ONE of Wirral's last surviving veterans of World War Two has died, age 95.

The elder of two boys, George Jackowski was born on a farm near Uscilug in December 1925, and was just 13 when Soviet forces marched into that area of Eastern Poland, as the country was divided between Russia and Germany.

One night in February 1940, five Soviet soldiers gave George, his brother Stanislaw and their mother half an hour to pack, marching them at bayonet point to cattle trucks, and deportation to a labour camp deep in Russia, loading logs onto railway trucks.

They remained there until Hitler's surprise invasion of Russia in June 1941.

Suddenly, their Soviet captors announced that they were all allies.

At the insistence of Winston Churchill, all Polish nationals interned in Russia were given the option of heading west, to "wherever you intend to fight from."

Wirral Globe:

George, in 2010, with his old uniform. Picture courtesy of Andre Jackowski

George, at 15, was given a service passport and a one way ticket to join Polish forces under British command.

Having made his way via Kurdistan and Iran, he was trained as a gunnery officer with the British 5th Army in Iraq.

George's son Andre, told me what happened next.

"In February 1944, and aged 18, he was sent with the 5th Kresowa Infantry, under the British 8th Army, to Salerno, to join the British push up Italy.

"His own gun team recorded 500 shells fired in five hours, during the worst of the fighting at Monte Cassino.

"In September of that year at Rimini, during the assault on the Gothic Line, he was awarded the Polish Cross of Valour (equivalent to the Military Cross) for taking a number of prisoners during a lone reconnaissance, to a supposedly deserted farm; and holding these prisoners, until his unit caught up a while later."

In spring 1945 he was fully commissioned as a second lieutenant, and was among the liberators of Bologna, shortly before the German capitulation a few weeks later.

He took over duties as commanding officer of military guards on aid trains across Italy until late 1946, when after a full Army education in English and attaining matriculation, he was sent to barracks near Cheltenham.

Attending a forces dance here, he met a young RAF girl called May, who was to become his wife.

Shortly after this his brother Stanislaw turned up unannounced at his barracks door.

Their mother had also survived the war, and was in Warsaw.

George and May married in Okehampton in 1947, and George worked as a scientific instrument maker in Birmingham, Crewe and for a time in Australia, before they settled in Bebington in the 1970s.

They had two children, Vanda and Andre.

Despite his wartime experiences, George was never bitter toward his former enemies, and indeed drove a Volkswagen Beetle until he had turned 90.

In 2008 he took part, along with Burma veteran and friend Cliff White, in a Wirral Council film about the war.

He remained active and lived in his own home, doing his own cooking, travelled on buses, kept his own substantial gardens, had a love of whisky and good beer and kept his sense of humour about life, right to the end.