Two more Hetzers emerged from Wierzbowa Street, followed by infantry. The tanks were very cautious and it was obvious that they did not want to come close to our positions. The infantry behind could not deploy because of crossfire from our two machine guns. Again the tanks started to shell us and the machine guns from the opera house started to rake our walls. Nevertheless, their attack stalled and they withdrew. The same tactic was repeated twice more without success. Finally, around 5 p.m., all fighting ceased. When the first attack started, some women scattered and managed to escape, but many were killed. When all the fighting stopped, standing on the top floor of the town hall, Nałęcz and I counted thirty-four German corpses lying in different contorted positions on Theatre Square. The Germans who attacked us were from the SS Dirlewanger Brigade.
That evening we buried our five dead. We also had several wounded. Later that night, a few of our men crawled into the square to salvage weapons and ammunition from among the dead Germans. This was a dangerous task as German troops would light the square with flares and spray it with machine guns at any sign of movement.
The next morning, 9 August, was all quiet in our sector. We heard constant explosions from the centre of the old town. Stukas were flying and dropping their bombs there non-stop; at one point, I saw four planes over the old town at the same time. The planes were based at Okęcie Airport, on the outskirts of Warsaw, so it took no time to fly, bomb, return to the airport, rearm and return over the city. There was a constant sound of screeching from the diving plane and the whistle of a falling bomb followed by an explosion with its clouds of dust and smoke. We on the front line were lucky; the Germans did not bomb us due to the proximity of their own lines. In most cases, the enemy line was just on the other side of the same street.
In the early afternoon the Germans again entered Theatre Square shielded by Polish women. After a while they withdrew without attacking us. We continued to receive machine gun fire from the opera house. Our losses that day were only one killed.
In the late afternoon a runner arrived with an order from Lt. Col. Kuba, commanding officer of the sector, to turn over our position to the company from the Łukasiński Battalion. We were to become Reserve of the Group and were assigned new quarters at Hotel Polski, No 29 Długa Street. I accompanied Lt. Nałęcz to Group HQ on Barokowa Street, where I overheard a heated discussion between Nałęcz and Lt. Col. Kuba. Nałęcz tried to convince the colonel to rescind his order and allow our battalion to stay in its current position. He argued that our soldiers were very familiar with the position and would be able to react better and more quickly to attacks, and find cover, thus avoiding unnecessary losses. Newly arrived troops, on the other hand, would be at a disadvantage and would suffer larger casualties and could even lose the defensive positions. The colonel curtly said that he had made his decision to have troops frequently change positions. Further arguments from Lt. Nałęcz resulted in the terse command, ‘Lieutenant, acknowledge and execute!’ Coming to attention, Lt. Nałęcz saluted, ‘Yes, Colonel, sir!’
The following morning, 10 August, our men turned over their positions to the new unit and moved to new quarters. P-20 Company moved with us and the platoons of Lt. Leszek, integrated into our battalion, remained with us. This created bad blood between Lt. Nałęcz and Cpt. Barry, who had commanded them before. Since Barry’s unit had become military police, Leszek preferred to be in the front line unit.
Later that afternoon, after our officers had briefed the new replacements, Nałęcz was relaxing, sitting with some of our officers around the table in the prison guards’ mess hall in the rear of the town hall. There were still a few bottles of the old wine from the cellars left. Nałęcz decided that they all should have a ‘stirrup cup’ before leaving our old positions. Well, after a few cups somebody checked the calendar and discovered that 10 August was my name day. Nałęcz proposed a toast to me and decided that I would have to drink it with them. A demitasse was filled with the old wine and I drank it while they sang ‘100 years, 100 years …’, the Polish equivalent of ‘Happy Birthday’. The wine was very tasty, sweet and syrupy. I was also given a bottle as a name day present. After a while I tried to get up and couldn’t. I had problems moving my arms and legs. After a couple of hours a very merry, but not very steady, group made its way to the Hotel Polski. Andrzej was there and he had a place for me to sleep. The next day I got up not knowing how I ever got there.
