Reign of Hell (34 page)

Against the full force of the German machine, the Polish Commander-in-Chief, General Taddeus Bor-Komorovski, had pitifully little to offer save a spirit of fanatical determination. His faithful band of partisans would fight to the end, but that end must now be very close. For arms, they were forced to rely upon whatever they could capture from the Germans or manufacture themselves. Their most effective weapons were the petrol bomb, flame-throwers fashioned from lengths of piping, and hand grenades made from old tin cans. For explosive material they plundered the many unexploded German shells which lay scattered about the streets. It was all very ingenious, it was all very deadly, but sooner or later the supply must run out.

Meanwhile, however, the Polish partisans were still capable of giving us a good run for our money. They recaptured the central telephone exchange in the Rue Zilna, and in order not to waste valuable ammunition they rid themselves of the German troops by throwing them out of top-storey windows. They had been in possession of the building barely twenty minutes when the Pioneers turned up and began hurling explosives from the shelter of armoured cars. The occupying Poles had little with which to oppose the attack, but they held on grimly until the exchange finally blew up in a shower of bricks. Not one of them survived the wreckage.

With the support of an assault battery we launched an attack on the police headquarters, but the partisans who held it fought like demons out of hell and even went so far as to come streaming after us as we beat a hasty and undignified retreat through the neighbouring streets.

One Polish unit was enough to put paid to five hundred aged German gendarmes still occupying a wing of the Ministry of the Interior. The Germans had been dragged out of their mothballs, in which they had been buried knee deep ever since 1918, and set down in the midst of a strange type of warfare which made no sense to them. The Poles swarmed all over the building, the fighting was conducted in the corridors, on the stairs, face to face across office desks, and the few surviving sections of gendarmerie fled in panic from the scene, while two SD companies under the command of a Russian colonel of the Kaminski Brigade marched forth to put the upstart Poles in their place. The partisans, gloriously drunk on German blood, caught them neatly in a trap. They let them into the building with virtually no resistance at all, then promptly came out of their hiding-places and surrounded them. And this time, as an added refinement, they set light to them before throwing them out of the windows. They then went roaring into the streets to mop up the last survivors of the five hundred gendarmes with hand grenades parachuted to them by the British.

The remnants of the five hundred had taken shelter in the Church of the Holy Spirit; not because they placed any importance upon the Poles’ respecting their right of sanctuary, but simply because the church happened to be one of the few buildings in the area still standing.

Three German infantry regiments marching to their rescue crossed swords with Colonel Karol Ziemski Wachnowski, and his partisans and were anihilated. A group of suicidal Poles then burst into the church with explosives strapped to their backs, and the half dozen gendarmes who survived the holocaust were sprayed with petrol and sent running in flames through the streets.

SS Obergruppenführer von dem Bach Zalewski commanded a fresh attack. Behind the assault columns marched the sub-humanity of Dirlewanger’s SS, but before they had even reached the great fountain in the Place Royale, the columns were brought to a panic-stricken halt by a bombardment of petrol bombs and hand grenades. The Poles were
behaving like madmen, and the confusion was total. Dirlewanger’s gangsters were among the first to turn and run.

Colonel Ziemski Wachnowski immediately sent his men tearing after them, and the demented Poles raced screaming through the narrow streets in pursuit of the fleeing army, trampling the injured underfoot.

Meanwhile Dirlewanger and Kaminski between them had succeeded in bringing their troops under some sort of control. Himmler had their death warrants already written out, awaiting his signature should Warsaw not be flattened within twenty-four hours. With such a threat hanging over their heads they turned their men round and sent them straight back again. This time the Army was sent along behind to back them up. Our orders were to shoot on sight anyone not wearing a German uniform. Man, woman or child. Young or old. Himmler had condemned to death the entire Polish race, and we were to be their executioners.

We emerged into the Place Napoleon, and suddenly, above the tumult of shooting and shelling, we heard the sound of music. Music in such a place, at such a time as that? It was coming from a house over on the north side of the square. A Polish captain was playing the piano, apparently oblivious to the fighting going on all round him. The sound seemed to drive Kaminski berserk. He sent an entire battalion racing across the square to put an end to it, and screamed after them that he would promote the man who brought him the captain’s head on the end of his bayonet.

