by George Bruce
For to add to the nightmare, the sewers were like vast speaking tubes which distorted and amplified every sound. In some of the smaller tunnels a gasp or a groan grew to the proportions of a lion’s roar. Bombs falling above, or the explosions of grenades tossed through manholes by the Germans, boomed and crashed in a resonant pandemonium, setting the tunnel trembling in a way that stretched the overtaut nerves of the columns of wayfarers to the very limit.
Men and women stumbled forward under the weight of loads of ammunition or equipment, trying to keep their balance in the strong current, sometimes up to their waists in excrement, slithering about, falling face forward or tripping over a corpse or a bundle of abandoned equipment. People who fell behind lost their way and were never seen again. Occasionally someone’s will to live would vanish completely in this hell. They slumped down in the filthy sewage, refused to move and never got up again.
Communication through the sewers was hell, but compared to life in what was left of the Old Town only relatively so. Since people in fact had to try to learn to live with sewer communication human intelligence was brought to bear upon it.
An attempt at safety and system had been made. Sappers fixed safety ropes, marked the walls with phosphorescent paint, warned of danger points in the collector tunnels where sudden rushes of sewage occurred, or built dams to control them. To prevent over-crowding sewer travellers were allowed past the sentries guarding the manholes only on production of a pass signed by a district commander.
A one-way street system with a timetable had been introduced to prevent the near-disaster which happened once or twice in the early days, when a column going north stumbled into one going south in this blackness where it was impossible for two people to pass. Thereafter, a party going from Zoliborz to the Old Town would leave at midnight and expect to arrive at about 10 o’clock, so that men and women leaving the Old Town for Zoliborz would be safe to depart an hour later at 11 AM. Women volunteers organized in units known as kanalarki (Polish for sewer is kanal) helped to keep the sewer traffic moving, carried orders and even helped to explore safe new tunnels. The German discovery of the insurgents’ use of the sewers was to lead to hand-to-hand fighting with pistols and knives in pitch darkness and waist-deep filth.
Komorowski, his staff officers, Basia, his messenger girl, the Deputy Premier Jankowski and his fellow political leaders were all roped together for this ordeal where a false step could mean a grim death. The sewer pipe to the City Centre was just under a mile long, but gasping and stumbling it took them several hours to struggle through and they were sick and exhausted on coming out into the clean air.
At this time, the end of August, the women of Warsaw sent an appeal to the Pope by radio: ‘Holy Father, we Polish women are fighting in Warsaw, moved by patriotism and attachment to the land of our fathers,’ they declared.
We are short of food, arms and medical supplies. We have been defending our fortress now for three weeks. Warsaw is in ruins. The Germans are murdering the wounded in the hospitals. They are driving women and children in front of their tanks. The news that children are fighting in the streets of Warsaw destroying enemy tanks with bottles of petrol is no exaggeration.
We mothers are seeing our sons perish for freedom and the Fatherland. Our husbands, our sons, and our brothers are not considered by the enemy to be combatants. Holy Father, no one is helping us. The Russian armies which have been for three weeks at the gates of Warsaw have not advanced a step. The aid coming to us from Great Britain is insufficient. The world is ignorant of our fight. Only God is with us. Holy Father, Vicar of Christ, if you can hear us, bless us Polish women who are fighting for the Church and for freedom.
Four days later on 4 September, Churchill and the British War Cabinet drafted a strong protest to the Soviet Government, which however, made no reference to Stalin’s assertion that Soviet armies were fighting hard against the Germans in the region of Warsaw. ‘The War Cabinet wish the Soviet Government to know that public opinion in this country is deeply moved by the suffering of the Poles…’ it began.[261]
Whatever the rights and wrongs about the beginnings of the Warsaw rising, the people of Warsaw themselves cannot be held responsible for the decision taken. Our people cannot understand why no material help has been sent from outside… The fact that such help could not be sent on account of your Government’s refusal to allow United States aircraft to land on aerodromes in Russian hands is now becoming publicly known. If on top of all this the Poles in Warsaw should now be overwhelmed by the Germans, as we are told they must be within two or three days, the shock to public opinion here will be incalculable. The War Cabinet find it hard to understand your Government’s refusal to take account of the obligations of the British and American Governments to help the Poles in Warsaw. Your Government’s action in preventing this help being sent seems to us at variance with the spirit of Allied cooperation to which you and we attach so much both for the present and for the future.
