by Sue Gee
‘Look,’ Paweł said suddenly. ‘What’s that?’
‘What?’
‘A searchlight … Look!’
To the south-west, a beam brushed the sky like a giant finger, then came another, then two more, closer, and suddenly they could hear the throb and roar of low-flying aircraft, swept on and over the heart of the city by the beckoning lights.
‘They’re here! They’re here! They’ve made it!’
He was hugging Paweł, saw Wroński and the others leaping wildly up and down and then, below them, doors and windows flung open, and the street fill with people pouring out of the cellars and houses, yelling and waving at the sky like children in a playground.
‘They’re here!’
In streets and squares hurricane lamps were being lit: he’d heard women were lighting them, and lying there, forming the outline of a cross or star, to guide the planes to the dropping places. For a moment he imagined what it must be like, to lie flat on the ground with the roar of an aircraft only a hundred feet above you, knowing that you could die at any moment if the plane was hit, or an engine failed.
From all directions, now, came the sound of anti-aircraft fire.
Jan thought suddenly of the pilots, of how far they had travelled, and how at risk they were, of what they must be thinking as they saw the lights below. Were there Poles among the crew, looking down on Warsaw for the first time since the war began? Then a plane was almost on top of their building, and he forgot to think of anything as it roared overhead towards Krasiński Square and its belly opened.
Bundles spilled out, parachutes swelled open, and the containers swayed and drifted on to roofs, on to the ground. On the housetops they were cheering as the plane flew on, and then there came the deafening sound of anti-aircraft fire, and a burst of flame on the left wing of the plane. It was hit, it was wounded. His fist to his mouth, Jan watched it fly helplessly on, like a great bird trying to escape the pain of a broken wing by flying, until there was a sudden, all-engulfing explosion and it fell.
Jan reached for Paweł and saw him standing white-faced, gazing up at the sky. Then another plane was roaring towards them, followed by two more, and more. An oblong container hit their rooftop, smashing the tiles, and they stumbled towards it, shouting.
12 August: Churchill to Stalin
The Poles request machine guns and ammunition. Could you
give some aid, because the distance from Italy is so great?
On 13 August, Prime Minister Mikołajczyk returned to London from Moscow: the talks with Stalin had broken down. That day, Tass issued a statement, broadcast on Moscow radio and on the BBC.
‘Information from Polish sources on the rising which began in Warsaw on 1 August by order of the Polish emigrés in London has recently appeared in various newspapers abroad. The Polish Press and wireless of the emigré government in London have asserted that the Warsaw insurgents were in contact with the Soviet High Command, and that this Command had sent them help.
‘The Soviet Agency, Tass, is authorized to state that this announcement by the foreign press is either a misunderstanding or a libel against the Soviet High Command. Tass is in possession of information which shows that the Polish circles in London responsible for the Warsaw rising made no attempt to coordinate this action with the Soviet High Command. In these circumstances, the only people responsible for the results of the events in Warsaw are the Polish emigré circles in London.’
They squatted on the dusty floor, counting it all again. Three more revolvers, with twenty rounds of ammunition; a tommy gun with eight rounds; a box of grenades; four tins of corned beef; two tins of dried milk. A picture of Princess Elizabeth – ‘I’ll have that,’ said skinny little Piotr, and pressed it dramatically to his lips. A door opening from the corridor interrupted their laughter.
‘Lieutenant Wroński?’ A tall fair man in shirtsleeves and armband stood in the doorway. ‘You have received your allocation?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the Lieutenant, and got up from where he was kneeling between Jan and Paweł. ‘Are there any changes?’
‘Dried milk is to go at once to the civilian authorities for nursing mothers and children. Now – may I just go over what you have received?’ He came across and bent down, his eyes skimming the pile in the centre of the circle. ‘I see … and you are how many?’
‘Six, sir, and myself. Two boys were wounded in the first week of the fighting – they’re in the field hospital on the next block.’
‘And what arms do you have left?’
