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street scuttle for cover. It didn’t occur to him to do the same. He stood astride his machine and watched as the sky became full of Stuka bombers, accompanied by powerful Messerschmitts, the fastest aeroplanes in the world. If only the Polish Air Force had aircraft like those it would be a different story. He saw the bombs falling, heard the explosions, saw the clouds of dust and smoke and then the flames and shook his fist at the sky, a futile gesture if ever there was one. He swore vengeance.
    A staff car came speeding along the road and stopped beside him. There was a general in the rear seat. ‘Where are you going, Captain?’ he asked.
    Jan hesitated. Going back to Rulka would be tantamount to desertion; he could not disgrace his name and his squadron by doing that. ‘To rejoin my squadron, General, sir.’
    ‘Then don’t stand about here. Get going. We can’t afford to lose pilots.’
    Jan knew that. Air force casualties had been severe but there wasn’t a man in the squadron who wasn’t prepared to fight and die if necessary. That was where he belonged. He saluted and rode away, turning his back on his beloved wife.
    He felt terrible and could hardly see where he was going for the tears that filled his eyes. The road he took was jammed with people and their pathetic bundles fleeing the capital. Where did they expect to find a haven? Would Hungary and Romania take them in? Or were they going east towards the Russians believing they were preferable to the Nazis? And there were columns of troops trying to get through them, marching to defend their homeland and being hindered by this tidal wave. Did the rest of the world know what was happening? Did they care? Poor Poland didn’t stand a chance. Between them, Germany and Russia would gobble the country up, as had happened in the past, times without number. Only since 1918, when the Poles had ousted the Russians, had they been an independent republic, their boundaries decided by the Allies at the Treaty of Versailles. It was those boundaries they were set on keeping.
    He turned the cycle off the road and bumped off across country, hoping to get ahead of the exodus. The sooner he got to grips with this war, the sooner it would be over and he could go back to Rulka. He had promised her he would.
     
    Romania, fearing for its own safety, reneged on its mutual defence treaty with Poland and declared itself neutral. When the Polish squadrons landed, their aircraft were impounded and the airmen interned, something Jan and his fellow pilots had not foreseen. Jan’s spirits, already low at having to leave Rulka, plunged evenfurther when faced with the prospect of spending the rest of the war on the sidelines. But the thought of Rulka facing heaven knew what terrors in Warsaw roused him from his state of apathy. He was determined to escape and fight on, and spent long hours discussing with his comrades how this could be done.
    The first they knew that there were forces at work on their behalf was when a Polish go-between slipped Captain Witold Urbanowicz a roll of money and a stack of false identity cards, and told him to distribute them among the men and instruct them to make their way in ones and twos to Bucharest. There the new Polish government-in-exile, headed by General Sikorski, had enlisted the help of the British and French Embassies who were prepared to do all they could to help the Polish flyers escape. ‘Guilty consciences, that’s what,’ Jan murmured when he heard this.
    The first of them left that night, their absence covered by the remainder. The next night more went and a few hours later the last of them set off, scattering in the countryside. Some walked, some stole bicycles, others jumped freight trains. Jan and two others hopped on a passenger train just as it was drawing out of the station and hid in the lavatories until they reached their destination. They had been warned that Bucharest was crawling with Gestapo agents on the lookout for Polish