Out of regard for Marshal Stalin and the Soviet peoples with whom it is our earnest desire to work in future years, the War Cabinet have asked me to make this further appeal to the Soviet Government to give whatever help may be in their power, and above all to provide facilities for United States aircraft to land on your airfields for this purpose.
On the same day Winston Churchill made one more plea to Roosevelt to authorize the United States Air Force to drop arms ‘landing, if necessary, on Russian airfields without their formal consent’, but Roosevelt was not prepared to risk shattering the alliance by a unilateral act of this kind, especially in view of the need for Soviet aid against the Japanese.
His refusal next day took the form of a somewhat clumsy diplomatic avoiding action — or was he unknowingly harbouring Stalin’s friends in his entourage? ‘I am informed by my Office of Military Intelligence that the fighting Poles have departed from Warsaw and that the Germans are now in full control,’ he said.[262] ‘The problem of relief for the Poles has therefore unfortunately been solved by the delay and by German action, and there now appears to be nothing we can do to assist them.’
The depth of cynicism and falsity in this message must have been shattering even to worldly-wise Winston Churchill.
A last-ditch assignment was Colonel Ziemski’s in the ruins of the Old Town. The Germans had barricaded below a manhole the northern sewer link with Zoliborz to stop the flow of supplies. There was little ammunition. The garrison counted between two and three thousand exhausted men. What little water still ran was mostly poisoned by the bodies which had fallen into the wells. Potato soup was almost the only food.
‘I should like to mention the fact that four hand-grenades are not enough to hold this redoubt for twenty-four hours,’ reported Lieutenant Kalinowski, defending the Town Hall.[263] ‘It will undoubtedly lead to disaster. A relief garrison must be found, as the present one is demoralized by the numbers of dead and wounded, and exhausted as well. Blank’s Palace is without defence. The civilians have all been buried in the cellars. I request a garrison for the ruins of this palace.’
But relief was impossible. Kalinowski’s situation was typical of the entire Old Town defence. In the Cathedral Lieutenant Korwin’s platoon had been fighting for ninety-six hours without relief, and for the past two days had had neither food nor water. When they were finally relieved by another platoon with four grenades and a machine-gun they could hardly walk. On 20 August Stuka dive-bombers demolished the twenty or so remaining Old Town houses.
Further losses had reduced the number of defenders to barely two thousand men with a small number of grenades and a few rounds each for automatic weapons. They had now reached the point of complete physical inability to endure the hail of fire any more. Colonel Ziemski decided that despite the order to hold on to the last no further resistance could effectively be made.
But the issue was not surrender; it was how to get his remaining force out of the Old Town and south to the City Centre. Ziemski decided to go about it by driving a c
orridor south through the enemy positions in Bank Square and Mirowski Square, through which the wounded and the civilians as well could be taken out. At the same time it was agreed that Chrusciel was to mount a similar attack from corresponding City Centre positions. Major Perdzynski went there through the sewer to agree on the details. Both sides were to open fire at 11 o’clock on the night of 30 August. About six hundred yards separated the two Polish forces, held by strong German units supported by tanks and artillery. Surprise was the essence of the operation, which required exact coordination. Under Ziemski’s command, the Old Town units were to advance in two wings, while at the same time a diversionary attack was to be made on the enemy positions in Bank Square by means of a sudden arrival from the sewer manhole there.
