AN officer from Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose – with an incredible war-time family history – will lead the Royal Navy guard at this year’s Cenotaph Remembrance Sunday Service in London.

Lieutenant commander Anna Sanocki’s grandfather was removed from his home in Nazi-occupied Poland, escaped from a labour camp, was wounded fighting for the partizans in former-Yugoslavia, and then joined the Allied Army in Italy.

After the Second World War and urged by his family not to return home, by then occupied by the Soviets, he settled in England where he met his future wife, a young woman called Ruby West who had served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

While remembrance is dedicated to those who lost their lives in both world wars and other conflicts, Lt Cdr Sanocki said she would also remember the sacrifices made by her grandparents.

She said: “I think the longer I am in the navy, remembrance seems to mean more to me every year. It’s been 80 years since the end of the war and there are hardly any of the original heroes left and so it’s important that we do this.

“The world seems to be a bit of a mess at the moment, and we need to remember everything that everyone gave to try and stop this happening again. These people gave everything, and I think it’s important we remember that.”

The 43-year-old from Plymouth is the senior meteorology and oceanography officer at RNAS Culdrose. She runs the team which provides weather forecasts for flying operations at the Fleet Air Arm station, and ocean tactical data used by naval helicopters to hunt submarines.

Her grandfather Tadeusz “Ted” Sanocki was 22 years old at the outbreak of the Second World War. He lived in south east Poland on a family farm near the city of Przemysl, which is today near the border with Ukraine.

Lt Cdr Sanocki said: “When I was younger, I thought I was the only one with any link to the military, until I discovered there was this rich family history. Grandad didn’t talk about what happened in the war and that family knowledge was lost. He passed away when I was two.

“Some years ago, I started getting into family history and pieced together his story. His family were farmers. The German invasion intended to take the best land for themselves. My grandfather was taken with his brothers and sisters to a work camp elsewhere in Poland. We know that he was sent to a prison in Germany and then to a work-farm in Austria.

“He escaped to Yugoslavia and fought in support of Tito, but he was shot in the leg. He then escaped to Italy in 1945 and joined the Polish contingent of the British Eighth Army.”

Lt Cdr Sanocki has photographs of her grandfather with fellow Polish soldiers while serving in the 5th Kresowa Infantry Division. One picture shows her grandfather holding a small girl, although the context is not known and the photograph is not captioned.

“After the war, he came to the UK with the Polish Resettlement Corps,” she added. “Initially, my grandfather wanted to go back to Poland. His family wrote to him and said: ‘Don’t come back. It’s not safe. You’ve got a better life in the UK. Stay there.’”

Lt Cdr Sanocki said Ted then met her grandmother, Ruby, who was aged 22 at the end of the war. She had been a corporal in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, tending to barrage balloons in Yorkshire. The couple married and moved to Plympton, near Plymouth, and in 1957 Ted became a British citizen.

“There are certain details that make me now think ‘that’s really cool’,” Lt Cdr Sanocki added. “I joined the Royal Navy at the age 26. When I think back about my grandmother, she was serving on the frontline when I would have been in my second year at uni’. It puts a whole new spin on things.

“She died when I was 14. I wish I’d known about all this when I was younger, especially I could have asked my grandmother some questions. I’d ask her what life was like in the 40s.”

Lt Cdr Sanocki will lead the platoon of Royal Navy personnel in central London on Remembrance Sunday. Next year, she is due to join the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in a role she describes as “my dream job.”