WITOLD TADEUSZ GĄSIORSKI

 

Witold Tadeusz Gasiorski was born in the village of Myskowice in Eastern Poland, (now Ukraine) on 25th January 1921.  In his touth he was fascinated by the advancement of aviation and it was inevitable that he would try to pursue it as a career.  He was accepted at the Air Force Cadet School in Warsaw where he began training as a pilot.

Sadly, the outbreak of war shattered his dreams and he and the other cadets were arrested by the Russians, crammed into cattle trucks and deported to Siberia.  He was eventually interned in the gulag at Vorkuta, a coal mining town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle where he was underfed and overworked like all the other prisoners.

Following Operation Barbarossa, when the Germans turned on their former allies, the Russians released him and he is believed to have been passenger number 90 0n the British ship SS Llanstephan Castle from Archangelsk to Glasgow although his name appears to have been slightly miss-spelt (as W. Gasierski) on the passenger list.  He arrived there on 3rd October 1941.

He spent some time in hospital recovering from his malnourished state and was then sent to the Polish Depot at Blackpool where he learned the basics of the English language and British military ways and regulations before being sent for gunnery and wireless operator training.  This is a little odd because he had previously been training as a pilot but may have been due to selection differences in Britain.  Eventually he was posted to No 1 (Coastal) Operational Training Unit at Silloth, Cumberland (now Cumbria) where he trained in British Battle tactics and was bonded into a crew.

304 Squadron hand written record of his arrival

After passing out at RAF Silloth he was posted to 304 Squadron based at RAF Lindholme on 19th January 1942 according to the Squadron's own records when they were based at Lindholme near Doncaster, Yorkshire which seems odd and suggests there may have been a mistake since he did not fly any sorties for them until 21st September 1943 when they were based at RAF Davidstow Moor in Cornwall.

He subsequently moved with them to RAF Predannack, Cornwall, RAF Chivenor, Devon and RAF Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland although he was only at the latter for about two weeks before he became tour expired and was transferred out to be an instructor with No 19 (Polish) Service Flying Training School at RAF Newton, Nottinghamshire.  He had served the Squadron well, having flown 47 Operational sorties with them and being involved with what is believed to have been an attack on a U-boat on the night of 24th/25th July 1944.  The Admiralty was left totally puzzled over the green smoke emitted and did not give any indication on whether they believed the U-boat to have been damaged or sunk in the absence of any wreckage coming to the surface.  The reports and the ir response are shown below:

During his military service he was awarded the Krzyz Walecznych (Cross of Valour) and two bars, the Medal Lotniczy (Air Force medal) and British campaign medals.

Witold's departure from 304 Squadron

At the end of the War, the village where he was born was absorbed into the Ukraine and was subjected to Communist rule so he decided not to return home and stayed in Britain.  He started a new life by his marrying Urszula Burger in 1945, she was a fellow Pole who had also been interned in the gulags  and only came to Britain via a long tortuous route but understood the hardships he had gone through.  Theyhad known each other since childhood.

Together they had three children and he became a bus driver in Rotherham, Yorkshire where they made a home and had a long happy life together until Witold's death in 2003 at the age of 82.