A Special Duty

by Jennifer Elkin

  Tom and Kunicki left the camp on horseback every day to search for a suitable area to prepare as a landing strip for a Dakota. They needed firm ground or a stubble field that could be cleared and flattened, and which could be defended during the period the aircraft was on the ground; a tall order in this boggy, forested terrain, and several times when they found a suitable strip they had to abandon it when German troops moved too close for safety. Kunicki was philosophical about the search. If they found suitable ground, all well and good, if not, then he had four extra partisans for his unit. Tom’s main recollection of these daily treks was the awkward horse he was given to ride, which rubbed up against every tree and gatepost it could find in an effort to dismount him. The horse had been given to the unit by a farmer, who had been unable to control it, and nobody in the unit had managed to ride it until Patrick Stradling asked to be allowed to try. Kunicki was reluctant at first, mindful of his orders to keep the men safe, but eventually agreed and Patrick jumped on the horse and fought with it until it became calm, at which point he dismounted and gave the reins to Kunicki saying: “Now it will listen”.

  The everyday routine for the unit involved foraging for food, outpost duties, raids on local towns, and the relentless sabotage of rail links, so that there were never more than fifty men in the camp at any one time. The blowing up of trains was the main military focus during May 1944, and the unit chalked up ninety-eight hits by the time the airmen left them. An attack on a train would be launched on receipt of a radio message, and the unit would set off to intercept either a troop or a supply train, sometimes using stick dynamite on the track (which partisans would detonate as the engine went over it), and sometimes laying a landmine on the track (which detonated with the weight of the engine). If it was a supply train they stayed to retrieve whatever stores or equipment they could from the wreckage, but if it was a troop train they disappeared very quickly back into the woods.ix The airmen were still not allowed to take an active part in the raids, but witnessed at least one train being blown up and were issued with Russian tommy guns and given ‘alarm’ posts.

  When not attacking trains, partisan groups were often away foraging, scouting, or raiding local towns, but when Kunicki moved, so did the airmen, with orders and instructions given to Tom in German. One particular day they were on the move with a one-hundred strong contingent of partisans when they came face-to-face with an equal number of bandits coming from the other direction. Like a scene from an old western, they met on the dusty main street of a village, and not a single safety catch was in place on their guns, but it was not in either group’s interests to get involved in a fight, and they passed each other in silence on the otherwise empty street. On another occasion they were spotted passing through a village, and information was passed to the Germans who sent in a Junkers 87 to bomb it flat. This was a pointless act because the partisan group was long-gone by the time the bombers arrived, and they watched from the safety of a nearby wood, consumed by anger as the bombs fell on yet another defenceless village. The next morning they walked back to find nothing but a pile of smouldering timbers. The long-suffering villagers not only lived in fear of such attacks, but constantly had their food and livestock plundered by just about every group in the district. The Soviet units were well equipped in most respects, but they received no food in their supply drops and so bought, stole, or requisitioned supplies from the towns and farms of the district. Kunicki, being polish himself, was sensitive to the plight of the local population and, unlike many of the Soviet and Ukrainian units, retained their goodwill by paying either in cash or kind for produce, and reporting back to Kiev incidents of serious abuse by other units. Two vital items that did not tumble out of a Soviet Dakota were vodka and a tobacco called ‘Machorka’, which was usually rolled and smoked in the ‘educational’ papers distributed by the political commissar. Most raids carried out locally were to obtain vodka, and it was seized in huge quantities – 80,000 litres in one raid alone, but the airmen were wary of the Russian drinking sessions. It was strong stuff, and they couldn’t risk their tongues being loosened by alcohol, so it became necessary to stick together and make sure that no one was left alone with the political commissar, with whom they felt very uneasy.

  Kunicki issued the men with clean underwear, equipped them with automatic weapons and allowed Tom to write a daily diary. They were given permission to have their boots repaired by the unit’s shoemaker, and because of a lack of bedding, were issued with an old Russian parachute to cover themselves at night.x Most aspects of partisan life were harsh, but the airmen were finding that it could feel good to share the hardship with such worthy comrades, and despite the ever-present language barrier, friendships developed though music – a pastime they all enjoyed. George sang and played the guitar, and spirits were always raised by the mixture of homespun British songs and the catchy, sometimes mournful, Russian folk songs popular in the camp. Kunicki told Tom that he often had to send his men on suicide missions, and, with orders coming directly from Russia, there was never any thought of disobeying. The lives of the airmen seemed to have enough value for them to be protected, but it was not so for their partisan comrades, whose lives were held cheap and for whom the life-and-death struggle was to get much harder in the coming weeks. Kunicki was scornful of Father John, commander of the NOW unit with whom he cooperated, for issuing his men with leave passes to visit their families, finding this incomprehensible in wartime. The men of his own unit, detached from home and family and exposed to a great deal of cruelty and death, were somewhat brutalised by the experience and meted out savage revenge on any Germans they captured. Tom described the way prisoners were treated:

  “Prisoners were stripped to their underclothes and then shot. German spies, of which there were many, were taken by horse and cart to the neighbourhood of the nearest German garrison, where they were split open and filled with straw or eggs. The horse was then whipped up and the still-living man was carried into the garrison.”xi

  Such acts always prompted savage reprisals, but the Polish partisans did their best to protect the local community. Officers from the Polish camp regularly visited the Russian camp, always bringing with them a bottle of vodka (a gesture that was rarely reciprocated), and although these meetings were outwardly cordial, there were strong undercurrents of suspicion. The Russians accused the Polish of being bad neighbours in the past, and were contemptuous of their out-dated weapons and small-scale military exploits, belittling them at every opportunity. It was true that many of the Polish weapons were out-dated – Tom had watched them dig up an old Maxim gun that took four men to lift and must already have been an antique when it was buried in 1939. Resentment was fuelled when supply loads dropped by the Allies for the Poles were stolen by the Russians, and Tom saw for himself many British boots and watches in the Soviet camp, though they never touched the British automatic weapons which they despised, particularly the Sten gun, which they considered very inferior to their own.

  At night the four crewmen slept together beneath their Russian parachute, changing position every couple of nights so that they equally shared the cold outside and the warmer inside positions. They woke up one morning to a hail of machinegun bullets thudding past their feet, fired from a Fieseler Storch which had spotted them on the ground. Most of the unit had already moved on and they were alone with Kunicki and Ducia when the attack came, sending them running for the trees. The continuous threat from the air prompted Kunicki to suggest that Tom temporarily move his crew to a gamekeepers’ lodge deep in the woods, where attacks were less frequent. There was little he could do about the growing numbers of German ground troops being mobilised. Polish officers who visited the camp brought news of 24,000 second-line SS troops massing in Bilgoraj7 to clear up the district, but added that their morale was low and they were mostly boys of fifteen to seventeen years-of-age. The good news was that Tom and Kunicki had found a field that they considered suitable for flattening into an airstrip, and this information was passed on t
o Kiev. Strokacz responded with a message to say that he would send an expert in airstrip construction by Dakota to check it out.8

  On the night of the 28th May, the airmen joined Kunicki and his men at a prearranged dropping ground to await the arrival of the Russian Dakota, which was carrying airstrip specialist Lieutenant Szylowski, two female radio operators, and supplies. When the distant sound of the engine was heard Kunicki ordered the signal fires to be lit, and the prepared ground turned into a blaze of lights. A vertical ‘Very’ light was fired, followed by a horizontal one along the flare path, and the men rushed for cover just in case the plane was not one of theirs. The terrain-hugging Dakota came in low over the trees, and one of the partisans shouted “Ours!” as the light from the fires picked out the markings of a Soviet aircraft. One-by-one the reinforced sack containers drifted to the ground suspended beneath white silk parachutes followed by two female radio operators and Lieutenant Szylowski, the airfield specialist. One of the radio operators landed so close to the fire that her parachute went up in flames, and Tom took careful note on the Russian dropping technique, which on this occasion was impressively accurate (though he felt that in general their dropping techniques were inferior to those used by his Squadron).

  Partisans dispersed to recover the packages and to find Lieutenant Szylowski, who was injured in a bad landing and needed help. He was brought into the camp with his head bandaged up to a wholehearted welcome from the delighted Englishmen, who now felt sure their rescue was imminent. In the course of the next few days, delight turned to suspicion as Szylowski tried to get them drunk on vodka and spent most of the time interrogating them in the company of the political commissar, with whom he seemed particularly ‘pally’. He offered to send messages back to the airmen’s families, provided they used the normal RAF codes, and was keen to know the details of RAF briefings before an operation. During this questioning the crew realised that he was probably NKVD9 and quietly tipped the vodka on the ground, or even up their sleeves; anything to remain sober. Szylowski on the other hand got very drunk and maudlin, saying to the crew: “When you come to bomb Moscow, don’t bomb, land and give them my name and tell them you once lived with Russian partisans – you will be alright”. The crew thought this a very odd thing for a supposed ally to say to them, but at this point Kunicki took Tom to one side and told him quietly of his own misgivings about sharing too much information with Szylowski. Kunicki and Tom had developed mutual respect during their daily treks in search of an airstrip and, although he commanded a Soviet unit, Kunicki was Polish. His loyalties must have been put to the test on many occasions.xii Szylowski checked out the chosen landing site and declared it unsuitable for a Dakota, but after a further search they found a cornfield near the village of Huta Krzeszowska that he was happy with. This posed an ethical dilemma for Kunicki, because the crop belonged to the entire village and they needed it to sustain them through the winter. It would have been a simple matter to compensate one farmer for the loss of his crop but a different prospect to pay off each individual household for their share. However this was the field selected by the expert, so Kunicki radioed the location to Kiev and decided that, if the village required compensation, he would settle the debt with cattle and grain obtained from raids. Kiev responded, and confirmed 5th June as the date for the extraction.