Lieutenant Wroński ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Two pistols, but they’re a different calibre from these rounds, so effectively none. The tommy gun, and two rifles – I haven’t checked if they’ll fit this lot yet.’
‘Filipinki?’
‘They were all used in the first few days.’
‘To what effect?’
‘We destroyed an armoured car, sir.’
The Captain shook his head. ‘I am under orders to tell you, and all units in this sector, that the very greatest care is to be taken from now on in the use of all arms and ammunition. There may be another drop tonight, but even so, what is arriving is unlikely to sustain us if the Germans mount a concentrated attack on Stare Miasto, and all reports indicate that they are about to.’ He looked again at the little heap on the floor, at the subdued faces of the boys. ‘I was going to take one of the tommy guns, since the unit in the next house has received even less, but perhaps I’ll find one for them elsewhere.’
‘Sir.’
He turned and left the room, and they all looked at each other, but not at the Lieutenant.
Then Paweł said lightly: ‘Well, the corned beef’s a treat. Anyone got a tin opener?’
In a broad semicircle around the perimeter of the Old Town, some forty thousand German troops were assembling, their positions stretching from the Royal Palace in the north, backing on to the Vistula, round to Teatralny Square and Karowa Street in the south. On the western flank, ten infantry battalions were supported by two battalions of engineers, a company of tanks, twenty field guns, and four cannon, one of which was of the same calibre used to shell Dover across the English Channel. There were fifty Goliaths: tiny, deadly, remote-controlled tanks. There was a platoon of mine-throwers, an armoured train.
On 19 August, at 9 a.m., they launched their attack on an area some two miles square, where fewer than five thousand AK defenders were now armed with machine guns, anti-tank missiles, grenades, filipinki and bottles of petrol, and the battle for Stare Miasto began.
The afternoon sun still glared, and though the narrow streets were thick with shadow, they were hot, the air oppressive, full of dust. Jan and Paweł followed Lieutenant Wroński, the others behind, as he led them towards their new position. Jan felt sweat and the pressure of the rifle strap on his shoulder beginning to rub it raw, and shifted it to the other without stopping in his steps. They were behind barricades here, the small area still in Polish hands, but nowhere now was far from the German lines, and movement above ground like this was perilous. Everywhere, at the entrance to every alley, every flight of steps, you could see men crouched down, arms at the ready, keeping watch behind hastily assembled piles of tables and chairs, sandbags and dustbins.
One street away were the ruins of the Royal Palace, the outer buildings bombed by the Germans in the siege of 1939, the rooms within held by the Poles since the first days of the Uprising. On the clock tower the white and red flag run up on Constitution Day drooped in the heat. Linked by a small covered bridge to St John’s Cathedral, the defended palace now blocked the path of the Germans to the Kierbedzia Bridge across the Vistula: without doubt, it would fall under fierce attack. Wroński that morning had orders from Colonel Wachnowski, Commander of the Old Town, to move his men to reinforce all positions nearby. They were to be prepared, if possible, to move into palace or cathedral, to join the units already there. As they rounded the corner, and saw the apartment block where they were to reposition themsel
ves, they saw, too, that the street was filling fast with men and women running into doorways, into courtyards, pounding up stairs and through passageways.
‘First floor!’ Wroński shouted over his shoulder, and broke into a run himself, as the sound of shelling burst into the air. They began to run after him, stumbling on the uneven paving, into the open doorway to the stairs, not pausing for breath until they had reached the first floor, and found one room of the apartment already occupied by another unit, sandbags at the broken windows. Jan pushed his way through, moved the rifle off his shoulder, and managed to find a space at the window in the corridor; he stood peering between the shoulders of the two men in front.
‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s starting,’ said one of the men. ‘I don’t know if we’re going to get out of here.’ He looked at the rifle. ‘You’re lucky.’
Jan nodded. Then Wroński was yelling for him, and he moved quickly back into the main room. ‘To the centre window,’ Wroński snapped. ‘Cover the street as far as you can.’
