Song of the Legions

by Michael Large

  “All that is true,” I agreed, “but the real reason we lost, in my opinion, was General Suvarov. What we need, God help us,” I concluded, “is our own Suvarov.”

  A chill wind fell across the hillside. We huddled in our cloaks and clutched our swords and guns, but these seemed naught but pitiful toys before the terrible name of Suvarov. We held up our crosses, and drank vodka, as if to ward off the curse.

  “Blumer is right,” Sierawski admitted, “he is a poor shot, and a middling swordsman, and he rides like a woman going to church, and he is a great oaf with a thick head, but he is right. We need our own Suvarov.”

  “In God’s name, where in the world would we find a man like Suvarov?” Tanski asked.

  “God,” I laughed, “has no part in the begetting of men such as him. We will all have to pray to the Devil, boys! Amen!”

  We stared into the flames as they danced. Up above, the moon glowed pale, fat, and unforgiving. When we stared up at the moon, we knew that the evil old devil up there had not forgotten us. We listened to the wolves howling in the wilderness, and the wood crackling and blazing in the fireplace, like laughter.

  The very next day we rode on, and it was a good thing we did. We had seven horses now – three of our own, and four that we had taken from the Targowicans, and other spoils of war. We had their pistols, their powder, their victuals, their tobacco, their snuff, and sundry other trappings of good quality and quantity. The seizure of these articles was bittersweet. As ever, our enemies were better equipped than us in every particular. It would be preferable to receive supplies from a friendly quartermaster than to forever have to seize them, at great personal hazard, from hostile foes. Nevertheless Sierawski seemed delighted at something.

  “Why, we have seven horses, and we are riding to war!” he exclaimed, for indeed we were, although how, and by whose command, was entirely uncertain. Still, we did not let that dampen our spirits.

  Sierawski, as you know, was a Krakowian, and as we rode he bellowed out, very tunelessly and at great volume, a nonsense song that he knew, that did indeed fit the occasion perfectly. They have many such songs in Krakow, and they call them – with no great originality – ‘Krakowiaks’, which is also what the Krakowians call themselves. This was his favourite.

  “One man from Krakow

  Had seven horses.

  But after he went to war

  Only one was left!

  In seven years of war

  He didn’t draw his sword

  So his sword went rusty

  From no war!”

  As we rode, the valley narrowed and the flat plain turned to scrub and then to wood and the woods thickened to forest. Sierawski stopped singing and we drew our muskets, for this was bandit country still, and we with our four remounts laden with booty were a fat target. We saw that the trail rounded into a hairpin bend and we halted.

  Up ahead we could hear wild shouts, and the neighing of Cossack ponies. We heard a shot, and smelled the faint whiff of powder.

  “Damned Cossacks!” Tanski hissed, peering through a captured Targowican telescope, that had belonged to Szymon Korczak.

  “This is as pisspoor as your ambush was, Blumer,” Sierawski complained, “they’ve given the game away!”

  “You stupid sod!” I laughed, as I peered through my own telescope, “they’re not ambushing us! They’re ambushing someone else!” Or rather, they had ambushed someone else, for we had arrived towards the end of the affair. About a dozen Cossacks had set upon three of our soldiers – fugitives like ourselves. Having overpowered them, and robbed them, they were in the process of murdering them. Intent on their villainy, the Cossacks were entirely oblivious to our presence, and had posted no pickets or sentries.

  “To sword!” we roared, incensed, “to sword!”

  One of the Cossacks had thrown a rope over the limb of a tree. The first prisoner had a noose around his neck and the Cossacks were hauling him up in the air. He kicked his legs, gasped helplessly for air, and grasped at the rope with his hands, which his tormentors had left untied. Every few moments, as his face turned red and blue, the Cossacks would release their grip, cackling as if this was the height of wit. No sooner had the poor man recovered his breath, than they would haul him up again, and repeat this torture.

