Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Overhead, dogs sniffed up and down Mila Street; sound detectors begged to hear a cough, a cry.

At the end of the third hour the tension became unbearable. Heat added to the stillness. One by one they pitched forward in dead faints. Christopher de Monti yanked Deborah’s hair to keep her awake.

And then a cry!

Simon and Andrei and Tolek Alterman pistol-whipped the weepers into silence before a mass outbreak of hysteria.

Five hours ... six ...

The utter collapse as the Germans left the street.

Journal Entry

Tomorrow our battle goes into its twenty-fifth day. I want death to take me. I cannot stand more of it. Till yesterday I managed, but now Sylvia is gone and Moses is close to death. What has he had? What has he had?

Our boys and girls still fight fiercely. The enemy cannot claim the ghetto. I will die with pride. There is only one thing I wish now. Christopher de Monti must be taken out of the ghetto. He alone knows where the entire works of the Good Fellowship Club are buried. We cannot risk keeping him here any longer. I have not prayed in synagogue since I have been a boy. I have taken a position of convenience by calling myself an agnostic. I therefore did not have to submit to the hypocrisy of dogma, but on the other hand it spares me from exposing myself by saying I am an atheist and do not believe in God. Yes, a true position of convenience. Now I ask God to prove Himself. I beg him to let Christopher de Monti live so that this history will not die.

ALEXANDER BRANDEL

Chapter Nineteen

ANDREI ROLLED HIS TONGUE over his gritty teeth and peered out from behind the rubble pile. Muranowski Place before him was lit up with arc lights. It looked like day. Andrei thought, this night life is killing me. There was no chance of getting into the bunker from the Muranowski entrance. The square had at least two companies of Germans in it. He scratched his beard. Got to remind Simon to trim my beard tomorrow. I looked like hell in the mirror. Come to think of it, I owe Simon a trim too.

Andrei patted the Schmeisser, “Gaby,” and sized up the opposition. He had only one clip of twenty bullets and a grenade. Poor Gaby, Andrei said to himself. I can’t keep you clean any more. I’m all out of oil. Your pretty little sights are all rusted. Sorry, Gaby, we simply can’t take on a hundred of these whores by ourselves.

Well, they’re not moving, Gaby, so we’d better move, because I’m tired. I’d love to brush my teeth again before I die.

Each night since the beginning of the rebellion Andrei made a round of the Joint Fighters’ positions and reset them with orders for the next day. After the Germans were driven out of the ghetto in the first days the job was not too difficult. He could travel walking upright with runners at his side. During the fires it was nightmarish. Leaping flames, crumbling walls, and those damned artillery shells.

Now the communications between bunkers was all but broken. Two days ago he carried an order from Simon that each group was independent to act and improvise against the conditions in the immediate area. Each commander was responsible for forming his own hit-and-run attacks and, even more urgent, finding the food and ammunition and medical supplies to continue the fight.

Each night Andrei left Mila 18 to regroup the diminishing army. The Germans were getting bolder and bolder. Their night patrols increased. It took Andrei almost all night to find his scattered people, although their area was becoming smaller and smaller. Caution every damned step of the way. The Germans owned the southern end of the ghetto. Now at Muranowski Place they had a foothold in the north. On arterials like Zamenhof and Gensia, they dug in with permanent positions.

Joint Fighters shrank their area. Two bunkers holding half the force formed the extreme boundaries. At one end was Mila 18 and at the other end Wolf Brandel in the Franciskanska bunker.

Between these two bunkers the balance of the Joint Fighters had an interlacing network of a dozen smaller bunkers and two hundred people.

Ana’s company pulled back into Franciskanska. Tolek Alterman was sent out of Mila 18 to take over Rodel’s command of the small bunkers on the northern fringe.

Tonight Andrei pulled them in tighter again.

A month was coming to an end. It was a miracle, but over half the Joint Fighters were alive and armed. They had captured enough to sustain the rebellion into a second month!

“Filthy whores,” Andrei grunted, realizing the Germans had a permanent hold in Muranowski Place. His mind ventured the thought of a hit-and-run attack on them tomorrow night. He was very weary. He slid out of his hiding place and crept over the rubble piles down Nalewki Street through a puzzle of broken walls. He prowled with the deftness of a large cat playing with shadows and sped in his search to find one of Mila 18’s six entrances out of sight of the enemy.

The entrance from Muranowski Place was out of the question. The drainage pipe on Nalewki 39 was too close to German activity to try. He went for the third entrance in what had been a courtyard in the rear of a house on Kupiecka Street, which had a tunnel connecting to an air-raid shelter. Andrei peered out from the wreckage at the shelter. It looked clear, then he narrowed his eyes.

Something out there ...

Andrei’s eyes could penetrate the darkness with the sharpness of the large cat he was when he moved in the night. He saw the outlines of German helmets. They were in an emplacement of some kind past the courtyard and they were facing Mila Street with their backs to him.

Andrei calculated the odds. If he ran for the air-raid shelter and its tunnel entrance, there was every chance he would make it without being sighted. But any risk involving German discovery of Mila 18 had to be avoided.

His choice was to move on to the fourth entrance on Zamenhof Street or the sewers. Neither choice appealed. Zamenhof Street would be filled with the enemy, and the sewers were dangerous. He decided to have a closer look at the German emplacement.

Andrei slithered on his belly over the courtyard and crept up behind the enemy. Andrei observed what seemed to be a squad of six men fixed in an emplacement which looked over part of Mila Street from behind a barricade of fallen bricks.

He studied the area around them. On their left, a fallen building. On their right, a partially standing building. Andrei calculated that if he could reach the half-ruined structure he could get over the top of them, but any movement beyond his present position would be detected.

He felt about for a brick and threw it to the left. It skittered over the rubble.

“What was that!”

The Germans turned a machine gun on it.

Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat!

Andrei sprinted in the opposite direction. He made a flying belly flop in the ruined structure and began to climb up while the Germans continued to be occupied with the decoy.

“Stop your fire. It is only falling rubble,” someone ordered.

“Yes. Don’t be so nervous.”

The Germans laughed jumpily.

Andrei was above them now. He inched up so he could count helmets. Four ... five, six. Bastards! Whores! They had set up a machine gun to cover part of Mila Street as a permanent emplacement. Filthy whores! Andrei squinted. Regular army. Wehrmacht. Good, they were less willing to die bravely than the SS. It was a stupid position. What audacity to put up this gun without flanking cover, he thought. Well ... I shall have to give them a lesson on how to be soldiers. Too bad they shall not be around afterward to benefit. Look at the fools, all clustered up as if they were at a Hitler rally. How lovely.

Andrei unhooked the hand grenade from his belt placed the handle in his teeth, and with his free hands slipped his clip of ammunition into the machine pistol. Now, Gaby, don’t you be a naughty girl and jam on me.