The Battle of England was horrible
Jaroslav Kvaček was born on May 28, 1912 in Nymburk. His mother did not survive his birth, he grew up with his father, two siblings and a stepmother. His father was a blacksmith in the workshops of the Czechoslovak State Railways. Jaroslav was trained as a technical engineer and then graduated from the Secondary Industrial School in Mladá Boleslav. After the war in 1934 he joined the Czechoslovak Airlines (ČLS). In August 1939, he illegally crossed the border into Poland, where he wanted to join other groups of soldiers in the fight against Nazi Germany. After several weeks, when Poland succumbed to the German invasion, he ran away to Romania, where he was interned. He managed to escape and with the help of the French consulate office he got to Lebanon by a boat. There he joined the Foreign Legion. After that he crossed the Mediterranean Sea to France. On November 13, 1939, he joined the emerging Czechoslovak exile units in Agde in France. After the defeat of France, he got to Britain by a boat and there he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) and was assigned to the 310th squadron. He worked there as the hangar commander. From 1941, when he completed his courses, he was assigned to the 311th Bomber Squadron, with which he participated in the Battle of England and remained there until the end of the World War II. He flew in combat aircraft as a mechanic and a shooter. He flew 528 operational flights. He experienced the end of the war in Dice, Scotland, near Aberdeen. He was never injured. On September 1, 1945, he married a Czech woman in England. She worked in England during the war, and on September 5 of the same year, he returned to his homeland. After the war, he returned to the Czechoslovak Airline and remained there until his retirement.