  The Cossack Hetman, which is their chief or sergeant, watched approvingly as he raised a bottle of wine to his lips. A moment later, he was dead, run through with Tanski’s lance, and the bottle rolled away into the dirt.

  As we charged, I thought of the two girls hanged by the Targowicans. I was determined to prevent another such foul murder, and thus I reached the hangman first. Quickly I dispatched the drunk and unarmed Cossack with point-blank pistol fire, and without any qualms whatsoever. The rope flew from his hands like a whip and the hanged man fell to the ground, gasping for air.

  “Lachy! Lachy!” the Cossacks cried, in despair, running for their ponies. All around, Cossacks were running to and fro. The three of us cut them down mercilessly like rabbits, blazing away at their backs until we ran out of shot, then slashing at the top of their heads with our sabres. For if you give no quarter, you can expect none in return.

  Three of them made it out of the clearing alive and we took a man each, chasing them down on our horses. I caught up with my man near a stream and leapt from my horse, wrestling him to the ground, dropping my sword in the undergrowth. We rolled through a thorn bush and the barbs cut through my uniform and shredded the skin of my face and hands.

  The Cossack was a stout, thick, round fellow, with a great bristling beard, dressed in filthy furs. We traded a few good punches, blacking each other’s eyes and bloodying each other’s noses. Then he sprang back and pulled a wicked dagger from his belt. My pistols were gone, in the mêlée.

  Grinning, he began to circle me, feinting and jabbing his knife at my ribs and face, and cackling and cursing. It was, as you may imagine, extremely unpleasant, and I had to be on my guard to avoid being skewered. I had my own knife in my boot, but no leisure to draw it, for I was sorely pressed.

  Then, from out of the trees, came another figure, wielding a huge Cossack cutlass, his neck still red with the rope burns, showing livid above his white shirt collar. He was, I noticed, a tall, handsome fellow with a great shock of shiny jet-black hair, and a black beard. I fancied that he looked a bit like a Jew, which struck me as an odd thought, and also appropriate. For the Cossacks have a great hatred of Jews, and would very well have tormented one in the base fashion that they had done, by strangling him with a rope.

  As I was speculating on this, the hanged man struck the Cossack’s head from his shoulders with a single vengeful blow of the sabre.

  “Dobry wieczor, good day to you,” I said, whistling with awe at this prodigious feat. “Warrant Officer Ignatius Blumer at your service, comrade. I am indebted to you, for saving my life!”

  “Good day to you too, Sir,” saluted the man, who was indeed a Jew, for he had the Star of David at his collar. He wore the same tattered uniform of the Republic as I did. The hanged man then rubbed vigorously at his throat, which was as raw as the meat on a butcher’s block.

  “My name is Private Karol Birnbaum,” he said, still rubbing his throat, “and it is I who am indebted to you, Sir, for cutting me down from that accursed tree.”

  With Birnbaum and two of his comrades, who had also survived, there were now six of us riding, and not three. The three Jewish soldiers had recovered what the Cossacks had taken from them, and any of the Cossack weapons as were serviceable. Behind us we had a good few horses, both Cossack ponies and the thoroughbreds we had taken from the Targowicans. It is well said that they that go out for wool, often find themselves shorn!

  In this way, across the nation, whole brigades of insurgents were gathering into companies and battalions and regiments. One day, we knew, into an army. Poland was not dead, not while we lived, at any rate.

  Birnbaum now wore the enormous Cossack scimitar at his belt, black furs on his back, a
nd a fur cap on his head. He was a striking-looking fellow, was Birnbaum, with his dark eyes and scowling brow.

  “Damn it!” he laughed, as we rode through a terrified village, “these peasants think I’m a Cossack!” This Birnbaum had a fine sense of humour, and was a learned, bookish sort, and we found his society a pleasant change from banging our three heads together and being howled at by wolves.

  “Tell us about the Beardlings,” we said, for it was a subject that interested us all greatly. When the Commander had armed these Jewish volunteers, it had excited deep passions and prejudices amongst us Poles. Still, we had been desperate, and all hands were needed at the plough.

