Continuing our series of blog posts about the Warsaw Uprising, drawing from our award-winning book The Color of Courage, by Julian Kulski:

CHAPTER 6
AGE 15: 1944 — THE WARSAW UPRISING

pp. 314–316:
Friday, September 1 — We hear that the Home Army Command has decided that it is no longer possible to hold the Old City, owing to lack of food and ammunition, and to enormous losses. Yesterday alone, three hundred soldiers of ‘Chrobry I’ Battalion died in a single sector of the Old City. So, the thin remnants of the Home Army garrison decided to escape through the sewers to the Center City. Their plan was as ambitious as it was radical.

It seems that at dawn the enemy attempted a surprise attack. This was repulsed, and some one hundred of the enemy were killed or wounded. However, at noon there came a simultaneous pincer attack—Ukrainian SS units from the Royal Castle Square and Germans from the north headed toward Krasiński Square. The famished and exhausted troops counterattacked with their last reserves of ammunition. Their devastating fire succeeded in keeping the attackers from entering Krasiński Square, where the manhole to freedom was located.

Leaving only token guards on the barricades, platoon after platoon, company after company, formed a long line. Then, with perfect discipline, the armed men descended one by one into the stinking, swift-flowing sewer.

The trip took four hours through waist-deep sludge and poisonous fumes. The human chain, each link holding tightly to the next one, snaked its way underground. Everyone had to move slowly, in total darkness and in silence. Those who slipped and fell in the deeper parts of the channels and had no strength to get up were drowned. The others could not spare precious time or reserves of energy to search for them, and without lights it was a hopeless task anyway.

Saturday, September 2 — As soon as the first rays of morning light fell upon the smoking ruins of the Old City, the Stukas began to dive-bomb Krasiński Square. Then, during the day, the enemy moved into the Old City, capturing some thirty-five thousand civilians and seven thousand seriously wounded. Many of the wounded, lying in makeshift hospitals set up in the cellars below the ruins, were burned alive with flamethrowers. The old, disabled, sick and all others unable to walk were lined up and shot, and the remainder were taken off to concentration camps.

Continuing our series of blog posts about the Warsaw Uprising, drawing from our award-winning book The Color of Courage, by Julian Kulski:

CHAPTER 6
AGE 15: 1944 — THE WARSAW UPRISING

pp. 304–307:
Monday, August 21 — General ‘Grzegorz’ and Colonel ‘Heller’ have reached Żoliborz after a tortuous trip through the fast-flowing sewers. They are here to organize a full-scale attack [to reinforce Home Army units in the Old City]. This time it is to be coordinated with a joint attack from the other side of the railway line. Our company’s mission is to attack the Warsaw–Gdańsk Station itself, thus diverting the attention of the enemy from other sections of the line—and permitting the Partisans to reach the Old City. Almost the entire force of Żoliborz, under the personal command of Colonel ‘Zywiciel,’ is assembled along the full length of the line from the Old Citadel to the Chemical Institute and the artillery positions in the suburb of Buraków.

The night is unseasonably cold and the ground upon which we are lying is very damp. Our thin, worn-out summer clothes, now in rags, give us little protection. Our boots are covered with rags to muffle the sound of our feet on the pavement during the initial attack.

The field is regularly lit up by huge blinding flares, and the quiet is interrupted by long salvos of machine-gun fire, which cut down the grass and the potato plants around us. After the previous night’s attack, the German and Ukrainian troops are jittery and trigger-happy. They are ready for us.

Tuesday, August 22 — At 2:00 a.m. the order came. We started across the street and through the previously cut openings in the lines of gnarled barbed wire, but before all our detachments could cross the street, the wide expanse of sky was lit by hundreds of marker flares. The red stars hung for a long time, casting an eerie light on the troops pinned down in the shadows of the houses.

Hundreds of shells from automatic weapons now began to rain down on Zajączek Street, while tracer bullets created a barrier of fire above the prostrate army. They spattered against the walls of the apartment houses, throwing chunks of white stucco on the black pavement, while artillery shells gouged out craters, churning up the macadam, concrete, earth, and plants.

