Military Obituaries by David Twiston Davies

Author:David Twiston Davies [Davies, David Twiston]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Great Britain, General, Military, World War I, Aviation
ISBN: 9781909808317
Google: KA4hogEACAAJ
Publisher: Grub Street
Published: 2015-10-26T00:39:52+00:00

COUNT RALPH SMORCZEWSKI

Count Ralph Smorczewski (who died on October 20 2009, aged 84) fought in the Warsaw Uprising with the Polish Resistance before joining the Eighth Army in Italy and then making his home in England.

By early 1943, Poland had been under German occupation for more than three years. Smorczewski, aged 18, contacted the Polish Resistance and was sworn into the ranks of the Armia Krajowa (AK), the Polish Home Army, and subsequently graduated from the Infantry Officers’ School.

The following year he moved with his parents from their estate at Tarnogóra, south of Lublin, to a flat in Warsaw as units of the Red Army drew near. The city was run by two opposing factions: the SS and police, and a section of the Polish government in exile, based in London. German rule was ruthless; arrests and executions were part of everyday life. The Resistance forces retaliated, and assassinations of the most notorious agents of the SS and the German security service were ordered by courts meeting in secret, then carried out by squads from the AK.

In July 1944, as the Red Army approached Warsaw, the German civilian authorities began to leave their offices. At 5 pm on August 1, the centre of the city was enveloped in clouds of black smoke, followed by the rattle of machine-gun fire and hand grenade explosions.

Smorczewski was playing bridge. Horrified that the uprising had begun before he had been alerted and sent to his starting position, he threw down his cards and ran down the street towards the sounds of fighting. Meeting one AK unit comprising about twelve well-armed men, he was given a handgun and two grenades. Crouching under cover of a railway embankment, he moved eastward with the group.

A unit of German police approached with the intention of taking control of the railway line. As their heads appeared over the embankment, the AK unit opened fire with its machine gun. The Germans pulled back, leaving their dead or wounded on the railway line as the AK took up defensive positions in an allotment.

Smorczewski, who was nearest to the embankment, found himself pinned down by machine-gun fire and on the receiving end of German hand grenades which exploded near him, showering him with earth and potatoes.

One burst was so close to him that he was knocked out and wounded in the leg. When he recovered consciousness, he found that he was alone when dawn was breaking. He made his way to the Palace of Wilanów, a miniature Versailles occupied by the Branicki family. To the German guards, he muttered an apology for “returning home so early in the morning” and went inside.

The building was in uproar. The Germans had discovered that a small hospital had been secretly prepared there in readiness for the uprising. The Branicki family was being subjected to a vicious cross-examination, and during the next few days Smorczewski watched, appalled, as groups of captured young Resistance fighters were brought in and executed in the park.

The Germans took over the makeshift hospital, and Smorczewski was recruited as the surgeon’s assistant.

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