  “Tanski here,” I teased, “is, as you know, our superior officer, and he holds the esteemed rank of Lieutenant, from which he is hoping to be promoted to boot-licker or shit-collector.”

  “Go to hell, Blumer,” Tanski exhorted me.

  “Tanski is very keen to know about the history of his new Jewish legion,” I continued, “for we see Tanski as a sort of Moses, leading his people out of the wilderness. Give him half a chance and he’ll take away your golden calf, fetch you down ten commandments from that hill yonder, and part the waters of the Vistula with his farts.”

  “What the Devil do you mean by that – his people? I’m no Jew!” Tanski snapped, rising to the bait. He began ranting and raving about the times he had eaten pork, and the fact he had no beard, and so forth, until we fell about hooting with laughter. Eventually he shut up, his face crimson with rage, for by then even he saw the jest, and shrugged hopelessly. For if one commands, one must have skin thicker than a pig’s, be it kosher or not.

  Birnbaum told his story as we rode.

  “I was a student in Wroclaw. After the Second Partition, Wroclaw fell into Prussian hands, as you know. Well, one day my tutor called me in and said that he was very sorry, but the Germans would not allow me to attend the university any longer, for I was a Jew, and therefore needed no learning but as could allow me to read the Talmud and to count money.”

  We threw up our hands and protested at this petty injustice, so typical of the Prussians.

  “Now I was mighty put out by this, as you may imagine. For I was all set to make my way in the world as a fine lawyer or a doctor, or some such profession as tickled my fancy, and wear wigs and ride in a carriage and never have to labour for a living or want for a thing. That door to advancement being barred to me, I returned home to my father’s business – he was a silk merchant – to put my shoulder to the wheel of honest commerce.

  “My father was a hard working man, and he inherited his business from his father, and his father’s father. We Birnbaums have been in Wroclaw since Sobieski’s day, when our family sought sanctuary in Poland under the protection of the Polish kings. Polish kings have always been friends to the Jews – even when their subjects have not,” he said, archly. “Anyway, our silks have always flourished, for we work hard, and we have the knack of turning a grosz into a zloty. We are a thrifty family, and we never waste a tynf.

  “Yet our persecution did not end there. After the Partition, we found that a thousand new petty taxes and regulations had been inflicted upon us by our new overlords. It was bad indeed, for it was a hundred times worse than the torments inflicted upon us by our Polish masters. Truly, it is better the devil you know! For decades we had prayed for deliverance from Polish tyranny – if you fine officers will excuse me for saying so – and now we found ourselves delivered alright. Delivered right out of the frying pan, and into the fire!”

  “Aye,” I agreed, “be careful what you ask God for, in case you get it.”

  “So it goes!” Birnbaum laughed. “Anyway, between the customs house and the taxes and the fines levied on Jews, and the bribes that we had to pay just to open our shop in the morning, we were driven to the wall in short order, and to penury. A good business that had flourished since Sobieski’s day, ground under the Prussian jackboot in less than six months. We watched as our creditors took our silks, our warehouse, and every stick of furniture in the house. Then the bailiffs gave us a good hiding with their truncheons into the bargain. They should have turned us out and packed us off to the ghetto, too, but for the fact that we already resided there. ‘Well,’ my old father said, as we dusted ourselves down and nursed our wounds, ‘now we may have nothing, but at least we still have our good name.’”

  “Your father was right,” I said, “one’s good name is the only possession that matters to a gentleman.”

  “Ha!” Birnbaum laughed, “My mother saw it differently. She scolded him for a fool, and said that in that case we had nothing but our lives, and like as not the Cossacks would be at our door for those presently. For we had all heard of the pogroms, of course. Then it took a turn for the worse, which I had scarcely considered conceivable. I woke up the next morning from this nightmare to find some Prussian gendarmes on my doorstep. They handed us a writ, or some such, and told us to present ourselves at the town hall on the morrow. There we were to be assigned a new name, and also to sign over our coat of arms, which was now null and void, nonesuch being permitted to be held by Jews. Now we really would have nothing – not even our good name!”

