World War II: The Autobiography (72 page)

ONE MAN’S WAR: AN UNFORTUNATE DAY ON THE EASTERN FRONT, JULY 1944

Lieutenant Zhuravlev Alexander Grigoryevich, Red Army

I remember one most unfortunate day. We lost 50 men. It was July 1944 near the city of Lvov. Everything began at dawn. There was a rye field behind us. The rye had grown high. As the mist began to dispel Nazis appeared in our rear. They moved straight to our batteries. We turned our guns and dispersed the Nazis. Then we had breakfast. We were ordered to take new positions. Usually our first battery headed the convoy on the march. It was followed by the second and the third batteries. There were four studebeckers in our platoon and each carried a heavy gun. Our fourth vehicle drove into a shell-hole breaking an axle. We stopped. The batteries that followed us went ahead. At the approaches to the next village they fell victim to a most fierce air bombing. Vehicles burnt, shells blew up, all people gathered in a straw shed. It was hit by a bomb. When the bombing ended we dug out the straw shed and found burnt bones. We identified the chief of the staff by his boots. We failed to identify others. If our vehicle had not driven into a shell-hole our battery would have been the first to enter that mess. We laboured over the damaged vehicle and had to leave it behind. At an edge of the forest Nazis opened fire on us. We turned away from the highway, we moved on the field. When we camouflaged ourselves I noticed that the third vehicle was lacking. I went to search for it. It was on the field. The driver was injured, his commander was bandaging him. I could not leave the studebecker there, it meant death for the crew. I could drive a car. I drove that vehicle at high speed. The engine was roaring, so I did not hear the sound of shelling: Nazis opened machine-gun fire on me. Only later I noticed that when I turned the wheel to the left the studebecker was listing to the right. I could hardly reach our camouflaged positions. There was a hole in the car’s back. But well, I was not injured. We moved on. On the way we were caught by a thunderstorm and received the order to take defenses on the edge of the forest. We heard Nazi vehicles roaring near-by and their catterpillars clanging. We carried guns with our arms and dug out all night. Next morning there was a lull. Our reconnaisance reported that Nazis had retreated, practically without a shot.

Grigoryevich was awarded the title hero of the Soviet Union for his role in the forcing of the Dnieper River, September–December 1943

WARSAW UPRISING: A PARTISAN GROUP IS TRAPPED IN THE SEWERS, 26 SEPTEMBER 1944

Anonymous fighter, “Polish Home Army”

Twenty thousand resistance fighters of the Polish Home Army rose in revolt against the German garrison in Warsaw, capturing half the city before they were crushed. Although the advancing Russians were only thirty miles away they could not or would not (Stalin had no wish to see an independent Poland) help. Ten thousand Polish Home Army fighters were killed in the eight weeks of the uprising.

It was 26 September. For the last fortnight I and my radio group had been in Mokotow, where the situation was critical, not to say hopeless, just as it had been in the Old Town a month earlier. We were on a narrow strip of territory like an island, with the Germans all round.

We carried her in turns, stumbling over corpses, knapsacks and arms. It was horrible. Ewa’s demented howling mingled with other unearthly screams. She was not the only one.

I felt my strength ebbing away. At one point I lost my footing and fell heavily. My companions, Oko and Geniek, helped to put me on my feet again.

We set Ewa down and covered her with overcoats; we had to rest. She sat, propped against the side wall of the sewer, no longer screaming, and with glassy eyes. A procession of ghastly phantoms kept filing past us, some of them howling as Ewa did only a short time ago. Those screams, multiplied by echoes, were about as much as one could stand.

Then a new party approached. I wanted to warn them that we were resting, but before I could do so one of them had fallen, and the others, no longer aware of what they were doing, went over him, trampling him down into the bottom of the sewer – automatically, quite unconscious of the fact that he was still alive. In the same way they would have walked over us.

When they had passed we got up. Ewa no longer gave any sign of life, nor did the man who had been trampled on. We walked on.