The day of 11 August was devoted to clean-up, resupply and reorganisation. The battalion had grown to over 200 men by absorbing volunteers wanting to join a unit that became famous for its defence of the town hall. The battalion was formed into two companies. The first was commanded by Lt. Pobóg with lieutenants Skóra, ‘Orwid’ and Leszek as platoon commanders and the second by Lt. Holski with lieutenants Jur, Bar and Zew. The squads were commanded by cadet officers from the KB Officer’s School. More girls and young women joined and increased the ranks of our nurses, commanded by Baśka. Other women became auxiliaries, doing the cooking and other chores.
The men started to change into uniforms that Jur and Andrzej brought from Stawki. The uniforms were reversible SS camouflage smocks, with summer green and autumn brown shades in a spotted ‘panther’ pattern. They were called panterki. We all wore them brown side out, which blended better with the city landscape. Andrzej kept the smallest one for me and one of the new women shortened the sleeves. Andrzej also gave me a ‘parade’ type German helmet made of a light-gauge steel. It was considerably lighter than a regular helmet. He had already scratched off the SS insignia and painted red and white Polish pennants on it. It was in effect a ‘safety helmet’ that protected my head from falling debris and banging when passing through small wall openings.
That afternoon a man came to Nałęcz wanting to show him where he had been hiding thirteen Jews for the last couple of years. We followed him to his workshop in the basement of a nearby building down Długa Street. We entered a low basement housing a typical mechanical shop with an array of metalworking machines. A workbench against an internal wall was moved to reveal an opening in the floor. Crawling through a short tunnel, we emerged on the other side of the wall. There was a candle burning on the table. In the light of our torches we realised that we were in a space created by a false wall. The space created was about 16ft long and trapezoidal in shape. At one end, about 3ft wide, were a water closet and a slop sink. At the other, about 5ft wide, were three wooden platforms, one above the other, with bedding on them. The space, like the basement, was only about six and a half feet high. There was a narrow table and a couple of benches against the long wall. Thirteen people had lived in this space for two years, without daylight, receiving food passed through the tunnel every two or three days. They could only flush the toilet at night. If they were ever found out, or betrayed, then not only they but also most of the inhabitants of the building would have been killed.
That night I had the luxury of sleeping on an actual, relatively clean, bed, with my shoes and uniform off. I did not know that I would not be able to remove either my uniform or shoes for the next two and a half weeks.
12
Old Town – Telephone Exchange Building, 12–20 August 1944
The next morning, 12 August, the Germans recommenced their aerial bombardment of the old town, as well as heavy artillery and mortar fire. For the first time, the Germans used the Nebelwerfer, a six-barrel rocket launcher which fired 8in high-explosive or incendiary rockets. It made a very specific, loud howling noise, nicknamed ‘mooing cows’.
Unbeknownst to us, a very serious situation had developed that morning. The barricade at the beginning of Leszno Street, defending the principal access to the old town from the west, had been captured, opening the way into the rear of the Polish defences. A counter-attack by an assault group from the elite Parasol Battalion temporarily recaptured the barricade. However, a second German attack once again occupied the barricade, though only after Lt. ‘Ryszard’s’ replacement unit faltered after he was severely wo
unded. The way to the soft underbelly of the old town was open once again. A small garrison in the five-storey telephone exchange building was still holding on. This building was on the corner of Przejazd and Tłomacka streets opposite the beginning of Leszno Street.
A second counter-attack by P-20 Company, ordered by Lt. Col. Kuba, broke under concentrated mortar and machine gun fire on Tłomacka Street before reaching the barricade. Lt. Col. Kuba requested and received permission to engage our battalion, the only reserve of the group. Early that afternoon, Lt. Nałęcz received orders to recapture the lost intersection.
Przygoński described our action as follows:
The 12th of August … Col. Wachnowski conducted the successful action of recapturing … the position on the confluence of Rymarska-Tłomacka-Leszno streets. The action was audaciously executed by the detached units from KB Nałęcz Battalion, cutting through Długa Street from the Arsenal side, making their way through the cellars of the buildings on Przejazd Street and into the rear of the German-occupied barricade on Leszno Street, relying on surprise, they attacked them, achieving complete success. The Hitlerites running away in panic were pushed to the crossing of Leszno and Orla streets. The KB Battalion secured the barricade, closing the exits of Leszno and Rymarska streets, organising their key defensive position in the reinforced-concrete building of the telephone exchange on Tłomacka Street at the intersection with Przejazd Street.