As soon as the machine guns of our company started up, the enemy firepower began to center on them, silencing them one by one. Our platoon advanced up to the viaduct. One boy reached a high point and threw a grenade down into a heavy machine-gun nest, silencing it forever. Then, caught in the cross fire from other machine-gun nests, he rolled back down the embankment to his starting point.

The cries of the wounded could be heard above the machine guns’ rattling and the explosions, and the combat nurses crossed the road in a vain attempt to bring help. Those who could, started withdrawing as the order was passed along the field. The short battle was lost.

When the enemy stopped firing, and the artillery shells from the Citadel stopped thumping, only white flares remained and bathed the field with ghostly light, illuminating the three hundred dead and wounded that were left behind.

Continuing our series of blog posts about the Warsaw Uprising, drawing from our award-winning book The Color of Courage, by Julian Kulski:

CHAPTER 6
AGE 15: 1944 — THE WARSAW UPRISING

pp. 299–302:

Saturday, August 12 — We have been holding onto our positions in the Fire Brigade Building for several seemingly interminable days under steady artillery fire. At about 11:00 a.m. today, a German truck was seen racing toward our building. This time we allowed it to come closer than before, and when it was about fifty yards from us, we stopped it with our fire. The Germans immediately jumped out. One of them was killed, but the other two managed to get away. The truck remained in the open space which was now under continuous cross fire.

Then Cadet-Officer ‘Zawada,’ along with two others, ran to the truck and succeeded in bringing it to the garage doors at the front of our building, although they were shot at by a German machine gun.

As he was under fire all the time, it did not surprise us when ‘Zawada’ crashed the right wheel against the corner of the garage wall. The truck was full of wooden crates, and opening one, we found it full of German hand grenades. We were overjoyed at our luck and started to unload the crates as quickly as possible, as we knew that the Germans would press their attack even harder now. Sure enough, just as we were putting the last crate in the cellar, the whole building shook from the explosion of an artillery shell, which had hit the fifth floor.

Now a dreadful time started for us. Shell after shell began to explode in the different rooms and the gunpowder made our eye smart—sometimes the explosions were so close that the shock waves threw us against the walls. The entire building’s rooms and corridors were covered in clouds of dust, and strewn with pieces of brick and fragments of exploded shells.

But the observers held their original places ad paid extra attention in case the infantry advanced behind the screen of the artillery barrage. The firing only stopped with the coming of night. We were then able to take three seriously wounded men to a hospital and dress on the spot the wounds of those less badly injured.

Our building is now so perforated from the outside that it looks like a Swiss cheese, and inside all the rooms are badly damaged. We can only manage three to four hours’ sleep each night, as we have to spend time at the observation posts, clean our weapons, and check our ammunition.

Continuing our blog series on the Warsaw Uprising, drawing from our award-winning book The Color of Courage, by Julian Kulski:

CHAPTER 6
AGE 15: 1944 — THE WARSAW UPRISING

pp. 297–299:

Tuesday, August 8 — The wedge of German steel today succeeded in advancing along Elektoralna Street to Brühl Palace, where Fischer [Ludwig Fischer, German Governor of the Warsaw District] and his staff have been surrounded since the first shot of the Uprising was fired on Suzina Street. Isolated in his fortress palace, defended by his Storm Troopers and select SS units, the Governor has been locked in a precarious position, not knowing when an attempt might be made to capture him. Fischer can have no illusions as to what will happen to him if he falls into our hands.

Today we heard a few details of what is happening there. Three days ago, General Erich von dem Bach took over as Commander-in-Chief of all German units. Soon after that, Home Army units surrounding Brühl Palace were pushed back, and von dem Bach sent Fischer instructions to leave the palace as soon as possible. Von dem Bach, charged personally by Hitler not to take prisoners, to kill women and children as well as civilian men, and to eradicate the city of Warsaw from the face of the earth, had been anxious to get Fischer out as soon as he arrived in Wola, the westerly suburb.

