I was 19 when I arrived in the UK in the summer of 1940. The RAF needed pilots and I wanted to fly. After two months of English lessons, I attended the elementary flying school, then the secondary one. At the end of 1941, I was posted to Squadron 316, “The City of Warsaw Squadron”, where I joined the RAF as a fighter pilot and began flying Spitfires operationally.

I often came back with holes in my aircraft, but thankfully they were all in the wrong places. If the bullets had hit something vital, like my petrol tank or wing, then I would have had to abandon the aircraft. When it came to shooting, you would aim the whole aircraft at the target. If I was shooting at a Messerschmitt, for example, I didn't want to kill the pilot; I wanted to finish off the machine. You knew your adversaries had girlfriends, mothers, fathers and brothers and were just like you. I was lucky to survive and as I'd completed a number of operational flights, I was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

I was 24 when the war ended. The British government encouraged us to go back and I wanted to return home to my family. But by then Poland was under Russian domination and if you weren't a communist it was too dangerous to go back. I could read between the lines of my father's letters: “We miss you but stay where you are.” Not that he could actually say that, because all Polish mail was censored, but I knew to take his advice. One pilot from my squadron who went back to be with his wife and child was imprisoned on trumped-up charges and then executed.