It was a daring and well-planned operation. The left wing under Colonel Radosław’s command was divided into two columns. One, under Major Jan, was to advance from the ruins of the Bank of Poland, into Bank Square to link up with the group emerging from the sewer manhole there and then to fight their way down Elektoralna Street to Zelazna Brama Square. The second, led by Captain Trzaska, would advance parallel from Danilowiczowska Street through Senators’ Street and thence through Zabia Street, giving protection through Saxon Gardens.
The right wing under Captain Sosna, about two hundred men, was to advance from the Radziwill Palace through Tlomackie towards Rymarska Street. About six hundred and fifty men were to take part in the operation. Major Rog, with about a thousand men, was to hold all the defensive positions of the Old Town in a rearguard action while the operation was in progress, fighting his way out when a flare signalled the moment.[264]
In view of the large numbers of German troops holding the district and the extreme exhaustion of Ziemski’s men the chances of success were not great; and Ziemski himself was sceptical about it. The sewer was an alternative outlet, but seemingly impossible for so many men at once. Colonel Chrusciel said that withdrawal from the Old Town would release all the German forces there for heavy attacks on the City Centre. He therefore requested Ziemski to hold off for two or three more days after 30 August, so that the defences there could be strengthened, but Ziemski knew that his own defence was nearing the point of total collapse. Urgent action was vital.
His view was given added point on 29 August, when enemy bombing raids increased in both frequency and weight. In last desperate struggles the Poles three times gained and lost St John’s Cathedral, while elsewhere among the ruins and rubble the fighting gained rather than lost in intensity.
During 30 August the walking wounded were evacuated through the sewer. At the same time Ziemski began the difficult task of withdrawing his men from their strongpoints and deploying them into their jump-off positions for the breakthrough. Then the unexpected happened. The unfortunate civilians heard of it and, fearing the worst, began to panic. Desperate not to be left behind they rushed up from their cellars and thronged in a shouting crowd around the units.[265] Hearing the noise the Germans began firing at the abandoned barricades and strongpoints.
It was a dangerous moment. Ziemski managed to pull his forces back to the barricades just in time to repel enemy attacks. As a result the attempt at breakthrough had to be delayed for a time.
But the units were scattered over the whole extent of the Old Town defences. In the dark, contact with them all was almost impossible. About seventy men of Radosław’s Zoska Battalion failed to hear the new zero hour in time and attacked alone and unsupported. German machine-gun nests and pillboxes put down a curtain of fire. Captain Jerzy led his men to refuge down a manhole into the sewers, but there in the darkness they lost their way, and came out through an open manhole in Saxony Park, which the enemy held.
It was a situation calling for immediate action. Captain Jerzy told his men to take the red-and-white arm-bands off their captured German SS uniforms; then forming them up two-deep with four men who spoke fluent German at their head he ordered them loudly in German to march towards Polish barricades about three hundred yards away.
An enemy patrol advanced. Quietly, Jerzy now ordered the word to be passed down the line that they were not to shoot unless attacked. But the German NCO merely warned him that any noise could bring down Polish fire. Coolly, Jerzy asked where the mines were laid in the neighbourhood, and having been told marched his men briskly towards the Polish barricades. But seeing a unit in SS uniforms advancing from German lines the Poles themselves opened fire, killing one man and wounding two. When the shooting stopped Jerzy’s men rushed for the barricade, shouting in Polish — ‘Don’t shoot!’ They were saved.
The main attack was a fiasco. At first the enemy were taken by surprise, and it made progress, but they soon recovered, turned a withering fire from machine-gun nests, mortars and tanks on the flank of the Polish troops and stopped them. When there was no advance from the City Centre troops, Ziemski ordered his men to return with all speed to their Old Town positions. Thus at least some of the defences were reoccupied. Tanks meantime foiled the attack from the City Centre; while men making the diversionary sortie in Bank Square were shot down while emerging from the manhole.
Thus this heroic but unrealistic effort to get the Old Town defenders out on the ground had failed. But the sewers remained, and hazardous as it was in all ways, Ziemski now planned for such an escape.
