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Denikin's, Kolchak's and Petlura's White armies, struck the naked Polish flank. The Poles began a retreat which did not halt until the Russians were at the gates of Warsaw. Day after day for two months the Squadron fought a 400-mi. rear-guard action, covering the evacuation of towns, hindering and harassing Budenny at every turn. Often their base train would slip out of the west of a town as the Cossacks clattered in at the east. Once they were forced to burn planes that failed at the last moment, the pilots escaping on foot. Like other Russian troops, Budenny's men had been promised a four-day loot of Warsaw, took no officers prisoners. Each Kosciuszko pilot carried a vial of potassium cyanide in case of capture.
Pilot Cooper was shot down in the retreat but when surrounded by Cossacks he said he was an enlisted man, showed his hands, calloused and blistered from overhauling motors. After a year in foul Russian prisons, he miraculously escaped and returned to the unit. Pilot Cooper later wrote for the New York Times, then set out to film Grass, epic migration of a remote Persian tribe. This he followed with the immensely profitable Chang, filmed in. Siam. A descendant of Count Casimir, Pulaski's second-in-command at the Battle of Savannah, affable Pilot Cooper is now an associate producer of Radio-Keith-Orpheum in charge of adventure pictures. Including replacements and the six Polish members the Squadron had a roster of 23. Founder Cooper is the only U. S. member who has made a name for himself in private life. Several of the Poles are high in Polish aviation circles. Author Murray is the only one who still flies commercially. A transport pilot (unemployed), he once went treasure-hunting by air in Yucatan. Though he has written many a tale for pulp magazines, his story of the Kosciuszko Squadron is his first book. Lean, bronzed, reserved, Author-Pilot Murray is married, has one child, lives in Tuckahoe, N. Y.