Early Life and Initial Military Service
Jan Borowczuk was born on May 11, 1919. In 1925, he began his education at a local school, and from 1929, he attended Gimnazjum Humanistycznym im. J. Długosza. In May 1937, he volunteered for the army. He initially served in the artillery, completing the Szkoły Podchorążych Rezerwy Artylerii in Vladimir Volynsky, after which he was assigned to the 16th Light Artillery Regiment. With the beginning of the 1938/1939 academic year, he started his studies at Jagiellonian University.
The Odyssey of World War II
On June 2, 1939, Borowczuk was discharged to the reserve, but was mobilized at the outbreak of war. He served with the 12th Regiment in Lviv. With the fall of the city on September 22, he burned his military documents and, in civilian clothes, began to return home. He was detained in Przemyśl but managed to escape and reach home relatively safely. In the second half of November 1939, he joined a partisan unit.
In April 1940, he fled Poland hoping to reach France. By April 12, he was in Slovakia, and two days later in Hungary, where he contacted the Polish embassy in Budapest. With the help of diplomats, he was assigned to a group of Poles who intended to be illegally transported to Yugoslavia. After spending a couple of days in jail, having been detained by Hungarian police, he nevertheless arrived in Belgrade on May 8, 1940. On May 17, he sailed on the “Patrisa” to Split, from where he planned to travel to Marseille. However, due to the uncertain situation in France, the transport was redirected to Beirut. There, Borowczuk joined the Brygady Strzelców Karpackich as an artilleryman. After the fall of France, the brigade was subordinated to the British and moved to Egypt, participating in the African campaign.
RAF Career and Post-War Life
On October 21, 1942, he applied for a transfer to aviation. On November 25, he was sent from Basra to Karachi aboard the “Devonshire”, and then, via the ships “Nevada”, “City of Paris”, and “Empress of Canada”, he reached England. The last of these ships was torpedoed by an Italian submarine, and Borowczuk spent several hours in the water until he was picked up by the corvette “Petunia”. This forced him to Freetown, Sierra Leone. He was sent to the islands on the next available ship and completed a retraining course.
On November 11, 1944, he was assigned to the 315th Squadron. He made his first combat sortie on November 25 in a Mustang Mk. III. He served in this unit until the end of the war, completing 24 combat sorties and being twice awarded the Krzyż Walecznych.
After the war, Jan Borowczuk remained in England. In February 1950, he graduated from Birmingham Central Technical College and began working for Air Industrial Development Ltd., before moving to Canada. There, he found employment with Canadian Westinghouse Co. In 1958, upon obtaining Canadian citizenship, he changed his surname to Forester, an English translation of his Polish surname. In 1960, he moved to Ottawa, where he worked for the Federal Civil Service until his retirement in 1984. In 1999, he published a memoir titled “In Search of Freedom”. As of 2003, he resided in Ottawa.