by Peter Haden
Jan
Peter Haden
Copyright © 2017 Peter Haden
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1788034 203
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
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Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
To my granddaughter, Elle Haden
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgement
Foreword
Jan Janicki was my uncle. He was born in Pomerania, northwest Poland. When the Germans invaded his homeland in September 1939, Jan made his way across Nazi Germany, eventually to join the Allied war effort in the United Kingdom. It was a remarkable journey.
As a young boy in post-war Britain, I had always wanted to learn of his escape. Some years later, my aunt eventually persuaded Jan to tell me his story. I was a teenager at the time and remember a sunny but freezing winter afternoon as we walked over white, hard-frosted fields in Worcestershire.
Life was not always kind to Jan. Because of the post-war regime in his homeland, he was never able to return to Poland. He sent frequent food parcels to his widowed mother – sugar, flour, coffee and so forth – without once receiving confirmation that even one had arrived safely. Jan and his mother were not to meet again.
Uncle Jan was a remarkable character – kind, humorous, incredibly hard working and perhaps a little flamboyant. Were it not for his influence, I might never have been commissioned into the British Army.
What follows is a work of fiction; although I confess to having drawn upon some of the information shared with me nearly sixty years ago. Above all, this book is intended as a tribute to Uncle Jan, and to the many thousands of Poles who fought with the Allies during the Second World War.
Peter Haden
(Colonel Ret’d A P Haden)
Chapter 1
Pomerania, Northwest Poland, 1936.Near the Polish-German Border
He would take the headshot. Slowly Jan reset the back sight for 200 yards. Yards, not metres, because this Mosin-Nagant M91 bolt-action Dragant had been made in America, probably during the early years of the century.
Pan Janicki, his father, had “acquired” the rifle in 1920, fighting under Tukhachevsky when the Russians captured the railway line north of Warsaw, cutting off the Free City of Danzig. He had never confessed the detail of its provenance, but stripped and concealed in his pack, it had been brought home in triumph. It was his father’s most prized possession. ‘Dużo lepszy – much better quality,’ he would say, ‘niż te produkowane przez Rosjan – than those turned out by the Russians.’ Lovingly cleaned, oiled and polished, the rifle was in perfect condition.
Jan worked the bolt action to chamber a 7.62 mm round. As he had been taught, he controlled his breathing. In… out…slow and gentle, then a half breath and a brief pause. His target could not have heard a thing, not at that range and with a gentle breeze tangentially in Jan’s favour. But the head lifted, perhaps from some innate sixth sense. A small adjustment for deflection and his finger caressed the trigger. Squeeze, never jerk and he took the shot.
The boar died instantly under the spreading oak; its mouth still full of half-masticated acorns as the forelegs collapsed and it rolled to the ground. Jan realised he was still holding his breath. Taking the head shot had been a risk, but his reward was a carcass undamaged by the heavy round. Some his mother would keep, but the rest Pani Janicka would butcher and sell in the local market for much needed zlotys. They were not rich, with just thirty hectares to support a family of five, but they had enough.
Stefan Janicki heard the shot, then waited for another. None came, and he smiled at the silence. A former sniper – which was how he had acquired the rifle from its previous owner in the first place – he had taught both of his sons to shoot. But even though he was only 16, the younger one was a natural – he rarely missed, although this was only the second time Jan had been allowed to hunt on his own. He had gone for deer or boar. Stefan walked to the barn and put a halter on their only horse, Kary, a fifteen hands gelding used for any purpose on the farm. He was strong and had a bit of a temper. He would skitter at the scent of blood, but would carry whatever Jan had shot back to the house.
Aniela ran out to greet them as they approached the single storey farmhouse. A year younger than Jan, they were still close, although he sensed that as his sister began to show signs of maturity they were beginning to grow apart; no longer the intimate playmates of their childhood years. Still, she always sided with him when Tadeusz, who was two years older than Jan, tried to boss his younger siblings around. “Tadzio”, as he was affectionately known, had eventually given up trying to impose any kind of authority over the pair of them.
‘Dzik – a boar,’ she said seriously, then broke into her angelic smile. Jan had long since realised that when she grew up she would be a beauty. Dark, wavy tresses reaching her shoulders framed an attractive if determined face. ‘A head shot, and just one round,’ said Stefan approvingly, for ammunition was expensive, and Jan could not help beaming with pride. So when their father was not looking, Aniela stuck her tongue out at her brother, but she was still grinning afterwards.
She disappeared into the kitchen to help their mother. Stefan and Jan gutted the boar in the yard then hung the carcass in the barn to mature. It was almost dark when they, too, entered the kitchen to be greeted by the smell of pieczeń wołowa na dziko, Jan’s favourite, a pot roast of marinated beef, rich with herbs and wild mushrooms and served with dumplings. Tadzio joined them just as it was ready to be served. Chairs scraped on flagstones as they pulled them from under the wooden kitchen table. But for all of them, it was a bitter-sweet occasion.
