This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it wasn't the Germans who first uprooted

Stanislav Koolik and his family. It was the Russians. Deported to a Siberian

Goulag, Stanislav's fate took a dramatic turn in 1941

when the Germans launched their invasion of the Soviet Union.

Suddenly the Russians released their Polish captives and Stanislav embarked on an arduous journey across thousands of miles.

He eventually joined the Polish army in Uzbekistan, a path that would lead him to Britain and ultimately

to the front lines in Holland where he fought with the Polish parachute brigade at Arnhem. I'm Angus Wallace and joining me today is Nicholas Kinloch, the grandson of

Stanislav Kulik. Nicholas has chronicled his grandfather's extraordinary

wartime experience in his book from the Soviet

Gulag to Arnhem a Polish paratroopers epic war time journey.

Nicholas let's start at the beginning Where was your grandfather from in Poland? What was his background?

So he was born in what was then the east of Poland. And the borders of Poland back then were different to the borders now. They were

further to the east. And to kind of put it in context where he was is now actually in Western Ukraine. So that gives you a kind of idea of where it was.

Yeah, it was an interesting area and an interesting time because Poland had only recently regained its independence after the First World War.

So he would have been one of the first children, I suppose, born into that new polo.

Because it was only around 1920 or so that there had been a series of battles with Soviets and

Ukrainians and and so on for the lands around there in

Eastern Europe. So he was born in 1924 very soon after that and it was actually land that had been in the Austrian-Hungarian

empire before the first world war. So very

diverse, multi-ethnic area as well.

...