While Still We Live (20 page)

“First the tanks, then the flame-throwers, then the mopping-up parties,” one man said.

Another nodded wearily. “No more shelling now, anyway.” He sounded almost hopeful.

A third soldier, sitting beside the two wounded men, examined his rifle carefully and adjusted the bayonet once more. He looked up to catch the eyes of a comrade watching him.

“I know,” he said savagely. “I know, for God’s sake. But it’s all I’ve got. How the hell do they think we can stop tanks with a bayonet? Why the devil don’t they send us the reinforcements we asked for?”

The man’s outburst was the sign for the officer to rise and walk towards the window. His movement silenced the oaths behind him into an indistinct mumble. Well, why don’t they send something? Why in all hell don’t they? He looked up at the gunner.

“Nothing out there, as yet, Captain,” the gunner said.

The officer nodded. He climbed heavily onto the solid table which had been jammed with massive beams against the window to support the gun. Standing there, his head close
against the wall, his neck twisted forward, his eyes above the pavement’s level, he could see as far as the haphazard pile of concrete blocks which straddled the street By this time, the Germans must have occupied the remains of the houses beyond that freak barricade. But the snipers he had posted near there this afternoon were still silent. The man lying on the half-ruined ledge above the café’s entrance was still silent. There was nothing out there, as yet. He wiped away the sweat which blinded him, streaking his face with his grimy hands. His fingers scraped over the heavy stubble on his jaw and rested on his chin. Five days’ beard, two days’ hunger and sleeplessness, a handful of ammunition, a spoonful of water in the last twelve hours. So we’ve come to this, he thought; we are fighting like rats from a basement. His bitter eyes followed the broken line of buildings which fenced the street. They rested on the pitted surface of the road. If only we had some petrol, he thought once more. Even one bottle of petrol.

“Nothing there,” he said abruptly. He knew that the man beside him and the men behind him were watching him. They were waiting for orders, for a last word of encouragement, and suddenly his bitterness turned to anger: anger with them for depending on him, anger with himself for his uselessness. They had relied on him for four weeks now, and he had brought them to this. Caught like rats, fighting like rats with bare teeth. Yet what else should he have done? At what point in the last four weeks could he have made another decision which would not have led to this? It seemed laughable now that he should have been so proud of the way in which he had led his men to Warsaw. After the slaughter-fields of Poznan, after the scattering and encirclement of the remaining armies, Warsaw
had seemed the one hope. There, men could make a stand and fight, men could hold the Germans until help came. Well, they had held the Germans. The Germans hadn’t been able to cross the Vistula, not with all their planes and tanks and ammunition, not with all their ten divisions in a tight noose round the city’s neck. Ten divisions... He stared at the house opposite the café. There, Cadet Kurylo waited with the other machine gun and five men. Four snipers. One outpost. Nine men here. Twenty altogether. A nice round figure. Twenty of them, and only four of his original command. He had brought them to this. His sense of failure was so complete that the whole catastrophe became his personal fault.

He turned quickly away from the window, and stumbled down from the table. He faced the waiting men. Now was the time for a neat little speech; now was the time to tell them that everything would be all right All they had to do was to hold this basement for one more hour, and then the trenches guarding the approach to the Poniatowski Bridge would be reinforced, and they could fall back to join their comrades evacuating the other streets, and together they would fight along the Vistula.

He steadied his voice and said, “Well, we know what we’ve to do.” A traditional beginning. Excellent. Wonderful. His voice grew more bitter as he gave the final instructions which were demanded of him: hold your fire until the tanks—” He halted. If he could see what was beyond all this for these men, he could face them more easily. What the devil was wrong with him, anyway? All he could see was the last round of ammunition and the eventual capitulation. Capitulation. The muscles in his throat knotted when he thought of the word, as if someone had stuck a knife into his side. Capitulation. He kept repeating the
unbelievable word, twisting the knife cruelly in his wound.

