Jan

by Peter Haden

  ‘No,’ he emphasised to Tadzio, placing his hand gently but firmly on the table. ‘We have to have Jan with us, and Hedda is an experienced fighter which, with due respect, you are not. But it is absolutely essential that someone stays at the farm. Tadzio, that can only be you,’ he said quietly. ‘If we can, we should keep the farm as a secure base, not just for this operation but for the future.’

  ‘I know you don’t like it,’ Hedda offered, reaching out to put her hand over Tadzio’s, ‘but it makes sense.’ Tadzio opened his mouth to say something, but Hedda kicked him under the table and he knew he had lost the argument.

  The partisans arrived at first light, having used darkness to cover their march, then settled in the barn to rest up for the day. There were five women in the attack group and they helped Hedda make an arrival breakfast, then a lunch of soup and bread, and finally to prepare some meat, cheese and more bread that they could consume on the march and in the morning. They had also brought a few pack horses and canvas containers salvaged from the drop.

  At first they moved in small, well-spaced groups of three or four, in order to not attract attention from any distant glance or passing aircraft. But in deepening twilight, the partisans closed up and marched almost silently, Jan in the lead with Józek. Talk was desultory but they did discuss setting up a programme so that Jan could train some of the partisans in the use of explosives. Although this first time he would set the charge for the ambush. ‘We have a middle-aged Jewish man with us,’ Józek also confided. ‘He’s never going to be any use as a fighter but I’m told he has always been an amateur radio ham.’ Jan agreed that he would be an ideal person to train up as their operator, then he in turn could instruct others.

  It was about twenty-five kilometres to the site that Jan had chosen but they stopped just short in a clearing whilst it was still dark. The partisans rigged a line between two trees to which they tethered the pack horses. Józek outlined his orders. ‘If it follows the usual pattern, there will be between five and ten trucks, with an escort fore and aft,’ he began. ‘With any luck, they’ll still be fairly relaxed – they don’t get nervous till they are over the border.

  ‘The armoured car in the lead will almost certainly be a wheeled Sd.Kfz 222. Some of you have seen one before, but for those who haven’t, it carries a crew of three and is armed with a twenty-mil cannon and a 7.92 mil machine gun. Jan will set the charge and detonate it remotely, hopefully right underneath. Immediately after the explosion, if all has gone to plan, I shall take the tyres out on the lead truck. My gunfire will be the signal to start the attack. If for any reason the charge fails to go off, or we fail to disable the armoured car, we abort. Because if we don’t, the armament it carries will cut us to pieces. So, if you don’t hear me fire within a couple of seconds of the blast, we melt back into the trees. With only about ten soldiers I doubt they’ll want to dismount and follow us. Then we can always try again another day, but not if we take heavy casualties. Clearly understood?’

  He looked round the half-circle of people. There were nods and murmurs of agreement.

  ‘Right, I want us to split into three groups,’ Józek went on. ‘I want seven men and Hedda with Jan and me. Our job is to take out the armoured car and immediately disable the lead lorry. I want a rear party of ten to take out the half-track. As soon as you hear firing, five of the rear group open up on the occupants, to keep their heads down, and the others put hand grenades into the passengers up in the back. The last group will form a small screen, two stop groups one on either side several metres from the road. Make sure you are far enough back and watch where you are firing – I don’t want any stray rounds hitting those of us attacking the convoy. Your job is to take close-range, aimed shots at any Germans who escape our ambush. When all the firing stops, come and join us.’

  ‘Right,’ he went on, ‘once the half-track and its occupants are neutralised, we start on the lorries. Chances are the drivers will jump out and surrender, but if there’s any opposition gun it down. Usual drill – a few rounds through the cab door, then pull it open and check. Rear group will collect any Germans who jump out of the passenger door on the right-hand side as you look forward. My group will cover the other side, moving back down convoy, to take out any drivers who try to make a run for it from their door. So, don’t fire across the line of vehicles or you risk hitting each other. Once the enemy are collected or neutralised, we’ll take what we want and torch the rest.’

