in European armies of the time. Kopański continued to train his men in mountain warfare, but also in warfare in desert conditions, completely alien to the Polish soldiers. In August 1941, the brigade was moved by sea from Palestine to the besieged town of Tobruk, where the unit took part in the final four months of the siege. After the siege was lifted on December 10, the brigade joined British forces in their pursuit of the withdrawing Italo-German armies and fought in the Battle of Gazala. Formation of 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division On 21 April 1942, after more than two years in constant service, Kopański was given a three weeks leave in London. On the day of his arrival there, he was appointed by General Sikorski as commander of the newly formed 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division. He organized that division out of his former unit and newly arrived soldiers of the Polish II Corps of General Władysław Anders, who had been liberated from Soviet gulags and then evacuated to Persia and Palestine. His new division was prepared and trained to take part in the Italian Campaign. London Shortly before the invasion of Italy commenced, Kopański was withdrawn to London on 21 July 1943, where he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Armed Forces in the West. A skilled front-line officer, Kopański did not have much work "behind the desk", especially since, while most of the Polish units were fighting under Polish command, they were part of Allied fronts and armies. Because of that, on 20 October 1944, Kopański tried to resign. However, the President of Poland, Władysław Raczkiewicz, would not accept his resignation; instead, Kopański was promoted to the rank of Division General two days later. He remained Chief of Staff of the Polish Armed Forces until the end of World War II. After the war the Allied governments withdrew their support from the Polish government, and the Polish forces were transformed into the Polish Resettlement Corps. This was a paramilitary organization designed to allow Polish veterans who were unwilling to return to communist-dominated Poland to find employment and homes in the west. In 1946 Kopański, became commander of the corps, and on 26 September that year he was deprived of Polish citizenship by the Communists. Post-war After the corps disbanded in 1949, Kopański settled in the United Kingdom. He remained an active member of