It was that knowledge that had led many of them to take their planes that morning and fly from the British bases to Warsaw. En route they had not taken any aggressive action and therefore had not been bothered by German planes and only once by flak. If one ignored the confused look on the face of the German officer who had commanded the airfield when they arrived, he would have believed that they had been expected. It was a major step in which he knew, he and his comrades were being used as pawns in a power game that spanned the continent. Theoretically their action could be deemed desertion, but any doubts about that had been brushed aside when General Bor specifically announced that he had the power to sanction their action retroactively.
Now all they could do was wait.
8 am August 17th
London,
Foreign Office
‘The Foreign Secretary will see you in a few minutes Sir,’ the young civil servant almost sneered at Premier Mick.
The Pole shrugged, he knew that a confrontation was looming and that Eden was merrily using this underling to add to the ‘pressure’. The fact that is man had addressed him as Sir and not Mr Prime minister was typically British, snide words behind a correct exterior. The irony was that if only Eden could understand the hardships his nation had gone through over the past few years, then the Foreign Secretary would have understood that the Polish Premier had had to almost physically restrain his cabinet from accompanying him en masse to the confrontation with Eden. After succumbing to so many British arrangements and compromises, they all wished to be present at the moment they stood up again. If this was the worst the English were going to throw at him as a person he relished it. When he was finally ushered into Eden’s office, the Foreign Secretary barely got up.
‘Let me get straight to the point Sir. Her Majesty’s Government requires an explanation concerning the actions of certain Polish aircrew and their theft of British property. In short we need to know whether their actions are the first step in Poland’s withdrawal from the alliance?’
Strong stuff. Must have taken you hours to must your courage to be so direct. Premier Mick was surprised by the directness but not intimidated.
‘Foreign Secretary, first of all good day….’He let that hang but received no response.’ Let me assure you that the actions of our airmen who flew to Poland were not formally authorised by my Government. They represent a logical, almost understandable reaction to unwillingness of the rest of the Alliance to respond in any way to the plight of our fighting forces in Warsaw. ‘
‘Forces who have made a pact with our opponents’
‘We prefer to think of it as a temporary bit of realpolitk to prevent the replacement of one occupier with another. Nevertheless I can assure you that the men acted on their own and that no-one in the Polish Government or command authorised or ordered this action.’ The Premier was on safe ground here, it had been encouragement not an direct order.
‘The Russians are part of this alliance and you signed a treaty of co-operation with them!’
Under pressure from your government sir My predecessor always stressed that this was done to prevent precisely the legitimacy of the scurrilous claims which the Lublin Committee is now making of Moscow’s behalf.
Eden went back to the original theme.’ Our Government wishes to hear what measures you will take to retrieve the stolen property and to bring the men into line. Her Majesty’s Government expects that you will order the Home Army commanders to arrest them as a matter of urgency and make them available for court-martial. It is also of vital importance to know what actions these men will take now that they in Warsaw. If they are collaborate with the Germans in offensive actions against the Russians they could seriously weaken the alliance.’
‘Foreign Secretary I can in all honesty not give you a clear answer on the first matter as I have thanks to your Governments policy inadequate presence on the ground to order our men around or to anticipate their next moves in our Homeland. The channels your Government left me will mean that communication will take a few days. As to the matter of disciplining them I can assure you that as members of the Polish Air Force and part of the alliance we will deal with them and their acts in the manner prescribed by our rules. He drove the point home. They are after all Polish soldiers!’
Eden did not understand the emphasis. ‘Serving in our armed forces and thus subject to British command and military law.’ That seemed rather obvious.
Premier Mick had been building up to this one; ‘Foreign Secretary this is a point I hate to correct you on but they and thousands others like them may well be serving in Allied formations and in uniforms that generally resemble the British uniform. They are however and have always been Polish soldiers whose oath of allegiance was always to the Government of Poland and no other. Our nation never surrendered and thus our men never needed another oath. They never swore allegiance to Britain but remained its allies. So while I regret the embarrassment their actions have caused to the alliance, I can assure you that in terms of the treaties between our Governments, they are my problem. This is a matter of considerable importance to us and our legal experts have looked into this in great detail. You will find that even members of your own Party share this view.’
Eden was stunned. This was outrageous, the Pole had to be bluffing. For the moment however he was outmanoeuvred. All he had was a meek. ‘Her Majesty’s Government remains adamant that you inform us within forty-eight hours of the measures you intend taking to retrieve the stolen property.’
Mick was elated. It was clear that Eden had not done his homework His mistake stemmed directly from his unwillingness to treat the Poles as equals, now he was paying the price for it. He pressed his advantage. ‘Foreign Secretary, my Government takes note of your request and you may rest assured that I will be seeking a meeting with your Prime Minister to provide an answer. I believe this will be the appropriate level to address this. Good day to you Sir’ A quick, curt nod and he was gone.
Outside the Foreign Office the Pole sent a quiet prayer of thanks to heaven. He had not had to lie, or disown the men who were ultimately acting upon his orders. He now wished them good luck. In one respect Eden had been right, there was absolutely no way of telling where this would lead.