Powstanie warszawskie w sierpniu 1944 r., vol. 2, pp. 17–18
Two assault groups were formed under the command of Pobóg and Holski. The sapper’s section, two machine gun crews and battle nurses followed both groups. Nałęcz, as always, was at the head and I was ‘glued’ to him. We departed from the Hotel Polski walking west on both sides of Długa Street towards the Arsenal, where the two groups split. Pobóg and his group with the machine gun crews left to capture the east (even) side of Przejazd Street and take control of the telephone exchange. Nałęcz, Holski’s group and the sappers were to capture the west (odd) side of the street and the intersection with Leszno Street.
From the Arsenal we reached the courtyard of 5 Przejazd Street, the last building standing next to the ruins of the ghetto. We expected all the cellars to be interconnected. As we entered the cellars Nałęcz asked me to take the lead: he relied on my sense of direction. The cellars were almost empty; most of the civilians had already left as this had been the front line for some time. There were flickering candles here and there were small groups of people near them. We made our way under numbers 5, 3 and 1, and then entered what I estimated to be the cellars of the corner building with Leszno Street. Our immediate objective was the barricade closing Leszno Street, which adjoined this building.
We quietly reached the staircase. There was light from an open door upstairs and we heard German voices. Nałęcz and I flattened ourselves against the stairwell to make room for the assault vanguard. On his signal, the attack started. We ran after the vanguard, followed by the rest of the group. Grenades where exploding in the courtyard, machine pistols were barking, long bursts by the Germans and short ones by us. We could hear the sound of single shots, running and the screams of the wounded. Bodies were lying on the courtyard cobblestones. Some were still; others moving and moaning. Even though we managed complete surprise, the fight to clear the Germans from the courtyard and ground floor, where there had been a restaurant, was very brutal. Eventually, the surviving Germans escaped through a staircase to the upper floors.
At the same time, Pobóg and his group recaptured the other side of Przejazd Street and connected with the few remaining defenders of the telephone exchange building. Nałęcz sent me to Pobóg to tell him to place his machine guns on the top floor of the telephone exchange in order to cover us when we continued our attack down Leszno Street. The attack moved forward. We found that the buildings on the even side of Leszno were all interconnected by wall openings on the top floor. We pressed forward, clearing the buildings along the way. We reached the barricade on Orla Street supported by our machine guns on top of the telephone exchange. The blocking fire of German machine guns from Orla Street and the assault guns from Leszno Street made it impossible to capture that barricade. We retreated after repeated unsuccessful attacks. The attempt of Pobóg’s group to capture Rymarska Street barricade was also unsuccessful.
As we consolidated our defences at the Leszno Street barricade and telephone exchange, the Germans commenced heavy fire with mortars and artillery in preparation for a new attack. In the meantime, the nurses were taking care of and evacuating our wounded. Our soldiers were stripping German corpses of their weapons and ammunition.
Within a short time we saw a large group of Polish men being pushed out into Leszno Street from the Protestant church about a block away. They were followed and flanked on both pavements by German soldiers. Two assault guns, their engines and the clanking of their threads clearly audible, kept their distance behind. Nałęcz ordered the sapper section and sharpshooters to the top floors. We took positions on the second floor of 2, 4 and 6 Leszno Street. All these buildings, and those further down the street, were interconnected by holes in the party walls. The sappers had the ‘bombs’ made for our ill-fated catapult. The rest of the men were on the ground floor to deal with any German breakthrough from the street. Nałęcz sent me to the top floor of the telephone exchange to tell Lt. Zew to fire his machine guns only on the opposite side of the street in order to keep the Germans on our side. He was to wait until he heard our bombs go off before commencing fire at will.