Jan remembered his father’s words from a couple of weeks ago. ‘Skończyłeś szkołę, musimy postanowić, co dalej – You have finished school, and we have to work out what you are going to do,’ he began.
‘Aniela will
marry and move away. Tadzio will inherit the farm, but it’s not big enough to support two families after your mother and I are gone. When land is split into holdings that are too small, all you end up with is poverty. Even now,’ he went on, ‘if I didn’t have my job, we would struggle.’ Jan’s father cycled for half an hour two days a week to work as a foreman in an engineering firm in Chojnice, the small town south of the farm.
They had been sitting on a bench in the sunshine outside the kitchen door. ‘You know Herr Raschdorf was here the other day,’ he went on. Jan nodded, sensing what was to come. Herr Raschdorf was a wealthy German estate owner who managed both a farm and an agricultural machinery business a few kilometres on the other side of the border. Jan knew that with so many men joining the Wermacht, the German army, many Poles had escaped starvation by working on the land in Hitler’s Reich. They had no rights – they were not citizens – but the Germans were glad to have them.
Günther Raschdorf and his father had been doing business for years – the German bought produce from the farm, mostly grain, fruit and potatoes for wholesale distribution. Usually he sent one of his men, but a couple of weeks ago he had appeared in person.
‘Günther to dobry człowiek – Günther’s a good man,’ his father went on, ‘jest uczciwy, and he’s honest. I told him about you. He knows you can turn your hand to just about anything on the farm, you can read and write, and you don’t need to be told anything twice. I don’t want to see you end up as a labourer in this benighted country.’
Jan noticed that his father sounded almost apologetic, as if the recession in Poland were somehow his fault.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘he’s offered to take you on. It would be a sort of apprenticeship, training you up as a mechanic. You would learn metalwork and machining skills as well. After that you could stay with him, or perhaps think about setting up on your own. But either way, it’s a better future than you would have here.’
He paused to let his words sink in. Jan leaned forward, elbows on knees, looking at the ground. Going to Germany did not worry him. He spoke the language. Athough ethnically Polish, just after the war, his parents lived in what was then “Bromberg”. In 1919, after the Paris Peace Conference and under the Treaty of Versailles, the city had been renamed “Bydgoszcz” and became part of Poland. But over 80 percent of the inhabitants were Germans, so although Jan’s family spoke Polish at home, he literally learned German playing in the street. When his father inherited the farm, they moved north and west near Chojnice, alongside the border with Prussia. A number of German families lived in the area – their children went to his school – so he still used the language.
But he was only sixteen. All right, he was big for his age. Not that tall, but like Tadzio and his father, he was heavily muscled and thick-necked from labouring on the farm. Mainly it was the thought of leaving home – his mother and father and Aniela… even Tadzio… that concerned him. But on the other hand he could look after himself. Once he had caught two bullies, both boys older than he was, tormenting Aniela. Neither of them were fit to go back to school for the best part of a week.
Slowly he sat upright and turned his head. ‘W Polsce nie czeka mnie nic dobrego, prawda ojcze? There’s nothing for me in Poland, is there father?’ Stefan sighed and his head moved from side to side. ‘All right,’ said Jan, ‘it’s good of Herr Raschdorf. So what happens next?’
After the stew, his mother served him first in honour of the occasion: it was Sernik, a rare treat and again his favourite – usually his mother would sell their cheese rather than bake a cheesecake with it. There was even cream. Jan took a modest helping, but she seized the jug and poured – smothered – as much again. He could see a glistening in her eyes. Nobody said anything as they finished their dessert.
Afterwards, whilst his mother and Aniela washed up, Jan, his father and Tadzio sat at the table. Stefan went to the cupboard and brought out a bottle of wódka and three glasses. It was the first time Jan had ever been offered alcohol. Stefan poured but his mother stood behind her husband’s chair and leaned forwards to put her arms around his chest, soapsuds still on her hands. She smiled at Jan. ‘A gdzie mój?’ she whispered in her husband’s ear. ‘Where’s mine?’
The morning dawned bright and clear with a hard frost. Jan washed at the stone sink in the kitchen. His mother had placed the cardboard suitcase on his bed in the room that he shared with Tadzio. It took only minutes to pack the few clothes he possessed. His father and Tadzio were already out on the farm. Jan wasn’t hungry, not after what was supposed to have been a celebration send-off meal last night.
