Pictures at the end of the article.In 2018 I asked Len to attend our 50th Reunion. Meeting him to discuss the plans but not having spoken to him for 20 years, he could remember me, my brother, our parents, and most of my year group, and I didn’t even study mathematics under him! This was a teacher who loved his job and took an interest in his pupils. While talking to Len he shared some of the letters he kept from different times in his career. All neatly folded and stored, he was proud to show them. It demonstrated that despite his unfortunate teenage years, he was a man who always looked forward and made the very best of his opportunities in life. He worked for two Headmasters at school, Peter Sheppard and Chris Potter. Under Peter Sheppard he raised the standard of ‘O’ and ‘A’ Level mathematics and introduced the new ‘modern’ mathematics. By 1962 students were passing ‘A’ Level mathematics at the higher ‘S’ Level grade. The high standard of teaching continued throughout his career. With his imminent retirement in 1990 Chris Potter wrote thanking him for his time at school. Len continued with CCF duties after retirement.I am grateful to Guy Sheppard who worked with Len to produce the biographical notes below, which he agreed to release after his death. After surviving the 2nd World War in both Russian and German-occupied Poland, Len Krukowski joined the Polish army based in Italy. When posted to England in 1946, he did not speak a word of English or have any financial resources of his own, yet he subsequently managed to go to university, qualify as a mathematics teacher, and forge a long and successful career at one of the country’s best-known state-boarding schools. Zbigniew Leonard Krukowski, known as Len in later life, was 16 when Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939. Within a fortnight, his 15-year-old sister Krystyna had been killed in a Stuka dive bombing attack on a railway station where the family had been waiting with 300 wives and children of officers and non-commissioned officers from his father’s regiment. They were being evacuated to a pre-arranged destination in the east of the country where they were to be resettled on farms. About a third of them were killed in the attack and were then buried in a communal grave. Len suffered minor injuries but his mother’s ankle was shattered and she spent the next four months in a hospital in Lwow (now Lviv in the Ukraine). With the Russians invading Poland from the east on 17 September, Len and his 14-year-old brother Jurek had no one to turn to from their immediate family. Their father, Leonard, was a major in the Polish army and, after fighting to halt the German invasion, he became a Prisoner of War (PoW) at a camp in Upper Bavaria. He had fought against the Russians in the Prussian army during the First World War. During the Russo-Polish War of 1919-1921, he won the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest military decoration for heroism and courage in the face of the enemy at war.Len and his brother found part-time work in Lwow, which was controlled by the Russians, but the winter was very severe and food was in short supply. It was a striking change of fortunes from the previous summer when Len had passed his matriculation exam at grammar school in his hometown of Pleszew, near Poznan. He had been looking forward to starting sixth form when war broke out. In May, 1940, Len, his mother and brother took the opportunity to move to German-occupied Poland in an exchange agreement with the Russians which enabled many Jews to temporarily escape persecution by the Nazis. The family stayed in Krupki village school near Warsaw. In September, Len was found a job as a storeman in Krasnystaw by his uncle. He remained here until April 1942, when he moved to Warsaw to be with his mother who was suffering from poor health.They lived in Zolibuz, a suburb of Warsaw, and Len became a clerk for an agricultural co-operative. Life remained relatively uneventful until August 1st 1944. Then, after finishing work in the centre of the city, he made the half-an-hour journey home by tram. It was the last one to leave the city centre before the beginning of the 63-day struggle to liberate Warsaw from German occupation by Polish resistance fighters. “As soon as I got back, I heard shooting,” Len recalls. “If I had left any later, I would have been stuck in the centre.” The fighting was initially confined to the city centre but then spread to the suburbs. Once, when Len was eating his breakfast, a bullet came within a metre of him during an attack on a German citadel near his home. “I was eating porridge in the summer house. I was very lucky not to be hit.” Once the Warsaw uprising had been crushed, the Germans rounded up the remaining inhabitants from the city. Len grabbed a few family photos when they came for him and his mother, marching them 10km to a holding centre at Pruszkow. The route took them through the devastated heart of the capital where the sight of children lying dead in the streets proved particularly distressing. The Gestapo (Nazi Germany’s official secret police) segregated those people whose identity cards showed they were from Warsaw and, it was later discovered, earmarked all the men from there for labour camps and concentration camps. This group was in the left-hand of three columns as they were marched away. According to Len, it was providence that prompted him to veer away from the left-hand to the central column while they were on the move. “Something told me to go