Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II (7 page)

There was no one around to hear him. It was Sunday morning, and his housekeeper, Janina, had gone to church. Perhaps her prayers will persuade God to intervene on the side of the Poles, he thought. He got up from the table and wandered through the quiet house, his mind detached, passing from room to room like a visitor in a museum. He shuffl ed through the formal dining room and the stiffl y elegant parlor, pausing at the doorway of his study.

It was a comfortable room, with oak-paneled walls and a soft, brown leather chair in front of the fi replace. The mail and legal journals he had been reading Thursday night were still on the desk next to the empty brandy snifter. Janina never touched anything on his desk.

He entered the study, stepped over to the fi replace and picked up a picture of Anna from the mantel. It was one of his favorites, taken in Antwerp, Belgium, at the home of his friend Rene Leffard. Anna had lived with the Leffards during her university years. In the picture, she was laughing and waving her diploma in her hand. If only her mother had lived to see it, he thought every time he looked at it. He set it down and glanced into the mirror above the mantel.

The refl ection was unfamiliar. It was the same thin face, the same white hair and wire-rimmed glasses. But behind the glasses, the eyes were strange and Night of Flames

35

alien, the eyes of someone who didn’t know what to do, the eyes of someone who was helpless.

As he stared at the strange image in the mirror, the events of the last two days thundered through Thaddeus’s mind: the air-raid sirens, jarring him awake early Friday morning, Janina screaming from downstairs, the thundering roar of airplane engines and muted thumps off in the distance. He remembered how confused he had been, struggling to clear his mind of the fog of sleep, thinking it was a drill or an exercise of the Polish Air Force.

The explosions got louder; Janina had screamed again. Thaddeus had grabbed a shirt and pulled on a pair of trousers. The stout, gray-haired housekeeper stood barefoot at the bottom of the staircase, clad only in her nightgown, clutching the banister, her eyes wide with fear. Thaddeus ran down the stairs, out to the front yard and stared up at the sky. Airplanes! Dozens of enormous airplanes were passing overhead, black-and-white crosses on their fuselages and swastikas on their tails.

The rest of the day had been a blur of madness. Explosions around the city continued for several hours and then stopped. Nothing was damaged in their neighborhood, but the streets were soon fi lled with confused, terrifi ed people.

Thaddeus had tried to telephone Irene’s mother in Warsaw, but the lines were already down. He could still make calls within Krakow and, with some effort, reached the main offi ce at the university. They couldn’t get through to Warsaw either. Then, in the late afternoon, the air-raid sirens started again, and he and Janina went down to the cellar to wait it out until dark.

On Saturday, there had been sporadic bombing raids over the city, and radio bulletins reported intense fi ghting as Poland’s Krakow Army clashed with the Germans southwest of the city. Statements from offi cials in the government encouraged Poland’s citizens to be brave and not panic. “Our armed forces are holding off the German onslaught. England and France will be at our side in just a few days.”

Thaddeus had listened to all this, struggling to remain calm. But the German invasion had taken him completely by surprise. Negotiations between Germany and Poland had just begun. How could they have broken down already? Why had these idiots in the government continued to tell everyone that things were under control—and how could he have been foolish enough to believe them?

What was happening to Anna, Irene and Justyn? He knew Henryk would 36

Douglas W. Jacobson

do anything to protect them, but what can anyone do against airplanes and bombs? Were they still in Warsaw? Had they tried to make a run for it? He had considered taking a train to Warsaw but that was sheer folly. Even if he could get on a train, it might take days to get to Warsaw, if he got there at all.

No, he had fi nally decided, the only sensible thing to do was to stay put and wait to hear from them.

The image in the mirror was pathetic, and Thaddeus turned away. He plodded back to the kitchen and switched on the radio to listen to the latest news bulletin. He picked up the cup of cold tea as a crackling voice began reading an announcement.

His hand stopped in midair.

He stared at the radio, not sure if he had heard correctly.

The voice repeated the announcement. “Krakow has been declared an open city. The Polish High Command has determined the city cannot be defended.

The Krakow Army is retreating to the east.”

