THE LAST GOOD WAR: A Novel

by Paul Wonnacott

  Ryk suddenly didn't feel quite so tired.

  She wanted to know how he had gotten out of Poland. He provided a brief report of the flight of the Red Baron.

  “There's someone I'd like you to meet,” she said, taking his hand.

  They headed toward a corner, toward a tightly packed group of pilots. They didn't seem to be acting precisely the way officers and gentlemen should. They were jockeying for position; occasionally, there was just a hint of an elbow.

  “Ah,” said Lois, with a touch of envy, “some girls just have it.”

  As they approached, Ryk caught the eye of one of the civilians just as she turned. She broke away from her admirers and rushed to Ryk, throwing her arms around his neck.

  “Oh, Ryk, Ryk. I was afraid I might never see you again. I'm so glad you got out of Sweden.”

  “Anna. Anna.” For a few moments, that was the only thing he managed to say.

  They began an animated conversation in Polish.

  At least the other officers were gentlemen enough to fade away and to leave the two alone. One by one, they turned their attention back to Yvonne and a number of other vivacious young ladies who worked for the government. Where was not exactly clear; the pilots were having the worst time trying to get telephone numbers.

  Ryk and Anna talked of their adventures; they had so much to catch up on. Anna recounted her difficulties during her first morning in Britain, substituting the Air Force Meteorological Service for Naval Intelligence and not mentioning any names. Ryk was astonished that anyone could be so enthusiastic about weather forecasting, but he was grateful that someone was doing it.

  Ryk tried to ignore the way she rubbed her cheek with her left hand, displaying her wedding ring. The message was unmistakable. Only too clearly, Anna was still deeply in love with Kaz. Or, thought Ryk, grasping at straws: she was still deeply in love with his misty, fantasy memory. Unlikely they'll ever see one another again.

  Anna rubbed her cheek again. “Message received and understood,” said Ryk lightly. Anna blushed, and, to make amends, leaned over and did up the top button of his tunic. As he felt her hand brush against his chest, he briefly grasped and squeezed it. She looked him softly in the eyes for a few seconds, then gently withdrew her hand.

  Someone cranked up a gramophone and started to play Glen Miller records. Beer was flowing; the party was warming up.

  Would she like to dance? The speaker was a boyish officer with pilot's wings. Anna wondered if he was shaving yet. Yes, she'd love to.

  Anna hadn't danced to Glen Miller before. She swung from one pilot to another; she hadn't had so much fun since the war began. A dark thought intruded: what a horrid war. So little fun, so much danger for these marvelous young men. But she suppressed the thought as she went on to the next partner. Each seemed more lively than the last.

  The music switched to Vera Lynn. “We'll hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line.” Each time they came to that phrase, the dancers joined in the song. Then, “Bless 'em all, bless 'em all....” The dancers stopped, formed lines with arms around their partners' waists, and swayed as they sang along. “There'll be blue birds over, The White Cliffs of Dover....” Then, “Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.”

  The music turned sentimental. “We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when.” Anna was in Ryk's arms; he had worked his way back to her side as the dancing resumed. How wonderful to meet again! They talked of their fun as teenagers. The time Ryk and his daredevil friend Radek scaled the church steeple to put a chamber pot on the peak. It could have been even better. They could have used a tin pot; that's what Ryk wanted. Because it was porcelain, the priest quickly solved his problem with a well-aimed rifle shot. Anna had a confession. Radek mentioned the plot ahead of time. She talked him into switching from tin to porcelain. The priest had been a mountain climber thirty years before, when he was a young man. She was afraid he might take a tin pot as a personal challenge; it could have ended badly.

  “Oh, Anna, how could you betray me?” said Ryk in mock disappointment.

  A Wing Commander tried to cut in, an officer from a neighboring base. Ryk pretended not to understand, responding in Polish: “Don't you realize what a royal hash you're making of the war, sir?” But he spoke with a smile. Anna put her hand to her mouth to hide a giggle. The Wing Commander graciously backed off; perhaps the young lady didn't speak English.

