The Adjacent (30 page)

When I saw some German battle tanks to the south of me, arrayed in a broad flank, heading towards the city with their peculiar and threatening motion, I swung away from them as quickly as I could.

I continued to skirt around the city, but now I had changed my mind. It made no sense to drive to another city, when I had an aircraft that I could use. I headed for the airstrip, trusting that the
Germans would not yet be there. The car’s engine was making a loud clattering sound, presumably because of the damage I caused when I drove across the door frame. It was difficult to keep the car headed straight forward. I saw no point in halting to try to find out what was wrong.

There was hardly any other traffic on the road. I saw one column of Polish army trucks, but they took no notice of me.

I reached the airstrip. As soon as I drove in from the road, turned into the familiar field, I was struck by how normal it felt. Everything was just as I had left it. I went straight to the Czapla I had been flying earlier in the day, started the engine and taxied it back to the hangar. Here I filled the petrol tank to the top, then made everything as secure as I could. I wasted no time. As soon as the aircraft was fuelled I searched in the tiny office for every map of Poland I could find, filled a bottle with water for myself and then took off.

The aircraft was equipped with a radio so when I was in the air I switched on, scanning for incoming signals. The usual frequencies were silent, an ominous sign. Knowing that I should at least inform my superior officer I used the standard communication channel and filed my flight plan. No response.

The day was coming to an end and it was dusk by the time I reached the Lwów sector. I located the military airfield, radioed down for permission to land and received it at once. The controller’s voice on the radio-telephone was professional, calm. He courteously repeated the identification signals that I would see displayed on the runway approach, then signed off.

That, I think, was for me the last reminder of the order and peace that had once existed in my home country. I landed the Czapla, taxied it as instructed to an air force hangar. When I climbed out of the cockpit, shaking out my hair from under the leather flying helmet, the maintenance men working there stared at me in surprise. Where I normally flew, people were used to me. Here I was among strangers.

I was by this time tired and hungry, not having had any kind of break since the morning. When I had made sure the plane was secure, the wheels chocked, the engine correctly closed down, the controls equalized, I went to the duty office to report in.

Here I learned several alarming facts, the first of which was that late in the day several divisions of the German Army had made a lightning attack, moving in on Lwów from the south and setting up a cordon around the southern limits. A full attack was expected before first light the next day – there were no Polish ground troops anywhere
near to repulse them. The tentative plans to set up a rendezvous point in Lwów for the government in exile had been abandoned.

All service personnel and members of the civil service and diplomatic corps were to be evacuated even further to the south and east, initially to Czernowice, in the shadow of the Karpathian mountains.

But – Lwów was where Tomasz and I had planned to meet! I felt panic rising. He was still somewhere in Kraków Province, with the Nazis sweeping all before them.

As if all this were not upheaval enough there were many reports that the Soviet Union had invaded Poland in the north. Some rumours said that the Russians had invaded on ‘our side’, to fight the Germans on our behalf. That idea was dismissed with the cynical distrust that Poles have always held for both Russians and Germans: if the Soviet Union was invading, they were not going to do us any favours. Events of course were to prove us right.

While I was still trying to absorb this welter of unwelcome information I was suddenly informed that because of the emergency I had ceased to be a civilian and was now commissioned as a Flying Officer in the Polish Air Force. This meant I was under direct orders from any superior officer, not just the informal ‘requests’ I had been receiving from the top brass I had been ferrying around.

The first such order I received came from the duty officer who broke the news to me. He said I was to fly immediately to Czernowice in a two-engined plane, carrying several diplomats as passengers, then return to Lwów before daybreak to collect more.

It was impossible. I was practically in a state of physical collapse. I pleaded to be allowed a few hours’ sleep. The officer then insinuated that if I had problems with night flying then he would understand, and transfer me to clerical ground duties for which I would be more suitable. I angrily brandished my log book in his face, showing the dozens of flights I had carried out in the past few days. I said I could not fly safely, day or night, on the ragged edge of exhaustion, but that I would be back at the airfield at least an hour before dawn.

I did not tell him that I had never in my life taken off in a plane in the dark.

I stumbled off to find something to eat and a bunk I could borrow for a few hours.

I was awake by 4:00 am and reported back to the airfield. While I had been sleeping the place had been transformed. All semblance of order was gone. The control tower radio-telephone was not responding and the illuminated flares along the sides of the runway
had been extinguished. I could find no officers, or at least any officers who either knew what was going on or who were prepared to give me orders. Artillery was firing in the distance, but no shells were landing anywhere near the airfield. I began to think nervously of the Stukas, but I assumed they would not attack until after sunrise. In the time I was walking around trying to find out what I was supposed to do, three clearly overloaded Polish aircraft taxied down at short intervals to the unlighted runway, took off after an agonizingly slow run and flew precariously towards the south.

I made a decision to act on my own initiative. I thought it might be safe to make one flight, then return to Lwów to try to locate Tomasz. I went through to the assembly area and discovered a large group of civilians clustered miserably together, surrounded by many bags and cases of their belongings. They pressed around me, demanding to know when they would be evacuated. Most of them had been waiting all night. Some were holding official-looking identity cards or letters. There was no point my reading them, but to try to take control of the situation I took two of the letters and skimmed through them. Both of those men were from the French embassy.

Out on the apron I found a LW6 Żubr – an obsolete two-engined plane with the reputation of being loathed by every pilot who had to fly it, but it was the only machine available. It had cargo space behind the pilot’s seat. I managed to locate one of the engineers. He confirmed the plane was airworthy, but not fuelled. I searched for and found a working bowser and moved the aircraft across to it. I refuelled it myself, clambering nervously on top of the wing.

The sky in the east was lightening quickly.

