The Miracle Typist

by Leon Silver

  * * *

  The Poles packed up the transit camp in El Marie and were loaded onto ships to be sailed around the African coast to Tobruk to relieve the Aussies, who were heading back to New Guinea to fight the Japanese. Tolek Klings lay on the hot metal deck of the British minesweeper the HMS Latona watching the bombs drop and the anti-aircraft guns belching puffs of smoke. Pom poms and ack acks assaulted his ears. Ships’ horns bellowed danger, deafening explosions erupted on the sea nearby, and the ship zigzagged, making Tolek slide here and there. The normally clean sea air reeked with the stench of gunpowder. By way of distraction, Tolek contemplated the weird turns that his life had taken. An incident sprang to mind, one he had shoved to the back so as not to analyse it.

  Three years earlier, he could’ve so easily been on another ship, a passenger liner, with his family, sailing for that blessed continent of Australia. He could have been watching the Mediterranean disappear along with troublesome Europe, receiving the news of the German invasion on the ship’s radio, toasting with Klara and his boss, Norbert Schrenzel, and their families to their good fortune of escaping. In May 1938, Schrenzel and family had gone for a holiday to London. When he returned, he was effusive in his praise about what a beautiful place England was and how freely the Jews lived there. In early August 1939, when the political situation deteriorated, Tolek had begged Schrenzel to take their two families for an extended holiday to England – close up the two practices for a few months and just go. Tolek had felt in his bones that war was imminent. Should war break out, the two families would never be sent back to a hostile Europe. Tolek even discussed with Klara the option of immigrating to Australia, about as far as they could get from Europe’s brewing troubles.

  An Australian client from London, Jack Wilkah, had told Tolek that, in July 1938, in Evian-les-Bains, France, there had been a worldwide conference to discuss Europe’s Jewish refugee problem. Thirty-two countries attended and Australia had agreed to accept 15,000 Jewish refugees over three years. Jack – a short, jolly man of about sixty – was an importer of construction equipment. Born in Warsaw, he’d emigrated to Australia as a child, but still spoke broken Polish. ‘Come to Australia,’ Jack, smiling, had encouraged Tolek while they were having a drink after work. Then he’d laughed. ‘A great country, tucked under at the end of the world, and it’s always warm.’

  Despite his failure to convince his boss to take a holiday in England, Tolek kept after Schrenzel to close the legal office for a couple of months, go to the Australian Embassy in London and apply for passage. Why would Australia refuse two well-educated families with young sons and the means to pay the fares?

  But his boss wouldn’t listen. ‘Why give up a thriving practice? The troubles will blow over, they always do.’ Instead, after learning that Jews were being thrown into refugee camps in Vienna and massacred in Germany, they donated money and collected clothes to send to the refugees. Tolek could feel the pre-war tension in the streets, see it in people’s faces. But Schrenzel was stubborn. ‘You are a born pessimist, Tolek,’ he insisted. ‘You’re always panicking. Germany will never dare cross England and France.’

  Tolek pictured Schrenzel’s eyes that day when he’d visited in his Polish Army uniform: red beneath a swelling, bleeding forehead smeared with white plaster. ‘Can you please – please, can I get my family and come with you on the army truck?’

  The memory was too much. Tolek got up from the ship’s deck and leaned over the rail to watch the sea. The air–sea war was exploding all around him – planes diving, ships zigzagging like drunks, bombs exploding in the water, waves erupting high into the air like water cannons. Then he saw it: a flash of white tail, a torpedo speeding towards where he stood. Tolek visualised the boat blown in half, himself catapulted into the air, both ends of the ship sinking fast with screaming men trapped inside. Tolek closed his eyes and conjured up Eliezer and his blessings from the wedding: mazel tov – mazldik nshmh. He opened his eyes and, as if by magic, the torpedo made a sharp left turn and missed the boat, disappearing into the horizon.

