by Mary Nichols
‘Oh,’ she said. There would be no reunion with her husband, not yet. ‘We are alone, then?’
‘No. As the British government pointed out to our people, there is the Red Army, which is in a better position to render aid. We have to work with the Soviets whether we like it or not. General Mikołajczyk has been flown to Moscow for talks with Stalin …’
‘Fat lot of good that will do,’ Colin said in English.
Arkady asked Rulka to translate, which she did. ‘I am inclined to agree with you, my friend,’ he told Colin. ‘But it means there’s no one in London to say yes or no. General Bór will have to make the decision himself and he is inclined to seize the moment. If the Soviets cross the river before we have secured the city, the battle will be between them and the retreating German army and our moment will be gone. We have to take the city and hold it before the Russians come …’
‘Don’t you think we can?’
‘Of course we can,’ he snapped. ‘The Soviets will be here in two or three days at the most. I just wish we had more weapons, that’s all. I spent all morning digging up graves and retrieving the guns I buried. There was a nosy SS sergeant who came and wanted to know what I was doing. I told him we had run out of suitable burial plots and I was having to put one body in on top of another.’ He chuckled. ‘It is as well he did not look into the coffin I had beside the grave. I had to pretend it was a body and bury it again. I’ll go back after dark and retrieve it.’ He paused. ‘Are you ready, Bulldog?’
‘Yes.’ Colin was to take part in the assault on one of the German army stores. ‘I have rifles, ammunition and hand grenades, enough to arm each man in my unit to start with. After that we will take them from the Germans we kill.’
‘What about me?’ Rulka asked.
‘You will stay out of it,’ Colin said.
‘I will not! Haven’t I been with you all along? Haven’t I done everything you asked of me and more besides? I won’t be left out.’
‘You are not going to be left out, Myszka,’ Arkady said patiently. ‘Your skills as a nurse will undoubtedly be needed. Your orders are to report to the church of St Stanislaus Kostka. It is to serve as a hospital for our casualties. Dr Andersz will join you there.’
Colin and Rulka went back to the cellar, more than usually subdued. The streets had somehow emptied. The population, who had been trying to make the best of the sunshine, had gone to wherever they called home: an undamaged apartment, a cellar, the basement of a church, an empty shop or office. There was an eerie calm. Even the boom of heavy artillery to the east had fallen silent.
Rulka was keyed up to fever pitch and these last few hours were going to take a toll on nerves already frayed. She clung to Colin’s hand until they regained the cellar, where she made a meal of sorts but neither had much appetite. Colin went into the boiler room, now no longer his bedroom, and set about cleaning his rifle and laying out his ammunition. Unable to settle, she went and watched him. He looked up and smiled. ‘Feeling fidgety?’
‘Yes.’
He left what he was doing and came over to take her in his arms. ‘We can’t do anything but wait, sweetheart, but I can think of something to pass the time.’ He paused to lean back and look into her face. ‘That’s if you want to.’
‘Yes. I want to feel your arms about me, your body next to mine, to pretend the world is at peace, to feel human for a change. To feel safe.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ he said, leading her into the bedroom. He was a tender and patient lover and, for a little while, they were able to forget what was happening elsewhere. Afterwards they lay with bodies entwined, waiting for dawn.
But nothing happened the next day or the day after that and they were beginning to wonder if anything was going to happen at all, when, on Tuesday morning the first day of August, a runner in the person of a Boy Scout came to tell them Liberation Hour would be at five o’clock. Everyone was to be in position by then. Rulka donned her uniform, clung to Colin for a moment, then left for the church.
In a light drizzle, welcome after a hot dry spell, Varsovians from all over the city, men and women as well as children, were emerging in small groups. The adults were carrying pistols and ammunition disguised as briefcases and shopping bags, while the children shouldered rucksacks of food and medical supplies. Rulka gave no sign that she had seen them, as she hurried to her own station. She knew, before the day was out, she was going to be busy.
A few minutes after Rulka had left, Colin set out to join his unit in the grounds of a school next to the stores. He was under no illusions about the difficulty of the task ahead of them. Because he wasn’t a native Varsovian or even a Pole, he could be more objective than people like Arkady and Krystyna who were passionate about their city and Polish independence. He would probably have been the same if the Germans had occupied London. That they had not was, so he had learnt while a prisoner of war, due to the Royal Air Force and that included Polish airmen. He felt disappointed, angry and embarrassed that no one from the country of his birth would help the Poles now.
He could have taken the help that was offered and left Warsaw two years before, but there was no guarantee he would have reached England safely, so he had stayed. To begin with he had stayed because he admired the courage of the Poles and hated the Germans and it had seemed like an adventure. The adventure had turned into a nightmare, but by then he had fallen head over heels in love with Krystyna and hoped one day to wear her down into admitting she loved him too. He didn’t blame her for holding back when life itself was so uncertain, but please God, they would survive the next few days and then he would really tell his mouse what was in his bulldog’s heart.