As the taxi drove him back to his office his thoughts turned the practical issues of consolidating his lines of communication before an enraged Eden completely cut them. The meeting with Churchill, which his secretary was already busy setting up would hopefully get a better reception than from the two-faced Foreign Secretary.
August 17th
Moscow
While his vehicle took the Polish Premier back to his office, an enraged Stalin sent a clear message of what he thought of the move. News of the arrival of the British planes and Polish air crew had reached him within 24 hours. Ignoring the pleas of his foreign minister and of STAVKA to assess the situation, the dictator got directly onto the phone with the Commander of the First White Russian Front Marshall Rokossovsky and ordered a massive air strike. By the time, Premier Mick sat down to report back to his eager cabinet three waves totalling 600 Red Air Force Il-2 Shturmovik fighterbombers, Pe-2 bombers and swarms of Yak-9 fighters swooped on the Warsaw airfields. Prodded by Stalin their commanders kept up the effort until darkness put an end to their vision. Stalin’s reaction forced a number of choices for the Poles. Half of the fighters managed to scramble their planes hoping to escape the attacks without a fight. But the Yaks followed them. In the ensuing dogfights the more experienced Poles shot down eleven Russian fighters while losing one fighter and four of their B-24s Liberators. When the last fires had finally been extinguished by the dazed Luftwaffe ground crews none of the air fields remained serviceable and nearly half of the British planes had been reduced to scrap (either on the ground or in combat). Two Staffeln (wings) of German night fighters were similarly caught on the ground and destroyed. Among more than the fifty dead on the ground were six Polish pilots and a dozen of the accompanying ground crew. All over Pola
nd there were confusing scenes as Wehrmacht personnel and Polish peasants alike confronted the escaped British/Polish planes on any flat surface they could land on, unsure of what to do. But first blood had been shed; Poles in British uniforms and British and American planes had fought the Red Air Force.
While the Red Air Force rained death of Warsaw’s airfields and chased planes with German and British markings from the sky, Stalin carpeted the allied representatives in Moscow: US Ambassador Averell Harriman and his military counterpart Major General John Deane, Chief of the Us Military Mission in Moscow arrived first and were kept waiting in the ante-room until the British Ambassador Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr and his military attaché, Admiral Ernst Archer, arrived. Together they were ushered into Stalin’s office were the desk was bare. No maps or documents anywhere. Stalin was signalling he alone was in charge, he alone had all the facts, he alone made the decisions. It took him less than five minutes to deliver a message dripping with anger to the British. The Americans merely stood as bystanders greeted but then ignored. Stalin berated Clark-Kerr for British duplicity, accused the British Government of going back on all agreements made in terms of this alliance. Twice Clark-Kerr tried to respond, twice he was cut off. When they all left, Stalin had come within a hair’s breadth of cancelling the alliance. He had made it clear that he regarded the action as an aggressive act on the part of Britain against Soviet interests and agreements made at Teheran. He made it clear that it was up to the British to take concrete steps to restore his faith in their good intentions. Harriman who had never liked Stalin and had remained throughout his tenure in Moscow vehemently distrustful of Soviet motives would later note in his autobiography that this was the one time he believed he had seen the true Stalin, the monster, as he would describe it in action.
When Radio Moscow announced the destruction of the ‘Polish reactionaries’ aided and abetted by ‘British renegades’ that night, London went into crisis mode. Premier Mick’s private secretary was woken at 2am to be told that Winston Churchill had found a space in his busy schedule first thing the morning of his return from Italy to discuss the escalating crisis by telephone from Italy. Although Winston Churchill was far more sympathetic to the Polish cause than his Foreign Secretary, his hands were tied by the US President. Roosevelt used the transatlantic phone to instruct his representative in Italy, to let Churchill know in no uncertain terms that these Poles had to be locked down and neutralised to ensure the continued commitment of the Russians to victory over Germany. Churchill’s protests that the western allies had a commitment to the Poles of some kind, were brushed aside. Roosevelt’s message made it clear that compared to the need to keep Stalin happy the Poles were a factor easily dismissed. Churchill barely managed to avoid an open break by proposing that he and the President should go to Moscow to persuade Stalin that the Polish incident was an aberration. As a face saving gesture to Roosevelt he agreed to suspend diplomatic relations with the Polish Government. The original intention of his time in Italy, to finalize a move into the Balkans slipped down the agenda
It was only when an angry Roosevelt put down the phone that he remembered that the Poles were a Catholic nation. That afternoon the administration leaked a story to sympathetic journalists that it was the British rather than the American administration that was standing in the way of more open support for the Warsaw Poles. Both the Vatican and the Kremlin saw the story and interpreted it very differently.