We took off after the sun had just started to appear. I managed to cram five of the civilians into the cargo space, but only on the condition that they took none of their baggage. They resisted at first and seemed reluctant to take orders from a woman, whether she was in air force uniform or not. I made it clear that I was about to fly the plane away, with or without any of them, but I could take five passengers. I returned to the aircraft to wait. A minute later five men walked out sheepishly and jammed themselves into the cargo space. When I taxied out to the runway the airfield was still in semidarkness, and shrouded in morning mist, but either my instincts took over or we were lucky. We lifted away from the ground without trouble, although the plane was horrible to handle.

I climbed the Żubr at the steepest angle it was capable of, because I suspected the enemy lines could not be far below us. In fact I saw
no sign of the Germans, either in ground formations or in the air.

The few hours’ sleep had revived me. Personal priorities were now dominant. I maintained the plane’s altitude at about a thousand metres above the ground, the morning air cool and calm, the very best of weather in which to fly. The plane was painfully slow and every movement of the stick was a physical struggle. While I kept an eye on the ground I was thinking about Tomasz and how we might make contact with each other again. When I thought rationally I realized that our meeting in Lwów could not now happen – everything I had seen there told me that the Germans would be in control of the city before nightfall. There was hardly a trace of military resistance from the Poles. If it was true that the Russians had also invaded then it was only a matter of a few hours before the whole country capitulated.

I found Czernowice by map-reading and dead-reckoning and landed the plane safely, albeit with a bone-jarring crunch when I misjudged the height above the runway. My cramped passengers untangled themselves from the hold and limped away to whatever their destinies might be. I secured the unlovely plane, then went in search of more information.

I quickly realized that even this remote town, in the far south-eastern corner of Poland, was not a safe haven for anyone, military or civilian. Here in Czernowice the talk was all of the Russians: they were fifty kilometres away, perhaps a hundred, only twenty-five. Three Red Army divisions were marching in our direction, fifteen, maybe twenty divisions. I disliked rumours – they always frightened me. My country was being overrun and destroyed. My life was in danger, but so too, I knew, was Tomasz’s. I had achieved a measure of self-determination, but Tomasz was trapped in an outdated and under-equipped army, confronted by two of the most aggressive military powers in the world.

Unexpectedly, Major General Zaremski arrived in another plane half an hour after I landed. From the main building on the airfield I saw him striding across the apron, the junior officers around him apparently bringing him up to date on the invasions. I went out to meet him but he brushed past without recognizing me. Later, when I attended a briefing for all air force pilots who had successfully reached Czernowice, Zaremski finally realized I was there.

We were to evacuate again, he announced, this time towards Bucharest. No civilians would be transported – priority would be given to air force personnel. The intention was to regroup and form
an independent detachment of the Polish Air Force. We would then launch guerrilla air raids on the occupying armies of the homeland. Zaremski named an air base in the north of Romania where we had permission to land and where there would be all the facilities we needed. It sounded impractical to me but Zaremski’s manner was calm and plausible. I listened to him with the other pilots, but I was aware that of all those present I was the only one who was not combat-trained.

He sought me out afterwards and took me aside.

‘I want you to be my personal pilot again,’ he said at once. ‘You will not be expected to take part in the action. But I will be in effect the commanding officer of this strike force, so you will be in danger because of that. Are you prepared to serve me once more?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said, even though I was starting to think that he and everyone I was with was descending into a kind of madness. How long could Polish warplanes operate from a base inside Romania without the Germans or Russians retaliating? What then? Would Romania too be dragged into the war? It was hard for me to think clearly: I had not eaten since the night before, I had slept only a few hours, I had been flying for most of the day.

Within an hour we were in the air again, but this time I was in a new aircraft, a twin-engined PZL.37 Łoś. General Zaremski was the only passenger. He sat beside me in the cockpit, never commenting on the way I was flying, even though I suspected he was more familiar with the aircraft than I was. I was too tired to care, which probably made me a better, more instinctive pilot. He acted as my navigator.

We crossed the Karpathians, we flew above the rugged and broken terrain to the south-west of the range, we droned low across an apparently empty landscape of farmland and small settlements. Towards the end of the day we approached the designated airfield. I was once again on the point of exhaustion. Zaremski guided me towards the landing-path. I went into the final approach with the feeling that I was dreaming, but we settled safely on the runway. I taxied the plane as directed to a certain part of the base.

And there the adventure abruptly ended.

All our plans collapsed in a moment. It was instantly apparent that the Romanian government, presumably under pressure from the Germans, had lured us to this place. The intention was to take as much of the Polish Air Force as possible out of the reckoning. Armed troops arrested us as soon as we climbed down from the aircraft. We were driven away as prisoners of the Romanian government –
‘internees’ was the word they used, but it amounted to the same thing.

I spent the winter months billeted in the house of two Romanian schoolteachers, living with them and their two children. I spoke no Romanian, they spoke only a few words of Polish. We managed to communicate with a few scraps of English and German. They obtained for me an English-language textbook from their school and I spent the long idle hours learning this language. That at least was of benefit to me.

It was more or less impossible to obtain information about the progress of the war, and in particular news of what was happening inside Poland. I knew that the fighting had ceased within a day or two of my escape, and that the country was now occupied by both the Germans and the Soviets. No news at all of Tomasz, although there were disturbing rumours I heard from other Polish exiles that many of the officers in the forces who had remained in Poland had been rounded up and interned. I listened anxiously to the broadcasts from the BBC – they were often jammed, but about twice a week it was possible to hear most of their bulletins. They rarely if ever said anything about Poland: it was as if my country had ceased to exist. The British had gone to war in our cause but now they ignored us. For me, the main benefit of the broadcasts was that they gave me a chance to listen to English being spoken. I repeated the words aloud, learning and learning.