Page 41 - BPW-UK - E-news - Edition 124 - September 2024 - COMPLETED

He eventually arrives in Britain, and starts training with the RAF pilot (later, he will
join the 302 Polish Fighter Squadron). Initially, life is hard. He doesn’t speak any English,

and the Hurricanes he must now master are very different from the PZL P11 he was used
to back in Poland.

Hawker Hurricane

His only joy are some remnants of family he finds in England: Edyta’s sister and his
niece Dana, who live in Swiderby, close to RAF Coleby Grange. During the Battle of Britain,
Matthias’ Messerchmitt is shot down by Blazej, who recognizes his wife’s murderer’s plane
from a distinctive painting on its fuselage. Captain Brandt will become one of the first Ger-

man PoWs at Grizedale Hall prison camp, while Blazej thinks he’d actually killed him.

Matthias Brandt and other PoW German officers are invited to a New Year’s Eve RAF
gala in 1940 – it was an RAF gentleman’s custom at that time. Axelle May – Edyta’s sister –
a war widow of an English Navy officer, is invited too. She meets Matthias there for the first
time. Even if she hates all Germans for what they did to her husband (he perished in the

sinking of HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow), or to her sister and parents (who were arrested
during the invasion and sent to a concentration camp), they establish a connection. She
can’t help feeling attracted to him. Matthias tells her about the woman he killed in Poland,
but he doesn’t know she was Axelle’s sister, which is also beyond her own imagination. As

the war goes on, they do not see each other for a long time.

Blazej continues fighting for the RAF. One day, he thinks he kills a German pilot who
had parachuted from his plane, and this action makes him feel he’s no better than the man
who killed Edyta. Axelle tries to find her family and starts working in the War Rooms in Lon-

don, while Matthias endures his captivity. He is one of few German officers who explicitly
asks to work. He loses what little commitment he still had for his country, and undergoes a
deep change of heart. Axelle meets Matthias again while delivering Red Cross materials to
the new prison camp to which he’d been sent, and they fall for each other.

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