there and I went. To this day, I believe in God because I was safe. The guards could have told me to go back but they did not notice me go to the right.” He was sent to Jedrzejów in the south of Poland where he found work as a storeman in another agricultural co-operative. In January 1945, he visited his mother who was living with friends in Krakow. One night, as part of a round-up of Poles being sent for forced labour to Germany, he was arrested by the Gestapo, bundled into a van and sent to a holding camp. As it later transpired, this was another stroke of good fortune because, if he had remained in Jedrzejów, he would have been stuck in communist-controlled Poland when the war ended and his chances of escaping to the west would have been limited. After three days, he was put on a train and eventually ended up at Häring near Gmunden in Austria. He and 20 other Poles had been sent there to work in a plant producing synthetic petrol from coal. It was buried deep underground in the mountains to prevent damage from Allied bombing. With most Germans now recognising that the war was effectively lost, Len says he and his workmates were not treated badly and he stayed at Häring until June. The town ended up in the American-administered section of Allied control. Len made friends with a US soldier of Polish extraction who arranged for him to visit Len’s father at his PoW camp in Murnau, Upper Bavaria, on a 350cc German army BMW motorbike. Petrol and papers authorising the trip were provided as well. When Len discovered that a friend had a brother in the same camp, he invited him to come with him. “We got safely to the PoW camp and I was very happy there,” he recalls. “It was summer, we were treated very well and we had a jolly good time.” It was the first time he had seen his father in nearly six years and, after years of food scarcity, living off the P-Ex rations supplied to the US soldiers seemed like luxury. The bike provided a good opportunity to explore the area but, within four months, it was stolen after being left outside the barracks where his father was based. Once the war was over, Len resumed his education, completing his lower sixth studies at a Polish school in Murnau, south west of Munich, in six months. The Polish forces, which had played a key role in the liberation of Italy, then arranged for him and several other Poles living in Murnau to move to an Italian army barracks in southern Italy. In September, they were asked if they wanted to join the Polish army in Italy and, after being kitted out with uniforms, taking out an oath of allegiance and undergoing a quick training programme, he was sent to Cesena to guard Polish prisoners from the Polish army. In November 1946, his unit left Italy, bound for the UK. Len arrived at Dane Ghyll Camp near Barrow-in-Furness the following month, having travelled there by train and boat in battle dress and with his rifle. At the camp he joined the Polish Resettlement Corps which helped prepare soldiers for civilian life in the UK while they were still in uniform. While staying at Murnau, his father had urged him not to go back to Poland because it was now controlled by the communists. The Polish government, which had been exiled to London since 1939, was still in existence and one of its functions was to enable Poles to complete their education in the UK. On the insistence of his father, Len completed his school education, finishing his sixth form studies at Bodney Airfield in Thetford, Norfolk. He passed the Polish equivalent of ‘A’ levels within six months. His certificate records that in mathematics and religious studies he was “good” and “very good” at physical training. “I had a really good time at the airfield,” he says. Len still remained in the Polish army and was transferred to Cark in Cumbria until October 1947. He and 20 other soldiers were then ordered to guard a former army barracks at Stanley Park, Blackpool. Although the war was over, the Cold War was just beginning and the UK government felt a large standing army might still be necessary to withstand any attack from Russia. It was therefore felt necessary to retain army barracks which had become redundant at the end of the war. Len’s role was to prevent squatters from moving on to the camp. This proved undemanding work and meant there was plenty of opportunity to enjoy the night life of Blackpool! His final months in the army were spent at Cark from June to August 1948. When demobbed, he found work at Carr’s Biscuits in Carlisle. After six months working in the bakery, he was promoted to a warehouse job, boosting his weekly earnings to four pounds five shillings (£4.25). The work was hard and he remained there until October 1951. This gave him time to learn English which he had no knowledge of before being transferred to the UK. Through the newly formed Veritas Foundation, which had been set up to promote Christian education and culture in the Polish community that settled in the UK after the war, he was accepted on a Bachelor of Arts degree course at Cork University. The fact that he had learned Latin proved a decisive reason for his acceptance. However, with no source of income to fund his studies, Len had to apply for a grant from Carlisle Education Authority. Its members included one of the Carr family. “When my application came up, he said I was a good worker and I got the grant,” says Len. Although this was worth about £143-a-year, it was still not enough to live on so, during the summer vacations, Len worked for Wall’s Ice Cream in