* * * * *
After Nałęcz and I watched the three officers slip away on their mission, we waited some time before returning to headquarters. It was quite late by then, most likely after midnight, when I entered the room I shared with my mother. She was lying on her back, in her clothes, on top of the bed, looking at the ceiling. There was a dim candle at her bedside. After a while, without changing her position or looking at me, she said in a low matter-of-fact voice, ‘it is true,’ she paused. ‘Andrzej is dead.’ This was not a question; it was a statement. ‘Yes’, I replied.
I felt immediate relief – relief that I would no longer have to lie to her or avoid her as I had been doing since arrival from the old town. I felt confident that she would never find out the horrible circumstances of his death. I did not know how wrong I was.
Nothing more was said by either of us. We both knew there was nothing more that could, or should, be said. She blew out the candle, I took off my shoes and belt, lay down in my uniform on the bed we shared and we both pretended to go to sleep.
* * * * *
Battalion Order No. 28, from 11 September 1944:
II Promotions:
Private Bohdan from today’s date is promoted to the rank of a corporal with seniority as of 11.IX.44. The above promotion was given in recognition of his services as line runner of the battalion. At the same time I commend Cpl. Bohdan.
CO of 1st Assault Battalion Nałęcz
Nałęcz Cpt.
It was with great pride that I put on two stripes, signifying my new rank, on the shoulder boards of my uniform.
Around that time the front in the centre-north sector was stabilised. Our old street, Nowy Swiat, became the front line. The area to the east, Powiśle, was lost, together with the power station and access to the Vistula. Next to the centre-north and south there were three other separate districts in Polish hands: Czerniaków to the east, with its access to the Vistula; Mokotów to the south and Zoliborz to the north.
On the afternoon of the 13th, when I was at the command post of 2nd Company, we saw Russian planes again. They bombed the Poniatowski Bridge. Some time later there were more explosions from the direction of the bridge. I went with Lt. Holski to the top floor of a nearby building and we saw the bridge was down. The Germans blew it up after it was damaged by Russian bombing. We wondered if it were possible that our officers got through and this was the result of their mission. Later that day, all remaining bridges across the Vistula were dynamited by the Germans. The Russians now occupied the whole of the Praga district on the other side of the river. During the next few days German troops concentrated their assault on the separate remaining districts, starting with Czerniaków. During the night of 15–16 September, units of the Polish People’s Army crossed the Vistula and reinforced the defences of Czerniaków. On the 15th, the KB hospital on Boduena Street was bombed, over a hundred wounded soldiers lost their lives. Our battalion was lucky; most of our wounded, with the exception of Sten, were no longer there. Sten, first wounded in the old town, then again after arriving in the centre, was there and suffered wounds for a third time.
From the time that our two companies went to the front line, combat at their respective sectors was static. Both units were in defensive positions although there was one fierce action conducted in the same manner as we had fought in the old town. On the 15th, supported by tanks, the Germans captured a building on the corner of Bracka Street and Jerusalem Avenue. The Germans who occupied this corner building were separated from our positions by solid, thick party walls, which prevented them from further exploiting their breakthrough. The assault group from our 2nd Company under Lt. Patriota blasted a large opening in the party wall. Then, in a surprise attack, with machine pistols and grenades, they recaptured the building. Several German soldiers were killed within the building; more in the avenue when they tried to escape to the other side. The corner building was re-occupied by our 2nd Company. When I visited them next morning I saw about fifteen German bodies lying in front of their positions. During the next few nights, we salvaged most of the German weapons and ammunition.
We heard that more Polish People’s Army troops had crossed the Vistula during the next couple of nights. Fighting there was very heavy as the Germans wanted to eliminate this bridgehead at all costs. After the Russians bombed the Poniatowski Bridge they launched night flights over Warsaw, dropping needed supplies. This action was more show rather than meaningful help. They flew outdated single-engine biplanes from the late 1920s. The planes were PO-2s, nicknamed Kukuruznik from the Russian word for maize, and used prior to the war for crop dusting, hence the name. The drops were made at night to points identified by signal fires. The plane usually turned off its engine to avoid AA fire and dropped the supplies during a shallow dive, restarting the engine when pulling up. The supplies were dropped from low altitudes without parachutes. The food was mostly hardtack and there was tobacco. Weapons were also dropped without parachutes in bundles together with ammunition in boxes, resulting in much damage to the supplies. The one anti-tank rifle the Sokól Battalion retrieved from a drop was so damaged that it became inoperative after being fired just once.
One evening, Nałęcz asked me if I knew of a tall building where we could look out for any airdrops. Just before midnight I brought him to the building where Holski and I had gone to see the recently destroyed Poniatowski Bridge. From the attic of the six-storey building we had a clear view all around because the roof was gone. The night was dark and all around us as far as the eye could see was a glow of fires and burning buildings. Flames were coming out of gaping open windows and from roofless attics. The whole of Warsaw was burning.
Beginning on the 15th, Cpt. Nałęcz was assigned to KB headquarters staff and from then on most of his time was spent there. His new assignment left me with even more free time, which I spent hanging around with one or the other of our two companies. I did, however, accompany Nałęcz on his inspection and visits to our companies.
