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Poland once helped liberate the Netherlands, and we thanked them by spending decades mispronouncing their commander's name. During the Second World War, thousands of Polish soldiers fought their way across Western Europe after their own country had been occupied by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Among them was the Polish 1st Armoured Division under General Stanisław Maczek. In 1944 they entered the Netherlands. Their most famous Dutch chapter came at Breda. Maczek wanted to liberate the city while avoiding unnecessary destruction and civilian casualties, so his troops manoeuvred around German positions rather than simply flattening their way through them. On 29 October, Breda was liberated. The city survived remarkably intact. The people of Breda responded with Polish flags and signs reading: “Dziękujemy Wam Polacy.” “Thank you, Poles.” There is something bittersweet about what followed. The Dutch could celebrate their liberation, but many of the Polish soldiers couldn't simply go home. Poland had fallen under Soviet domination, and men who had fought from Poland through France, Belgium and the Netherlands suddenly found that the country they had been fighting for was no longer a place to which all of them could safely return. Maczek eventually settled in Scotland. But his connection to the Netherlands never disappeared. When he died in 1994 at the age of 102, he was buried, according to his wishes, among his soldiers at the Polish military cemetery in Breda. Even today, Breda remembers its Polish liberators. For Dutch people, Poland can sometimes feel like that large country somewhere beyond Germany whose language appears to have been deliberately designed without enough vowels. But buried in Dutch soil are men who travelled an extraordinary distance to help give us our country back. Some neighbours are closer than the map suggests.