  * * *

  Miraculously, all five ships in the convoy reached Tobruk unscathed in late August 1941. Tobruk Harbour was filled with sunken tonnage: eerie masts and hulks like tombstones rising from the sea. The night was lit by German bombs – ‘chandeliers’ – as the men madly scrambled down the heaving rope ladders. They jumped into the small boats, almost toppling them, trying not to get hit or slow down the men behind them. Near the shore, they waded through the water as fast as possible for the relative safety of the beach. By the time Tolek disembarked from the small boat into the shallow water, he’d lost his pack and rifle. He ran across a beach lit so brightly by German chandeliers that he could see his own shadow. Dodging the dead bodies, Tolek followed a group of men to take shelter in a huge cement pipe beneath a road. They collapsed atop each other, falling asleep in a heap in the midst of the bombing and yelling, exhausted.

  Tolek was rudely woken in the morning by loud motorbikes racing across the road over his head: the military police trying to corral the mess of disorientated soldiers. The harbour and beach looked worse during daylight, with bodies floating like an invasion of uniformed jellyfish. The military police – dirty, unshaven, with bulging eyes and hoarse voices – gave them strict instructions on how to get to the assembly point. There were minefields and booby-trapped areas set up by infiltrators. ‘Avoid this road, take that path in that field, turn right there, go around those bombed buildings…’

  The next night the Poles were placed in the B-line of the Tobruk defences. The Australians were in A-line, the front. Every evening between six and ten, an unofficial truce broke out. The war stopped for four hours for team changes and resupply. The Poles were due to go into the A-line trenches at six o’clock the following night.

  ‘We are here to replace the Aussies,’ Captain Kasprowicz said. ‘For eight months they have held off the Germans and Italians, living like rats in trenches, dug outs and tunnels. If it wasn’t for these diggers, this coast would’ve already been lost. Now it’s our turn to defend it.’

  Now Tolek understood why the Aussies had been referred to in the desert NAAFI as ‘rats’ and ‘diggers’.

  Not only did Lieutenant Poznanski not forget his threat, he was in haste to carry it out. Even before they were deployed he called Tolek, another corporal and three soldiers over.

  ‘We’re going to inspect the minefields,’ he announced, looking straight at Tolek. His colleagues edged away from Tolek like he was contagious.

  ‘Miracle Typist can lead,’ he announced.

  The five men edged out into the dark field. Tolek led the row of men about six or seven hundred yards into a safe area. The lieutenant walked on the side and for a second they lost sight of him behind an embankment. Bam! An explosion boomed and threw them back. The lieutenant’s body – split into a thousand pieces – was flung into the air. They had to collect the pieces in a blanket. Poznanski was wrong: the first Polish casualty in Tobruk was him, not Tolek Klings. His colleagues stared at Tolek, bewitched. They crossed themselves; Tolek the Jew had to be protected by the devil. On the way back they stuck so close to Tolek they bumped into him.

  ‘The fixer… the fixer,’ Lewandowski and Szymanski grinned, buying Tolek whisky.

  No one missed the nasty lieutenant, the soldiers were glad to be rid of him. A few days later, when they were in the front lines, Tolek had a visit from the Polish military police. They took him to a large, empty bunker for interrogation.

  ‘Did you have an incident with the lieutenant before leaving Alexandria?’

  ‘If you already know, why do you ask?’

  ‘If you had an incident, why did you not report it to your commanding officer?’

  ‘Everyone knows what happened. Ask Jan Bielatowicz.’

  ‘Were the alleged threats he made against you serious?’

  ‘Were they?’ Tolek was suspicious; his trust in Polish military justice was not at its peak. Were hidden ears liste
ning? He had heard of a few anti-Semitism harassment and discrimination complaints from fellow soldiers going unanswered. He decided not to be afraid. ‘Everyone knows what happened on the minefield. Even the commanding officer. There were plenty of reliable witnesses.’ Tolek tried not to laugh, picturing his four colleagues crossing themselves. ‘I had nothing to do with the lieutenant’s death. I will not answer anything further unless there is a full court-martial.’