Jan crossed quickly to the window, and hoisted the gun to his shoulder. From the far end of the street, quite empty of running figures now, came the rumble of a tank, like the one he’d heard the day the airdrop came, and then the sound of shelling, much closer than before. Paweł was suddenly beside him, peering over the heap of sandbags.
‘Wroński says we can share this shift. You all right?’
‘So far,’ said Jan.
By the evening his head throbbed and hammered with the roar of the shelling. Between the bursts of anti-aircraft fire came the sickening tearing rumble of buildings falling apart, thundering to the ground. And everywhere, fires raged.
As dusk fell, Wroński returned from a meeting on the ground floor and announced: ‘At first light, we advance: couriers say they need every man.’ He nodded to Jan, to Paweł and Piotr and the two others who had each done a shift at the window. ‘There’s a field kitchen two houses along, access through the cellar. Go and have a break, then get some sleep.’
They put down their arms and went down the stairs, across the hall and down into the sprawling cellar. Lit by candle stubs, every corner, every small storage room or passage was crowded with people huddled on blankets, next to cardboard boxes spilling with clothes, saucepans, tin plates. Children wailed; an old woman was coughing and coughing, bent double. As the boys with their armbands went through, a path was cleared between the families, and one or two people called out: ‘God bless you,’ but Jan also heard grumbling, and someone mutter: ‘You got us into this.’
They bent down to crawl through the hole in the wall leading to the next cellar, also packed full, and lit by a few candles. From the top of the stairs on the far side they could hear loud voices, and plates and saucepans clattering; they could smell soup. They made their way through and climbed the flight in single file. Across the narrow hall a door opened into a noisy, crowded room, a long trestle table under the windows, with a wood-burning stove in the corner. Women in overalls were behind the trestle, ladling hot soup into bowls; a queue of people, AK and civilian, waited. The air was thick with cigarette smoke.
‘God, I’m hungry,’ said Paweł. They stood in the queue, and Jan saw that the opposite wall was plastered with notes and messages, some scrawled directly on to the plaster, some little scraps of paper tacked up.
‘Keep my place a minute,’ he said to Paweł, and went over. Was it possible that Mama could have got a message sent here? He searched the wall, his head still throbbing. Marek: we are in Dobra Street now, number 8. Maria. Tomasz was here, 14.8.44: Krystyna, I love you. Will anyone who knows of my daughter, Hania Kowacz, please try to inform Rybacka Street, number 7. Krysztof: Wojtek was killed 12.8. Please contact. Mama. There were at least five notes addressed to different Jans but none of them was for him. Where was his mother now? There was no chance of getting back to her; in any case, she would not, could not be at home – he could not even begin to know where to look for her. Despite all this, he fumbled in his pocket, and found a stub of pencil. What could he write on? He went back to Paweł. ‘Have you got any paper?’
‘No,’ said Paweł. ‘Of course not.’
A girl in the queue behind said: ‘I’ve got a notebook.’
‘Thanks.’ He tore off a sheet and smiled at her, then went back to the wall, and pressed on it. Mama: I was here, 19.8. Thinking of you. We are moving tomorrow. See you when it’s all over. Jan. He folded it and wrote his mother’s name, Pani Zofia Prawicka, then took a tack from someone else’s note and pinned them up together.
Paweł and the others were almost at the table. He hurried back and stood with them again, winking at the girl behind, who had long brown hair piled up under a cap. She was very pretty.
All night the sound of shelling shook the house, and the sky was filled with the scream of Stuka jets, and the violent light of flares and fires.
‘Fire to put out! Fire to put out!’
The shout came every hour; they ran out to stand in a line, passing buckets of precious water from hand to hand. They’d been given a ground-floor room to rest in, but no one rested until just before dawn, when a brief, sudden lull made their ears ring, and they slumped into sleep for perhaps half an hour. Then Wroński was shaking them awake, his own eyes puffy and his face unshaven, and they stumbled after him down into the cellars again.
