Inferno - Max Hastings [9]
Polish troops and civilians were strafed and bombed with ruthless impartiality, though some victims took time to recognise the gravity of the threat. After the first wave of attacks, Virgilia, the American-born wife of Polish nobleman Prince Paul Sapieha, told her household reassuringly, “You see: these bombs aren’t so bad. Their bark is worse than their bite.” When two bombs fell in the park of the Smorczewski family’s stately home at Tarnogóra on the night of 1 September, the young sons of the house, Ralph and Mark, were hastily dragged from their beds by their mother and rushed outside to hide in a wood with other young refugees. “After recovering from the initial shock,” Ralph wrote later, “we looked at each other and fell into a fit of unrestrained giggles. What a strange sight we were: a motley collection of youths, some in pyjamas, others with coats thrown over their underwear, standing aimlessly under the trees, playing with gas masks. We decided to go home.”
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Soon, however, there was no more giggling: the people of Poland were obliged to recognise the devastating power of the Luftwaffe. “I was awakened by the wail of sirens and sound of explosions,” wrote the diplomat Adam Kruczkiewitz in Warsaw. “Outside I saw German planes flying at incredibly low level and throwing bombs at their ease. There was some desultory machine-gun fire from the tops of a few buildings, but no Polish fliers … The city was stunned by the almost complete lack of air defence. They felt bitterly disappointed.” The town of Łuck belied its name: early one morning a dozen German bombs fell on it, killing scores of people, most of them children walking to school. Impotent victims called the cloudless skies of those September days “the curse of Poland.” The pilot B. J. Solak wrote: “The stench of burning and a brown veil of smoke filled all the air around our town.” After hiding his unarmed plane beneath some trees, Solak was driving home when he met a peasant on the road, “leading a horse whose hip was a blanket of congealed blood. Its head was touching the dust with its nostrils, each step causing it to shudder with pain.” The young airman asked the peasant where he was taking the stricken animal, victim of a Stuka dive-bomber. “To the veterinary clinic in town.” “But that’s four miles more!” A shrug: “I have only one horse.”
A thousand larger tragedies unfolded. As Lt. Piotr Tarczynski’s artillery battery clattered forward towards the battlefield, Stukas fell on it; every man sprang from his saddle and threw himself to the earth. A few bombs dropped, some men and horses fell. Then the planes were gone, the battery remounted and resumed its march. “We saw two women, one middle-aged and one only a girl, carrying a short ladder. On it was stretched a wounded man, still alive and clutching his abdomen. As they passed us, I could see his intestines trailing on the ground.” Władysław Anders had fought with the Russians in World War I, under the exotically named Tsarist general the Khan of Nakhitchevan. Now, commanding a Polish cavalry brigade, Anders saw a teacher leading a group of her pupils to the shelter of woods. “Suddenly, there was the roar of an aeroplane. The pilot circled, descending to a height of fifty metres. As he dropped his bombs and fired his machine-guns, the children scattered like sparrows. The aeroplane disappeared as quickly as it had come, but on the field some crumpled and lifeless bundles of bright clothing remained. The nature of the new war was already clear.”
Thirteen-year-old George Slazak was on a train