He stared at the men, waiting so patiently in their exhaustion. Michal Olszak had been right he thought. Two nights ago, he wouldn’t let himself believe Olszak. Two nights ago, he had insisted a break-through could still be made, and to prove it he had tried it with some four hundred men. And of these four hundred... He said roughly, in sudden fury at himself and all the world, “Repeat tactics of this morning.” But this morning, they had had grenades and petrol and phosphorus. This morning, their numbers had been three times as great. This morning, they had had a well-built shelter, and a field telephone, and another machine gun. And these men knew all that as well as he did.

The soldier who had been so preoccupied with fixing his bayonet gave a slow grin. “Kill what we can. We’ll give as good as we get, Captain.”

“Aye, Zygmunt,” one of the wounded men said, “the more we kill, the less left for someone else to kill.”

The captain’s tight face relaxed. He reached into his pocket and fumbled for the last cigarettes. He looked at them, crumpled and flattened, in his blackened palm. “Three,” he said, his voice even once more. “If we cut them up, they’ll go round.” What the devil had been wrong with him? he wondered again. His anger had given way to shame that he had doubted the men. They’d go with him all the way.

He found himself saying, very quietly, very slowly, “There will have to be a capitulation, of course. There’s no hope now of connecting with the outside world. This whole sector has just a few more hours’ ammunition left. But before then—” He halted abruptly. He had said more than he should have. Two days ago he would have cursed an officer who had let
himself speak so frankly. Before then, he had been about to say, before then we have a job to do. But he hadn’t said it, and he wouldn’t. In this desperate moment, men had a right to choose whether they lived or died. He waited tensely for their reply.

One of the men, the civilian with the armband to prove he was a soldier, said thickly, “There’s no such thing as capitulation.” The lines round the officer’s mouth slackened.

Zygmunt, one of his four remaining cavalry men, was watching him fixedly.

“Yes, Captain,” he was saying, “we’ll take a few of those Szwaby along with us when we go.” He looked as if he wanted to add, “What were you afraid of, Captain? That we’d go out to meet them with a white cloth waving above our heads?” Instead, he grinned. It was a slow, wide grin, showing strong teeth against his ugly, blackened face.

Captain Adam Wisniewski smiled as he dropped the last fraction of his piece of cigarette onto the broken floor. Looking at the faces circling him, he was happier than he had been all this day. His smile broadened. He felt less like a man who has condemned others to death along with himself.

From the window, the gunner’s voice ended the feeling of suspended time.

“Movement from the German end of the street,” he reported crisply. “And something’s been moving at the other end, too.’”

Adam Wisniewski returned to the window. Once more, he stared into the red-lined shadows of the street. “Machinegun nests, probably.” He listened carefully, trying to catch the sounds of this particular street against the dull roar of battle. But the snipers were obeying orders, however much their fingers itched on the trigger. The angry chatter of German machine
guns swept the street but there was no reply. The machine guns ceased.

“They’ll think we all got killed in that shelling this afternoon,” the gunner said.

Wisniewski nodded. All the worse for them, he thought, when they do make up their minds to attack. Each of our bullets will have double value.

“Why don’t they attack, and get it over?” the civilian with the armband said angrily.

But the captain was staring at the western end of the street. He could see nothing. “Sure you saw a movement there?”

“Yes, sir. Jozef up on the ledge saw them first. He gave me the signal. Two men at least. Perhaps they are ours. About time some more ammunition was coming up. Unless they’ve forgotten us.”

“If they have ammunition, they’ll send it,” his captain answered. Perhaps they are ours, he was thinking. Or perhaps the Germans have forced their way along a neighbouring street and are setting up machine guns in the rear. Encirclement—that was all he could think of nowadays.

“How far away?” he asked.

“Less than eighty yards. More like sixty. Just ahead of that church which is burning.”

Adam Wisniewski jumped down from the table. The tiredness had lifted from his muscles. There’s another hour’s life in them yet, he thought. His eyes rested naturally on Zygmunt. And Zygmunt, just as naturally, had already risen to his feet and was moving towards the doorway.

“The usual,
rotmistrz
?”

Adam nodded, and watched the large, solid shoulders
crouch to slide through the hole in the café’s western wall. Good man, Zygmunt. He met you half-way. The use of the word “
rotmistrz
” twisted Wisniewski’s tight lips into a bitter line. Fine captain of cavalry he made now, he thought, and turned to the civilian with the armband and two other soldiers.

