My Boyhood War

by Bohdan Hryniewicz

  The next day, 22 August, was again sunny and warm. In the morning, we twice attempted to continue our attack across Bielańska Street. Both attempts were fruitless as heavy machine gun crossfire blocked the street. Later, I walked through the rooms of the looted palace. Paintings on the wall were slashed or lay torn on the floor; furniture had been turned over and broken; drawers were pulled out, spilling their contents; the floor was covered with broken pottery, glass and plaster. In the upstairs library, books were scattered over the floor. The centre of the room held a row of museum tables, their glass tops smashed and their contents emptied. On the floor, amongst the broken glass and plaster, I noticed an ivory cross about 3in tall. The figure of Christ was beautifully carved and designed to hang from a cord of pleated horsehair. Attached to it was a small paper tag with elegant script in fading sepia ink: ‘This cross was worn on her deathbed by Princess Izabela Czartoryska, mother of Prince Adam Czartoryski.’ I picked it up and put it in my bag.

  That afternoon we received an order from Maj. Sosna to recapture the group of buildings on the opposite side of Bielańska Street, between Tłomacka and Długa streets. The final objective was the recapture of the telephone exchange and the territory lost after our battalion was relieved from the Nałęcz Redoubt. Our action was to be reinforced: another group was to attack from the Simons commercial building on our right flank. Col. Wachnowski specifically ordered Nałęcz to take command of our group while Maj. Sosna was to appoint the CO of the other attacking group. The co-ordinated attack of both groups was scheduled to commence at midnight and the signal would be a shot from our anti-tank gun in the Simons building.

  The promised reinforcements arrived towards evening. They included the remainder of P-20 Company under the command of Lt. ‘Edward’ as well as Lt. Nowina’s unit. The third group was a partisan unit from Kampinos Forest, freshly arrived through sewers from Zoliborz. They were very well armed by the Allied airdrops; some of them even wore British battle dress. They were to provide supporting fire but we weren’t sure of their urban fighting experience. Again assault groups were selected with lieutenants Pobóg and Orwid in command. Our immediate target was a building opposite the palace, 9 Bielańska Street. Abczyc’s sappers were to blow up the entrance gate and neutralise the machine gun nest. We took the jump-off positions in the burned-out palace guardhouse. It was just an empty shell with walls as the roof had collapsed during the fire. I stood next to Nałęcz. We were checking our watches and straining to hear the gun shot. Midnight passed. A new day began, 23 August. Time kept on passing. Finally a runner came from Maj. Sosna – the attack was postponed until 3 a.m. The signal would be a white flare fired towards the Arsenal from the Simons building.

  As we waited in the burned-out building, we started receiving mortar fire; the Germans must have been alerted. Three o’clock came and went, and still no signal. Finally, we saw a green flare from the indicated direction. There was a moment’s hesitation as we were expecting a white flare. Then a fainter white flare became visible from the same direction and Nałęcz ordered us to attack. When Abczyc and his sappers sprinted forward, across the street, all hell broke loose. The explosion at the targeted building was drowned out by a barrage of German mortar and concentrated machine gun fire along Bilańska Street. To our left and across the street there were machine gun nests that had not been destroyed. The attack was stopped cold. The street in front was swept by machine gun fire, mortars exploded all over and illuminating flairs were fired by the Germans. The sappers retreated with Abczyc’s lifeless body. Some mortar rounds exploded inside the roofless guardhouse and wounded Nałęcz, who was standing next to me. He received shrapnel wounds to his legs and falling masonry dislocated his left shoulder. We retreated to the palace. The other group, on our right flank, never left their jump-off positions. About twenty men from the attacking units in our group were killed, including six from our unit. Many more were wounded, including the majority of our officers. Our losses were about 50 per cent: of the approximately forty men who initially captured the palace, six had been killed and sixteen wounded.