  There were enthusiastic noises from the partisans. Clearly looting was good for morale. Jan had no idea whether Józek had ever received military training, but from the use of terminology almost certainly he had. The plan was sound and he put it across in a confident, relaxed manner that suggested every chance of complete success. He was a good leader and his men – and women – were up for the fight.

  They moved into position in the gathering light to the sound of the dawn chorus. Looking at the site Jan had chosen, Józek nodded appreciatively. Roads in Germany were generally hard surfaced; in Poland, particularly in the countryside, they were not. This close to the border, the road was not in a good state of repair. Jan selected a pot hole more or less in the middle and set his explosive charge – just past a bend so that the rest of the column would not be able to see what was happening. The device and its black wires he covered with leaves and dirt that blended with the surroundings, then led the wires off into the trees so that he would be well back but perfectly able to see his target as it approached.

  Sentries were set out a quarter of a kilometre at either end, so that they could warn of any enemy approaching and then run back to reinforce the ambush groups. Józek knew they had the advantage of surprise but his Poles were only thirty fighters. Everything depended on taking out the escorts.

  The rear sentry ran in, breathless. A wave to Józek, who was on the road at the bend, then both he and his sentry retreated into their ambush positions. Jan heard the convoy before he could see it and wound the handle. Suddenly the armoured car was on the bend. The commander was not down in his weapons cupola but sitting up carelessly on the rim at the rear. Jan paused for a few seconds, calmly judging speed and distance. With its front end just a couple of metres from the charge, he pressed the plunger.

  The ear-splitting explosion almost deafened him. The armoured car leapt into the air and crashed down on its side a couple of metres off the far side of the road. The commander was thrown by the blast and his broken body cannoned into trees. Seconds later a fire started and rounds were cooking off. The crew never emerged.

  Jan, his ears still ringing, was conscious of Józek leaping to his feet and firing at the front tyres of what was now the lead vehicle, before switching his aim to the cab. Further back, out of sight, he heard the rattle of automatic fire and the blast of Mills grenades. Jan decided to follow a few yards behind Józek, Hedda and the other fighters, just in case anyone in a cab survived to leap out behind them. With Jan bringing up the rear, they ran down the length of the convoy, pouring rounds into cab after cab till there was no more resistance. Toward the rear of the convoy one lucky driver did emerge, Maschinenpistole in hand, but he dropped it immediately on seeing Jan and raised his hands. Their run completed, they discovered that none of the passengers in the back of the half-track had survived.

  Józek’s force regrouped more or less in the centre of the convoy. A few passengers had leapt out and surrendered before the rear group of partisans arrived to shoot up their vehicle. Jan’s captive was shoved into their group, who were led off into the trees. Seconds later there was a prolonged burst of automatic fire.

  ‘Did we have to do that?’ Jan asked.

  ‘They have to learn,’ Józek replied bluntly. ‘We are at war. They murder innocent civilians. We kill only their military. Perhaps this will make them think twice before they extract reprisals against Polish citizens.’

  At first Jan had mixed feelings but when he thought of his father and Aniela
he dismissed any doubts. The murdering bastards were always someone’s husband or son, but as far as he was concerned they had it coming.

  Two of the partisans returned with the pack horses. Into the canvas canisters from the air drop went a treasure trove of captured ammunition, food and other stores intended for the eastern front. Sadly, they could not take everything but it was still a rich haul. Finally, they torched the rest of the convoy. The Germans would find only a line of burnt-out vehicles and a pile of dead bodies – most importantly of all, inside their own border. When they set off, leading the now heavily laden animals, all the partisans had at least two weapons, one on each shoulder, in addition to their own slung across at the chest.

  Jan and Józek had plotted their return route carefully. The area, when it was not wooded, was well streamed and marshy. Even the weather favoured them with steady rain from a low, clagged-in sky. There would be no foot- or hoof-prints for the enemy to follow. Not even a scent if they used dogs. It was well past midday when Jan and Hedda, by this time well beyond the more direct route from the ambush site to the farm, broke off and returned home from the other direction. The partisans carried on to their forest.