The question of food was becoming very critical. Almost all of the reserves that our population had were exhausted. There was no meat as all the horses had been eaten during the first few days. Now the dogs started to disappear. Up until then I do not remember being really very hungry; somehow I always had something to eat. From time to time we would discover delicacies such as cans of pineapple, found hidden in an apartment in the old town, or boxes of Portuguese sardines, found recently behind a false wall in a cellar. From now on, our principal food was porridge made from un-husked barley. It was nicknamed zapluwajka. A rough translation is ‘spit soup’. It was so named because after carefully chewing each mouthful one had to spit out the remaining husks. The barley came from one of the warehouses of the Haberbusch & Schile brewery, which remained in Polish hands. Each night the Army Work Battalions transported sacks of grain on their backs. It was hard and dangerous work. On many early mornings I saw caravans of men walking single file, carrying heavy sacks. Occasionally, civilians were allowed to join the work battalions and were permitted to keep a small part of the grain they brought back. Living conditions for the civilian population were becoming unbearable. No electricity or running water, food almost gone, constant bombing and shelling. People combined their meagre supplies to cook one daily communal meal on outdoor fires in their courtyards. Nevertheless, the civilian population was bearing these hardships with great determination and surprising fortitude. During all the time I spent walking through cellars and courtyards where people now lived and sheltered, I never came across any sign of anger or hostility towards our soldiers.
One day as I was savouring my daily zapluwajka from the field kitchen of 1st Company I found, to my great surprise, a small piece of meat. It tasted like any other overcooked meat but it turned out to be dog meat. That did not bother any of us and I would gladly have eaten some more. On another occasion, I was given a piece of sausage supposedly made from cat meat. I guess when you’re really hungry you lose all inhibitions.
17
American Airdrop – Centre South, 18–29 September 1944
The Soviet government cannot of course object to English or American aircraft dropping arms in the region of Warsaw … But they decidedly object to American or British aircraft, after dropping arms in the region of Warsaw, landing on Soviet territory …
Andrey Y. Vyshinsky, message to Ambassador
Harriman in Moscow, 15 August 1944, Foreign Relations of
the United States, 1944, Vol. 3 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office), pp. 1374–6
Why should they not land on the refuelling ground which has been assigned to us behind the Russian lines … ?
Winston Churchill’s telegram to F.D. Roosevelt,
25 August 1944
I do not consider it advantageous to the long range general war prospect for me to join with you in the proposed message to U.J. (Uncle Joe).
Message from F.D. Roosevelt to Winston Churchill, 25 August 1944, Roosevelt Papers, Map Room Papers, Box 6
On 18 September 1944, around 2 p.m., while returning to headquarters, I heard the sound of many aircraft engines. As the sound increased in intensity, many people, both soldiers and civilians, ran out into the streets. A huge armada of large bombers appeared flying from the north-west at great heights, trailing white contrails behind them. That was the first time I had ever seen a contrail; Polish, German and Russian planes never flew that high. German AA opened up with the greatest intensity that I’d ever witnessed. Above us, white parachutes began to appear, dropping from the planes. ‘Polish paratroopers are coming,’ people were shouting. We were all sure that the long-awaited arrival of the Polish Parachute Brigade had come. Soon it became clear that containers, not paratroopers, were swinging under the parachutes. It was a supply drop. We all looked on in dismay as most of the containers drifted over our lines and into German hands. The planes continued in a south-easterly direction. The AA fire died down, leaving the sky full of puffs of black smoke. The white contrails slowly disappeared. The dejected population returned to their shelters. Our soldiers were seeking and recovering the dropped containers.
What we did not know then was that that same day the first elements of the Polish Parachute Brigade were landing at Arnhem. Three days later the rest of the brigade was dropped across the Rhine, on the German-held drop zone. They fought vainly in this faultily conceived, planned and executed last part of the operation known now as ‘A Bridge Too Far’.
In the one and only large supply drop attempted by the Allies, 110 B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from the US Army 8th Air Force took off from England; 107 arrived over Warsaw and from a great height dropped 1,280 220lb containers. Because of the height only 380, less than a third, fell within Polish lines. Two planes were shot down and 104 landed at Poltava, a Russian airbase in Ukraine. The base had been assigned to and previously used by the USAAF United States Army Air Force for ‘pendulum’ bombing of the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. Until that day, Stalin had not allowed the United States use of this base for a mission to supply Warsaw. By the forty-ninth day of the Uprising, Stalin did not expect us to last much longer. He allowed this one and only Allied airdrop, simply for public relations.