  Back in the palace, we manned defensive positions on the ground floor. The partisan unit remained on the second floor. Nurses tended to the wounded. Nałęcz wrote a situation report and sent me to deliver it to Maj. Sosna. I found him, delivered the report and answered all his questions. When I returned, Lt. Orwid was in command. The wounded Nałęcz and Pobóg had been evacuated to get medical attention. Of the approximately twenty men left in our unit, some were also wounded.

  While I was away, a grave had been dug in the palace garden for Abczyc’s body. Most of the other dead were left where they fell: it was impossible to retrieve them. The remaining sappers invited me to be in the funeral honour guard. To save ammunition, only one volley was fired from three rifles and my pistol. A cross was made from packing crate boards, upon which his name and the date were scribbled in pencil. One of the sappers gave me the notebook Abczyc always carried on him. I used to watch him make sketches, in ink and pencil, of our soldiers and engagements; he was a very good illustrator. There were also descriptions of some of the actions, with situation sketches. The notebook was about 4 x 6in with a black oilcloth cover, about ¾in thick. There was a jagged hole in the middle made by the shrapnel fragment that killed him. It travelled through the book and his chest.

  It was already dusk when Lt. Orwid, who had presided over the funeral service, and I returned to the palace. ‘Go and get some rest,’ he told me. I replied that I would be under the stairs in the entrance hall. I took off my bag and laid it on the floor, unbuckled my helmet, placed a brick under it and used it as a pillow. I curled up under the lowest part of the stairs and immediately fell asleep.

  I dreamt I was flying in a plane. The noise of the engine got louder and louder. An explosion woke me up. I moved a few feet to the open door of the living room under the stair landing. Through the open doors, which were on the opposite side of the living room, I saw a smoking bomb crater in the middle of the garden. I got back under the stairs and lay down again. A few minutes later came the screeching noise of another diving Stuka, followed by the increasingly intense whistle of a falling bomb and the roar of an engine pulling out of a dive, then a thud and a slight shake of the building. A second or two passed and a thought crossed my mind: it’s a dud … then I blacked out. As I slowly came to, my ears were ringing and I was choking on dust. I could hear somebody faintly yelling: ‘Bohdan! Bohdan!’ Through the grey dust I saw the dim glow of torchlight. I yelled: ‘Here! here!’ Lt. Orwid’s hand appeared through the dust, I grabbed it and he pulled me up. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. I stood up, shaking off the pieces of plaster and dust. ‘I am fine, sir!’

  I tried to find my bag, which held all my keepsakes: my uncle’s overseas cap, the set of city-of-Warsaw table silver, a bottle of 150-year-old wine from the cellars of the town hall, the ivory cross from the palace and Abczyc’s notebook. I had laid it down on the floor close to me; it was now buried under rubble. The item I missed most was the notebook. It would have been a very valuable pictorial record of our soldiers and the actions of our battalion.

  I gave up searching and went to join Lt. Orwid, who was calling me. I stayed with him as he surveyed the damage and established new defensive positions. The left wing of the palace had received a direct hit and was demolished. There were heavy losses in the partisans’ unit on the second floor. The few men remaining from Nałęcz Battalion took positions around the windows of the ground floor of the main palace building. German infantry renewed their attacks from Bielańska Street but short bursts from our machine gun kept them at bay. The wounded were evacuated across the alleyway, through the hole in the wall of a building on Długa Street. The bursts from our machine gun were getting shorter and finally stopped. The only defensive fire was now from rifles.

  Lt. Orwid scribbled a few words on a page of his notebook and told me to deliver it to Maj. Sosna. I was to report that we had received a direct hit from the bomb, had
many casualties, were under attack and running out of ammunition. I was to stress that unless we received reinforcements immediately we would be forced to abandon the palace. I sprinted across the alleyway, which was already receiving German fire, to the hole on the other side. I found the major, already on his way to our position, in the courtyard of a building adjoining 29 Długa Street. He received my report and told me to tell Lt. Orwid he must hold as long as he could. I jumped back through the alleyway, which was receiving more and more fire, and reported to Lt. Orwid.

