My Boyhood War: Warsaw 1944 by Bohdan Hryniewicz

Author:Bohdan Hryniewicz [Hryniewicz, Bohdan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2015-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

14

Evacuation to the Centre,

24–29 August 1944

24 August. I was with what remained of our battalion in the Spiess building behind the town hall. It was a large five-storey building belonging to a pharmaceutical company on the corner of Hipoteczna and Daniełowiczowska streets. The day before, a German Stuka had been shot down during a dive and crashed into the roof of the building. The explosion broke a large glass demi-john of sulphuric acid, which splattered and burned some of our wounded and nurses. The worst affected, burnt on their faces and hands, were Gryf, the oldest of three Mirowski brothers, and nurse ‘Baśka II’ (thereafter known as ‘Burned Baśka’ to differentiate her from ‘Baśka I’). I reported to Nałęcz, who was limping and had his left hand in a sling. His shrapnel wounds had been patched up and the dislocated shoulder reset. He told me to go rest and catch up on my sleep.

The next day, 25 August, Nałęcz formed two small assault groups from the men still capable of fighting, commanded by cadet officers since the few remaining officers had been wounded. The men were all very well armed as the weapons of injured soldiers had to be relinquished to other units. Some weapons were reluctantly surrendered but many others were hidden away. One assault group was sent to join in the attack that recaptured part of the town hall. The other reinforced the defence of the ‘Holy Mother’ barricade.

I requested and received permission from Nałęcz to go and look for Andrzej’s grave. I walked, for hours, all around the hospital, checking pavements and courtyards in vain. Most of the graves were there; it was relatively easy to dig there since the paving stones had been removed from the pavements to construct barricades. The cobblestones of the courtyards were also easy to remove. While walking the streets of the old town I saw the destruction caused over the previous twenty days by constant air bombing, artillery and rocket fire. Almost all the buildings had been hit. Some were completely destroyed, nothing more than piles of rubble, others were severely damaged, full of holes, while still others were just burned-out walls with gaping holes in place of windows and doors. Masonry rubble spilled onto the streets and bomb craters were everywhere. On Miodowa Street I saw two burned-out piles of metal, Liberator bombers shot down while making airdrops over Krasiński Square. The streets were empty. From time to time a runner would go by, nurses carrying a stretcher with an wounded, a group of civilians with their meagre belongings looking for shelter.

The next couple of days were anticlimactic. As Nałęcz was recuperating from his wounds he was no longer directly commanding any unit. The two detached assault groups were integrated into other units. I followed him to meetings at the headquarters of Maj. Sosna, to our detached units and to the hospital to see some of our more severely wounded. Most of our lightly wounded were in the basement of the Spiess building.

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