* * *
After the war, I learned that Churchill had wanted Roosevelt to pressure Stalin to allow use of this base for supplying Warsaw. He wanted Roosevelt to threaten Stalin with stoppage of the Murmansk convoys, which were delivering supplies to Russia. Roosevelt declined his request. In February 2003, I attended an American Institute of Polish Culture function in Miami. One of the guests was Winston Spencer-Churchill (1940–2010), grandson of Winston Churchill. His mother, Pamela, was married to Averell Harriman. At lunch the next day, I was sitting next to him and our conversation turned to the Warsaw Uprising. I asked him if he knew anything about the Allied airdrops. He told me that his grandfather confirmed to him that Roosevelt had refused to threaten Stalin with stoppage of supplies to Russia in order to force help for the Warsaw Uprising. He added that later, when he asked his stepfather Averell Harriman (who had been Roosevelt’s advisor and wartime US Ambassador to Moscow), Spencer-Churchill said: ‘Harriman gave me a dirty look and walked out of the room.’
Our conversation later moved on to the Katyń Memorial Monument in London. Winston Spencer-Churchill, as a Member of Parliament for a district near Manchester, represented a large constituency of Polish Second World War serviceman who settled there after the war. In 1975, he became a member of an Honorary Committee for the Katyń Memorial Fund. He intervened with the Foreign Office, trying to countermand an unpopular decision. Under pressure from the Soviet Union, the Foreign Office disallowed a description of the monument which stated that that Polish officers were murdered in 1940 by the NKVD. The government gave the committee two alternatives: the date of 1940 without the place (Katyń); or the place without the date. In the end, the description read:
In remembrance of 14,500 Polish prisoners of war who disappeared in 1940 from camps in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostaszkow of whom 4,500 were later identified in mass graves at Katyń near Smolensk.
* * * * *
The day following the US airdrop, The Russian Air Force appeared over Warsaw in strength. Their planes bombed several German positions, including the BGK building opposite our 2nd Company positions. We again speculated about whether our officers had managed to reach Russian headquarters, since this building was one of the designated targets. The Germans continued to concentrate their attacks on the Czerniaków district in order to eliminate the Vistula bridgehead. On the night of 19 September, Col. ‘Radosław’ evacuated his group through the sewers to the Mokotów district. On the 23rd, Czerniaków fell and the Germans repeated the same atrocities as after the fall of the old town. All surviving soldiers, including the wounded and nurses, were brutally killed.
The same day, our 2nd Company suffered the largest loss of life since evacuating from the old town. Heavy artillery and mortar fire on their position killed several officers and men, wounding many others. That same night, on the corner of Krucza and Nowogródek streets, in the courtyard of the buildings destroyed in 1939, a bonfire was lit to designate a drop point for an expected Russian airdrop. In addition to the designated soldiers, from our company and Sokół Battalion, a large group of other soldiers and civilians gathered there. Nałęcz and I arrived before midnight and left after a short visit. Shortly after there was a direct hit on the courtyard. In the resulting carnage our company had more killed and wounded that day. Sokół Battalion also lost four men and had several wounded. It has never been determined conclusively what happened. There are two speculations: one, a direct hit from a German mortar and two, a German plane with its engine cut out dropped a bomb. The next day’s order of the day listed, by name, the following casualties:
Killed in action: two officers and six other ranks.
Wounded: one officer and seven other ranks.
Two days later, I joined our officers and men for a funeral mass for the fallen. Lt. ‘Szczęsny’ died that day of his wounds. Three other soldiers died over the next two days.
The Germans now concentrated their attacks on the Mokótow area. From the 26th to the 27th our forces started to evacuate this district through the sewers to the centre of town. For some of the soldiers from the Radosław Group this was the fifth time they had moved through the sewers. The remaining troops capitulated. By that time, the Germans had finally started to recognise combatant rights of the Polish Home Army under the Geneva Convention.
On the 26th, the HQ of the battalion moved across the street to 51 Koszykowa. We took over an apartment on the second floor overlooking the street. Two days later, as my mother was standing next to the open balcony door, a 2-ton shell from a Karl-Gerät siege mortar exploded on the street below. Luckily, it hit the street about two buildings to the side. Nevertheless, the explosion threw her clear across the room and ruptured an eardrum. (By that time, all the glass in the windows was long gone and there was no longer any danger of flying glass par
ticles). Fortunately, she was only knocked about but, unfortunately, lost her hearing in that ear. We all knew that after each explosion you had about half an hour before the next one. It took a long time to reload this mortar. The shells were audible as they fell relatively slowly. They were nicknamed latajace kufry, ‘flying coffers’.
During my daily visits to 2nd Company, I’d noticed that German bodies, lying in front of their position since the 16th, were decomposing and smelled rather bad. Also, there was a sack of supplies, recently dropped by a Russian plane, in the middle of the avenue.
Around the 24th, from their positions across the avenue, a German soldier who spoke Polish with a Silesian accent started up conversational banter. Our men replied, chiding him for not removing the corpses of his fallen comrades. To this he said that they were afraid we would shoot them if they tried. On our assurances that we would not shoot, he replied that he would speak with his lieutenant. Next day, the conversation continued, but with a German officer. He proposed a brief ceasefire for them to remove the corpses and for us to retrieve the sack of supplies. During the proposed ceasefire an officer from each side would remain in the middle of the avenue. Following approval by our high command, since this involved other neighbouring Polish units, it was agreed that a ceasefire would begin at 4 p.m. the following day.
My Boyhood War Page 18