  Our fire was slackening as we were running out of ammunition. The Germans were getting closer and were now using grenades. I followed Lt. Orwid to the open side door of the palace, opposite the hole. He told me to go to Sosna again and report that unless we received help in the next fifteen minutes we would have to abandon the palace. He looked at me: ‘Get going!’ I ran across the alleyway, which was now under heavy machine gun fire, and again found Sosna on the other side. He was organising the defence of what had become known as ‘the Barricade of the Holy Mother’ (because a picture of the Madonna remained hanging, intact, on the wall above a hole of the destroyed building). Shortly afterwards, our men started to withdraw across the alleyway. During the retreat, Lt. Orwid, one of the last across the alleyway, was wounded and Lt. Zew killed. We had three killed, including Nurse ‘Jasia’, and about ten wounded including, nurses ‘Alicja’ and ‘Halina’.

  The Germans reoccupied the palace, or what was left of it. We paid a high price: the battalion lost its fighting ability and was sent to rest in the Spiess building, where our wounded and sick were sheltered. The few remaining soldiers capable of fighting joined the defence of ‘the Barricade of the Holy Mother’. Only twelve days before, a 200-man battalion had attacked the telephone exchange, later called the Nałęcz Redoubt. Only fifteen men capable of action remained.

  14

  Evacuation to the Centre,

  24–29 August 1944

  24 August. I was with what remained of our battalion in the Spiess building behind the town hall. It was a large five-storey building belonging to a pharmaceutical company on the corner of Hipoteczna and Daniełowiczowska streets. The day before, a German Stuka had been shot down during a dive and crashed into the roof of the building. The explosion broke a large glass demi-john of sulphuric acid, which splattered and burned some of our wounded and nurses. The worst affected, burnt on their faces and hands, were Gryf, the oldest of three Mirowski brothers, and nurse ‘Baśka II’ (thereafter known as ‘Burned Baśka’ to differentiate her from ‘Baśka I’). I reported to Nałęcz, who was limping and had his left hand in a sling. His shrapnel wounds had been patched up and the dislocated shoulder reset. He told me to go rest and catch up on my sleep.

  The next day, 25 August, Nałęcz formed two small assault groups from the men still capable of fighting, commanded by cadet officers since the few remaining officers had been wounded. The men were all very well armed as the weapons of injured soldiers had to be relinquished to other units. Some weapons were reluctantly surrendered but many others were hidden away. One assault group was sent to join in the attack that recaptured part of the town hall. The other reinforced the defence of the ‘Holy Mother’ barricade.

  I requested and received permission from Nałęcz to go and look for Andrzej’s grave. I walked, for hours, all around the hospital, checking pavements and courtyards in vain. Most of the graves were there; it was relatively easy to dig there since the paving stones had been removed from the pavements to construct barricades. The cobblestones of the courtyards were also easy to remove. While walking the streets of the old town I saw the destruction caused over the previous twenty days by constant air bombing, artillery and rocket fire. Almost all the buildings had been hit. Some were completely destroyed, nothing more than piles of rubble, others were severely damaged, full of holes, while still others were just burned-out walls with gaping holes in place of windows and doors. Masonry rubble spilled onto the streets and bomb craters were everywhere. On Miodowa Street I saw two burned-out piles of metal, Liberator bombers shot down while making airdrops over Krasiński Square. The streets were empty. From time to time a runner would go by, nurses carrying a stretcher with an wounded, a group of civilians with their meagre belongings looking for shelter.

  The next couple of days were anticlimactic. As Nałęcz was recuperating from his wounds he was no longer directly commanding any unit. The two detached assault groups were integrated into other units. I followed him to meetings at the headquarters of Maj. Sosna, to our detached units and to the hospital to see some of our more severely wounded. Most of our lightly wounded were in the basement of the Spiess building.

