I grew up in Montreal West, Quebec, in the 1960s and was best friends with the son of Zbygniew "Zbyshek" Kustryzynski, the Polish fighter pilot who escaped from Stalag Luft III with Tuck.Mr. K., as we called him, was a plant manager for Dominion Textile being a chemist by profession. He was a tall, muscular man with a deep bass voice and a twinkle in his blue eyes. He wore thick black horn rimmed glasses which had hearing aids in each arm for each ear because his eardrums had been punctured during one of his crash landings. He had a long scar which went from the right side of his forehead, down across his strong nose to his left cheek. This was the scar he got in September 1939 when he crash landed his Polish biplane in Bulgaria after the Polish high command ordered all their fighter pilots to flee the unstoppable German war machine. They were told to get to England where the British would get them flying again to continue the fight against the Germans. Zbyshek told us how he had to hold his service pistol to the head of a local doctor while he sewed up his shattered face because the terrified physician wanted to flee from the advancing German army. The local underground resistance fighters managed to get him to Greece where a boat took him up to England.He and many other Poles trained on Hurricanes for the Battle of Britain which had started in July 1940. He was put on active fighter duty on September 1st and flew in the Battle for a little over 3 weeks with the British squadrons. I personally made photo copies of his official RAF logbook which show that he was rotated up to Scotland at the end of September due to "battle fatigue." The log book shows he had 15 certified kills registered in that three week period, the most intense period of the Battle of Britain. (I have attached a photo of his log book page here.) He was awarded the British DFC and the Polish K.W. medals for this service.He was retrained to fly Spitfires and started flying "rhubarbs" over France like Tuck did and, also like Tuck, was shot down by ground fire near St. Omer, France in April 1942. I have a book called "Spitfire" by Alfred Price which has a photo taken by Germans of his broken Spitfire being loaded onto a flat bed trailer by German army personnel. He was "captured" sitting in the crash landed Spitfire, his back having been broken in the crash. He recuperated in POW camp strapped to a door while his spine healed up. He escaped when he was well enough and was recaptured and put in Colditz Castle POW camp with British commando prisoners. He told us that they stayed in shape by fighting and wrestling regularly in preparation for escape attempts. I saw a photo of him taken with other prisoners looking depressed and glowering with pent up rage at being a POW. He was transferred to Stalag Luft III when he was caught trying to escape again. This was the high security prison for the "most difficult" POWs and this is where he met Tuck. Because the stalag was on the German Polish border, Zbyshek knew exactly where they were and when they managed to escape, he led Tuck across Poland to the Russian lines where they were captured by battle crazed Russian "muzhiks" who wanted to kill them for their boots and the gold in their teeth. Fortunately, Zbyshek spoke Russian because he had grown up in Moscow for the first 8 years of his life as his father was a Polish diplomat there in the teens during World War I. He told the Russian soldiers that he was an American fighter pilot pointing to the Polish eagle on his officer's hat saying it was an American eagle. He knew if the Russians knew he was really Polish, they would probably have killed him on the spot. This ruse caused enough confusion for the battle weary Russian peasant soldiers that they called an officer to take over the British and "American" pilot escapees. They were processed and sent to Vladivostok where they then sailed back around to England. They were emaciated and sick from deprivation and infection by the time they got back to England and were put in hospital where Zbyshek met Zosia (Sophia). She was a Polish nurse who had escaped from Poland with her doctor father and served as a nurse with the British 8th Army in North Africa during the campaign against Rommel. Field Marshall Montgomery had promised her and her three Polish nursing compatriots safe passage to England after they had nursed thousands of British soldier casualties during Battle of North Africa to wait out the rest of the war.I saw a personal photo of an emaciated Zbyshek down on one knee, arms outspread, singing O Chichornya to Zosia in the hospital as he was courting her in the true tradition of the "amorous Poles". Zbyshek finished the war on P-51 Mustangs scoring another 3 kills before VE day.She and Zbyshek were married and came to Canada after the war ended. In 1956, he received an autographed copy of "Fly for Your Life!" from Tuck with a hand written letter from him jokingly asking him to forgive the "literary license" that Forrester had taken with many of the facts of their escapades together.Both he and Zosia were unassuming, quiet yet elegant people who you never would have guessed were titans of their time and the war. At Zbyshek's funeral in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, in 1996, five of his surviving Polish Battle of Britain fighter pilot friends dressed in blue blazers, gray trousers and full medals saluted as one in military style under their flag bidding farewell to one of the heroes of the 20th century. He was 85 when he passed away. Zosia passed away 5 years later. I still derive inspiration from their memory to persevere through difficult moments in life reminding myself that my problems are but a pittance compared to what they and their generation survived to live a new life another day.