  The proposed rescue mission gave Kunicki and his fellow Soviet commanders the opportunity to evacuate injured personnel and send important papers to Kiev and the couriers were kept busy liaising between the groups so that the best use was made of this opportunity. Meanwhile, Russian pilot Captain Vladimir Pavlov and his crew, all familiar with dangerous operations, were preparing for their most complicated assignment to date. Two Dakotas were to take part in the special operation behind enemy lines; the first to land and pick up personnel, including the British crew; the second to follow thirty minutes later and drop supplies. Pavlov, a modest and highly skilled pilot, was to carry the supplies. He carefully planned his route to take him over swampy and forested ground that he knew to be difficult for German anti-aircraft guns. In the event this proved unnecessary because they flew much of the way in thick cloud, and their main difficulty was navigating in the poor visibility. The skies cleared as they flew over the Styr River, but Navigator Dimitri Lisin could not be sure of the exact section of the river they were over to get a ‘fix’. However, the crew knew that once they were spotted they would get their ‘fix’, because anti-aircraft guns were positioned at bridges over the river and the highway; it was just a matter of waiting. And it wasn’t long before searchlights swept across the sky and tracer fire streaked past the window. Pavlov swung the plane away to the right to avoid the fire, and Lisin managed to establish his position – they were forty minutes flying time from their destination.

  Preparations at the cornfield had to be left to the last minute so that the prepared ground would not be spotted by the enemy and so, on the evening of the 5th June, a partisan detachment from the area flattened and hardened the field with horse-drawn logs of wood, back and forth until the surface was solid enough to support the aircraft. Kunicki and Yakovlev’s men carried out diversionary attacks on the nearby German garrisons to keep attention away from the evacuation zone, and a one-thousand strong partisan contingent surrounded the field to defend it against attack, which was sure to come once the fires were lit. Then, in the distance, the unmistakable drone of a Dakota was heard, and the prepared flare path of three bonfires was set alight to guide the aircraft in. When Pavlov arrived over the field to drop his supplies he noticed that the first aircraft, which had taken off thirty minutes ahead of him, had not arrived, and this gave him a problem. If he dropped the packages they would leave indents in the field, making it impossible for the second aircraft to land. So in a courageous manoeuvre, knowing that the injured partisans and the British crew were waiting below, he brought his aircraft down on to the prepared strip. In the darkness he was unable to find the turning circle at the end of the cleared runway, and the swirling corn chaff blocked the engine air-intakes, which began to overheat. The crew climbed out and cleared the intakes by hand as partisans arrived to direct them to the turning circle. The airmen gave their weapons to Kunicki, who would have much greater need of them, and bade him farewell. A couple of days earlier they had posed for a photograph with Kunicki and Ducia, so that proof existed that they had been alive and well when handed over, and Kunicki gave Tom a photograph of himself as a souvenir. He wrote on the back, in Russian:

  Mikolaj ‘Mucha’ Kunicki.

  Photo given to Tom Storey as a souvenir June 1944

  “In memory of the English aviator Tom, being in my partisan unit. Brigade Commander “Stalin” (Mikolaj Kunicki) 04.06.1944, Bilgoraj forest.”

  Then the airmen, George, Szylowski, a group of badly-injured partisans, a pregnant woman, and important documents for Kiev were quickly loaded and Pavlov, though concerned about the excess weight of his aircraft, prepared to take off. The first two attempts failed, the Dakota stubbornly refused to move through the sandy trough into which it had settled. The engines shrieked and dust and corn chaff swirled around the plane and into the eyes of the partisans, who gathered behind the wings and tail and began to push. Heat radiated from the engines as the partisans heaved the plane until it began to move, and then Pavlov took over, slowly at first, gathering speed and, as the line of trees rushed towards them, lifting clear of the ground, almost brushing the tree tops, and disappearing into the night. The delay and the noise left the partisans on the ground exposed, and they were still trying to damp down the signal fires when two German bombers arrived over the stubble field firing heavily from machine guns and dropping bombs. Kunicki gave the order to shoot at the bombers, which eventually flew away without inflicting any casualties.

  Pavlov flew close to the ground, carefully avoiding the area where they had been fired on during the outward journey, but then quite unexpectedly, a group of Germans on a riverbank below, startled by the sudden appearance of t
he aircraft, opened up with bursts of machine-gun fire, forcing Pavlov to throw the aircraft into a dive. The sudden manoeuvre caused injured passengers to fall from their benches and luggage to tumble around them. Bullets whistled past, clunking into the metal frame, and a piece of metal flew past Tom’s head and punched a hole in the cabin roof, through which a stream of air came rushing. Pavlov had his eyes glued to the ground trying to avoid the fire, while inside the blacked-out plane, one of the airmen was trying to find water for the pregnant woman, who was crying in pain. Pavlov’s crew exchanged silent glances of relief when the danger had passed and Tom expressed his admiration for the skill and daring of the crew: “It was a good job”, he said.