  In the late afternoon of the 28th a female runner arrived with two men. They all smelled rather bad. The men, called kanalarz, were employees of the municipal sewage department familiar with the extensive sewage system under Warsaw. The runner brought Nałęcz an order from KB HQ, to return to the centre of town immediately with the battalion. After a brief rest, the woman left with one of the men, leaving the other behind.

  It was dark when I led Nałęcz to Col. Wachnowski’s headquarters in the vestry of St Jacek church on Freta Street. After a short wait, the colonel’s adjutant let us in. Nałęcz saluted as I stood at attention behind him. The colonel came forward, shook hands with Nałęcz, looked at me and asked: ‘Are you the runner who came from the telephone exchange when your unit was cut off?’ (He had also interrogated me on the 15th, in Maj. Sosna’s headquarters when I arrived from our cut-off positions.) Standing at attention, I clicked my heels: ‘Yes, sir! ‘What is your name?’ ‘Runner Bohdan, sir!’ ‘Well done, Bohdan’. He nodded and sat behind his desk, indicating to Nałęcz to sit down in a chair opposite him. I sat down on the floor with my back against the wall. I heard the whole subsequent conversation.

  Nałęcz stated that he had received a direct order from KB HQ to evacuate the battalion immediately to the centre of town, through the sewers. However, he said, he was under the tactical command of the colonel and would abide by his orders. The colonel replied that in recognition of the valour with which the battalion had fought, and the very heavy casualties it had suffered, he would allow the evacuation of the wounded only. Men capable of fighting would have to stay. Nałęcz acknowledged the order and asked for the pass to send the runner to KB headquarters. The colonel called in his adjutant and told him to prepare the pass to enter the sewers that night. He also told Nałęcz that the order allowing the evacuation of the wounded would be ready in the morning. We got up and saluted and left his office. Several minutes later, his adjutant gave us the pass. We returned to our quarters, where Nałęcz dictated his report. He called in C. Off. ‘Czajka’, who had almost recovered from his wounds, gave each of us one copy to deliver to HQ on Boduena Street.

  Around midnight I led Nałęcz, Czajka and a sewer worker down to Krasiński Square, where the entrance to the sewer was. On the way over, I asked Nałęcz what I should tell my mother about Andrzej. After a while, Nałęcz said: ‘Why don’t you tell her that Andrzej was wounded and evacuated through the sewers to Zoliborz?’ (This was a suburb of Warsaw on the north side of the old town.) After a pause, I quietly said: ‘Yes, I will do that.’ I took my diary, where I had made notes since the beginning of the Uprising, including the details of Andrzej’s death. I tore out page after page, letting them drop as we walked through the ruined streets towards the sewer entrance.

  I looked at my watch: it was after midnight, already 29 August. We reached the entrance to the sewer on the corner of Krasiński Square and Długa Street. The open manhole was guarded by military police. Cpt. Barry, CO of the military police was there himself. There was bad blood between him and Nałęcz after part of Barry’s unit had decided to join us in the town hall. Nałęcz showed him the pass from Col. Wachnowski. Barry looked at it, then at us, and said: ‘They are not going.’ Nałęcz pulled out his 9mm Colt and said, ‘They are going,’ and to us, ‘Start going down’. First the sewer worker, the
n me and then Czajka started to climb down the iron rungs of the manhole to a small, dimly lit chamber. The sewer worker gave us his instructions: he would be the only one to use the torch, we were not to turn ours on; when he stopped and turned off his torch I was to grab his belt and Czajka mine; we were to move when he moved and stop when he stopped; there would be no talking, absolute silence; altogether, we would cover over a mile, it should take about two hours; the first part would be easy, the sewer was large and we would almost be able to walk normally; the last part would be the most difficult, we would have to crawl using sticks. He gave us each a 20in length of broomstick.