While it is good that your readers are reminded of the significant contribution made by the Poles under British command during the second world war (Should Poles be allowed in the British army?, G2, March 19), to say that today "Poles living in Britain want to follow their ancestors by joining a hard-pressed British army" is a misleading representation of the status of the Polish armed forces in the west during the war.
There were some individual Polish nationals in the British armed forces, but most Polish nationals served in the Polish army, air force, and navy under British operational command as allies, on the basis of the Anglo-Polish military agreement of August 5 1940. They represented a distinct national force whose allegiance was to the Republic of Poland, whose government-in-exile had moved to London after the fall of France.
Many of these servicemen refused to return to a Soviet-controlled Poland after the war. Churchill's suggestion of March 1946 that they should be invited to form a "British Foreign Legion" was turned down by Attlee's government.
Instead, the government created the Polish Resettlement Corps, a transitional non-combatant unit in the British army, with the aim of preparing Poles for civilian life in Britain. During its two-year existence (1946-48) over 114,000 Poles enlisted in this corps. They, with their dependants and descendants, were to provide the core of the Polish community in Britain for the next half century.
Dr Hubert Zawadzki