  “I've been waiting to say that for months,” Ryk whispered in Anna's ear. The Wing Commander—the RAF's answer to Col. Blimp—had dragged his feet on resetting his Spitfires' guns, and relented only when faced with a mutiny.

  The music started again.

  “Who's taking you home tonight?” Anna and Ryk were now dancing cheek to cheek. “Please let it be me,” Ryk sang softly, accompanying Vera Lynn's words. Anna didn't respond, pretending that Ryk was simply continuing the sing-along.

  The music stopped. Holding hands and looking into her eyes, Ryk repeated, “Please let it be me.”

  “Oh Ryk, Ryk, please don't ask,” she said, kissing him softly on the cheek.

  Music again drifted across the floor. FOR ALL WE KNOW, WE MAY NEVER MEET AGAIN.... TOMORROW WAS MADE FOR SOME. TOMORROW MAY NEVER COME. FOR ALL WE KNOW.

  “Tomorrow may never come,” Ryk choked as he spoke the words. “Life is so uncertain.”

  Uncertain.... The fleeting life span of pilots. Anna felt a sudden pang, a surge of soft emotion; she might never see him again.... It wouldn't be immoral. This was wartime.... Or maybe he was hinting that Kaz was gone; there was no point in waiting. Her tenderness toward Ryk was overwhelmed by her longing for Kaz. In the background, she could now hear the words of the Anniversary Waltz: COULD WE BUT RELIVE THAT SWEET MOMENT DIVINE. Oh, Kaz, Kaz. There were tears in her eyes.

  They were close. Anna looked first into one of Ryk's eyes, then the other.

  He asked: could he see her again?

  She paused. Yes, she guessed so. Lois had offered an open invitation. Maybe she could meet him at the Winslow open house some Saturday or Sunday, when the weather was too bad for Germans to be flying.

  Ryk sighed.

  Nevertheless, he would eagerly take her up on the offer.

  On the trip back, Anna couldn't help but notice that the bus was only a third full; it had been packed on the way to the party. Tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Would she ever see Kaz again? Or Ryk?

  Perhaps she had been right to throw herself so completely into her work.

  Anna was sitting beside Yvonne. As the antique bus bumped and creaked along the back roads, the two women said nothing. Anna didn't notice, but Yvonne, too, had tears in her eyes.

  For Ryk, the evening could have turned out worse. Seeing Anna brought all those pleasant memories rushing back. And a week later, he received a very small package in the mail. A button from an RAF officer's uniform. It was Anna's way of saying sorry. Apparently someone had told her. Pilots who had fought through the Battle of Britain were entitled to leave the top button undone.

  Ryk took the button as a small sign of encouragement and faithfully carried it into combat as a good luck charm.

  A small flight, of only a dozen bombers, was approaching the coast. A British squadron would intercept them. The 303 could stand in readiness, in case additional Germans came.

  A single Spitfire taxied out to the end of the grass runway and immediately began its takeoff run. It rapidly climbed away, toward 15,000 feet, in a curving turn to the right until, in the distance, it faded out of sight.

  It was the last anyone would see of Joseph Frantisek.

  At the beginning of the Luftwaffe's onslaught, a memorial service was scheduled each time a pilot was lost. As the casualties mounted and the pilots approached exhaustion, memorial services for all the losses of the preceding week were held immediately after the Sunday chapel service; or, if the weather was clear and the Germans threatened, it was postponed until the first rainy day.

  At first, Ryk attended each of the services, even fo
r the pilots he had not met. But the services became painful, and unnecessary, reminders of their mortality; he stopped going.

  Joe's service would be different. As Ryk was the last one to fly with Joe, he was asked to say a few words.

  “We are here to pay tribute to one of the best pilots in the Battle of Britain, one who shot down seventeen enemy planes, more than any other man.

  “I had the privilege of flying with Joe. In a few short days, he taught me skills that have helped me survive. I owe him my life.” Ryk wasn't telling the whole truth. De mortis nihil nisi bonum: Of the dead, nothing but good.

  “Joe was a joyful and irrepressible individualist. He was happiest alone, chasing Germans out of his sky.