Thaddeus dropped the cup, oblivious to the shattering china and the liquid splashing over his arm. He stood up and gripped the edge of the table. His chair toppled over. Krakow an open city, left undefended? The royal city—the Mecca of Poland for a thousand years—occupied by the Germans? Was this possible in just two days?

He stared out the window overlooking the terrace. If Krakow couldn’t be defended after only two days, what did it mean for the rest of Poland?

He stepped outside and sat down in one of the wooden chairs positioned in a neat semicircle on the brick terrace. Hunched over with his elbows on his knees, and staring at the potted geraniums, a cloud of fear descended over him.

He squeezed his intertwined fi ngers so hard that his hands shook, trying to resist the urge to smash every one of the goddamn pots.

Janina burst through the kitchen door and onto the terrace. “Dr. Piekarski, have you heard? The Germans are coming!”

Thaddeus turned toward her. Strangely, the frightened look in her eyes had a calming effect on him. “Yes, Janina, I’ve just heard.”

“Everyone is leaving! We have to get out of town! Where will we go, Dr.

Piekarski?”

“What do you mean, ‘everyone is leaving’? Who’s leaving?”

“It’s the talk all over. At the church. In the tram. Everyone is saying we’ll Night of Flames

37

have to leave or the Germans will round us up and put us in work camps!”

Thaddeus took the plump woman by the arm and led her to one of the wooden chairs. She sat down heavily, clutching her white silk purse with both hands. “Janina, listen to me,” he said. “There’s nowhere to go. It’ll be more dangerous out in the country than here in the city. Our troops are retreating to the east of the city, and that’s where the fi ghting will be. German airplanes will be bombing the roads and the railroad tracks. Leaving the city now would be foolhardy.”

“But what will we do if the Germans come into Krakow?”

Thaddeus took a deep breath. “They
will
come into Krakow—and they’ll occupy the city, probably within the next few days. Nothing can stop that now.” He took another breath. The thought was abhorrent. He put his hand on Janina’s shoulder. “There are hundreds of thousands of people in Krakow,”

he said, “with businesses to run and factories to operate. The Germans need those factories. They aren’t going to round us up or haul us off to work camps.

They’ll take over our local government for awhile, until the British and the French jump into this thing. We’ll just have to sit tight and be patient.”

She looked at him for a long time, and the fear slowly drained from her face.

She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and stood up. “Thank you. I feel a little better now. Of course, you’re right.” She started back toward the house then abruptly turned toward him again. “But, Dr. Piekarski, what about Anna and the others? How will they get home now?”

He looked at her but did not answer.

Janina nodded and stepped into the house.

The next three days were beyond anything Thaddeus could have imagined.

Hundreds of panic-stricken people fl ed the city in cars, horse-carriages, wagons, or simply on foot, carrying bundles on their backs. The railway stations were mobbed, and through all the confusion, convoys of army trucks fi lled with dejected-looking Polish soldiers rumbled through the city, heading east.

But most of Krakow’s citizens decided to stay. In quiet desolation they stood along the streets or leaned out the windows of their homes and apartments, watching the exodus of soldiers and would-be refugees. Thaddeus stood among them, his heart breaking. They were being abandoned.

Finally, an eerie quiet descended on the city. The artillery fi re ceased. The 38

Douglas W. Jacobson

bombing stopped. Now, nothing stood between the people of Krakow and the German Wehrmacht.

When the fi rst convoy of German troops entered the city, Thaddeus was having lunch with his friend and fellow law professor, Jozef Bujak, in a café on the Rynek Glowny. Led by motorcycles, with black and red fl ags snapping crisply in the wind, the motorcade descended upon the historic square—long black cars, gray canvas-covered trucks and clanking tanks, with leather-capped crewmen standing in the open turrets. Announcements in German and Polish blared from megaphones on the tops of the cars. “The fi ghting is over! Go about your business! There is no need to be concerned!”

The motorcade proceeded to the center of the square and halted in front of the town hall. Several hundred people, who had been walking through the square or, like Thaddeus and Bujak, sitting in cafés around its perimeter, stopped what they were doing and watched the incredible scene unfold in complete silence.

