struck the wires running along the left side of the field........... think it was August '72....
Fast forward to Oman in '74, where he led the Wessex det to SOAF (of which I wasn't a part - but I was there!) for which IIRC he was made MBE. I can do no better than quote - apologies for length - from Ian Gardiner's excellent
In the Service of the Sultan.
The detachment was commanded by a Polish pilot called Alek Tarwid. Nothing was too much trouble or too risky for him or his team where we were concerned. A solution would be found. Alek, who was somewhat older than most pilots, had flown Spitfires during the Second World War. Once, he got me up beside him in the cab of his Wessex and gave me a demonstration of what it was like to fly a Spitfire. The Messerschmitts wouldn't have stood a chance! "A Spitfire is like a woman" he used to say in his marked Polish accent. He never amplified. I think it was meant as a compliment to Spitfires. We were always left to speculate what kind of women Alek liked, assuming he favoured women who were like Spitfires.........
And I recall in the height of the Cold War him opining that "the Russians would never come west; they know the Poles would never ever support them"
We thought at the time he was mad to say that, but of course he was proved right, and lived long enough to see that he was.
RIP Sir, they most definitely don't make 'em like that any more......