­Following the defeat of the Polish army by the joint forces of Hitler's Germany and Stalin’s USSR in September 1939, an order went out for Polish soldiers to make their way, as best they could, to France where a Polish Government in Exile was formed. There, under the premiership of General Sikorski, a Polish army was being assembled to continue fighting alongside Poland’s allies - Britain and France. Those that didn’t make it across Italy to France headed for Syria where they were formed into the Carpathian Rifle Brigade which later fought at Tobruk. The army that formed in France participated in the abortive Narvik campaign and, following the defeat of France in 1940, evacuated to Britain.

In the meantime Stalin was consolidating his hold on the part of Poland that the Soviet Union had annexed under the Ribbentrop - Molotov pact by deporting to Siberia anyone thought likely to resist the annexation . By the time Hitler attacked the Soviet Union on 22nd June 1941 close to a million Poles had been deported.  Germany’s attack on the Soviets brought them into the Allied camp together with Britain and Poland, consequently, Stalin agreed to a Polish army being formed in the USSR.  A so called “amnesty” for all Poles in Prisoner of War Camps, NKVD Prisons and in Soviet Exile was declared and all those who heard of the “amnesty”, and were able to undertake the journey, set out for the recruitment centres.  In 1942 the army and its dependents left the Soviet Union for Persia (Iran) to be re-equipped and made ready for battle.  The Polish Armed Forces in Exile thus became the third largest fighting force in the West after Britain and America.  Their Battle Honours include Narvik, the Battle of Britain, Battle of the Atlantic, Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Normandy and Arnhem.

The political settlement between Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill meant that when the war ended the Soviets annexed Eastern Poland and incorporated it into the Soviet Union while the rest of Poland became a puppet state with a communist government imposed by Russia.  The vast majority of Poles rejected this settlement and chose to remain in the West where they could continue the political struggle for an independent Poland while maintaining their language, culture, and traditions for an eventual return to their homeland. 

Some 250,000 Poles chose to remain in Britain and were joined by their families and dependents from wherever the fortunes of war had left them.  By far the largest number were those who, having escaped from Siberia with the Polish Army in 1942, had spent the war in Displaced Persons camps set up by the British in India and West Africa. The only way such numbers could be accommodated was by placing them in camps recently vacated by the Americans and Canadians.

There were many such camps in the UK most were built in the early 40s in rural areas, often in the grounds of large country estates, as Military Hospitals, Army Bases and Airfields. A Polish Resettlement Corps (PRC) was raised in 1946 as a corps of the British Army into which Poles were enlisted for the period of their demobilization up to 1948.

The camps in the UK were given up by the MOD for housing Polish Families and they were administered by a number of organisations; National Assistance Board, Local Authorities and the National Service Hostels Corporation being the principal ones.

­Some were hostels for single working men and a handful were Polish boarding schools run by the Committee for the Education of Poles. There were also a number of  Polish Hospitals, the best known was Hospital no.3 in Penley North Wales.

As people were finding their feet, many moved out of the camps in search of better work and accommodation. A large number, with help from the authorities, emigrated to the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Argentina. The camps were slowly closing  and families were moved from camp to camp so that  by the mid 1950s the two hundred odd camps had dwindled to around fifty and by the mid 1960s there were just a handful left. 

This website tells the story of one such camp, Grove Park which was located in the grounds of Iver Grove, an early Georgian country house in the Buckinghamshire village of Iver. Grove Park was the birthplace of Emilia Eve Fursewicz­ to whom this book is dedicated.