Two dozen Wehrmacht soldiers, armed with rifl es and submachine guns, jumped from the trucks and quickly encircled the massive, gothic structure.

The doors of the lead car opened, and two black-uniformed SS offi cers emerged, followed by a soldier carrying a large bundle. They entered the building.

The silence of the anxious crowd was broken by muted gasps as an enormous red banner unfurled from the top of the town hall. Centered in a stark white circle in the middle of the banner was a large black swastika.

Chapter 6

Jan shifted again and leaned back against the rough wooden walls of the old barn. The smell of dung and urine was overpowering, but at least they were out of the weather. A drizzling rain had started just after dark and was such a welcome relief after the sweltering heat of the last week that most of the men had just collapsed in the fi elds to cool off.

But, over the next several hours, more than a hundred tired and wet soldiers had sought refuge inside the barn. Others pitched their small two-man tents in the fi elds or just curled up under the few trees in the area. Jan could hear a few men snoring, but for him, and for most of the troopers of the Wielkopolska Cavalry Brigade, sleep would not come tonight. In the morning they would launch the counterattack.

The expected confrontation with the German Eighth Army at the outbreak of the war had not materialized. Instead of a frontal attack near the city of Poznan, the Eighth Army had crossed the border in a narrow strike well to the south and made a dash for Warsaw. For the last week, the Wielkopolska Brigade, along with the entire Poznan Army, had been slogging eastward, trying to keep up with the enemy’s rapid advance.

Jan had read the reports coming in from the other sectors, which grew more ominous every day. A large part of the Polish Air Force had been destroyed in the fi rst two days. With no further threat of air attacks, and concentrating their forces along tight, narrow fronts, the panzer divisions of the German Wehrmacht had ripped through Polish defenses and were advancing on the ground with alarming speed. In the north, they swept through Danzig and were closing in on Warsaw. In the south, they marched into Krakow then 40

Douglas W. Jacobson

veered north, also driving toward Warsaw.

Jan stood up and stretched. His back ached and his knees were sore from seven days in the saddle. He looked at his watch in the thin moonbeam drifting through a crack in the wall. It was 0130. He stepped carefully around the resting troopers and made his way to the door. In one hour the Wielkopolska Brigade would ride out ahead of the main force of the Poznan Army and strike the fi rst blows of the counterattack.

The rain had stopped and the clouds lifted, revealing a bright starlit sky. Off in the distance, Jan could see a glow from some smoldering town left behind by the German war machine. Now, seven days into the war, he realized what they were up against. The Luftwaffe were not only bombing railroad bridges, factories and water towers, they were randomly dropping incendiary bombs on rural hamlets and farm villages. Dive-bombing Stukas machine-gunned fl eeing peasants with as much ferocity as they did Polish troops. The German
blitzkrieg
was not just a military strategy—it was an all-out campaign of terror intent on the total destruction of his homeland.

Jan pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook one out, trying to push the frustration out of his mind. The irony of their situation was tragic. Like a piercing dagger, the German Eighth Army had driven a hundred kilometers into the heart of Poland, leaving the brigade—and the entire Poznan Army—in its dust. Poland was being overrun, and they hadn’t fi red a shot.

As he struck a match to the cigarette, Jan refl ected on another grim irony . . .

the rain last evening. It had hardly rained all summer. If the antiquated and outgunned Polish army couldn’t slow down the enemy, Poland’s notoriously greasy, muddy roads and wide rivers might have. But it was not to be. The roads were rutted, but they were dry and hard. The riverbeds were wide but shallow and easily forded. The fl at, open terrain provided few obstacles for the mechanized, ever-advancing Wehrmacht.

He leaned against a tree and took in the sight before him. Six thousand cavalrymen and another thousand support troops camped out over the high, fl at plain north of the Bzura River. Their artillery was arrayed in a neat row along the dirt road, ready to be hitched to horse teams to follow the frontline cavalry troops into the Bzura valley.

The men were starting to move around now. They gathered up their gear and saddles, and dug out their ration packs. In the fi elds beyond the rutted Night of Flames