They called her Myszka because she was so small and swift and could squeeze through holes and apertures that a larger person could not. But she was no mouse when it came to courage; she had more than her share of that and he had often had to hold her back from doing something foolish. It was he who had suggested to Arkady that she should be ordered to the church. He wanted her to be safe where he could find her when it was all over.
He found the rest of the platoon at the appointed place. He was wearing his old army uniform which was far too big for him now, and the others were dressed in a motley range of uniforms, many of them stolen from the Germans. Others had donned old uniforms, some their own, some belonging to their fathers from the Great War. A Scout handed them all the red and white armbands to denote they were part of the Home Army. The Germans must have guessed there was something afoot but they didn’t know where or when the strike would be. By three o’clock, Colin and his men occupied the school without opposition. At precisely five o’clock, they climbed over the back fence of the school and raced across to the stores, guns blazing.
At the same time, doors and windows all over the city were flung open and any Germans in the streets were subject to a hail of small arms fire. Home-made grenades, called filipinki, and Molotov cocktails were hurled at German strong points. Those not involved in the fighting – housewives, teachers, children – dragged furniture, carts and paving stones into the streets to build barricades, and many of them were shot while doing so.
There were casualties on both sides, but Colin survived unscathed, as they overcame German resistance and took control of the stores which were immediately raided for uniforms, boots, helmets and camouflage jackets. They could hear fighting going on all over the old city, but had no idea of the outcome. By evening a Polish flag was flying from the top of the Prudential Building, the tallest structure in Warsaw. They saw it when they moved out to their second objective, leaving the populace to loot the stores of flour, sugar, cereals and anything else they could carry.
That evening Colin met Arkady in the Kammler furniture factory which had become command headquarters, and his feeling of euphoria at a job well done evaporated when Arkady told him they had failed to take several important objectives. In spite of valiant efforts and heavy losses, Castle Square, the Police District, the airport and the State tel
ephone building were still in enemy hands and they had not managed to seize control of the bridges. What was even more worrying, the Germans were bringing in reinforcements and the Soviet advance had been halted.
‘It’s early days yet,’ Colin said.
‘Yes. No one said it would be easy.’
‘Have you seen Mouse?’
‘No.’
Colin could not leave to see if she was all right, he could only hope that in the hospital she would be safe.
The casualties had been coming in all day and Rulka had not had a moment to spare, but it was obvious from the tales filtering through to her the fighting was bitter and unrelenting. She worried about her friends, especially the women who were fighting alongside the men, and Colin, of course. He was her rock, the one person she could turn to when she had doubts or felt low. You couldn’t live with someone for two years as she had been doing without having feelings for him, but was it more than that? It was certainly enough for her to rush to look at every new patient who came in and breathe her relief when it turned out not to be Colin.
She slept in a makeshift rest room that night, while others took over her duty, but the next morning it all began again. The enemy was not going to give in and responded with savagery. Not only were Home Army personnel killed and injured but the civilian population as well: men, women, children and babies, it was all one to the Nazis. And fire was their principal weapon. They used tanks and flame-throwers to telling effect.
Day after day, night after night, was the same and by the end of the week everyone was exhausted. The Home Army was still in control of the old town, the city centre and some of the southern suburbs and they had become masters at surviving bombardments and retaking positions they had lost the day before, but they hadn’t been able to drive the Germans out. It was stalemate.
‘We’ve been on to London again,’ Colin told Rulka on the sixth day. He had been to visit another small outpost on behalf of Arkady which took him past the church and he had taken the opportunity to find her. They had gone out to the forecourt to share a cigarette. ‘If they don’t do something, General Bór doesn’t know how much longer we can hold out.’
‘Is it as bad as that? I saw the RAF bombers fly over yesterday and drop supplies into Krasinski Square. Everyone waved and cheered. How they got through the guns, I’ll never know.’
‘Yes, brave men those pilots, coming in over the rooftops to make sure they dropped accurately, but according to Boris, who seems to know these things, there won’t be any more.’
‘Why not?’
He smiled ruefully. ‘They were Polish pilots who had been ordered to drop the supplies into AK rural areas outside Warsaw. They disobeyed orders not to fly over the city and one of them was shot down. The mission as a whole took heavy casualties and so future sorties have been cancelled.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘True, though.’
‘What are the Russians doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘We can’t surrender.’
‘No, that’s not an option.’ He paused. ‘I suppose it’s no good telling you to try and get out of Warsaw.’
‘No good at all,’ she assured him.
‘Then take care of yourself.’
‘And you.’
He kissed her and was gone. Rulka tucked a tendril of escaping hair into her cap and went back into the hospital. Beds were being emptied as people recovered or died, but they were quickly filled again as more casualties were brought in.
The fight went on and the longer it went on, the greater the atrocities. From wanting to retake control of the city, the German occupiers and their reinforcements seemed bent on destroying it and every living being in it. Rulka, trying to cope with burns, gunshot wounds, people crushed by falling buildings or flattened under tanks, worked like an automaton; her senses reeled and then became numb. She could only pray, ‘Please God, let it end soon.’
