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73to fight for the Allies, they would rather do it in the Soviet Union, flying with the Normandie Regiment. For the most part, however, at the operational level the partnerships worked. To return to the Belgians as an example, their Government in exile may have caused unnecessary problems with their demands for aeroplanes and personnel for use in the Congo, but in Europe 1,500 Belgian personnel served with the RAF. Out of 600 aircrew, some 200 would lose their lives on operations, and Belgians would claim 301 enemy aircraft and flying bombs as destroyed or damaged. In all thirteen Belgian officers would command RAF squadrons in combat.48 For the most part, relations were professional and productive between British and non8British personnel, although each took some time to get used to the other. Differing institutional cultures were as much of a problem as language, and Free French pilot Jacques Souviat found the RAF difficult to understand at first, recording: %u2018In the enormous organisation that was the RAF, many things seemed illogical and shocked our French backgrounds. Each time we received the same explanation, %u201cYes, but it works!%u201d and it was true. Everything was based on pragmatism and the confidence reciprocated in general, called the %u2018team spirit.%u2019%u201949 Genuine respect and co8operation was fostered across the RAF, based on inclusive and professional attitudes, pulling these diverse forces together into a highly effective fighting force. Perhaps the close co8operation and integration is the true moral of the case of the Norwegian aircrew at Tempsford, where no one had particularly noticed the foreign personnel because they were so much part of the accepted fabric of the Service. Many of the Allies found leaving the RAF harder than they had imagined. Even the staunch De Gaullist Pierre Clostermann felt sadness at leaving the RAF in 1945 to return to France, and we can perhaps end in no better way than in Clostermann%u2019s words as he records in The Big Show, how, on leaving, %u2018My pride welled up within me then I thought of you my aircraft, and above all of you, my dear RAF friends, whom I had had the privilege of knowing and living amongst, with your uniforms the colour of your island mists.%u201950