We passed a barricade put across the sewer by the Germans. After some time we caught up with the group which had passed us. Then we came to another barricade. This one was well built and was a real obstacle. There was no way through here. I turned back with my group, and some of the others followed. When we came to the first barricade, the one we had just passed, we met a party of people who told us feverishly that the sewer beyond the barricade in the direction of Mokotow was flooded. So we should never get to the top!

A despairing argument took place between the two groups, the one that had brought the news of the flooding and the one that had come up against the impenetrable barricade. By then people had lost their senses; they were shouting in their fury and anguish.

Some remnant of judgment indicated a return to Mokotow. It was not very likely to succeed, but it was the only way of keeping alive – no matter for how long; the only thing that mattered was not to die in the sewer.

The gas was affecting our eyes more and more the whole time. I felt just as if I had sand under my eyelids; my head, too, was rolling to one side in a queer way. The mass of people all round were still arguing how to save themselves. From time to time a hideous bubbling was heard, as one more person whose strength had gone slipped into the foul liquid. But even more unbearable would be the voice of some woman pulling him out: “Look, he’s alive, he’s smiling! My darling, you’ll soon be on top again!” Oh God, not to see it, not to hear it!

I realized during my increasingly rarer spells of clarity that I was beginning to lose consciousness. I held on to one thought: to get back to the surface. I did not want someone else to hear the splash and the bubbling which my ears would not hear.

I shouted then, at the top of my voice:

“Make way, I’ll lead you out!”

But the angry yells which met me on all sides were the worst thing yet.

“Who said that? Fifth columnist! Shoot him!”

This shouting, like a sharp lash, spurred me to an extra effort. I escaped. I had enough sense left to realize that at such a moment what they threatened could well happen. Edging sideways close to the wall, my group and I crossed the barricade unnoticed by the rest.

We were over on the other side. We were going back, come what might.

At once we were deep in it. After a few steps we could no longer feel the bottom, but with the help of planks, knapsacks and abandoned bundles, we managed to keep our heads above the surface. After a short time we again felt the ground under our feet. The cold water and the absence of the blasted gas helped to clear our heads, and, holding each other’s hands, we crawled slowly forward. Forward, that was what mattered. I knew that by following that sewer we were bound to come out in Dworkowa Street. We had to make it.

At 4 p.m., seventeen hours after we first went down into the sewers, we were pulled out of them by S.S. men in Dworkowa Street.

GERMANS FLEE THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE, DANZIG, 9 MARCH 1945

Hans Gliewe, schoolboy

Danzig in the so-called “Polish Corridor” had been the pretext for the German invasion of Poland in 1939.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that 9 March in Danzig as long as I live. . . . We had found a place to stay with a woman whose name was Schranck. Then, at seven o’clock in the evening, the sirens started to howl. The crashing started right away, the floor shook and the windows rattled. We rushed down the stairs and ran for the nearest air-raid shelter.

The shelter was so crowded we barely squeezed inside. Several hundred refugees had been living in it for days. When we finally dared to come out the sky was red, and over the houses were piles of black smoke. Then we saw that our house was burning, too. We had lost even our baggage.

The fires hissed and crackled. Some horses had torn loose and were galloping down the pavement. Children got under their hooves. Rafters fell down from burning houses. We finally fled back into the air-raid shelter. Next morning we went out again into the ruined streets, and looked for another place to stay. We found someone we knew, and they took us in. We slept on the floor. Mother was ou t almost all day trying to find something for us to eat.

That night, more refugees came and wanted to crawl under. Very late in the night came still another woman with a little baby on her arm. The baby was white in the face, its skin looked transparent and all wrinkled. The baby’s right thigh had been torn off, and the little stump was wrapped in bloody rags.

The woman must have been young, but she wore old, torn clothes and looked fifty. She was very shy. She made me think of a scared animal. She had nothing with her, only the child. For a long time she said nothing, only sat there on her chair.

Then she said, “God Almighty, I never thought I’d get as far as this. We were between the Russians all the time. We’re from Marienburg. The first wave of Russians came. They shot Father. They took our watches, and with us they did, oh, what they do . . .”

