Flight Lieutenant Czeslaw Sienkiewicz braved a 830-mile trek on foot across the Soviet Union's frozen wastes to India after being freed from a prison camp before eventually making it to Britain.

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He then became a decorated Spitfire and Lancaster bomber pilot who flew daring RAF missions against targets in Germany.

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Czeslaw had fought in the 1939 September Campaign when Poland became a target for oppression following the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin. The German Luftwaffe decimated the Polish air fleet and pilots like Czeslaw were handed machine guns and told to fight on the ground - against German forces invading from the west and Russian soldiers from the east. He and his comrades hid inside graves at a cemetery, firing at Russian tanks from inside a grave.

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Czeslaw made it back to his village but was later arrested by the Russian NKVD secret police and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment. He was deported in a cattle truck which took three weeks to reach the prison camp in Siberia.There were women and children in the cattle trucks and whenever someone died en-route the Russian soldiers just threw their body out into the snow.

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Following Hitler's invasion of Russia in 1941, Stalin allied with Britain and America against the Germans. Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed to provide Russia with equipment, on condition that they release the Polish nationals being held in Siberia - and Czeslaw was one of them.

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In the fall of 1941, the prisoners were told that they were free to leave the camp and travel south to join the Polish army being formed in Uzbekistan. They initially thought that this was a trap, and they would be shot, but they eventually did leave in groups of ten on specially made sledges. In Czeslaw’s group only he and another airman survived the journey, the others just collapsed in the snow.

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Czeslaw and his companion trekked 830 miles on foot before they could smuggle themselves onto a train heading south, and they finally made it to India, from where he got passage to Britain.

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Once in England, he changed his name to Tony Rogers. Czeslaw met Nan, a WAF driver, who would become his wife and mother of their two children.

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During the rest of the war, Czeslaw flew Spitfires for the RAF before being drafted into Bomber Command to fly the Lancaster because of his experience in Poland of flying twin engine aircraft. He served in 138 squadron Special Operations (Moonlight Squadron) in the B Flight, based out of RAF Tempsford in Cambridgeshire.

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In 1944 he flew a supply mission into Warsaw to help the Home Army fight in the Warsaw Uprising. He flew low to parachute down supplies including arms, explosives and radio sets at a place where lights flashed to indicate underground members. German fighters were waiting for the planes to rise but they kept at low level, however many crews were lost and the missions were stopped for being too risky.

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Czeslaw continued to serve in Bomber Command until his retirement from the Polish Air Force in the UK in 1948. His service logbooks highlight 12,000 flying hours in a variety of aircraft types: Spitfires, Lancasters, Wellingtons, and after war ended Meteor jets.

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In the early 1950s Czeslaw and his family moved to Singapore, where he was the personal pilot to General Sir Gerald Templer, British High Commissioner in Malaya during the Communist insurgency. He would fly light aircraft such as the Auster to spot terrorist activity in the Malayan jungle so that the ground troops could move in and flush them out.

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Czeslaw was awarded the Virtuti Militari Cross – Poland’s highest award, the Polish Air Force medal, the RAF Air Crew Europe Star, the 1939-1945 War medal, and the Defence Medal.

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Czeslaw was eventually immobilised by a stroke and the RAF Benevolent Fund stepped in to provide a mobility scooter. He was so inspired by this that he went on to become a keen supporter of the RAF Benevolent Fund.

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Czeslaw Sienkiewicz passed away in Fairford, Gloucestershire, UK on 15 January 2013. He was 91years old.

 

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Copyright: The Rogers family

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