The next day, around ten o’clock in the  morning, under heavy guard, and with the protection of armored cars, Fischer’s entire staff started to leave the palace. As they were attempting the getaway, our units made a surprise attack. It was totally unexpected as the route was heavily guarded on both sides by thousands of German troops brought in earlier to push back the Home Army.

In the attack, Fischer was wounded, and several members of his entourage were either killed or wounded.

Continuing with our series of blog posts about the Warsaw Uprising, we will draw from our award-winning book The Color of Courage—A Boy at War: The World War II Diary of Julian Kulski.

Julian Kulski, author of The Color of Courage, was a 10-year-old Boy Scout when the war broke out in September 1939. At age 12, he was recruited into the Home Army by his Scoutmaster. During the Warsaw Uprising, Kulski, then 15 years old, was a member of the Ninth Company Commandos stationed in the Żoliborz neighborhood in northern Warsaw. Kulski had worked very hard to join a commando unit after his Home Army commander and former Scoutmaster Ludwik Berger was killed by the Germans in November 1943.

In his Afterword to The Color of Courage, Captain Mieczysław Morawski ‘Szeliga,’ commander of the Ninth Company Commandos, writes (pp. 383–384):

“Without any doubt this Company was the best unit in the Żoliborz Division. It was most effective in its close contact surprise attacks on the enemy. Used in special actions, the Company was the first to attack and the last in withdrawal.

“Divided into three platoons, the whole Company was never more than one hundred fifty strong. Sixty percent of the Company’s complement were teenagers, and fifteen to twenty percent were girls….

“There were heroic tasks performed; there was bloodshed and suffering, but surprisingly few tears.

“Julian Kulski’s book tells the truth, while also bringing a message of desperate importance: it is difficult to obtain freedom, but it is even more difficult to maintain it.” [italics in original]

Excerpt from The Color of Courage:

CHAPTER 6
AGE 15: 1944 — THE WARSAW UPRISING

pp. 285–291:
Saturday, August 5 —

Two detachments of our platoon were called to the still unfinished barricade at Słowacki Street today, to defend it against the attacking German infantry. We repelled three enemy attacks with our hand grenades and with our machine guns, Sten guns, and rifles. In this action, eighteen were killed on the German side while we had only two wounded….

The Germans are attacking the Old City with airplanes, tanks, infantry, and all available artillery…. Every hour enemy Stukas fly over Żoliborz from the Bielany airfield, dropping bombs on the city before returning for a new assault. It is outright slaughter; we do not have one antiaircraft gun in the entire city.

According to the news circulating in Żoliborz, the enemy is now fighting to open an artery from the western part of Warsaw through the Center City held by the Home Army, all the way across the river to the eastern suburb of Praga. The reason is obvious. The German Army fighting the Red Army across the river has lost its vital line of supply, which we have cut. Unless they can restore  contact, they will not be able to hold out against the Soviet troops much longer. Therefore, they are throwing their main forces against the Home Army units blocking their way. We hear that a brigade of Ukrainians, organized by the Germans from Soviet war prisoners with promises of plunder, food, and vodka, is fighting with the Germans.

The westernmost suburb of Wola evidently has received the brunt of the first attack, and it is reported that the Germans and Ukrainians are giving no quarter to anyone in their way. They are taking no prisoners, and are killing men, women, and children on sight. According to eyewitnesses who have reached Żoliborz, the entire staff (as well as the sick and wounded) at the Hospital of Saint Lazar on Leszno Streetr has been massacred. Babies were swung by the legs and their heads split on the corners of buildings; women were raped before being shot; and hundreds of civilians were herded by the Germans in front of tanks attacking the barricades. Polish fighters cannot open fire on these innocent civilian shields, and some of the enemy’s successes have been due to this tactic.

Were it not for what has happened during the last few years, and what happened to the Ghetto little more than a year ago, nobody would have believed the Germans capable of such barbarism.