  At this point, Birnbaum drew out a beautiful silk handkerchief, very large, embroidered with an elaborate heraldic design. This he tied to his lance and held aloft.

  “Behold, the Birnbaum crest!” Birnbaum snorted with laughter. “Well, by now I’d had my fill of this. All of Poland was alight with rebellion. I resolved to join The Uprising. If all other occupations were barred to me, there was at least the profession of arms. We Jews all knew of a Jewish merchant named Colonel Joselewicz, from Kretina, who had raised a rallying cry in Yiddish against the invaders. This Joselewicz had worked as a financier for one of the magnates, and he had travelled to Paris, where he had learned French. Caught up in the revolution, with its spirit of liberty, equality, and fraternity, he was something of a Jewish Jacobin, and he found in the Commander a kindred spirit, and was made a Colonel.”

  “A Jewish Jacobin!” Tanski snorted, “saints preserve us!” Tanski, as you will know, was not fond of Jacobins, nor indeed of Jews, although he was always perfectly civil to our new comrades, except when in temper. Birnbaum continued his story.

  “Well, in September last year the Colonel raised his own regiment of Jews, which I joined, named ‘the Beardlings’.” He pointed at his black beard. “It was so-called for we had been allowed to keep our beards, and eat kosher foods, and even to abstain from fighting on the Sabbath, when circumstances permitted. We were all volunteers, and most of us had been tradesmen or artisans, like my two comrades here that you also saved from the Cossacks. There we were, alongside the militia and the scythemen, when the Commander read the Act of Insurrection in Krakow Square.”

  “God’s wounds, the Uprising!” we sighed, hearing the bells of the churches again, smelling the incense of the altars again, tasting Pepi’s champagne on our lips. Krakow, and freedom.

  It is a common slander that Poles hate the Jews. That may be so. Yet I never saw, nor fought against, nor even heard of, a regiment of Jewish volunteers under arms for any other nation. Not in twenty years of war. No Tsar, Kaiser, or Hapsburg ever had such a regiment as the Beardlings under their flag. But the Republic did. And it would have one again, in Italy, in our Polish Legion.

  “There we stood with all free Poland,” Birnbaum reminisced, “five hundred of us, the first regiment of Jewish warriors since the days of Masada!”

  I laughed at this. “You Jews certainly know how to pick a fight! The odds we faced in The Uprising weren’t much better than you Jews faced at Masada in Biblical times – standing against ten Roman legions!” The Jews of Masada, of course, committed suicide rather than submit to slavery.

  “Alas,” Birnbaum said ruefully, “you are right. We were cornered by the Cossacks at Praga. That must have occasioned those bastards great satisfaction, for their age-old hatred of us is unquenchable. As you see, a few of us Beardlings esca
ped, including the Colonel. We went into hiding in the ghettoes and synagogues, for our people sheltered us. We were making our way for Lwow, when a few of us were separated from the others, and the Cossacks caught up with us, and that is where my tongue catches up with my horse, so to speak.”

  “Why to Lwow?” we inquired, suspiciously.

  “That is where the Legions are gathering,” Birnbaum said cannily, “as everyone knows, and where you are bound yourselves.”

  “Soon enough, Birnbaum,” I said, “but we have a rendezvous first.”

  With that, we all grinned, and spurred our horses.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PULAWY

  Pulawy is south-east of Warsaw, not far from Maciejowice. We stayed well clear of that accursed spot where the Commander had his horse shot from under him, and was taken prisoner by the Russians. It took us until late summer, for the roads were thick with spies and soldiers. The harvest was already in and the skies were losing their lustre, like an old maid left on the shelf. In a few months’ time it would be light enough to see the hand in front of your face, but dark enough not to see the knife as it was stuck in your back.