Читать книгу Hoodwinked - the spy who didn't die - Lowell Ph.D. Green - Страница 16

BY LATE MAY I am almost fully recovered. “Tell somebody I’m ready to fight the bastards,” I tell Babunia. The next day they come for me. Two armed and very dangerous looking women, who lead me, blindfolded, for several kilometres through the forest. “When we see what kind of stuff you are made of,” explains one of them, “then we may let you know how to find us.” I understand only too well how persuasive the Gestapo can be and I no longer have my thorn. It disappeared in the explosion that destroyed the truck and as yet I have nothing to replace the comfort that precious bit of stone provided.

Thus it is that in May of 1942, I join the Mstitel partisans. A loosely knit but surprisingly well trained group of about 100 men and women hiding in a small and scattered collection of zimlankas deep in the forest that pushes almost up to the Minsk City limits.

Some of the partisans are Jews who escaped from the ghettos of Minsk or Warsaw, but most are men and women like myself, who have refused to become slaves to the Nazis.

Food and other supplies come from nearby villages or Minsk itself—usually donated, but sometimes taken by force. Most of the guns, ammunition, knives and other military equipment, as well as whatever medical supplies we are able to round up, come from the Germans. Always by force!

I discover the reason for the high degree of training when we are joined by a member of the Red Army who has been ordered by Moscow to teach combat skills to several partisan groups operating in the Kurapaty forest. He is only one of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of professional soldiers carrying out similar training operations throughout Belarus, in particular in the Naarutz, Chinchivi and Belovezhskaya forests, as well as here in the Kurapaty where thousands of partisans are gradually taking control of large sections of territory as more and more German soldiers march eastward to confront the encroaching Red Army.

We learn how to use a gun and a knife, how to make and set mines and bombs, and how to throw a grenade, but most of our time is spent learning how to defend ourselves and attack without weapons. Our instructor is an expert in a highly refined and deadly Russian method of hand-to-hand combat called “spetsnaz.”

I learn the points on a man’s body that when pressed will render him unconscious. I learn how to destroy a man’s knee, break his arm or leg, and yes, it is here that I learn the skill that later saves my life in Ottawa: I learn how to kill a man with my bare hands!

My first combat operation is a relatively easy one, but a good test for my newly repaired leg and my fitness. Accompanied by our Russian trainer and following a woman who obviously knows these bush paths very well, we run and jog for the better part of six hours until we’re halted at the edge of an open field. We don’t see any Germans, but wait, concealed in underbrush until well after dark before darting across the field and throwing ourselves against the base of a railway embankment.

Fearful that the sound of our running has alerted the patrols that routinely check this part of the tracks leading from Minsk to the Eastern Front, we still our heavy breathing and listen. Nothing! At the all-clear signal, we clamber up the embankment, and keeping as close to the ground as possible to avoid silhouetting ourselves against the faint glow of a fire burning in distant Minsk, we lay more than twenty sticks of dynamite and fuse along the track, light the fuse, and then run for the welcoming forest with all the speed and strength we can muster.

I don’t quite make it and am knocked flat from the force of the blast that sends at least 100 metres of railway track and ties skyward. Thankfully unhurt, I bounce to my feet, join the rest of our “merry band,” and as dawn breaks we are back in our forest retreat where there is much joking about maybe overdoing it just a bit with the dynamite! “We could have blown up the Great Wall of China,” suggests one of my comrades. “Hell, we could have blown up Berlin,” I say, to much laughter. I am elated. At last, some payback!

For the rest of that year and well into the next, we carry out more than two dozen similar raids, blowing up railway tracks, a bridge and several truck convoys. On one occasion we stage a raid on a German roadblock as a distraction while another group of partisans rescues several Russian POWs about to be put to death. Only once do we get into a firefight with a German patrol. We escape with only one slightly wounded comrade, but it’s a close call. Most other partisan raids aren’t as fortunate. God must still be on my side!

Once in the fall and again in the winter when they think they can follow our tracks in the snow, the Germans make an attempt to locate our encampment and wipe us out. Unable to use tanks or any heavy armament in the deep woods, the Boche foot soldiers are less than enthusiastic in their pursuit. They don’t know the forest, but we do. Our tactic is to send a few snipers out to pick a few of them off and then melt back into the woods. Classic guerilla warfare.

On several occasions the Germans are able to locate partisan zimlankas in our forest and others, but by the time they arrive, the partisans are usually long gone, and more often than not the enemy pays a heavy price on their way out of the forests. Fortunately, we are now confronting the dregs of the German Army. Soldiers who can shoot straight are being pressed into the bloodbath of the Eastern Front.

I am told that in the early days of the partisan operations they did come under attack from the Luftwaffe, whose planes were roaming freely in the skies, but when the quick victory they had expected is denied in Russia, it becomes obvious the German High Command has more pressing problems than Belarusian partisans.

On one memorable occasion, the Germans haul several 105 mm howitzers to the eastern end of the Kurapaty forest and begin lobbing shells at what they think is our location. They miss us by several kilometres, shattering a broad swatch of trees that after another attack, this time from our axes, makes good firewood.

The guns are obviously in much greater demand elsewhere and despite our attempts to sabotage them, after two days of killing only trees, they are successfully loaded aboard a train and shipped east to kill Russians.

By the spring of 1943, the Germans have pretty well given up trying to root us out of our forest lairs and settle instead on increasing patrols in usually vain attempts to protect vital rail lines, bridges, roads and buildings. As I have already told you, what we did in Belarus is by far the most successful of all the resistance movements in Europe.

I have no doubt that even if the Red Army had not arrived in June of 1944 to liberate us, we partisans would have done it on our own. I often wish that is what had happened. We would certainly have been better off.

As the winter snows fade away, it becomes apparent that I am being kept away from the riskier ventures. It troubles me deeply since I have every reason to believe I have been as effective at sabotage as any others in our group. I take part in a couple of minor raids on truck convoys, but even then, my role is kept to a minimum, far from flying bullets.

When I ask what is going on, I am met with nothing but shrugs. None of my comrades knows what’s up either, only that they have orders that my life is not to be placed at risk.

It is mid-summer when I find out why.

There’s a stir in our camp. Word quickly flies around that none other than Urie Labonak,* one of the most famous partisan leaders, has arrived from Moscow.

*FACT: Russian state archives lists a U. Labonak as a key partisan commander.

My life is about to take a dramatic turn!

Soviet caricature. Inscriptions—Ideal Aryan must be: tall (above Göbbels), slim (above Göring), blond (above Hitler). The author of this caricature is famous political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, who died on the 1st of November, 2008, at age 108.