The battalion had gone only a few yards when Colonel Wachnovski threw his Janislau Brigade into the attack. The Janislau Brigade was made up mainly of women and girls and young boys, but they were none the less dauntless. They fought like all the partisans, like lunatics intoxicated with the taste of blood . . .

Behind us, the support troops started hurling smoke grenades, which belched forth great clouds of sickly green fog. Most of the Poles had no gas masks and they fell back in disorder. In fact it was not gas. It was a smoke used for camouflage purposes and was therefore accepted as a perfectly legitimate
tool of war. Anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in it for as long as twenty minutes would certainly die an agonising death, but that, apparently, counted as fair game.

There was a momentary lull, while both sides fell back. Then the Poles, evidently having decided that they might just as well die one way as another, plunged onward through the swirling mists and came howling and screaming at us, with explosives strapped to their chests. Kaminski and Dirlewanger’s SS were virtually anihilated by the first wave.

Those few who survived the slaughter turned and ran. Corpses lay piled in the gutters, and at every street corner flew the Polish flag with its proud white eagle.

Far away in Berlin, Himmler had retired to bed with a fever. Even Hitler himself hesitated to trouble him with mere matters of state, for Dr Kirstein had pronounced the Reichsführer’s life to be in grave danger. He had received a severe nervous shock upon hearing the news from Warsaw. The Poles had destroyed eight hundred Tigers and wiped out three divisions. The entire centre of the town was now in their hands. From his bed of agony, Himmler had just sufficient command over his faculties to sign the death warrant of Gauleiter Fischer, the traitor who had originally abandoned Warsaw to the enemy. The Gauleiter was dragged through the streets by a Tiger from Eicke’s Third Tank Division and his head was sent to Himmler in a box. General Rainer Stahel, the commander of Warsaw, was also condemned to death, but was given a reprieve on condition that he recaptured the old quarters of the town. Unfortunately for him, he fell into the hands of the partisans before he could carry out the task.

At dawn we came under attack from a cavalry corps, who charged through the streets with their sabres like a horde of howling Cossacks. Hooves thundered over the cobblestones, creating showers of sparks as iron met flint. The horses were foam-flecked and the sabres red with dripping blood. Many were the men who were caught up in the stampede and trampled to death. Many were those who had their heads
severed from their shoulders as they dived too late for cover.

I found myself running for my life with Porta by my side. Neck and neck we raced, with the sabres whistling past our ears and the breath of the horses hot and sweet in our nostrils. We reached the Place Pilsudski, heaped high with bodies. Porta tripped and fell, and I was unable to stop myself. I came down on top of him, knowing that this would surely be the end for both of us.

And then, suddenly, from the far side of the square, the machine-guns opened up. The advancing Poles were confronted by the SS Regiment ‘Der Führer’. Men and horses were cut to ribbons. Those who could, turned and fled, but many more were left behind in the graveyard of the Place Pilsudski. A horse and its rider were brought down directly in front of the spot where Porta and I were crouched among the dead. They missed us only by inches, and we were able to take shelter behind them from the flying bullets.

The following day the sky above Warsaw was black with bombers. They were Wellingtons, belatedly sent over to aid the Poles in their hour of need. But of all the arms and all the rations they dropped over the town, scarcely one-tenth were picked up by Bor-Komorovski’s beleaguered partisans. The rest were divided equally between the Germans and the Russians.

Joining forces with the 104th Grenadiers, we launched an attack on the Rue Pivna in an attempt to liberate the northern quarter of the town, which had now been in enemy hands for over a month. It was of strategic importance to the German Army, and we had been supplied with tanks, P64s, to make sure we did the job properly.

‘Forward tanks!’ ordered Colonel Hinka, across the radio.

The vehicles ground their way slowly down the slope of the Rue Pivna.

‘Range four hundred yards,’ said the Old Man. ‘Load and prepare to fire.’

We were back at the old routine. It had been a long time since we had seen the inside of a tank, we had been too often
on the receiving end these past few months. Now, at last, we were back where we belonged, on the inside looking out. It was as if we had never been anywhere else.