  Nothing happened, of course, except the Correspondent’s wrath. It hurt his Polish Army pride. By ordering Tolek to clean up the rubbish, then after being refused, threatening retaliation, an officer had been disgraced in front of an ordinary Jew. He wrote up the whole story for The White Eagle, but of course it was never published. Jan should have known better. The Polish Army preferred to bury the incident – not the right stuff a besieged army liked to feed its enlisted men. Tolek and anti-Semite Jan had finished up on the same side, again. Jan had to seriously consider the fact that there was open anti-Semitism against Jewish soldiers fighting for the fatherland. No wonder so many defected.

  * * *

  Now more than ever, Tolek realised he had to negotiate his time in the Polish Army carefully. He knew he’d had incredible good fortune, but even with all the luck in the world he feared he would never make it through this war in one piece without the strong protection of Eliezer’s personal blessing.

  There was more luck to come. During an attack, Tolek launched himself out of a foxhole just as a shell blew it up. Later, he somehow avoided injury and death while charging right up to a machine-gun position. His reputation as the luckiest soldier in the Polish Army spread even further. More colleagues crossed themselves when he passed. He was now the Miracle Survivor, as well as the Miracle Typist.

  At night he secretly looked up to heaven and thanked Eliezer.

  On another hot day while Jan and Tolek lay in the A-line trenches, annoying flies buzzed at them, trying to drink blood from any exposed vein. The men pressed themselves into the dirt walls on either side of the trench, trying for some shade.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ Tolek said, slapping the flies away. He sawed around a tin of marmalade with a can opener, folded out the shiny lid and placed it outside on top of the trench. The flies immediately made a U-turn for the tantalising concoction. As the two soldiers dozed in their fly-free trench, a screaming shell flew over them and landed between the two stretchers with an earth-shattering thump.

  Curling into the foetal position, Tolek braced himself for death.

  But after moments of waiting for the end, the only bang was his heart. He unfurled to see an unexploded artillery shell from an Italian Pavia cannon, its glowing metal backside sticking out of the soil. The shining marmalade can must’ve attracted the enemy spotters.

  Once their traumatised shaking stopped and they caught their breath, the Correspondent turned to Tolek. ‘You know, Tolek, I think that sticking close to a Jew brings me luck. Perhaps your God is saving me to write about Polish Jews. I’m safer near you or I would already be dead.’

  Tolek chuckled. ‘Perhaps you’ve been chosen, Jasiek.’ This was the first time Tolek had used the nickname Jan’s friends used – some degree of closeness was in order here; they had nearly been blown up together.

  After a pause, Jan said, ‘If the three million Jews in Poland were like you, Miracle Typist, we would love them all.’

  But that wasn’t a viable proposition. Tolek could hardly take millions of Polish citizens into the front-line trenches with him just to prove that Jews were human.

  * * *

  On 1 September 1941, the second anniversary of the war’s outbreak and Tolek’s thirty-first birthday, German airmen put on another show for the Allies. The Germans and Italians were shell crazy. One night the Poles in the A-line were shelled from dusk until dawn; they could barely lift their heads. Tolek and the Correspondent pressed their bodies into the hard dirt wall, escaping back into the earth. All night a sharp object dug into Tolek’s ribs and, in the morning, when the shelling lifted, he dug down to find a corner of a blanket. The Correspondent helped him to pull, and out came the mummified body of an Australian soldier. Tolek straightened out the soldier’s slouch hat, put it on the corpse’s head, and stood at attention and saluted the dead soldier before the body was lifted out.

  The Libyan desert belonged to the Germans and Italians, but the Allies held the fortress of Tobruk and refused to be dislodged. Mussolini had poured rows of cement bunkers when the Italians had occupied Tobruk, and the Australians had dug rows of dirt trenches between the bunkers so that the enemy could not surprise them with a sneak attack. The Poles spent three weeks in the cement bunkers and three weeks in the dirt trenches. The cement bunkers were quite comfortable, and the soldiers could move around, stand up, lie down, make a cup of tea or smoke, heat up soup on the Primus burners to eat with the thick English biscuits. Food and water were never a problem, and they even had vitamins and fresh onions to ward off scurvy. At night they slept in shifts and watched through the machine-gun slits for enemy patrols and infiltrators. In daylight, since it was less likely that they would be surprised by the enemy, only two soldiers manned the observation points and the rest lazed around, sleeping, playing cards or eating.