“Time to get along behind our snipers. About fifty yards to the east. Each of you choose four possible places to work from, as you did this morning. Hold your fire until the attack comes. You know what to aim for.”

“Yes, sir.”

The civilian said, “Still don’t see why they haven’t attacked. Sort of funny when you think of them trying to clear the street for a column of tanks to sweep through, when one tank and a couple of flame-throwers would finish us completely.”

Wisniewski looked wearily at the man. “Yes,” he admitted, “it’s sort of funny.” The Germans were playing a clever game. Its shape was still vague, but it was clever. He added quickly, “And it’s funny, too, to hear us talking, when we could be getting into position.”

“Yes, sir.” The man with the armband followed the others quickly through the jagged slit in the wall.

“And blacken your helmets and bayonets,” the captain shouted after them. God, he thought, sometimes I feel like a nursemaid. He posted a soldier to watch for Zygmunt’s return. The gunner was on the alert at the window. Josef on his ledge would be lying still, watering, waiting. The two wounded men were propped against the bar. One of them, only, would be of any use. When Zygmunt got back, that would make five men here. He looked at the less severely wounded man. Four and a half, he thought, as he picked up the other one’s rifle and
secured its bayonet. His eyes travelled round the room once more. “
Rotmistrz
,” he thought again; and he smiled grimly as he kept his eyes on his watch.

At the end of six minutes, the sentry at the western wall gave warning. “Zygmunt. Two men. Civilians. Carrying something.”

Civilians, and only two of them. No reinforcements, then. Wisniewski cursed silently.

“Good,” he said briskly. He climbed up beside the gunner, and watched the German end of the street.

Behind him Zygmunt’s voice exclaimed, “We’ve a chance, now,
rotmistrz
! Eight grenades. A couple of bottles of petrol. Phosphorus.
Rotmistrz
!”

Adam turned away from the window. No reinforcements. He faced the two men who had come with Zygmunt. They were resting on the ground, their breath coming in heavy stabs. Then the younger of them walked unsteadily towards the box which they had dragged here with so much difficulty. “It isn’t much, I’m afraid,” he said in his precise voice. The pride on his thin face hesitated as he blinked nervously through his spectacles at the silent captain.

“It’s what we needed,” Adam said, and watched the smile return to the boy’s white face. A student, Adam thought, probably rejected for military service. He smiled too, and said, “Excellent!” Eight grenades. Two bottles of petrol. Well, that was something. “Excellent,” he said again, and this time he meant it.

The young man was talking on and on. “Left the car at the foot of the street when that machine gun started. Didn’t know the Germans were so near.”

But Adam was no longer paying attention either to him or
to Zygmunt who was ripping up the last piece of his shirt into shreds. Loosely plaited, soaked with phosphorus, jammed into the narrow necks of the petrol bottles, they would serve as a fuse. Wisniewski stared now at the other newcomer.

“Just what the devil are you doing here?”

Michal Olszak took his pince-nez out of his pocket, wiped them carefully on his sleeve, and then settled them on the thin bridge of his nose. “I wanted to see you. This was the only way to come, as combined ammunition-carrier and dispatch-rider. I bring you some orders from Sierakowski.”

“You’ve come from Sectional Headquarters? What’s new? We’ve had no direct communication with them since that barrage smashed everything this afternoon.”

“They are trying to establish a field telephone at the end of the street, now. Your orders are to gather your men together and withdraw to that point. The Germans have begun a serious attack on the main road leading to the Bridge. Sierakowski is of the opinion that if you don’t get your men back to the junction of this street and the main road, then you are in danger of encirclement. Besides, you may be needed back there to help in the defence of the main road.”

Adam didn’t speak. He sat down on the ground beside Olszak. He passed his hands over his eyes as if to wipe the sleep out of them. It wasn’t as simple as all that, he kept thinking. It wasn’t so simple. If only the telephone wires hadn’t been blasted away, he could have talked to Sierakowski, could have persuaded him.

He said, “Did the man I sent to Sierakowski this evening get through?”