Tiny was loading and reloading with all his usual unfailing regularity. He even managed now and again to snatch a sip of vodka or a bite of sausage without interrupting the rhythm. It was a matter of complete indifference to Tiny what we were aiming at. The target could have been anything from a crowd of innocent bystanders to a nest of enemy machine-guns. He knew only that the machine must be kept in constant motion, and that it was his task to feed it with its supply of grenades.

A row of small terraced houses lay in our path. They crumpled up before us as if they were made of cardboard, but suddenly there was the sound of an explosion, the whole tank shuddered and tilted over and ended up resting on one track and shaking violently.

‘Magnetic mine,’ said Heide, tight-lipped. ‘The right track’s been buggered.’

There was a second’s silence, then Porta swore and got to his feet. He jerked his head at Tiny.

‘Repair squad outside. Let’s go.’

Tiny settled himself comfortably on the floor and stuffed his mouth full of sausage.

‘You just gotta be joking,’ he said.

‘You want to sit here and wait for them to blow us to bits?’ demanded Porta, furious.

Tiny shrugged his shoulders.

‘It’s better than going outside and getting yourself nobbled,’ he said.

Before Porta could reply, we were hit for a second time. A shell crashed into the outer casing and exploded in a ball of flame. It did no serious damage, except to our nerves. Our companion tanks had by now disappeared. We were being fired on from behind, and we had to rotate the turret by hand, for the electric circuit had been knocked out by the first shell. There was a third explosion, and this time the whole of the back axle was torn off. There could now be no
possibility of sending out a repair squad. Even if they did survive the raging inferno of the roads, they could certainly not replace the back axle.

The Old Man reluctantly gave the order to abandon the vehicle. A stationary tank is a sitting duck. It could blow up at any moment, and it would have been suicide to hang around any longer.

Every hatch was flung open, and I saw a scramble of arms and legs as my companions disappeared. It was my job to stay behind and destroy what remained of the vehicle.

‘See you in heaven,’ said Porta, blowing me a kiss.

I watched him as he scrambled out. I waited until I saw the soles of his boots, and then I primed the self-destruct mechanism and dived after him towards the nearest hatch. It refused to open. It had fallen back and it was stuck fast. I was seized at once with panic. The tank was going to blow up, and I was still going to be inside it. I had only seconds left. I was never going to make it. I hammered in futile sobbing fury at the closed hatch. The blast of a grenade had battened it down, and it was jammed tight. It needed more strength than my puny blows to force it open, and more sense than my terror-flooded brain possessed to lead me to another exit.

Suddenly, I saw daylight. Two hands, vast like carpet bags reached down towards me. They hauled me up through the turret, and Tiny and I fell together over the side of the crippled tank.

‘Bloody fool!’ snarled Tiny. He boxed me soundly round the ears. ‘Could have got us both bloody killed, buggering about like that!’

It was only the blast of the explosion which shut him up. We were blown across the road and hurled straight through the windows of a nearby house. Even Tiny was too shattered to do more than lie on the floor and gasp until one of the walls began slowly to sag towards us and we both went diving out again on to the pavement.

We tagged on behind a company of infantry and attacked the old Buhl Palace, once the home of royalty, now in the
hands of the partisans. They did not give it up without a struggle. We fought from room to room, on the landings and the staircases, in the galleries and the gardens, until at last the place resembled a barracks – its beauty destroyed, its pride humiliated. The partisans retreated, and we were now in sole possession. The silence was oppressive after the ferocity of the combat. The royal palace was a desolate wreck, and it gave me no comfort to stretch my unwashed, aching body on a four-poster bed in a room that had once belonged to princes. Tiny wiped his boots clean on the damask coverlet, and Porta wrenched down the velvet curtains and slept curled up on them like a dog in its kennel. For a few hours we were the lords and masters of a war-torn palace. But with the coming of the dawn we were thrown back into the gutters where we belonged, put to flight by a detachment of Wachnowski’s blood-thirsty guerrilla fighters. Our moment of glory had been very brief.