I ran back to Nałęcz. He was on the second floor of No. 4, the building next to the barricade. He was holding a periscope fashioned from a broomstick with a mirror taped to it. We saw Polish civilians walking in the middle of the street, slowly approaching our barricade. We heard our machine gun firing short bursts and saw Germans moving against the buildings on our side to avoid its fire. We were absolutely quiet and kept away from the windows. I went down the line again quietly repeating the order to hold fire until the signal was given by Nałęcz. I returned to No. 4, where Nałęcz and ‘Abczyc’ were standing next to the window. ‘Edek’, ‘Łuniewski’, ‘Adam’ and the other sappers were further down the line in the next buildings. They were standing next to the open, glassless windows, holding bombs in one hand and lit cigarettes in the other.
The civilians reached the barricade and started to dismantle it. Directly under us we heard German voices, the rattling of equipment and sporadic firing. Still not a single shot was fired by us, the sporadic short burst of our machine gun was no longer heard. From time to time, using his periscope, Nałęcz observed the Germans below us. They were all leaning against the walls directly beneath us. After one last long look, Nałęcz turned to Abczyc and whispered, ‘Ready?’ Abczyc nodded.
Nałęcz leaned out of the window and yelled, ‘Poles, run behind the barricade, run, run!’ He turned to us: ‘Fire!’ Abczyc touched his glowing cigarette to the priming cord of his bomb and started to count ‘one hundred and one, one hundred and two …’ I ran along the buildings unnecessarily repeating ‘Fire, fire …’ as all the sappers had already activated their bombs. There was a tremendous explosion as the first bomb went off, followed by others down the line. I leaned out of the window and saw complete carnage below. German bodies were lying around in all directions torn and bleeding; the survivors were running back along the wall. Unfortunately, there were also bodies of Polish civilians. We heard the sound of a firefight in the courtyard of the corner building below us. The explosion had blown open the gates of the courtyard from Leszno Street and a few Germans had managed to escape there. They did not last long; they were all killed by our soldiers on the ground floor. Unfortunately, we also had casualties.
When the fighting stopped we counted over thirty Germans killed and severely wounded. We managed to recover a lot of weapons and ammunition. A great prize was a Russian Tokariev ten-shot repeating sniper rifle, a German Mauser rifle with grenade launcher and a signal pistol with flares and e
xplosive projectiles.
After a while the Germans made a second attempt. Another attack emerged from Orla Street covered by the assault guns from Leszno Street. The assault guns did not want to come close and the infantry advancing behind was kept at bay by our machine guns from the telephone exchange. This attack was simultaneously supported by a German sortie from Rymarska Street. It too was repulsed. By 8 o’clock all fighting had died out.
We estimated that about fifty Germans had been killed and many more wounded. Our losses were relatively light: one officer and seven other ranks killed and several more wounded. In addition, the remnants of the other Polish units taking part in this fight suffered one officer killed and two wounded, and several other ranks killed and wounded.
Once the fighting died down, we needed to reorganise all the fragmented units into permanent defences. Col. Wachnowski, the CO of the old town, decided to retain our battalion in its current position. He appointed Nałęcz to overall command of this position, later called the Reduta Nałęcz (Nałęcz Redoubt). P-20 Company was integrated into our battalion. Twenty men with a flamethrower joined our battalion from the remnants of Lt. ‘Nowina’’s ‘Tigers of Wola’ unit, which had suffered heavy casualties. The remnants of Lt. Ryszard’s platoon were withdrawn from the front line. Headquarters sent a detachment from a work battalion to repair the barricades. They worked all night and left in the morning.
Nałęcz consolidated our defences in the area. Our southern perimeter was closed off by the barricade on Rymarska Street. The eastern, against the axis of the Germans’ main thrust, by the barricade at the beginning of Leszno Street anchored against the building next to the corner with Przejazd Street. All the buildings on both sides of Przejazd Street, on the block between Długa and Tłomacka streets, were in our hands. The main defensive position was the five-storey, reinforced-concrete telephone exchange on the corner of Przejazd and Tłomacka streets. Leszno Street terminated at the intersection with Przejazd Street (from where it continued as Tłomacka Street) but it was offset by about 8ft. From the projecting part of the telephone exchange, there was a clear view down both sides of Leszno Street. Our observation post was on top of the building, manned by a sharpshooter and a machine gun.
My Boyhood War Page 11