After being hospitalised in Coulommiers he left the hospital and escaped to Paris and then Chartres. He then joined GC I/5 at Carcassonne, retrieving a Curtiss with a flat tailwheel tire from another airfield and flying to join the Free French Forces in Saint-Denis-du-Sig airfield located near Oran, Algeria. Having been awarded but never received the customary Croix de Guerre for his first air-to-air victory, the Free French decorated Peřina as a Chévalier de la Légion d'Honneur and also awarded him the Croix de Guerre with six palms. He then travelled by train to Casablanca where he boarded a ship to Britain.