  Exhausted though they were, Hedda insisted on re-burying their weapons and ammunition before they returned to the cottage, including a mint condition Walther P38 pistol she had lifted from the body of the armoured car commander. Tadzio was overjoyed to see them safely home. He hugged Hedda tightly for a few seconds before she pushed him gently away. ‘Your brother saved our life back there,’ she told Tadzio, putting an arm round Jan so that he, too, received a hug. ‘One of the German drivers got behind us. If it hadn’t been for Jan’s training, he would have opened up.’ For no reason at all, she started to laugh hysterically.

  Jan recognised post-action stress but was too exhausted to say anything. Tadzio sensed their mood and silently put a bottle of bimber and three glasses on the table. As an afterthought, he added a bottle of red wine. He had made a sort of stew for their return. Hedda, calmer now and grateful for his foresight, was too kind-hearted to tell him that it wasn’t very good and that the potatoes were not quite cooked properly, but they drank the homemade wódka, ate a little anyway, then finally relaxed as they finished off the wine. It was barely dark when all three of them staggered off to bed.

  Chapter 20

  It was a battle for survival. In the forest, the partisans’ enemies were now the cold, the wet, and the conditions under which they lived in the harsh Polish winter. Their habitations were makeshift in the extreme: primitive log and branch structures roofed with thin beams, canvas and leaking sods. Mud everywhere, inside the hovels and out – ankle deep, when it rained or the snow melted, despite their best endeavours to make pathways from hewn timber. Humans and animals alike suffered from foot rot. Primitive braziers were lit for heating, but only at night and with the ever-constant danger of carbon monoxide.

  The women used salvaged oil drums to heat water for washing and laundry in the pre-dawn, pounding their lice-ridden clothes, sometimes little more than rags, with a home-fashioned postle stick. Often it took days to get them dry. And they were never far from starving. The partisans did their best to help the children survive – they were the next generation, the only future for Poland. Without the meat and eggs provided by Tadzio’s farm, and food and medicines either looted or from the supply drop, the situation would have been many times worse.

  Jan and Hedda restored the sleeping space that Tadzio had originally made in the barn, installing a false wall at the far end and a wood-burning stove liberated from a wrecked, neighbouring property. Jan took to sleeping there, which meant that desperately ill partisans, often a mother and child, could be brought out of the forest for a few days, put in Jan’s room in the cottage and treated with the few medicines they had, but at least with a chance to recover from racking coughs bordering on – and sometimes developing into – pneumonia.

  On the seventeenth of September, Soviet troops had invaded eastern Poland. On the twenty-seventh of September, Warsaw surrendered and German troops entered the city on the following day. In October, Soviet forces retreated from central Poland to a line behind the Bug river in exchange for German acceptance of their interests in Lithuania, although they retained control of western Belorussia and western Ukraine. In terms of square miles, Poland was divided more or less equally, although the western half under German occupation was more densely populated. But divided between invaders from west and east, Poland as a nation state had ceased to exist.

  On the farm, they got some news from the BBC Overseas Service – Warsaw went off air in the last week of September, when German artillery and bombers destroyed the electricity supply. But the BBC did not yet have detailed knowledge of what the invaders were doing to Poland and her people. This came anecdotally, in western Poland by contact with communities in Chojnice and the surrounding towns and villages, where it soon became clear that Poland was to be reduced to a source of slave labour, machinery and raw material, all to be exported to the Fatherland. Intellectuals were considered unnecessary and fit only for transportation to concentration camps. All polish secondary schools and universities remained closed. In the streets, German soldiers stripped warm clothing, particularly sheepskin coats, from passing Poles. The ghetto process accelerated, and inside and out thousands were slowly starving to death.