She went on: “The first lot moved on. Many of them knew a little German, and they told us we should get out because those who came after were even worse. So I took my child and left. I went after them. I thought these are through now, and the next wave will take a little while. I just wanted to stay between the two waves. I walked and I walked. Tanks kept coming, and the Mongols on them, and then it started again. My Joachim lay beside me, crying all the time. When it was over we went on walking. In the evening a couple of trucks caught up with us. I wanted to hide in the snow in the ditch but then I saw they were Germans. I ran out on the road and begged them to take me along. I told them about the tanks, and they cursed and swore.

“On the truck there were other women with their children. We got near a clump of woods. Someone shot at us. The soldiers drove on into another wood, and got off. They did not want to go on, they said, they wanted to surrender to the Russians. We were terribly frightened and cried and wept and begged. But they just said, Do you think we want to get away from Ivan just to be strung up by the chain dogs
⁹
? Then a corporal pulled an automatic pistol on them and said, “You yellow bastards, if you don’t get moving with those women right away I’ll shoot you down.” But they just grinned at him, and one of them said, “Go ahead and shoot, you couldn’t get that truck moving, could you? You’re stuck, too.”

“But at last some of them drove on with us. All of a sudden there was a crash. The truck stopped and we were thrown all over each other. Some women were lying on the floor of the truck and bleeding. Then another crash. Joachim had disappeared. So I grabbed this child and ran away. Later I met a soldier and he bandaged it. I don’t know its name. But I’m calling him Joachim. All night I walked, then a truck took me for a while, then I walked again.” She was silent. After a while she suddenly started to sob, and then she said, “I’m so tired.”

An S.S. patrol came next morning and confiscated the house. By noon we were out in the street. We were not allowed to go back into the air-raid shelter. The people who had come on their carts could at least crawl into the straw. We went from door to door looking for a place. Many people slammed the door in our faces when they heard we were from old German territory. They called us Nazis, and blamed us for everything that had happened to Danzig. One man shouted at us: “Why did you have to take us into your Germany! We were better off before! Without the likes of you we’d still be at peace! If only the Poles would come back quickly!”

So we were out on the street. There were Russian fighter planes. There were so many, the city had given up sounding the alarm. When it got dark we went into a hallway, put our blankets on the floor, and huddled together for the night. The cold from the stone floor got through the blanket and through our clothes. My teeth rattled and I had shivers. Later in the night a soldier came by and gave us his blanket. He said, “Don’t stay here, by to-morrow their artillery will have got the range. I bet they’ll be here in a week. Get out into a suburb, or to the coast. There are still some ships with East Prussians sailing from Pillau, and some of them stop in here . . .”

Next day we spent in the broken trolley cars that were lined up in one place. There were many refugees there. Most of us had not eaten properly for days. Some woman pulled out a cold boiled potato, and everybody envied her. The farmers on the wagons were better off. And the people of Danzig had food, too. But we came from a different section and the shops didn’t want to sell to us on our ration tickets. Two little boys fought over a piece of bread.

In the evening we got into the railway station and somehow found a place on a train going north to Oliva. In Oliva we found a house that was deserted. But we were awakened before morning. Russian artillery was shooting away, and from the road we heard the tramping of soldiers and of the many people who were fleeing south into Danzig. When it got light and I saw such a lot of soldiers, I thought the Russians simply couldn’t get through. But the soldiers with whom I spoke just sneered and asked me how I expected them to stop the Russian tanks – they had beautiful field guns, to be sure, but no ammunition, they couldn’t shoot their buttons, and the tanks wouldn’t stop out of respect for the orders of the stronghold commander. They said the Russians were only a mile and a half away. We were so frightened!

We stood in our cellar door, not knowing what to do. Other refugees came along, dragging their feet.

Then a soldier came by with a truck; he said he was driving to Neufahrwasser and would take us along. So we went. It was getting warmer and the streets were mud. Trucks blocked the road all the way. In one place, soldiers were digging trenches right next to the road. We saw many of the search commandos of the military police and the S.S. leading away soldiers they had arrested. And this constant flow of ragged people rushing past. I’ll never forget it – sometimes one of those faces comes back to me in a dream.