Spring Will Be Ours (24 page)

‘They'll be here in a day, surely,' said the Captain. He looked at his watch. ‘An hour and a half to go. Let me summarize our strategy. At sixteen-fifty hours we take up our positions …'

They listened, and grinned at each other, checking their white and red armbands, the letters AK carefully drawn on in ink, slipping cartridges into rifles, arranging a shift system to use them.

‘May I try to phone my sister, sir?' asked Jerzy.

‘If Pani Wójcik agrees.'

In the kitchen, she nodded, smiling. ‘Of course. And I've made some bread – I'll bring it in to you all in a moment.'

‘Thank you.' He dialled Wiktoria's number, but there was no answer.

Anna and Natalia did up the buttons on the flannel shirts, printed in tiny grey check. ‘They're quite the thing,' said Natalia, and they stood and looked in the mirror, with Jadwiga, just arrived, behind them, her mass of hair brushed out wildly.

‘Where did they come from?' asked Anna.

‘Some shop on Nowy Świat, I think,' said Jadwiga. ‘Everyone's got them round here.' She looked at her watch. ‘Half-past four. Where are the boys?'

‘In the kitchen,' said Natalia, ‘stuffing themselves. The woman upstairs has made a great mountain of sandwiches.'

‘Why didn't you say so before?' Jadwiga complained. ‘I'm starving.'

In the kitchen, they all stood eating, although Anna was too tense and excited to have more than half a sandwich. Henryk, their leader, was keeping watch with Wojtek at the window, his hand on his pistol.

‘Where's Wiktoria?' Jadwiga asked Anna through a mouthful.

‘At home. The apartment's been requisitioned for another unit – we heard at lunchtime. I imagine she's looking after them all.'

‘And Jerzy?'

‘As far as I know he's stationed near Jerozolimskie, but I'm not certain where. He knows where we are, though: I told him three days ago we'd probably be here.' She put down her plate. ‘It's no use, I can't eat a thing. I wish I knew if Teresa was all right – I haven't heard from her for weeks.'

‘There's two bastards on the corner,' said Wojtek suddenly. ‘I'm going to have them. Oh, God, why doesn't it start?'

There was a hammering on the door of the apartment.

‘I'll go.' Henryk walked quickly out and down the corridor; they heard him open the door on its chain, the murmured inquiry, then the rattle as he unbolted it, saying, ‘Yes, of course.' He reappeared in the kitchen with a small stocky man in shirtsleeves.

‘Pan Grabowski, the civilian commander of this block,' Henryk announced, and the man nodded at them all.

‘Good afternoon. I should have come to talk to you before, but there has been so much to do …' He wiped his face. ‘I am on the ground floor, apartment number three. In charge of all matters relating to this block, you understand? If we need to go into the cellars … or … have any problems with the lighting, or with water … I shall direct operations. My mother is with me now, and already baking bread as if for twenty units.' He smiled nervously. ‘This is a great day for Warsaw. God bless you all. I must go upstairs now.'

Henryk saw him out, and they turned to each other, eyebrows raised.

‘Can't see him directing an outing to the park,' said Jadwiga. ‘Oh, God, I can't bear it any longer – it
must
be five.'

‘Ten to,' said Henryk, returning, ‘Hold on to your hats, everyone. Out of here, now, into the living room. Take up positions.'

They stood at the windows, stomachs churning, looking down on to the rush-hour traffic, at those workers who were not, yet, aware of what was about to happen, and at the leaves of the great trees of Central Park, across Ujazdowskie Avenue, motionless in the cloudy evening air.

Five o'clock. And suddenly, at last, the flash of windows flung open all over the city, a sputtering of gunfire, another, another, an explosion. In street after street, the pounding feet of German troops, the sudden roar of alerted tanks, moving at top speed, scattering civilians. Doors slammed shut. Doors flung open. Screams. The bodies of ambushed German patrols sprawled on the ground.

In street after street taken by the Poles, people were running wildly out of the houses, waving white and red flags, upturning trams and setting them ablaze, staggering under the weight of sandbags, dustbins, slabs of paving, tables, chairs, chests of drawers – anything which might be used for a barricade, even sewing machines, even saucepans. Behind the barricades, pickaxes, spades, forks and shovels were passed along, the road and pavement torn up and dug out, the trenches made under fire from snipers. Many buildings were on fire: lines of fire fighters passed buckets, ancient hoses.