  Although they survived better than many, that winter the partisans lost about ten percent of their number to cold, weakness and disease: mostly the elderly, women and – despite their best efforts – some children. At least now, in the early days of spring, the weather was showing the first faint signs of warmth. As Józek Kowalski pointed out, seated at the kitchen table, most of the Polish roads could not support heavy traffic in the winter months, and the German main supply routes had shifted to the few Tarmac roads further north and away to the south. Their only success over the winter had been to blow the one important railway line near the coast, sending a locomotive and its carriages to the bottom of a small river. This had been in an area heavily populated by ethnic Germans who welcomed the invaders and co-operated with the suppression of Poles, so there had been none of the hated reprisals.

  ‘Prawie skończyliśmy budowę drugiego obozu w lesie, we have almost finished building a second forest camp,’ he told the three of them. ‘It’s a bit further from the farm, but the area to the south is even more heavily forested, to the point of being almost impenetrable unless the Germans want to mount a battalion-sized operation, and even then, they would need artillery and possibly air support. Most of the non-combatants have moved already.

  ‘A co do naszej obecnej sytuacji, as for where we are now,’ he went on, ‘we suspect they are aware of our existence but we don’t think they have the resources this far behind their lines to do much about it.’ He set his cup of preciously hoarded coffee on the table. ‘If they attack what’s left of the original camp,’ he said grimly, ‘it will cost them dearly. We have permanent listening posts well out from the perimeter and the camp is heavily mined and booby-trapped, plus we have a sizeable stay-behind force with mortars and machine guns. The plan is to mount a rear-guard action to hold up the German approach, then once we have evacuated, we will let them into the killing ground. These days we have enough motorcycles and horses to move the last defenders to our new position before their foot soldiers on the ground can mount a final assault.’

  Discussions were interrupted by a hasty warning from one of Kowalski’s sentries that a German military vehicle was still some way off but headed in their direction. It was a flatbed field gray Werhmacht Ford lorry, built in Cologne. There were six soldiers in the back, which had spaced horizontal wooden “fencing” all round. Not quite a fighting patrol, but a concern nevertheless. Kowalski and his sentry hurried off to the trees behind the farmhouse. Hedda washed, dried and put away his cup and frantically checked that there were no other signs of the visitor’s presence. Tadzio and Jan walked into
the yard.

  ‘I’m not sure I like the look of this,’ Tadzio said quietly. ‘Normally, when they want to collect livestock, they send a small van or a horse-drawn cart.’

  ‘I don’t think they are SS,’ Jan replied as the vehicle drew up and an Obergefreiter jumped down from the passenger seat, ‘can’t see any Sichersheitsdienst insignia.’ The soldiers lined up behind their corporal, rifles held across the chest but not in the aim. The NCO barked an order and one of the men entered the kitchen, returning a minute or so later with a struggling Hedda gripped firmly by her upper arm. She was pushed roughly to stand next to Jan and Tadzio, neither of whom till now had spoken to the Germans.

  ‘What’s happening, Sergeant?’ Jan asked politely in their language, deliberately upping the rank in the hope that the man would feel flattered.

  ‘We have to make your Polish agriculture more efficient, for the benefit of the greater Reich,’ came the reply. His voice was matter-of-fact rather than threatening. ‘Smaller farmers around the villages are being set a quota of their production that they must give to the occupation. Our requirements will always come first – the villagers must accept any shortfall.’

  ‘And will that apply to us?’ Jan queried.

  ‘Nein,’ came the response. ‘This is more of a farm than a peasant smallholding. Also, there are two adjacent farms where the owners have either died or taken flight.’ Jan thought the “died” was a bit rich – a euphemism for killed by the Germans, like his father and sister, but he said nothing.

  ‘We know you have taken livestock and materials from these two properties,’ the Obergefreiter went on, ‘and we do not mind. That in turn has made more food available for the occupation. But now we have three farms and only one of them properly efficient. Under the greater Reich’s new policy, these three together make a good-sized estate. From now on it will be owned by Germany, and we intend to farm all three as a single unit. A German farm manager will replace the three of you to oversee this new production unit.’