London, staying in accommodation provided by Veritas at 21, Earl’s Court. Despite learning conversational English when working at Carr’s, it took a year of university before he felt fully confident in speaking and understanding the language. He completed his degree in history, geography, Spanish and mathematics in the summer of 1954. The university registrar described him as “an industrious student and his character is excellent”. Len applied to do a post-graduate certificate of education at the University of Hull. “A friend of mine who was also at Cork and went to Hull had told me that there were a few Poles there,” he explains. “It was always my idea to teach mathematics from the age of 12. I’d had a good teacher in mathematics before the war.” Before starting the course, he spent three weeks in a Hull junior school, something he describes as very stimulating. Following teaching practice at Hull Grammar School in early 1955, he completed the certificate in the summer. The reference from his professor states that he “appeared to us a sound, intelligent and imaginative man who on all personal grounds is temperamentally well suited to be a school master”. Len applied for a job at King Edward VI Grammar School, Stourbridge, but the headmaster, Dick Chambers, wrote back saying the position had been filled before the advertisement appeared. However, because there was a national shortage of mathematics teachers at the time, he passed Len’s application on to Peter Sheppard, the headmaster of nearby Old Swinford Hospital (OSH) school. Len went for an interview and was accepted, beginning his teaching career in September. It was at this point that he adopted the name Len because colleagues had difficulty pronouncing Zbigniew. His initial salary was £600 which was riches compared with his earnings at Carr’s but his digs in Kinver, where he stayed until 1961, cost £6 per week so therefore accounted for around half of his earnings. However, a general school inspection of OSH in 1959 resulted in Len being promoted to head of the department, boosting his salary to nearly £1,000-a-year. By 1964, he was earning £1,575. Pupils at OSH had started taking ‘O’ levels in the early 1950s and the school’s academic performance steadily began to improve as more graduates were recruited to the teaching staff. In the summer of 1959, Len entered 30 boys for ‘O’ level mathematics and they all passed with good grades. The following September he started teaching ‘A’ Level mathematics and by 1962 some pupils were achieving the scholarship level grade needed to study the subject at the most prestigious universities. By 1965, following a two-year part-time course at the University of Birmingham, he began teaching what was then described as the modern approach to mathematics. This included vectors, matrices, transformation and statistics. “Universities preferred it because they had to lay on special courses for undergraduates who had not been taught this method,” he explains. Len’s father had returned to Poland in 1947. His mother, who had continued to suffer from poor health, died in 1955. Len became a naturalized UK citizen in 1957 and the following July he returned to Poland for the first time since the war. There he became engaged to Halina, who he had known before the war, and they were married in Warsaw in December. Halina, who had been widowed, had a son, Jim, and the two came to England in August 1959. “My impression was that there was no future for us in Poland under the Communist regime,” says Len. “There were shortages and everything was state-controlled. Halina was so glad to come here and have a different life.” Jim, who did not speak a word of English when he arrived, was a boarder at OSH for all his seven years at the school to ensure he learned to speak English fluently. On leaving, he went to Worcester Teacher Training College (now the University of Worcester) to do PE and mathematics. Len’s younger brother, who did not have any children, died in 1970 so most of Len’s relations in Poland are on Halina’s side of the family. He returned to Poland for the final time in 1967, the year after his father died aged 73. In 1961, Len joined the Combined Cadet Force, starting as a 2nd Lieutenant and retiring 35 years later as a Captain. “My army background helped a lot in the CCF,” he says. In 1973, he was awarded the Cadet Forces Medal in recognition of the service he had given.In 1977, he received the Silver Jubilee Medal, one of only three people from Stourbridge to receive it. He had been recommended by Mr Sheppard. The medal was awarded in recognition of his service to both the community and the school. Although due to retire from teaching in 1988, the chairman of the school governors, Eric Moody, asked if he would stay on for another two years. Len had no hesitation in accepting. “Time was not quick enough to go back to school after the holidays,” he recalls. “I really enjoyed my time as a teacher.” He eventually began his retirement aged 67 ½ but continued to put his teaching expertise to good use as a private mathematics tutor. He finally stopped doing this in 2012. “The most satisfaction I got from teaching was that the boys seemed to enjoy the work and to appreciate my commitment when they got their grades,” says Len. This appreciation was shown every time he attended the annual dinner of the Old Foleyans Association for old boys from the school. “Maurice Evans (the president) would mention I was there and the former pupils always gave me a standing ovation!”Guy SheppardJuly, 2013