Royal British Legion

MEMBERS of Borth British Legion recently travelled to Poland to meet with Polish veterans who served with the Allied Forces during World War Two. Wreath-laying ceremonies were held at Krakow (in the Rakowici military cemetery) and in Warsaw (at the Liberator Stone), marking the spot where a Liberator plane carrying supplies to Polish rebels rising against the Germans was shot down in August 1944, and seven Allied airmen were killed.

Pictured above, left to right: Former Bombardier Antoni Lapinski, who with the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division fought at the Battle of Monte Cassino; Jacek Polanczyk, Director, the Polish Office for War Veterans; Henryk Skrzypinski, who as a teenager spent three years of forced labour in Germany, then escaping joined the Free Polish Army, fought at Monte Cassino, and later stationed in England remembers the severe winter of 1946; Andrzej Janczak, representing his 100-year-old father, Jan Henryk who, released from confinement in a Soviet gulag, served alongside the RAF, for a time at Fairwood Common airfield, Swansea; Revd David Williams (chair, RBL Borth); Major Marian Slowinski, who fled from internment in Hungary, joined the Free Polish Army, taking part in the Normandy landings and the liberation of Belgium.