I DO want to apologise unreservedly for any unintentional offence which has been caused to British war veterans by my comments on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War.

I have never met any Pole who served in the war who did not have the warmest regards and respect for British servicemen.

Indeed, that respect is shared by the whole Polish nation.

I would also have hoped that my own past relations with the ex-service organisations in Wyre Forest would have indicated that I have always shared that view.

Indeed my comments specifically concluded "we remember too those British citizens and our other allies who fell and suffered in the battle for freedom".

However, it is also true that Poles are deeply saddened by the way in which Poland was treated by the American and British Governments at the end of the war.

It was an Englishman, the late Sir Bernard Braine, Conservative MP and Father of the House of Commons, who wrote in 1986: "It is one of the saddest ironies of history that Britain went to war in 1939 to save Poland, yet when victory came it brought not liberation for the Polish people but subjugation. Over 40 years now have elapsed since the betrayal of Yalta ... but that neither mitigates the crime nor gives much hope for the future".

Polish grief was deeply compounded by the fact that Polish servicemen in the UK were not allowed to take part in official VE celebrations in London in case it caused offence to the Russians.

Indeed it was not until the late '80s that Police ex-servicemen were able to parade their colours past the Cenotaph in London.

Furthermore, for many decades after the war respective British Governments placated the Soviets by going along with the Soviet pretence that the thousands of Polish officers murdered at Katyn, and similar sites, had been killed by the Germans, when it was already transparently clear that they had been murdered by the Soviets themselves.

Only after the fall of Communism did the British Government agree that it had been a Soviet crime.

I raise these points not to reopen old wounds but to explain why Poles feel so deeply about these issues.

Polish attitudes towards British Government actions (the betrayal of Poland at Yalta, the treatment of Polish servicemen on VE Day and the bitterly hurtful lies about Katyn) contrast so markedly with the sense of comradeship towards British ex-servicemen and the real gratitude for the hospitality and kindness of ordinary British people in the difficult post-war years which has long since developed into deep and sincere friendship.

The war was above all about freedom and freedom cannot be separated from truth.

Truth, however difficult, has to be told because without that we run the risk of making the same mistakes again, and of failing to learn the lessons of the past.

If in making a passing reference to the way in which Poland was treated by the American and British Governments at the end of the war I have caused offence to British ex-servicemen who I deeply respect, then I sincerely apologise.

Nothing was further from my mind.

MIKE OBORSKI

Consul of the Republic of Poland.

Osborne Close, Kidderminster