But that plea was not to be granted immediately. As the days and then weeks went by, the Home Army turned from attack to defence in an effort to hold the ground they had. They had lost the element of surprise and with nothing but small arms and a few captured tanks, they had no hope of dealing a knockout blow. General Bór sent out urgent messages to AK units outside Warsaw to come to their aid, but they couldn’t get through the cordon the Germans had put round the city. The German artillery, bombers and tanks gradually reduced the ground held by the insurgents and by the end of the month, even though the RAF had relented and dropped more supplies, and American Flying Fortresses had also dropped supplies on their way to Russia, more than half of which landed among the Germans, it was all too little and too late. Food and fresh water were running out; people were eating horses and pigeons and taking water from the river which was at a low ebb due to lack of rain, a dangerous undertaking since they risked cholera as well as being seen and shot. Soon Rulka was treating the sick as well as wounded. General Bór ordered a withdrawal of all outlying posts from the Old Town into the city centre, through the sewers. They all knew the end could not be far off.
‘Will you give me permission to go and fetch Mouse?’ Colin asked Colonel Mentor. They had climbed a ruined stairwell and were looking from a blackened window embrasure at a city that was a mass of rubble – whole streets had disappeared.
The colonel, exhausted and worried as he was, smiled. ‘She means a great deal to you, doesn’t she, Sergeant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then go with my blessing. You know where to take her?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He raced down the stairwell to the street and set off for the hospital, stumbling in his effort to run. Several times he had to duck when enemy artillery shelled the area. Some of the way he was able to run underground where the people had hacked holes in the walls leading from one basement to the next. Hopping over the people who were sheltering there, he emerged at the end of the terrace to find German tanks in the street using flame-throwers. He ran back and shouted to the occupants of the cellars. ‘Get out! Get out that way!’ Picking up two small children, he led the way, ushering them all out to safety, as, one by one, the basements behind him went up in flames. The heat, as the buildings caught fire, was intense; even the tarmac of the road was hot. He would not be able to return that way.
Rulka stayed at her post, doing what she could for the dead and dying, but in the end Lech had told her to go out for a breath of fresh air. The rumble of tanks told her the Germans were moving in. She ducked into the doorway as they came round the corner and saw a group of teenage members of the Grey Ranks dart out from surrounding buildings and hurl petrol bombs at the tanks. The boys were met by murderous fire. She rushed out to try and help one who had been wounded and was kneeling beside him when a dozen German troopers appeared from behind the tanks and ran into the hospital, firing indiscriminately. One of them came over to Rulka and ordered her back into the hospital. She ignored him. He kicked her over and put the muzzle of his rifle into her side. ‘Get up!’ he shouted.
She struggled to her feet, though standing upright hurt her ribs, and made her way back into the hospital. The Germans ordered everyone, staff and patients alike, into the crypt and were kicking the heads of the patients lying on the ground and shooting others when they were slow to obey. Rulka protested over and over again, only to be knocked down and kicked. Too winded to move, she watched in horror as the troopers flung petrol-soaked straw into the basement and set light to it.
Colin heard the shrieks long before he reached the scene. The church was an inferno, but the attackers had moved on. Desperate to find Krystyna, he dashed into the burning building, but was driven back by the fire. Again he tried and again was beaten back, choking on the thick smoke. ‘Krystyna!’ he yelled above the roar of the flames. ‘Myszka! Where are you?’ By now the shrieking had stopped and there was nothing to be heard but the crackling of the fire, nothing to be seen through thick black smoke.
Choking and consumed with fury and misery, he turned
to go and nearly fell over a bundle of clothes by the door, but then he noticed it move and bent down to look more closely. It was Mouse, battered and bruised but alive. ‘Thank God!’ he said, lifting her up. She weighed very little. ‘Let’s have you out of here.’
That was easier said than done. He was now behind what could be called enemy lines, though lines was a misnomer. Urban warfare was nothing like fighting in the countryside. It was done house by house, street by street, and each side held pockets or small enclaves. He had to find his way back without accidentally finding himself on the wrong side of a barricade. It was bad enough scrambling over ruins when he had his hands free, but with the burden of Rulka in his arms he often stumbled and had to stop frequently to rest and get his bearings. And several times they were held up by gunfire too close for comfort.
She stirred. ‘Colin, put me down, I can walk.’
‘Are you sure?’ She was bruised and in shock but he knew he could not carry her much further.
‘Yes.’
He set her on her feet and they set off again. There was fighting all around them as the insurgents launched diversionary counter attacks to cover the withdrawal of the main forces. They did not speak, there was no time for that, they had to concentrate on finding their way through unrecognisable streets to the corner of Dluga Street, where members of the Grey Ranks were to conduct people through the sewers. Darkness fell, but the fires lit up the ruins in a smoky glow. Colin feared they would be too late and everyone, including the boys, would be gone.
They were within fifty yards of the manhole and could see the head of a boy sticking out of it, looking about him to see if there were any more wanting to leave. Colin shouted at him to wait. He heard them, but he also heard the whoosh of a German rocket. His head disappeared and the manhole cover clattered back into place. Colin and Rulka, hiding behind what had once been a barricade, felt the force of the explosion, as more stones, bricks and cement dust flew into the air. Colin flung himself over Rulka.