Štandera Miroslav

Brigadier General v. v. Miroslav Štandera was born on 5 October 1918 in Prague. His mother died when he was ten years old and he grew up with only his father and three siblings. They lived in Dobruška near Nové Město nad Metuji. Miroslav graduated from a typography school, but he never applied his education. In 1936, he enrolled in the Military School of Aviation Cadets and in September 1938, as part of the Czechoslovak army mobilization, he was drafted into the Air Regiment 4, a separate III Squadron in Pardubice. After the demobilization of the army and the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on 15 March 1939, he went across the border to Poland and together with other soldiers sailed across the Baltic Sea to France. Here he joined the Foreign Legion and was deployed to the German-French War in May 1940. On his fourth flight he was shot down near Troyes and ended up in hospital in Clermont-Ferrand in southern France. He tried to escape from the advancing German army to the port of Bordeaux, but eventually headed south. From the port of Narbonne, he took an Egyptian coal ship across the Bay of Biscay to Liverpool, England. He made it to Cholmondeley Park and served in the 312th Czechoslovak Fighter Squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1940. His air base became Cosford over Birmingham. In 1943 he transferred to the RAF's 68th Night Fighter Squadron, with which he took part in the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944. After the end of the war he returned to Czechoslovakia and served in Pilsen and Trencin. However, as a western airman he was soon expelled from the army and had to earn a living by collecting secondary raw materials. In 1949 he was about to be arrested and decided to leave the republic. He crossed the border into West Germany and from there continued on to England. From 1949 to 1955 he served again in the RAF. When he left the army, he trained as a silversmith and worked as a silversmith and later started his own business. He retired in 1983. In the mid-1990s he returned to the Czech Republic permanently and spent the end of his life in Pilsen, where he died on 19 February 2014. He was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Order of the Legion of Honour and the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. Miroslav Štandera died on 19 February 2014.

Source: Memory of Nations