My grandfather was in the Polish Army. Germany invaded Poland 1939, he escaped from Poland, so avoided the German Occupation. He ended up coming over to Britain where he served under… I think it was the First Polish Armoured Division in the East Coast of Scotland. During that time he met my granny who was a schoolteacher. It was a wartime romance, they got married very quickly, I think actually she might have been pregnant
As far as I’m aware there was no direct contact between them ever again and since she had to bring up her two children in Scotland, he went back to Poland, married again, had four children. His children never knew that they actually had another half-family in Scotland. My father and my uncle grew up, they never knew their father. They only met him when they both went over to Poland in the 1980s, so they would have been in their forties, but even with them going over there, my grandfather kept that secret from his wife and from his other four children. He unfortunately passed away in 1990, so I never met him. My father and my uncle, they have four half-brothers and sisters. My uncle contacted them, he must have been interested to know what his father was like. We all met up in 2007 and they embraced my dad and my uncle as long-lost brothers and they’re now in regular contact.
Both my dad and my uncle do take an interest in Poland, both my dad and my uncle can speak a little bit, they have tried to embrace their Polish culture a bit.