By six-thirty, Anna and the rest of her unit were out in the street, piling up the barricade at the southern end, filthy, laughing, hugging each other. Improvised flags – torn white sheets, scarlet cushion covers – were at the windows, armbands wound round the catches. From a doorway an old man emerged, waving a real flag, threadbare and yellowing. ‘I've had this hidden in the cellar for five years!' he called out, and jammed the pole into the mountain of earth and rubble by the trench. A cheer rose, and then, as it died, a familiar tune sounded from an open upper window. Hissing and scratching on a gramophone record from the twenties came the ‘Warszawianka' the battle hymn of the 1830 Uprising against the Czar, which had become the anthem of Warsaw; in moments the whole street stood still, listening to the reedy, wavering music, and then singing together, arms locked:

‘This is the day of blood and glory,

Let there resurrection be …'

Anna saw a young, heavily pregnant woman standing nearby, swaying as if she might be about to faint. She moved quickly across to her, since no one seemed to have noticed, and caught her arm. ‘Are you all right?'

The woman slowly turned to look at her, and Anna saw that she was almost in a trance. ‘My baby will be born in a free Poland,' she said dreamily, ‘I never thought it would happen.'

From Jerozolimskie Avenue, four or five blocks to the north, there came the sound of a raging gun battle. Still holding the young woman's arm, Anna turned towards it, found herself saying aloud: ‘Please, please, look after him.'

‘Your husband?' asked the girl.

‘My brother.'

The whole of the avenue was filling with German tanks and heavily armed patrols at every intersection. From further up, perhaps on the corner of Nowy Świat, they could hear angry crossfire, but down here, for the moment, it was fairly quiet. The trams which had been caught in the sudden explosion of the Uprising, almost three hours ago, stood abandoned on the lines, some pockmarked with bullet holes; Jerzy could see the bodies of two German military policemen sprawled in the middle of the pavement on the far side, and another, much closer, killed by the Captain as he ran for cover. There were other bodies, some with the AK armbands, some without, lying under the trees: to be killed on the very first day of fighting, even in the first hour – Christ! Later, the Captain had said, under the cover of darkness they'd get those bodies back, and bury them.

Crouched beneath the rim of the window sill, he and Andrzej watched the sky begin to redden as fires burned in other parts of the city. Then, just after eight, they heard the Captain behind them draw in his breath. ‘I don't believe it!'

‘What, sir?'

‘The Prudential – quick! Look and tell me what you can see there.'

They craned their necks, and saw to the north-east, on the very top of the Prudential Building skyscraper, the white and red of the Polish flag, fluttering wildly against the clouds.

‘We've done it!' Andrzej yelled, and leapt into the air. ‘We'll have every bloody swastika in Warsaw shot down by tomorrow.'

Jerzy grinned at him. Wilk and Tygrys – Grzegorz and Ryszard, they all knew each other's names, now – had been on the far side of the room, oiling the rifles. They scrambled to their feet and came over, and they all stood gazing out over the rooftops, where other flags were billowing, as the last of the light faded, and far away, in the Old Town, a bonfire burned like a beacon in the Market Square.

From his new headquarters in a factory in Wola, bordering the ghetto ruins, General Bór issued his first message to the fighting city:

‘Soldiers of the capital!

‘I have today issued the order which you desire, for open warfare against Poland's age-old enemy, the German invader. After nearly five years of ceaseless and determined struggle, carried on in secret, you stand today openly with arms in hand, to restore freedom to our country and to mete out fitting punishment to the German criminals for the terror and crimes committed by them on Polish soil.'

On the radio station Kosćiuszko, a repeated broadcast: ‘The streets of Praga are being shaken by the roar of Soviet guns. Attacks on the Germans are the duty of every Pole. Your sufferings will be over in a few days. Listen carefully and obediently to our authorities, the Polish National Council, and the Committee for National Liberation.'

At 8.15, General Stahel, Commander of the German Armed Forces in Warsaw, gave an order from his headquarters in the Bruhl Palace:

‘As of this moment, Warsaw is in a state of siege. Civilians who go out into the street will be shot. Buildings and establishments from which the Germans are shot at will be levelled to the ground.'

