A Special Duty (14 page)

A couple of days later the men of the mobile forest unit
4
arrived back from their raid on the German farm with the bloodied body of a comrade, who had been shot and killed by guards. The mood became sombre as his closest partisan friends carried the young man’s body to the crossroads at Momoty Gorne. There they dug him a grave with their bare hands.
vi
This was the reality of partisan life, and they would witness more harrowing events over the coming weeks. For the moment, the overriding priority for Kmicic (whose orders were to keep the RAF men safe) was to move them out of the village where they were attracting a lot of attention, and into the forest where he could keep them on the move. His unit comprised three officers and twenty men; among them a doctor, a solicitor, and several engineers, some of whom were on the run from the Gestapo after being caught in sabotage activity at the munitions factory in which they had been conscripted to work. Morale amongst these men was quite good; they had no choice but to hide in the forest and fight for their lives. The officers, however, were volunteers, and often accompanied by wives and families. They seemed to be more affected by the constant strain of the situation. Lieutenant Kmicic had set up this forest unit quite recently, but he was a veteran of many operations, including the raid on Bieliny Police Station that had provided his men with some of their weapons. Tom mentioned during his debrief that Kmicic suffered from nervous strain and heart trouble, despite only being in his late twenties.
vii

Partisan life was tough but there was a routine, a sense of purpose, and comradeship, which at times made it a good life. The airmen were accepted into the unit and treated as equals in every respect, except that they were not allowed to go out on raids. Instead, they undertook guard duty around the camp, and helped with the daily task of foraging for food. Being in safe hands themselves, they felt keenly the hardship and suffering they witnessed around them, which ranged from pathetic family groups burned out of their homes and living rough in the woods, to roaming bandits, who themselves plundered and robbed just to survive. The Kmicic unit had been attacked twice by Bolshevik bandits, as had local villagers, who complained bitterly about the theft of their livestock and carts. The Russian partisan units that were suspected of arming the bandits disclaimed all responsibility, and were engaged in a certain amount of plunder themselves. This forest, once home to a few woodsmen, was now a frightening place, populated by fugitives, displaced people, and resistance groups, including Russians and Ukrainians who, with the advance of the Eastern Front were filtering in behind the departing Germans. All were living off the land, their desperation fuelled by an awareness that they were slowly being surrounded by German troops, whose spotter planes flew over the forest from dawn to dusk. They might be queuing for their soup ration one minute and rushing for cover the next as a Fieseler Storch loomed over the canopy, machine-gunning the area. This danger was increasing daily as the encirclement of the partisan- controlled forest progressed. The daily physical and mental struggle took its toll on the men, but a certain amount of self-sufficiency was expected of them and they constructed their own beds, carried water from the river, and went out daily (disguised as woodsmen), in search of food. They called at local farms, where they could usually obtain eggs, potatoes and poor-quality black bread, but rarely meat, and whatever they came back with was shared equally. They often went without, but unlike some of the Russian and Ukrainian bands, they didn’t steal their food, but paid for it with cash and protection. If they were staying in a farmhouse they would cook together in the kitchen, and then George would probably bring his guitar out and they would sing a few familiar songs together. In the forest, food was eaten cold, unless the commander considered it safe to light a fire. Alojzego Pajaka, known as ‘Ali’, who was assigned to Tom for communication in German, described the crew as young, friendly men who listened to everything intently and slept, ate and shared every task with the partisans, including the making of spruce shelters. Charlie Keen later commented: “They [the partisans] shared everything with us, and what’s more, they thought of our comfort before their own. If it had not been for them, we would not be here.”

