British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was among world leaders who gathered in Poland yesterday, Tuesday 1 September 2009, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany.
The Second World War in Europe began on 1 September 1939 when the German battleship Schleswig Holstein bombarded the Polish garrison in the free city of Danzig (now Gdansk).
Two days later Britain honoured its treaty for the defence of Poland and had also entered the war.
The Polish population would go on to suffer the highest percentage of deaths of any nation in the war (over 18 per cent) and many fled to the UK to continue the fight for their nation's freedom alongside their British allies.
To mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities David Miliband joined the likes of German chancellor Angela Merkel, Polish president Lech Kaczynski and Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin for the commemoration service in Gdansk.
Writing on his Foreign Office blog, Mr Miliband said:
"We have a duty to remember the sacrifices, including of Poles fighting in and alongside British forces, and to learn the right lessons - about confronting racism and xenophobia, about standing up against tyranny, and about building international co-operation.
"This will be a poignant return to Poland for me, as my mother survived the war in hiding in Poland before coming to the UK in 1946."
During the war thousands of Poles managed to escape to Great Britain or to other countries in the empire and joined up to fight under British command.
Famously, these included a great many Polish airmen, who ended up shooting down 11 per cent of the German aircraft destroyed in the Battle of Britain.
Polish forces would later go on to contribute a major part to allied efforts to defeat Nazi Germany and were crucial in the liberation of France as well as the celebrated capture of Monte Cassino.
Poles were also critical to cracking the German ultra codes and providing intelligence on the V1 and V2 rocket programme threatening the British population on the Home Front. However, it is often stated that Polish forces won the war but lost the peace and were to go on to suffer subjugation under the USSR.
Indeed, under pressure from Stalin, Polish servicemen and women were not invited to be among the allied nations who marched in the 1946 London victory parade.
To mark the sacrifice of Polish forces both in the liberation of Western Europe and in the defence of Britain, an official Polish war memorial is to be dedicated on 19 September 2009 when the last remaining Polish veterans in the UK will join His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire to see the unveiling of the statue.
The £300,000 cost of the memorial has been raised largely by public donations to the project's website, on which His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent writes:
"I feel deeply honoured to have been asked to unveil the Polish War Memorial on September 19, and thus to pay tribute to the gallant Polish men and women, both civilian and military, who gave their lives in World War II in the cause of freedom."
His words are echoed by General the Lord Guthrie, a former Chief of the Defence Staff, who, at the recent launch of a new book about the contribution of the Polish forces to the allied effort, said:
"We owe much to the Poles who came to join us in our struggle. There was a time when the only allies the British Commonwealth had were Polish and large numbers died in battle many miles from their country. We are right to remember those gallant men and women, who, at a very difficult time in both our countries' histories, were our firm friends and allies."
The UK and Poland were forced to take opposing sides due to the imposition of the Iron Curtain but the tradition of military co-operation resumed after the end of the Cold War.
Poland and the UK are now allies in NATO and the UK has a military training facility in Poland. The forces of the two nations fought alongside each other in the liberation of Iraq and most recently have been working together as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.