Page 35 - Demo

35%u0001%u0003%u0004%u0003%u0005%u0006%u0007%u0008%u0004%u0009%u0003%u0005%u0003%u000b%u000c%u0006fi%u0005%u000c%u0006%u0004%u0010%u0018%u0006%u00095%u0009%u000b%u000c%u0005%u001a%u00046%u000c%u0006%u0007%u0010%u0006%u000b%u0006%u0019%u0004%u0005%u0006%u0008%u0006%u0019%u0001%u0007%u0004%u0007%u0010%u0006fi%u0017%u0016%u0017%%u0006%u0018%u00177%u0015%u0016%u0016%u0006Having gained both a BA (1984) and an MA (1992) in aspects of international and modern British history at the LSE, Peter Devitt has been on the staff of the RAF Museum%u2019s Department of Research and Information Services since 2001. He specialises in overseas participation in Britain's flying services and is active in forging closer links, both formally and informally, between the Museum and veterans%u2019 groups, museums and cultural organisations. After the Fall of France, in June 1940, numbers of airmen from occupied Europe escaped to the United Kingdom to continue the fight against Hitler%u2019s Germany. The largest contingents came from the east, and, by August that year, there were some 8,400 Polish and 900 Czechoslovak air force personnel stationed here. For the Poles, who had been defeated and driven from their homeland in 1939, only to be forced to flee again, Britain was now Wyspa Ostatniej Nadziei or %u2018The Island of Last Hope.%u2019 Churchill announced that the continental airmen were to join the Royal Air Force. In doing so he sought to show the world, and especially the neutral United States, that Britain and her Allies were committed to continuing, and winning, the war. The Prime Minister was also aware that after suffering heavy losses in the Battle of France, and in covering the evacuation from Dunkirk, the RAF was short of 450 fighter pilots and needed all the help it could get.1 For reasons of national prestige, the Polish and Czechoslovak governments8in8exile established in London were also keen for their airmen to see action. This was all very well, but few of the Central Europeans spoke any English, and they came from countries with cultures, customs and traditions very different from those of their new hosts. The first Poles had, in fact, come to Britain on 8 December 1939 as a result of an agreement negotiated the previous October between the British and French air ministries and General Zaj%u0105c, the commander of the reconstituted Polish Air Force (PAF) in France. This divided the