Partisan activity during this period was predominantly to disrupt the German supply lines; blowing up trains and railway lines to harass the enemy as the Russians advanced and, in order to do this effectively, the partisan groups, AK, BCh and NOW
5
, were in the process of joining forces. A week after the German farm raid, the Kmicic unit joined forces with one of the larger groups in order to intercept a train and free Polish prisoners who were being transported to a concentration camp, but, when they reached the planned interception point, it was swarming with German troops and a skirmish followed in which seven of the partisans were wounded. The injured men were brought back in carts and taken to a field hospital run by Father John’s
6
well-equipped NOW unit, which specialised in diversion and sabotage operations and had in its ranks six Frenchmen who had escaped from forced labour in Germany. The Kmicic and Father John groups were in the process of merging to form a single AK-NOW fighting unit in anticipation of the June offensive, and a degree of cooperation was already underway, to the extent that the airmen, who were left with a ‘guarding’ group during raids, were not always sure which of the bands they were with. Father John’s unit of around 200 men and women was run with discipline and impressive military precision. Everyone was expected to attend morning and evening roll-call and daily prayers, reciting together: “Lord God Almighty, give us the strength and the power to persevere in the struggle for Poland…”

Every few days the Kmicic group would break camp at dawn and move under cover of darkness to a different location, sometimes staying in villages, but most of the time sleeping rough in the forest. The airmen were easy to pick out in the forest camp because they were dressed alike in RAF khaki, and always together. They remained polite and curious about every aspect of partisan life, and because they showed a particular interest in the weaponry, the partisans set up a target range with bottles to show them how to use the Mannlicher rifles (that they had acquired during the raid on Bieliny Police Station). There was a lot of laughter and leg-pulling, but all four men turned out to be good marksmen, which gave them great kudos within the group. The shooting contests became a regular sport and this, combined with a bit of slapstick humour and the singing of familiar songs, allowed them to forget the isolation of having no common language. Tom’s German was quite fluent and Patrick Stradling knew a little Polish, which enabled them to get by, but they did not have the fluency to join in a conversation in Polish or understand what was being said around them, and they quickly learned that asking too many questions aroused suspicion. It amused the partisans that the men remained straight-faced when they were laughing at a joke, but on one memorable occasion, a partisan took out a small black comb and put it under his nose in an imitation of Hitler and sang a song, which had them all laughing. Some things didn’t need words, and gradually a sense of kinship developed which would endure for a lifetime – trust, loyalty, humour and kindness were drawing them in to the Polish struggle for freedom. The fact that the airmen were able to beat all contenders in the shooting contests was certainly a factor in the developing mutual respect, to the extent that they were issued with the precious Mannlicher rifles when they were on guard-duty around the camp. They remained close as a crew, and kept their spirits up by singing familiar songs that reminded them of home – ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ and, ‘My Bonny Lies over the Ocean’, and were soon learning some new ones. ‘Kolysanka Lesna’, a forest lullaby, was a very popular partisan song, and ‘Moja Malgorzata’, a love song that George sang when thinking of his wife, became a favourite with Tom, who was missing his own wife, Marguerita. They had married during his embarkation leave before flying to North Africa and he wondered how she was coping, waiting in Ludlow for news of him.

The gradual shift towards emotional solidarity with their comrades did not prevent the harsh physical conditions taking a toll and they suffered from cold, dysentery, infections and lice infestation. Tom’s leg injury slowly healed, but he developed a painful foot infection, which was lanced with a knife and cleaned with the raw spirit usually reserved for drinking before a raid. He then succumbed to a bout of pneumonia and the partisans went to great trouble to get medicine for him. They had been living like this for a long time and had become inured to the hardship, developing expertise in primitive living and survival. They made poultices from beeswax and cleaned up their lousy clothing by stirring an anthill with a stick. They then threw the infested clothes on top for the ants to eat the lice, also leaving an acid residue to work as a natural disinfectant. The men strived to share every aspect of partisan life and would willingly have joined the fight, but in these early days, it is doubtful that they were sufficiently ‘hardened’ for guerrilla combat and they were not permitted to take part in raids. They had not entirely given up hope of finding a way back to the Squadron, and Tom asked AK Commander Belzynski if it would be possible to get a message to Brindisi to let them know that they were alive and in safe hands. Being familiar with the distances involved and lack of refuelling facilities, they probably had no expectation of a rescue mission, but simply wanted their families to be informed that they were alive. According to an account by Stanislaw Jankowski in his book,
Ostatni Lot Halifaxa
,
7
Belzynski did get a message to Brindisi early in May, but the response, when it came, gave no hope of rescue, because there were not enough hours of darkness for an aircraft from Italy or England to make the round-trip in safety and, even if an aircraft could have reached them, the required spec for a landing ground was impossible to achieve within miles of their current location. It was suggested that they try and make contact with a Russian partisan group, who might be in a better position to assist them. A couple of weeks later the whereabouts of these four crew members was reported in the Squadron operations record book:

“Information was received today from the Polish ME48 that a message had been received by them from ‘the field’ in Poland stating that W/O Storey and three members of his crew are reported safe and in friendly hands. Further details to follow”
(ORB 148 Squadron Summary 17
^th
May 1944)

They had flown alone and were now lost to the outside world. Interestingly, at the same time, May 1944, SOE were making plans for a Dakota of 267 Squadron, fitted with eight additional fuel tanks and escorted by two Liberators, to take off from Brindisi and land at a prepared airstrip near Tarnow to drop off and collect key Polish personnel (Operation Wildhorn II), so it was logistically possible to mount such an operation to south-east Poland, but perhaps only in exceptional circumstances. Brindisi base, once the hub of their lives, was a receding memory for the RAF crew, who woke every morning to bird song, hunger and the murmur of Polish voices as comrades prepared for the day’s raid, or went off to forage for food. They still wore the uniform battledress they had baled-out in, but their status as RAF aircrew, protected by the Geneva Convention, was compromised by their attachment to a partisan unit, and they knew that if caught, they would be treated as spies or terrorists and shot. Fortunately there were no ground attacks during this period, the forests being largely ‘no go’ areas for German troops, but it was a different matter in the skies, with reconnaissance planes flying over the treetops from dawn to dusk searching for partisans and machine gunning any likely groups they came upon. A new and worrying development was the dropping of signal flares by the Fieselers to guide in bombers for intensive and indiscriminate attacks, and it was distressing to see villages, where people had been kind and given them food, reduced to smouldering ruins, or subjected to murderous reprisal raids. Tom was particularly affected by the sight in one familiar village of men and women, victims of such a raid, hanging from the gables of their own houses. Something about this pathetic and pointless act of brutality not only tipped the men into wanting to avenge it, but haunted Tom for a long time. They toyed with the idea of forming their own guerrilla band, with supplies arranged through London – a sign of their growing anger at the unnecessary cruelty of the enemy and the solidarity they felt with their Polish friends.

The Germans were loathed for their cruelty, but partisans felt an even greater loathing towards the Russians, with whom they had been instructed, by their command, to cooperate. They believed that in helping the Russians they were merely assisting a permanent Soviet occupation, but nevertheless obeyed orders and reluctantly escorted the Russians through enemy territory, and passed on information to them, receiving little in return despite the fact that the Russians received regular supply drops of arms and ammunition. A sense of national pride was a factor for the partisans who, though poorly equipped, were fighting on their home soil and were not prepared to take a subordinate position. The Russians, with their regular supply deliveries and disciplined militias, were scornful of their neighbours, and automatically assumed a superior status. They co-existed in a state of armed neutrality with neither side respecting or trusting the other, but the Polish scouts, whose information network was second to none, were bringing back reports of a massive build-up of German troops in the surrounding towns and now they needed each other.

The Polish units were poorly equipped for such a fight, and supply drops were a touchy subject because of the disappointment felt over the flow of arms reaching them from the Allies, for which they blamed Britain. Tom did his best to explain the difficulties of supplying them from such a distance given the prevailing weather conditions, but the partisans resolutely believed that their overwhelming struggle could have been better supported, had the will been there. A happier subject was the progress of the war, and they were particularly eager to hear news of the Polish units, led by General Anders, who were fighting with the Western Allies in Italy, and on the point of a breakthrough at Monte Cassino. They were naively convinced that Churchill was delaying the invasion of France
8
in order to preserve his forces to fight the Soviet Union over the Polish question, and they followed events keenly. The Polish underground newspapers, which were in wide circulation, and Polish broadcasts from London kept them well informed, and both officers and men had been ‘filled with despair’ to learn of Churchill’s speech to the Commons in February, in which he praised his ally Stalin and said: