'I worked on Hitler's bunker before I escaped the Nazis'

Ches Black is an understated man with a life story of tragedy, heroism and resilience.

The 101-year-old was taken from his home in Warsaw, Poland, by German troops in 1939, as the Third Reich lit the spark that began World War Two.

That single event set off a chain of events in his life that have ended with him living a quiet life in an Oxfordshire village.

But between German capture and rural retirement, the centenarian has lived a life - encompassing everything from working on Adolf Hitler's fated Berlin bunker to a cunning escape straight out of a Hollywood movie.

Black was a teenager when German and Soviet troops first stormed into Poland in September 1939, with the Nazis setting their sights on the nation's capital.

"We didn't like them. We didn't like any Russians or Germans," he tells the BBC of the forces that invaded his homeland.

Polish forces and civilians defended the city for nearly three weeks before the might of the Wehrmacht crushed all opposition and seized the capital.

"They absolutely separated us. All I remember, I was on a truck, the door was open, saying goodbye to my friends, my auntie, and that's when I never saw my mother again."

Once in the hands of the Reich's forces, the teenager was put to work with the German Transport Organisation. An estimated three-million Poles were taken to Nazi Germany as forced or slave labourers during the war.

It was during that time that he worked on the early construction of an underground network beneath the garden of the Old Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

It would go on to become the Führerbunker - where Hitler spent much of the final year of the war, as the allies marched on Berlin. It was there on 30 April 1945 that he would take his own life alongside Eva Braun.

"I was only there for a day moving and laying sand," Black explains.

"I didn't realise what it was until after the war, I picked up the Polish paper and I saw a picture of it [the bunker]. The pictures were where Hitler died."

Later, while posted in Mussolini's Italy, Black would flee his German captors.

He explains that the truck he had been travelling in came under fire, at which point he fled - going days at a time without food and water.

A group of Italian partisans, fighting against fascist rule in their country, found him and he would go on to locate British troops, who helped him flee the country.

"We heard the artillery, the front was getting closer," he recalls.

"Germans were on this side, an English tank division was on this side," he says, miming the movements of the forces.

"They were shelling each other all through the day, but at night it stopped - so we went to the British."

Having made it to the UK, Black joined the Polish Second Corps - fighting alongside British forces.

But when the war ended, Nazi control of Poland was replaced by Soviet occupation - meaning returning home was not an option for him and many of his countrymen who had temporarily settled in the UK.

"We didn't like what was happening because the Polish soldier fought thinking that he was going to go back to his home to his family," Black says.

"All of a sudden he found himself with no home, nothing."

"England was our promised land."

Many Poles, including Black, ended up moving to refugee camps in south Oxfordshire - including in Nettlebed and Checkendon - after the war.

He would go on to work at the Huntley and Palmers Biscuit Factory in Reading after the war, where he says he bumped into a Polish soldier he had fought with in Italy.

A job at the Morris car factory in Oxford would follow, before he permanently settled in south Oxfordshire - near to the Black Horse pub in Checkendon.

The pub had been a hub for the hundreds of Poles settled in the woodland refugee camps between 1946-1961, and recently unveiled a blue plaque in memory of the members of the Polish Second Corps who fought World War Two.

The plaque was revealed by Black alongside the Polish Ambassador to the UK, Rafał Wiśniewski, at a ceremony in October.

Unveiling the memorial, Wiśniewski said the "hospitality and solidarity" shown needed to be remembered today as "we are now again exposed to military conflict" in Europe.

Reflecting on his time on the front line Black says: "I think war taught me comradeship.

"When you're in the fighting, you don't think of yourself, you think of everybody."

As time passes, more of those who fought in World War Two are no longer around to tell their stories and Black is now part of an ever smaller group of people, almost all now aged 100 and over, who remain.

"I think I was lucky, yes," he says.

"All the friends I had and people I know have all just disappeared. It's very strange, I feel. I'm starting a new life."