Early morning light slipped through the cracks and slits of windows, touching the grimy blankets and the grey faces of the sleeping families. Moving between snoring grandmothers, stepping carefully over restless children, all Jan could think of was sleep, of lying down here, beside any one of them, and not having to get up. He fixed his eyes on Wroński’s head, and went on, ducking through the holes in the walls of perhaps eight houses, the names of the streets overhead, and arrows to others, scrawled on the walls in chalk, or white paint.
A courier girl, sixteen or so, her face, shirt and trousers covered in dust and dirt, came out of the far tunnel.
‘Lieutenant? You are in command of which unit?’
‘Of Boar.’
‘I have a message for the first officers coming through this morning.’ She opened her canvas bag, took out a small sheaf of paper, and passed him a note, roughly duplicated. Wroński took it and read it, expressionless.
‘Thank you, my dear.’ He turned to the boys, pressed up behind him. ‘We are to move as close as possible to the cathedral.’ He paused. ‘The fighting is very heavy – there have already been a great number of casualties.’
‘Sir.’ They said it automatically, following him as he bent down and ducked through the hole into the tunnel, where another girl was waiting.
‘Maria,’ she said, and led them through, and up the steps from the next cellar.
When they came out, they found themselves at a doorway on to an alley littered with rubble: almost opposite stood a small house with shattered windows, the front door riddled with bullet holes.
‘There was a skirmish here yesterday,’ said Maria rapidly. ‘A great many people were taken to the nearest field hospital, and I’m afraid there are bodies in that house we haven’t had time to bury yet, it’s very distressing. But the house itself – the damage to it is superficial. You are to be stationed here – I think you have already been given written orders.’
‘Yes,’ said Wroński. ‘I have them here … We are to defend this house, until ordered otherwise, as a possible place of retreat from the cathedral.’
Maria nodded. ‘I’ll bring you new bulletins whenever I can.’ She looked as if she hadn’t slept for days. We all look like that, thought Jan, watching her shake Wroński’s hand, and hurry back to the cellar.
They picked their way across the alley, avoiding precariously shifting piles of bricks. Inside the house, in a little room off the hallway, they found the bodies of four boys, laid neatly side by side. They were still covered in plaster dust, but you could see the pools of caked blood beneath. The room stank.
‘Check them for arms,’
Wroński said flatly, and Jan and Paweł bent down, and fumbled at the leather belts. The boys’eyes had been closed, the dust brushed quickly away from waxy faces; one of the faces had been half shot away, and that side was turned down towards the floor.
Jan felt himself heave. ‘One pistol, sir,’ he said, getting to his feet, and somehow did not throw up.
Wroński took it and gave it to Piotr, who stood staring.
‘Thank you, sir.’ His voice was a whisper.
Then they all crossed themselves, quickly, and went out of the room.
They spent the next few minutes making a reconnaissance of the house. There was a tiny kitchen at the back, where a blackened stove stood next to a cracked sink and wooden draining board. On the table was a small cast-iron saucepan, half-filled with water: dust floated on the surface. Who had been going to cook what, before they were ordered out of here, or fled?
A flight of wooden stairs led up from the hall, with a door beneath to a small cellar. Wroński flicked at the switch on the wall, but no light came on.
Jan fumbled for his lighter, and passed it. By its tiny flame, they went cautiously down the stairs, and made out packing cases, firewood, a tin trunk. Though there had been no rain for a least three weeks, it was very damp; somewhere in the walls they could hear a faint trickle of water.
Upstairs there were two small bedrooms. In the one at the front an old iron bedstead had been pushed back against the wall, the mattress lumpy and thick with plaster dust. On it, a book lay open, face down: Jan picked it up, and blew off the dust. Błysk Gordon – Flash Gordon: one of the boys downstairs must have been reading that, having a laugh during a lull in the fighting. Was it the one whose face had been shot away? He put it down again, and followed the others on tiptoe and craned his neck – a view of the whole alley from here.