He’d been excused from any farm work this morning so he took the Dragant to the workbench in the barn. Last night it had been given a pull through with an oiled rag to protect the barrel but now he stripped it completely. He took his time, but half an hour later it was back on the kitchen table ready for his father to look at before putting it away. Tadzio and his father came back just as the harsh rattle of a four cylinder diesel heralded the arrival of the Raschdorf Estate’s three and a half tonne Büssing lorry, with the red lion emblem at the front of its long bonnet. Günther Raschdorf was in the passenger seat. Apart from the driver, there were three other men in the open back, huddled up against the cab and protected by wooden sides.
Günther jumped down from the cab. He spoke some, if limited, Polish as did many who lived just across the border. ‘Pan Janicki,’ he greeted Jan’s father politely. ‘Towar gotowy? Is the load ready?’
‘Za stodołą – behind the barn,’ Stefan replied. ‘Come into the kitchen and have a glass to warm you up. Jan can show your men where it is and give them a hand.’
‘Dziękuję – thank you,’ came the reply, ‘i możemy się rozliczyć, and we can settle up.’
‘Are you sure it will be all right?’ Stefan asked anxiously. ‘Jan not having a passport?’
‘Ja, ja,’ Günther laughed, ‘the guards on the border know that he could walk through the woods if he wanted to. Besides, every time I go back I give them a bottle of your polska wódka. They’ll be more interested in that than noticing there were three men in the back coming here and four going home.’
Three quarters of an hour later Jan took his place, his case on top of a row of sacked potatoes, and the Büssing coughed back to life. His mother and Aniela came out to join his father and brother in the yard. As he waved, he wondered when he would see them again.
His accommodation, about ten kilometres inside Germany, turned out to be a large loft room over a brick workshop, entered by a metal staircase that ran up the outside of the building. The only heating was an iron stove, next to which someone had kindly stacked a small pile of logs from the lean-to wood store outside. A single oil lamp stood on a table, and the bed was an iron frame with a good mattress on which were two folded sheets, a bolster pillow, a couple of blankets and a generous eiderdown. There was a wooden chair under the table, which had a few basic cooking and eating utensils and a washing bowl on it. An old, rather threadbare armchair had been set nearer the stove. Above the table, the one window looked out over farmland. There was a toilet in the workshop below.
‘We have our main meal at one o’clock,’ Herr Raschdorf explained. ‘Frau Raschdorf supervises the meal for all the hands and you take it in the barn attached to the house. Breakfast and evening meal you make yourself but Frau Brantis, our cook, will provide you with rations.’
Clearly if he did any cooking it would have to be on the stove. But he had his own room for the first time in his life. For Jan this was luxury. ‘Dziękuję, panie Raschdorf – thank you, Herr Raschdorf,’ he answered politely, but then remembered where he was. ‘Danke, Herr Raschdorf,’ he repeated.
And so began a period that, for a time, produced some good memories for Jan. He missed his family and the small farm in Poland, but he need not have worried. Herr Raschdorf was a good man. Every few months, when he visited either Jan’s father or a
nother farmer nearby, he made sure that Jan was included in the work detail and – if necessary – dropped off at home for a while to visit his family.
His immediate superior was Johann, who had been an engineer in die Handelsmarine, the merchant marine, for many years. A short, rather sparse figure with only a whisp of hair left, Johann was a widower who shared a cottage with his daughter and her family in the village, walking the kilometre or so to the estate every day. He lived for his work. At first Jan watched as Johann serviced or repaired not only the estate’s machinery but also tractors, ploughs, bailers and harvesters from most of the surrounding farms. In truth, he ran a separate, good-sized business within the estate, and Herr Raschdorf had been no more than truthful in suggesting that his mechanic needed an apprentice as an extra pair of hands.
The work was mostly mechanical engineering, but from time to time Johann would light the small forge and work in the smithy, making horseshoes or spare parts that could not be machined. Jan enjoyed these days, not least because the rising heat made his loft warm and cosy for the evening ahead.
But it was the mechanical and engineering work that he enjoyed most. In addition to his own estate machinery, Herr Raschdorf owned a magnificent black Mercedes Benz Cabriolet C, the most wonderful thing Jan had ever seen. Usually it was garaged next to the house, but occasionally it came into the workshop where Johann kept it in perfect order, teaching Jan how to service the huge, eight-cylinder, supercharged three point eight litre engine that produced a staggering one hundred and twenty horsepower. When the master had bought it, Johann told Jan, it had cost nearly twenty thousand Reich marks. On his meagre apprentice’s wages, Jan did not think he would earn that much in his lifetime.
Jan proved adept at his work and slowly developed an easy working relationship with his mentor, who also taught him metalworking skills. After a few months Jan could mill and machine spare parts even to Johann’s exacting standards. It was rewarding to look at drawings, take a solid piece of metal and turn it into a new component that would restore a valuable piece of equipment.
