Mila 18 - Leon Uris

Indeed, the book had been rewritten. It was the ultimate in mechanical and technical murder. The butchery of Poland—the slaughter of two hundred thousand of her army and scores of thousands of her civilians and the rape of her land—was a new German masterpiece.

Captain Andrei Androfski was knocked senseless by his first sergeant and dragged from the scene of the flaming death of Company A. With a half dozen survivors, they found horses and managed to get back to the Grudziadz base, where an even greater catastrophe had befallen the Ulanys. At Grudziadz, one third of Poland’s forces had been foolishly concentrated for a counterattack which was never delivered. The Germans enveloped them with ridiculous ease and, having trapped them, chopped them to bits. The large Westerplatte Saliant was formed by a double envelopment trapping the Polish marines. Soon, the last of Poland’s cavalry charges was made. With the Polish eagle still waving in defiance, a foolhardy attack tried to break the ring of iron around them. The Germans ungallantly ripped the Ulanys to shreds. The Westerplatte Saliant collapsed. The remaining Ulanys staggered back from Grudziadz to Torun. And ... a last weak gasp, one more charge at Wloclawek, and they were done.

There was no rest, for the German monster clamped its jaws tighter and the saber teeth pressed toward Warsaw at the end of only a week.

Captain Andrei Androfski had four horses shot out from under him in seven days. He was gored with arm and leg wounds and his body covered with bruises and filth. He and First Sergeant Styka were two of a handful of survivors when the brigade finally surrendered after Wloclawek.

On the night of September 7, before the Germans could fully organize prisoner compounds and complete the disarming of the Poles. Andrei, Styka, and four others broke out of their area and under cover of darkness gambled they could swim the treacherous upper Vistula River.

Two of them drowned. The remaining four hid in a forest the next day and at night crawled along the ditches of roads filled with German patrols.

At dawn on September 9 the four found refuge in a peasant’s hut on the outskirts of Plock, a third of the distance back to Warsaw. Beyond normal exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and close to death from his festering wounds, Captain Andrei Androfski allowed himself the luxury of collapsing.

Styka sent the other two men into Plock to fetch a doctor. He hovered over Andrei, who was terribly still and a chalky yellow shade. Andrei had spent the last ounce of reserve strength pulling Styka across the swift river. The soldier’s muddled mind remembered snatches of the past week since dragging Andrei from the burning forest. He saw the vision of his captain leading charge after charge and fighting on even after the end had occurred. He had never seen such anger in a man’s eyes as when they were put into the prisoner compound even though Andrei was barely able to stand. “We’re swimming the river, Styka, as soon as it turns dark.”

The peasant brought Styka bread and lentil soup. The soldier was too weak to lift the spoon or bite through the bread. He lay his head on Andrei’s chest. Yes, there were still heartbeats. His eyes began to shut. Must not sleep until the doctor comes ... must not sleep ...

“Who is he?” the doctor asked.

“My captain,” Styka answered through thick lips. His mind was fuzzy. An ignorant man, Styka was almost illiterate and too exhausted to put into words the horror he had seen in the past week. Only when the doctor promised to remain with Andrei did he fall on the floor by Andrei’s bed and drop off to sleep.

When Andrei blinked his eyes open twenty hours later, Styka was hovering over him. Styka managed a small smile. The doctor from Plock had gone and returned. Andrei managed to rise up on his elbows, looked around the cottage, and flopped back on the bed.

“We were wondering if you were ever going to wakeup,” the doctor said.

“Sure he would! I knew it all along!” Styka roared.

The peasant’s wife crossed herself innumerable times and wailed that all her prayers to the Blessed Virgin Mother had been answered.

“What’s the scorecard on me?” Andrei asked.

“The wounds are under control. The assortment of cuts and bruises will vanish. Your state of exhaustion will require rest. You are as thoroughly beaten up as any man I have ever examined. You have the constitution of a bull. I don’t see how you ever swam the river in your condition.”

Styka and the doctor helped him sit up. He took a stiff drink of home-brewed vodka and stuffed a half a loaf of bread into his stomach. Despite everyone’s objections, he remained sitting.

“Where are we?”

“Plock.”

“What is happening?”

“The news is bad all over. We are being beaten everywhere,” the doctor said.

“What about Warsaw?”

“The Germans have not reached Warsaw yet Radio Polskie says Warsaw will fight.”

Andrei tried to stand. His legs buckled and he tottered. “Where are the other two, Styka? They got across the river with us—where are they? We must get back to Warsaw and fight.”

The doctor and Styka exchanged glances.

“Well, where are they?”

“They have surrendered.”

“Surrendered?”

“The Germans have crossed the river in strength. All roads to Warsaw have been cut. I stayed here only until I knew you were all right, Captain, but there is no chance of reaching Warsaw. Every hour we stay here we put these good people in danger. The Germans have been shooting everyone harboring an escaped soldier.”

“I am a Pole,” the peasant announced. “I will never close my door to a Polish soldier.”

“Your sergeant is right,” the doctor said. “Now that he knows you are alive, it would be best for him to turn himself in. As for you, I can find you a hiding place for a few days until you get a little of your strength back, and then you must surrender yourself too.”

Andrei looked at all four of them. The woman was crossing herself and praying again. “If you will be kind enough to spare me a loaf of bread, a canteen of water, and perhaps some cheese, I will be on my way. I am going to Warsaw.”

Styka flopped his arms about helplessly. “Captain, we can’t make it.”

Andrei managed to walk to his sergeant and put a hand on his shoulder. Styka lowered his eyes. “Look at me, Styka—look at me, I said. You would surrender?”

The big homely man had been a good soldier for fifteen years. Dirt encrusted his once-proud mustache, and beads of sweat broke through the caked mud on his eyebrows and unshaved face. His face dropped in complete dismay.” “Yes, sir,” he whispered.

“Now you listen here,” the doctor said. “Warsaw is a hundred kilometers, the roads are cut, and the place is swarming with German patrols. If you were the strongest and healthiest man in Poland you could not make it. In your condition you won’t be strong enough to go ten kilometers.”

Styka began to cry, something Andrei had never seen him do. “Captain, sir. We have fought the best we know how. We have not disgraced ourselves.”

A sudden dizziness overcame Andrei. He pitched into Styka’s arms, then pushed himself free and stumbled into a chair.

Seven days and their war was over. Their fine beautiful brigade pulverized into a disorganized bloody pulp. The vision of the glazed eyes of the soldiers came to him, and he saw the line of thousands of corpses stretched beside the road outside Torun after their cavalry charge and the fields of lifeless horses.

The memory of battle ran together without day or night, beginning or end. The smells and the burns and the agonies. Kicking men to their feet to fire one more round ... one more round ... ear-splitting shellbursts and the tank treads cutting into walls of flesh and the cries of the wounded.