Читать книгу We Were Young and at War: The first-hand story of young lives lived and lost in World War Two - Sarah Wallis - Страница 8

We’ve been expecting something big to happen all week. People have been gathering in groups all over town, talking; reservists have been called up; soldiers have been confiscating horses and cars. We are not going to let the enemy take us without a fight. Our scout group has been on full alert too. On Wednesday afternoon posters were put up, warning citizens to make sure they’re fully prepared. Mobilization began on Thursday. My mother and siblings have already left the city, but I’m staying here with my dad. A siren went off at about 5 a.m. this morning; then came the air raids. It has started. The Germans are trying to take over our Poznań province, Silesia and Pomerania. The whole country is rising up as one today to fight them.

German planes are circling in the sky like black hawks. Their drone is the voice of death. This morning I saw large groups of people crossing over from the other side of the border. They said they’d been attacked last night by their German neighbours! That’s why they left their homes and came over to our side of the border, some of them only half-dressed. Some are on bikes, others on horses and carts loaded with their most precious possessions. I’m not all that surprised some people who live along the border are now declaring that they are German. Everyone has the right to say who they are, and if you’re German, you’re German. But the thing is, these are the same Germans who’ve been eating our bread for the past 20 years, who have lived in our country all this time. They tried to stop us from rebuilding Poland after the last war, and now they’re aiming guns at our chests, guns that they’ve kept hidden all this time. Well we, the Polish people, are not going to forgive them. They must have had so much anger inside. But I’m not afraid of war because I believe we are going to win and I believe that after a thousand years of fighting with our worst Western enemy we are going to destroy them, once and for all. ‘The Germans won’t spit in our face, and they won’t make our children German,’ as the song goes. No longer shall our brothers on the other side of the border live in pain under the German yoke. So I am actually very happy.

The entire Ostrów administration has been evacuated by train. Most people have left too. Our army is moving to new positions. It looks like Ostrów is going to be surrendered without a fight. I’m not really worried about it though, I am sure it must be part of our military plan…

It’s the afternoon now and I have packed most of my things, just in case. I didn’t want to leave the city at first, but as soon as Dad got back he got all his stuff together, even his fishing rod, and convinced me that we should catch the last train.

I know we’ll never give up, however hard things get. Even so, what happened next made me wonder. In the evening, people were no longer just leaving, they were running for their lives. Around 11 p.m. all remaining soldiers started to retreat, blowing up every bridge behind them. People are fleeing with no idea where they are going. We’re told to run away, but where to, and why?…

…We made it onto the last train. From the last carriage, they destroyed the tracks behind us. People are shocked by the amount of guns and ammunition the ethnic Germans had on them. Where did they hide them all? How come our military hadn’t spotted them? We were looking for little clues, but missed the big ones, it seems. And now we see the results of our carelessness. The sky behind us is red. We can hear shooting in the distance, and we are nearly in Czekanow. And here we stay until 3 a.m.

As German land and air forces attacked simultaneously from the south, west and north, Edward and his father fled east, in the direction of Warsaw.