I have posted before about a Polish Nav on 48 Sqn Hastings at Changi, but his story warrants a brief reprise given present posts.
Together with much else of the Polish Army after the fall of Poland, Victor Fontes (a Polish Cavalry Officer) went south east to the Black Sea port of Constanta (a remarkable feat in itself), embarked there in a British ship for Gibraltar, transhipped for Western France to fight the Wehrmacht that had laid waste to his homeland, but arrived there only for the fall of that country. He fled south to the Pyrenees with the aid of the brave guides described to us by sidevalve, was arrested and then escaped from the Franco regime, made it back to Gibraltar where he joined the RAF for training as a Bomber Pilot (there being a lack of vacancies for Cavalry Officers!).
He survived that very dangerous occupation and remained with the post war RAF, together with so many other Poles he knew that a return to the now Communist regime back home could mean certain death. He later remustered as a nav because of the surplus of pilots.
A larger than life character in every way and still challenged by his adopted tongue, Vic was a survivor in every way and an inspiration for a then still callow co-pilot.