Kleczyński, Bohdan, 1902-1944

Wing commander, Polish air force.

Biographical Note

Wing commander, Polish air force.

Despite wounds suffered in September 1939, Kleczynski made his way to the Polish forces in Allied France. A few months later, he and his comrades witnessed the collapse of France; evading advancing Germans they boarded a British coal ship in the southwest of France, arriving in Liverpool a week later. In England, Lieutenant Colonel Bohdan Kleczynski was given command of the Polish 305 bomber squadron, named after Marshal Jozef Pilsudski. Wounded again during a raid over Cologne, Kleczynski was appointed air attaché in the Polish embassy in Washington. After a few months in the United States, Kleczynski returned to Britain. Hurting both physically and emotionally, Kleczynski, no longer able to fly, spent the final months of his life lecturing in the Polish Air Force Academy in Scotland. He died in March 1944, at the age of forty-one.