  “An individualist. If he had been born at a different time, in a different place, we can only wonder what he might have done. In ancient Rome, he might have been one of Horatio's noble three who held the bridge and saved the city of seven hills. If he had been born a hundred years ago, in America, he might have ridden shotgun, protecting the stagecoach from the James gang.

  “To our great good fortune, however, he was born in Prague in 1918. He was here when we needed him most.

  “He was a free spirit. He died that the rest of us could be free.”

  Ryk couldn't go on; he could feel the tears welling up. Tomorrow may never come. He had to sit down.

  Strange. He scarcely knew Joe. But it was a warning he had already learned to his great sorrow. Don't make friends. It can cause too much pain.

  16

  “They Have Run Away”

  [Russia] is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

  Winston Churchill

  In the months after their escape, Kaz and Jan often wondered if they had made the right decision. Their rash actions had caused the deaths of Piotr and Wincenty. Even though the two of them had escaped, life was little better than that in a prison camp; they faced a constant struggle to survive.

  Their first objective was to get away from Smolensk as far and as fast as possible. In the excitement immediately after their escape, they made quick time; they moved about 100 kilometers in the first week. There were few notable events.

  One was a brief ceremony as they crossed a bridge. If they were caught, they didn't want the Russians to know they had escaped from Katyn; that might be fatal. Rather, they were Polish soldiers who had fled east from the German invasion, and didn't know where they were. They had been disoriented by the German shelling, and were simply wandering around trying to survive. Kaz Jankowski and Jan Tomczak would have to disappear. As they got to the middle of the bridge, they took off their dog tags, kissed them, and dropped them into the water below. Kaz briefly buffed his new dog tag on his sleeve; from now on, he would be Lt. Karol Kwiatkowski, his fallen comrade from the defense of Warsaw. Similarly, Jan became Lt. Edward Szymczak.

  They decided to head west, back to the Russian sector of Poland, and then south toward Romania. With luck, they would get help from Polish farmers. If they did get caught, their story—that they were itinerant survivors of the German attack on Poland—would be more believable once they were back in Poland.

  By late summer, they had worked their way to the southeast corner of Poland; they could almost smell the freedom of Romania, less than fifty kilometers away. But then, perhaps lulled into complacency, they entered a small village. They were eager for news of the war, and hoped to find a newspaper posted somewhere in the village. They were particularly anxious to find out if Romania had entered the war; if so, there might be no point in trying to escape to that country. They didn't realize that the newspaper bulletin-board was a favorite spot for NKVD informants; people make careless remarks when they read the news.

  Kaz was shocked to see a small story on the German occupation of France: “My God, Jan, the French have collapsed. The Germans are in Paris.”

  His exclamation drew the attention of a middle-aged woman, who looked almost as scruffy as the two travelers.

  “You hadn't heard of the German invasion of France?” she wanted to know.

  Kaz mumbled something incomprehensible.

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Where have you been? Who are you?”

  She signaled to a Russian soldier fifty meters away. Kaz and Jan were soon back in a prison camp—as Lt. Karol Kwiatkowski and Lt. Edward Szymczak. Fortunately, the NKVD informant had not heard Kaz call Jan by his right name. The two determined never again to be so careless; Karol and Edward it would be, regardless of the circumstances.

  The prison camp—just over the border in the Ukraine—was a repeat of the dreary camp of the previous year, except that it was filled with officers of the regular army, not reservists. The routine was harsh, but not as bad as the first camp. Jan had an explanation: most of the guards were Ukrainians, not Russians.

  As 1940 passed into the early months of 1941, they noticed another welcome difference. The winter was not nearly so bitter; the camp was further south. Somehow, the one thin blanket seemed much thicker and warmer than the blankets in Smolensk. The struggle to survive was not so desperate; fewer inmates died. And spring arrived early. Kaz delighted in filling his lungs with the warm, moist spring air, particularly when it carried the soft, sweet fragrance of apple blossoms; he would drift off into memories of springtime on his uncle's farm. Occasionally, his daydreams were jarred when the wind shifted, blowing in quite a different smell from the latrines.