Chapter Fifteen: Retreat through the sewers
Ziemski’s decision to withdraw alone through the sewers to the City Centre was at first opposed by Chrusciel, who wanted him to try to hold the ruins of the Old Town for a few more days. But Ziemski knew that the entire defence there faced collapse. He had hardly any ammunition and like sleep-walkers with an inhuman disregard for death his men faced the German attacks. He pressed Chrusciel to allow him to withdraw, and it was sanctioned for 1 September.[266] ‘Old Town situation critical, impossible to hold out longer owing to lack of supplies and the enormous losses,’ Komorowski signalled to London on 31 August.
Ziemski knew that great risks were involved, for no more than about fifty troops had so far made the journey at one time. Now there were about fifteen hundred, as well as many civilians, numbers of whom were exhausted and liable to panic. Moreover the Old Town barricades would progressively be stripped of their defenders. Sooner or later the Germans would discover this, realize where the troops were and throw grenades or turn flame-throwers through the manholes. The Poles would be entirely at the enemy’s mercy. For even the bravest, it was terrifying.
On 1 September the unexpected intervened. It was a burning hot day; the Germans launched a heavy infantry attack on Krasinski Square, thus endangering the manhole to the sewers, the only escape outlet. It electrified the Polish troops in the area.
Famished and exhausted, looking like human scarecrows, supplied with ammunition from the last of the reserves, they now attacked like demons. Their fire was murderous, steady and concentrated. Not a single German entered the Square and in the evening two enemy officers with a white flag cautiously crossed the no-man’s-land there to request a truce for a few hours so that the dead and wounded on the approaches could be removed.
It was a heaven-sent chance. Under cover of the truce Ziemski realized he could carry out the descent into the sewer labyrinth. He accepted the truce and issued orders to make ready.
Now began the most extraordinary episode in the whole Uprising. It was exactly 8 o’clock in the evening when the truce began. Shooting stopped and an eerie silence descended over the Old Town’s appalling ruins. Leaving one token guard on each barricade, units from defences north, south, east and west began moving towards Krasinski Square and the manhole. There a queue formed, to be slowly swallowed up in it.
Everything depended upon the speed with which they stumbled the four kilometres through the sewage to the City Centre, for the truce ended at dawn. Four hours was reckoned the shortest possible time, each man holding on to the one ahead. Somehow the wounded were carried along. Now and then this human chain passed in the darkness through niagaras of falling wa
ter from bomb damage to the tunnel roof. It made breathing even worse and almost drowned some of them, but there was no time to rest.
At intervals the pitch darkness was lit by the blue light of night streaming through an open manhole. Here it was easier to breathe, but more dangerous, because the Germans with their listening points on the sewers might discover what was happening and throw down grenades. Towards the end of the journey the level of the current fell from waist to knee level, but the sludge was thicker and heavier and the poisonous gases made every breath painful.
Many could not go on and fell unconscious in the stream of sewage. Those who came behind pushed forward, hardly knowing what they were doing and trampled them down in the darkness. And there they drowned.
At 5 AM, as dawn glimmered over the Old Town ruins and Ziemski with a few barricade guards entered the manhole, the drone of German aircraft was heard. Dive-bombers hurtled down and the two hundred soldiers still waiting to enter scattered for shelter. Bombs struck the ruins of houses all around the manhole and blocked the entrance with rubble.
But the operation had succeeded. Altogether fifteen hundred fighting men, about two thousand walking wounded, a few hundred stretcher cases and five hundred civilians, including nurses, eventually reached the City Centre. Another eight hundred managed to get through to Zoliborz.[267] Those soldiers left behind went out through smaller sewer tunnels and some survived.
German artillery, Stukas and tanks went into action as day broke. Finally, bewildered infantry led by flame-throwers stormed the silent barricades. When they were found to be empty the enemy officers suspected a cunning Polish trick, perhaps mines beneath the ruins, and pulled back their men. Civilians waving white flags went fearfully over to their positions and told them that all the troops had gone. By that time Ziemski was about to emerge in the City Centre.
