At the onset of the Second World War, 16 year old Andrzej Jeziorski was living with his family in Warsaw, Poland. Within days, his father, a Polish Air Force officer, was transferred to southeastern Poland with his family. After the Soviet invasion of their country, they crossed the border into Romania and eventually made their way to France, where Polish Armed Forces units were regrouping. Andrzej Jeziorski continued his schooling in Paris until May 1940, when, at the age of 17, he joined the Polish Army as an Officer Cadet. He was then evacuated to England along with many other Polish servicemen and continued his training in their Tank Corps. In 1942, Jeziorski transferred to the Air Force to train as a pilot and, in 1943, joined the Polish RAF Squadron 304, flying Wellingtons in Coastal Command, mainly on anti-submarine patrols over the Bay of Biscay. He continued these missions until the war's end and expressed disappointment at the fate of his homeland and its Soviet occupation. Jeziorski remained with the RAF until 1948 and went on to become a commercial pilot, settling in the UK with his family.

John wanted to fly since the age of ten, when, on the top deck of an open trolley bus he saw a Rapide biplane land at Croydon aerodrome. He joined the RAF during WW2 and later served as a signals engineer on the Avro York. Unknown to the crew his aircraft was used as a ‘guinea pig’ test of GCA (Ground Controlled Approach). GCA was a procedure where ground control guides the aircraft in during bad visibility and was widely used during the Berlin Airlift. This enabled aircraft to land every two to three minutes, even during the severe winter weather. During the Airlift John flew 356 trips and only one of these was aborted. One time he flew with a pilot who was so drunk that he was unable to carry out the pre-flight visual inspection but flew correctly once they were airborne. After a crash at Wunstorf which killed the crew, John served as one of the pallbearers at the funeral. He was in his early twenties and never thought about dying, believing that fate played a large part in matters of life and death. On the 60^th anniversary of the Airlift the Berlin Airlift Association went to Templehof airfield in Berlin for a memorial service. Here he was thanked by the elderly and the very young, an experience he found moving. At the time of the Airlift he thought he was only doing his duty but later he became aware of its importance of it to Berliners.

Marian Jones first heard about the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) in 1941/42 when someone on leave visited her school which had been evacuated to Cornwall. During her two-week basic training she was tested for aptitude on morse, after which she received 6-9 months of wireless telegraphy (WT) training before becoming an operational radio operator, receiving messages from agents abroad. She emphasises the secrecy that was impressed on everyone involved because of the danger to agents: she signed the Official Secrets Act, let her mother believe she was a nurse, did not speculate or discuss her work even with colleagues. She recalls some memorable incidents: speaking in clear to agents during the liberation of Paris and Arnhem; very brief periods of leave; a map showing agent locations, which few people saw; the FANY uniform providing excellent cover because people assumed they were ATS or NAAFI.