Confronted with Stalin’s rash action, Moscow, put simply did not know what to do. Soviet forces had occupied about a quarter of the land that Stalin was prepared to recognize as Polish. But while the Red Army advanced to the north into the Baltic and in the South into the Balkans, it did little in Poland. Politically the creation of the Lublin Committee had not yet been taken to its logical conclusion. In Romania and Bulgaria conquering Soviet armies were in the process of installing Soviet-backed Governments. But although the Lublin Committee had been given some legal and administrative powers, the Russians had not raised it to the status of a formal Government in waiting. Stalin had made no secret of his view that Poland was more significant to the security of the Soviet Union than any other European state. Until then, the Soviet leader however had held his hand, waiting for a signal of western acquiescence to his designs on the Polish nation. The Polish move had foiled his plans, pushing him into the role of aggressor. Stunned at the rash action, those around Stalin sat back and considered the myriad of options that their leaders reaction now presented the western allies with.
Privately even Stalin would later admit to himself that he had overreacted, that his outburst to the Ambassadors had been a mistake, the language he used wrong. He should have left it to Molotov to deliver icy words wrapped in diplomatic language. But these damn Poles! They had thwarted his in 1920 before Warsaw, now they were doing the same again. The first time it had almost cost him his career.
8:45am 17th August
forward command 4th Armoured
outside Chalons
France
The day started badly for Patton. “General we might have a problem. It seems that some Germans have pushed our boys out of the little places with the bridges across the Seine.” Here Sir, the aide pointed to the map. If they reinforce that spot it does make things difficult for our supply columns. ‘
George Patton took in the arrows on the map which was dripping from the fog. Clever move or just a lucky one, he could not tell. The German thrust had missed his last fuel convoy so he had some breathing space but if he left this matter unattended then his options would rapidly start decreasing even if he gained Chalons. ‘ Tell General Wood to send twenty Shermans to return and clear the road and radio a warning to the fuel trucks. He is to conduct a reconnaissance in force and reopen the road if possible but above all to get us information. That was the problem with Blitzkrieg it was always a high-risk gamble to leave your flanks open. It was always a choice advance or consolidate even the US Army could rarely do both at the same time. George Patton was still counting on the element of surprise. The weather might be depriving him of any aerial reconnaissance but at least he was able to access information from the locals. Surely that gave him an advantage over the Germans. The one thing he admitted to himself that he had gotten wrong was the amount of infantry support needed to guard the flanks. But this was chicken and egg stuff; if he had dragged along yet more infantry units the key roads on which his thrust depended might well have become too clogged to give him the pace of the advance he sought. Without them, well he was used to taking risks.
He picked up his binoculars to survey the assault on Chalons only to see his tanks stopped and a German staff car with a white flag coming down the road. Are they surrendering ? His aide grabbed his binoculars but shrugged “can’t right tell from here, Sir” From a distance they both witnessed the exchange between the German officer and the commander of the leading Sherman. After a few moments the staff car proceeded. “What the hell is going on there? Driver, get down there NOW. As the jeep gained speed Patton growled: ‘Jerry better be coming to surrender otherwise I’ll have the ass of the goddamn idiot who's sending the enemy on a guided tour of our capabilities and positions.’“
It turned out that the German officer – a tanker by his black uniform – was only carrying the flag of truce to pass on a polite request for the Americans to cease and desist. Patton’s jeep screeched to a halt next to the small group that surrounded him and the conversation which had been going nowhere anyway came to a complete stop. Like a cork out of heavily shaken champagne bottle George S. Patton exploded out of the jeep ‘Who’s in command here ?’
‘I am sir, Major Albert Irzyk, Sir. ‘
Patton barely took in the name as he drew himself up to his full height hands resting on his colt sidearms. ‘Tell me Major is this enemy officer coming to surrender and if so have you accepted his surrender’
Irzyk was pale.’ Actually General, he is here to ask us politely to turn around and…’
‘WH
AT’ Patton’s high-pitched voice was a shrill shriek. ‘Who the devil does he think he is’
The German – a captain – stepped forward and saluted’ General Patton if I may.’
But Patton was in a rage’ Are you surrendering or not? That’s all I want to know. If not get out of my bloody way’
‘Sir Your position may not be as strong as it appears’ His English was excellent but the General was not among his listening audience. ‘I giving you 1 minute Mister, to either surrender or get out of here. Starting NOW !’
‘General Patton’ The Panzer officer tried again he was sweating. Patton was every bit as intimidating as the propaganda had made him out to be and clearly not in the mood to talk. The German also saw that this Yankee officer actually wore a set of colt pistols strapped to his waist like a cowboy in a bad western. But he had faced worse and his orders were clear, delay the Americans by any means possibly to buy time for the various units that his commanders were currently pulling off trains and out of camps to stop this thrust from destabilizing the entire retreat in the sector. He tried again ‘General Patton, if you would please..’
Patton took a step towards him. ‘Get out of here’ he hissed.
Then he spun around. An accusing finger shot out at the hapless Irzyk. “When this is over I will have your stripes for letting the entire advance grind to a halt so that you could conduct a guided to for this enemy combatant. Now get moving. If he’s still here by the time your tanks moving through, run him over. That’s an order. “
The Valkyrie Option Page 34
