Douglas Jacobson - The Katyn Order

Berta stood next to her, impatiently shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Natalia turned and smiled, though she could just barely make out her friend’s face in the darkness.

At exactly 0015, the night sky erupted into a blaze of flashing lights and jarring whumps as the Kalinski Battalion launched the grenade barrage. A few seconds later the clatter of Sten guns echoed off the buildings, Zeeka shouted the order and the Minerki team sprinted across the wide street. Natalia was fourth in line behind Ula and ahead of Berta.

Suddenly a searchlight from the top of the tower illuminated the street, and a burst of machine-gun fire ripped along the cobblestones. But the Sten gunners took out the searchlight, and the street was dark again.

Zeeka was the first to arrive at the base of the enormous building and disappeared through the breach, lighting the way for the others with a flashlight.

When Natalia crawled through the breach and jumped into the damp, cavernous basement, the two women ahead of her had already opened their packs and were placing incendiary bricks under Zeeka’s direction. Berta was right behind her, and the four women set the explosives precisely in a predetermined chain that could be ignited from outside the building with the flamethrower. In three and a half minutes they were back on the sidewalk.

The Sten gunners started in again, spraying the tower with covering fire as Iza moved into position with the flamethrower, and Zeeka yelled for the others to get back across the street.

But the enemy machine gunners at the top of the tower refused to quit, spraying the entire length of the street with random, hammering bursts, shattering the last of the windows and filling the air with flying chunks of concrete and stone.

Natalia lowered her head and dashed into the street right behind Ula and Alida. She’d taken only a few steps when she heard a grunt from behind, and Berta stumbled forward, almost knocking her down.

Natalia reached back to grab Berta’s hand, but her friend fell to the ground and rolled over on the cobblestone street, clutching her left leg. Natalia dropped to her knees and crawled back to Berta, who lay curled in a ball, trembling and moaning, her shredded trouser leg already soaked in blood.

Natalia screamed for Ula, then grabbed Berta under the arms and tried to drag her forward. A second later Ula was alongside, cursing loudly as a bullet struck her steel helmet and knocked it off her head.

Holding Berta under the arms, the two of them dragged her across the street and behind the tank as bullets ricocheted off the steel frame. Natalia dug into her pack, pulled out a knife and quickly sliced away what was left of Berta’s blood-soaked trouser leg.

“Jesus Christ,” Ula muttered when she saw the wound.

“Grab her arm and roll her onto her stomach,” Natalia said sharply. “Alida, get over here!”

Berta groaned deeply as the two women commandos rolled her over, and Natalia examined the wound. It was a ragged laceration several centimeters wide running up the back of her leg from the knee to just below the buttocks. Blood seemed to be everywhere. It pooled on the ground, and Berta moaned louder as Natalia felt around with her fingers on either side of the ugly gash.

“I don’t think there are any broken bones,” Natalia said as she straightened up and ripped off her blue uniform coat followed by her cotton shirt. She quickly folded the shirt into a rectangular pad, then placed it over the back of Berta’s leg and pressed down hard. “Take off your belts and cinch them around her leg,” she shouted at Ula and Alida. “Right over this pad, quickly, we’ve got to get the bleeding under control.”

From across the street Natalia heard a whoosh from the flamethrower, then a momentary pause, followed an instant later by a rising crescendo of concussions that felt like hammer blows in her eardrums. The incendiary charges ignited in rapid succession, thrusting a monstrous fireball upward from the bowels of the PAST building.

Their faces blackened with soot and dripping with sweat, Zeeka and Iza dashed across the street, scrambled behind the tank and dropped to their knees. Zeeka crawled over next to Natalia. “I saw her go down. How bad is it?”

“Nothing’s broken as far as I can tell, but the back of her leg is badly lacerated and she’s losing a lot of blood.” Natalia shot a quick glance at Alida. “Tighten that belt!” Blood was already soaking through the makeshift bandage, and Natalia motioned to Zeeka. “Help me roll her onto her back again, gently, and we’ll get that leg elevated. We’ve got to get her to a medic fast or she’ll—”

Her voice was drowned out by a thunderous roar from across the street as the wall of flames engulfed the lower two floors of the eight-story PAST tower, climbing rapidly, blowing out windows in a relentless upward thrust. Dozens of shrieking German soldiers, their clothes ablaze, stumbled out through the main entrance or tumbled out first floor windows. The flames rocketed upward, engulfing floor after floor until they reached the top where dozens of men were trapped in the tower.

Natalia watched, dumbstruck with horror, as German soldiers leaped to their deaths, dark silhouettes flailing against the fire-lit sky.

NATALIA DIPPED A CLOTH in a pan of cool water, wrung it out and laid it gently across Berta’s forehead. She placed the back of her hand against her friend’s cheek. It was warm, but not hot, and that was good. Though it had been more than twelve hours, she knew Berta was still in danger. The few remaining doctors in Warsaw were all working round-the-clock in makeshift hospitals. But Zeeka had somehow managed to dig up a stretcher and then find a medic, as the others carried Berta from what was left of the PAST building to the women commando’s quarters on Trebacka Street. It had taken almost two hours and fifty stitches to close Berta’s leg wound, but there were no antibiotics and Natalia knew that the greatest danger over the next few days would be infection.

Fortunately the medic did have morphine. He’d given Berta two shots to get her through the procedure, and she had slept fitfully through the rest of the night and most of the next day. Natalia stayed with her, dozing on and off, and holding Berta’s hand whenever her friend woke up. By evening the morphine had worn off, and Berta was awake, groaning whenever she moved her leg. “God… damn it,” she muttered in a mushy, slurred voice, “of all… the… rotten luck.”

Natalia set the cloth aside, brought over a bowl of weak vegetable soup and fed her a spoonful.

Berta grimaced. “Ach, that’s… horrible.”

Natalia nodded, “Yep, same as always. But it’s all we’ve got, and you’ve got to keep up your strength.” She lifted the sheet and examined Berta’s leg, which was elevated with her left foot resting on a wooden crate. The jagged line of stitches ran up the back of her thigh, ending just under the buttocks. The medic had done an adequate job, but her leg was badly swollen. The skin on either side of the stitches was taut and deep red with a yellowish puss oozing from the wound.

Berta looked at her with bloodshot eyes. “So, former medical student… how does it look?”

“You’re lucky it didn’t get your knee,” Natalia said half-heartedly, knowing that wasn’t Berta’s real problem. More than half the deaths among the AK commandos were the result of infections from the unsanitary conditions and lack of medicines.

Berta gripped Natalia’s hand. “Listen to me,” she said, her voice dropping to a raspy whisper. “You can’t… stay here… and nursemaid me. Go get some rest. I’ll be fine.”

Natalia smiled at her, wiped her brow again and picked up the spoon. “Shut up and eat some of this delicious soup.”