  Soon it was June.

  Early one morning, Kaz was awakened by an ominous, familiar noise—the drone of German aircraft. He and his comrades were quickly on their feet, pulling on their pants as they tumbled out of the barracks. Above flew a formation of Heinkel bombers, their German crosses clearly visible on their wings.

  Operation Barbarossa—Hitler's blitzkrieg aimed at defeating the Soviet Union within a few months—had begun.

  In less than a week, the situation in the camp improved. Many of the guards were sent to the front. The flow of supplies into the camp fell sharply, but the remaining guards let some of the prisoners out to forage for food. Hostages were kept behind; they would be shot if the prisoners didn't return.

  Then came the news they had been waiting for. They were to be released. Stalin had agreed: the Poles could establish an army in the Soviet Union, under Gen. Wladyslaw Anders. Diplomatic relations were to be resumed between the Soviet Union and the Polish Government in exile in London.

  Now they would be soldiers again.

  By September, more than 150,000 Polish troops had moved to a training camp. Their spirits were high; Kaz and Jan delighted in every day of freedom.

  The word went out from Gen. Anders headquarters: he needed Russian-speaking officers to handle liaison with the Soviets. Jan/Edward volunteered. Soon he arranged for Kaz to join him; he explained to the colonel how closely the two had worked together in the past, and how indispensable “Karol” would be to him.

  Kaz wasn't sure that he wanted the job; he was a soldier, not a politician. But he surprised himself; he was soon caught up in the work at headquarters. They were preparing for a December meeting between Stalin and General Sikorski—the Polish Commander-in-Chief and Prime Minister of the Polish Government in London.

  The question was: what would Anders' army do? Would they fight the Nazi invader along side the Soviets? Or would they try to get Stalin's permission to leave the Soviet Union and join the British?

  The Poles couldn't agree among themselves. To seek a consensus, Sikorski would fly into Moscow to meet with Anders several days before his meeting with Stalin.

  “Edward” and “Karol” were invited to join the group going to Moscow, to help with security and administrative matters. They eagerly agreed.

  Plans for the Moscow meeting almost unraveled one morning in the middle of November. Karol was in his “office”—actually not an office, but a small area separated from other “offices” by charcoal markings on the barracks floor—when a lieutenant approached, pretending to knock on Kaz's pretend door.
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  “I'm looking for Karol Kwiatkowski; I was told I might find him at this end of the barracks.”

  Kaz looked up from the papers on the battered board that was serving as his desk. “That's right. I'm Kwiatkowski.”

  “But I was looking for Lt. Kwiatkowski from Lvov.”

  “Yes. That's me.”

  “No you're not. I went to school with Karol Kwiatkowski.”

  Kaz wanted to kick himself; he had not prepared for this obvious complication.

  “You were friends?”

  “Yeah. He's my best friend.”

  “I'm sorry. He's dead. Killed in the defense of Warsaw.”

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “Let's just say that I needed a new identity, and took his. We were together when he was killed. I'm a regular army officer.... Really.”

  The lieutenant's eyes narrowed. “Are you a Russian spy?” He, in turn, wanted to kick himself; a stupid question.

  “No.” Kaz felt equally silly answering. “But take your suspicions to Col. Polonsky. He handles security.”

  “Why should I trust him? Maybe he's in it with you.”

  “Maybe our whole army is made up of Russian spies?”

  The lieutenant's eyes narrowed even more. He slowly and suspiciously backed away, through the imaginary wall of Kaz's office.

  The lieutenant did tell someone. In fact, he went directly to Gen. Anders. He wanted to act as quickly as possible; his life might be in danger if Kaz really were a spy.

  That afternoon, Kaz was summoned to Anders' office. It actually was an office, more or less—the only one in the camp. Blankets were hung to separate it from the rest of the barracks, and give Anders some semblance of privacy. Col. Polonsky and Jan/Edward were there already.

  The General called a corporal and spoke a few quiet words. The corporal disappeared. Almost immediately, a loud chorus of men broke out into barroom songs. Kaz looked puzzled.