He woke with the sound of shooting, felt stiff from sleeping on the floor, thought for a moment he was back in the kitchen in Praga, in the winter after the siege, when they'd all slept by the stove to keep warm and woken each morning with cricks in their necks. But it was Andrzej lying next to him, not Anna, and when he turned to look at the window he didn't see the white light of falling snow but summer rain. The Captain was standing by the heavy curtains, with Grzegorz on the other side.

‘Sir?' He struggled to his feet, Andrzej and Ryszard, too, throwing off their blankets. ‘What's happening?'

‘Something in Napoleon Square – I think it might be the post office.'

They all pressed to the window.

‘Keep down!' the Captain snapped, and they flung themselves down and then peered cautiously over the sill. He saw German tanks, overturned trams, uprooted lamp posts, barricades: overnight, the avenue had become a wasteland for battle. From below, in the building, came the sound of heavy banging. Then the door opened and Pan Wójcik came in, saying: ‘They're moving down into the cellars – air raids are expected.' When they followed him to the apartment door they saw people spilling out of doors on every landing, carrying bedding, clothes, boxes of food, cans of water. Here and there were AK armbands, but most were civilians, women with children, grandparents. He saw one old man talking to an AK commander, begging to be allowed to join, and the officer shaking his head, explaining that there were barely enough arms to go round as it was.

By the afternoon the rain had stopped, and a hot August sun cast long shadows over the streets. Snipers hid in doorways, behind windows, in attics. The cellars were filling with families, trying to find a space to settle, calling when they found one, offering to share blankets, food, water. Few seemed afraid: a fever-pitch of excited talk rippled under the streets and pavements.

At 5.15, a voice almost breaking with emotion was picked up on the radio in the AK headquarters. ‘This is Polish Radio in London. Yesterday, at five o'clock in the afternoon, the Home Army began open fighting in Warsaw.'

That night, Lion unit was repositioned on the ground floor, and it was Jerzy's turn to keep watch, with Andrzej, as more tanks moved into the avenue and the buildings began to shake under mortar fire. In the north, many AK units were making for the Kampinos Forest,
^·
hoping for airdrops there, the supplies to be smuggled back into Zoliborz and the Old Town later.

By 3 August, the bridges across the Vistula were still in German hands, but the AK had taken and held the centre of the city, including the post office, the gasworks, the water supply and the Central Railway Station. After a battle lasting nineteen hours they had captured the electricity plant. They held the Old Town, they held the riverside districts of Powiśle and Czerniaków, and Mokotów, where they had stormed the Gestapo Headquarters. They were fighting desperately for Wola district.

In Moscow, Prime Minister Mikołajczyk was appealing for airborne supplies to be sent immediately.

‘What sort of an army is this Home Army of yours, without artillery, tanks or air force?' Stalin demanded. ‘It has not even enough light arms to fight properly. In terms of modern warfare, it is just nothing. I hear that the Polish Government has ordered these units to drive the Germans out of Warsaw. I do not understand how they can possibly do it.'

On 4 August, the Soviet fighter planes disappeared from the sky over Warsaw. German planes dropped leaflets in broken Polish, supposedly from General Bór: the talks in Moscow had failed, the people were to lay down their arms and go home. They fell on to streets empty of trams, cars, bicycles – of any kind of transport. People ran across the avenues and broad thoroughfares crouched down behind the barricades, stumbling over water and gas pipes in the trenches. From Wola and Ochota in the west, a great flood of refugees was beginning to pour towards the city centre and the Old Town. They were fleeing from German units made up mostly of ex-criminals, the very dregs of the
Wehrmacht
, who were rounding up civilians by the thousands, machine-gunning them in sealed-off side streets, burning them alive in their wooden houses, raping women and children; in the Curie-Skłodowska Radium Institute, they raped the cancer patients in their beds, and the nuns who nursed them.

At two o'clock that afternoon came the first
Luftwaffe
raid since the siege of 1939. Twenty-four Junkers flew over in close formation, dropping a hail of incendiary bombs. They came again at four. Fires raged through the city; fear began to spread in the cellars.