  In the open trenches, life was harder. Men were much more exposed and had to sit all day making sure their heads never rose above the top to become bait for snipers. All the food was consumed cold, and at night, any cat-nap might be their last because the enemy patrols could easily sneak across and slit throats.

  Despite the horror, during each evening’s unofficial truce the Poles shouted and waved to the Germans and Italians, who waved and shouted back. Some even threw kisses. In groups of eight, the Poles went to the bulk supply depot at the rear of the lines, pulling empty trolleys and big empty water cans. On the way back, six men pushed and pulled the laden trolleys through the sand. The other two men carried the heavy water cans on their shoulders.

  Tolek, who was in good physical shape, did this resupply trip many times, but one night a sergeant decided to single him out. ‘Hey, Miracle Typist!’ he yelled, blocking the path of the heavy trolley Tolek was pushing. ‘I’ve been watching you, you’re always pushing the trolley. Tonight you can carry the water cans.’

  Tolek didn’t care, one was just as hard as the other. He left the trolley and took two cans. They hadn’t advanced very far when – kaboom – a large explosion. The ground shook like an earthquake.

  The supply trolley had hit a landmine planted at night by saboteurs. Ammunition, potatoes, rice and cans of corned beef rained down on them. Two of Tolek’s colleagues were killed and four injured. Tolek got off with shock and a sore head after being hit by a flying can.

  No one could believe that he was that lucky. After another inquiry, his file thickened. More soldiers crossed themselves when they saw him, but many now shadowed him whenever possible.

  * * *

  Then the British invented the dreaded night patrols. Clad in black, with soft charcoal smeared on their faces, the soldiers crawled from the foxholes into the desert. They stumbled around in no man’s land from scrub to scrub, trying to find single enemy soldiers they could kidnap for interrogation. On one night patrol in Tobruk, they were led by a newly arrived lieutenant. The man was from a city returned to Poland after the Great War and spoke fluent German, so he could listen in to the enemy’s broadcasts and pick out targets for kidnapping and interrogation.

  Tolek’s night patrol, crawling around in the dark on a moonless night, were challenged in Italian: ‘Chi è la?’

  Before they could contemplate a reply, heavy machine-gun fire barked at them and grenades flew over their heads. Bullets whistled past their ears – one wrong move, you’re dead. The two men on either side of Tolek went down, one screaming, one still. The firing was so fierce they couldn’t even lift their heads to seek direction, much the less rescue their wounded. The Poles shot their rifles into the dark, aiming at the gunfire flashes, and threw a few
grenades, then rolled backwards. Tolek’s progress was hampered by his personal bodyguards, the colleagues who had decided that wherever he happened to be was the safest place. The seven-helmeted, giant black cockroach they created made an inviting target.

  Suddenly, a screaming Italian soldier, waving his rifle and bayonet, jumped up in front of them and Tolek’s comrades bolted in all directions. Tolek, flat on his back, was sure he was dead. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting to be punctured by bullets, to be speared by a bayonet; each second dragged on like an hour. When he finally slit open his eyes, the enemy soldier had dropped his rifle and his hands were up in the air. As unbelievable as it was, Tolek roared with relieved laughter: the soldier was giving himself up. When Tolek caught his breath, he brought the Italian back to camp on his own. A high-ranking Italian officer was a big prize.

  There was a bonus: the captured Italian brought two bottles of red wine with him. So while they were waiting for British intelligence to come and collect him, the patrol shared his wine. It was amazing how quickly they shifted from murderous enemies to drinking comrades.

  Tolek got a commendation and more people crossed themselves. Tolek Klings had now achieved the status of the battalion’s good luck charm. His worst injury that night was a mouth and ears full of sand.

  Another loss on that night patrol was the new multilingual lieutenant. He just disappeared, then turned up after three days wearing a German officer’s uniform. He told a thoroughly unbelievable story of how he had killed for the uniform, then spent three days as an officer in the German Army, learning their secrets.

  ‘I got lucky,’ the officer confided in Tolek, who knew the possible extent of luck. ‘I took a chance. I did what I could for my country.’