War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 159

Chapter 14

August 5, 1944

L

otte had been holed up in her office building since the start of the uprising. While the building resembled a fortress and was unlikely to be captured by the insurgents, most of the surrounding areas were in Polish hands and it wasn’t safe to go outside.

“It’s a nuisance those partisans have to put up so much resistance. As if we didn’t have enough on our hands with the approaching Soviets,” Lotte’s superior, Oberst Braun, muttered beneath his breath.

She heard him and some of the other high-ranking officers discuss the contingency plan, which consisted of waiting for reinforcement troops to arrive, while defending the strategic buildings. After digesting the shock over the early successes of the resistance fighters, they seemed convinced that the Poles would have to surrender as soon as reinforcements arrived.

Himmler himself gave the order to kill every last citizen of Warsaw, not to take prisoners and to level the capital as a warning for the rest of occupied Europe should they want to follow the Polish example.

Lotte gasped as the order came through. She had to warn Ewa. But how? Stuck inside the building and under the constant supervision of Oberführerin Kaiser, who’d taken it as her personal responsibility to ensure the safety of the

Helferinnen

who hadn’t been able to evacuate, she didn’t have an opportunity to slip away undetected. Frau Kaiser moreover deemed the moral dangers presented by the German soldiers inside the building on a par with the dangers from the Polish resisters outside.

“Oberst, I really wish you could evacuate these girls,” Oberführerin Kaiser said for the hundredth time during the last few days.

“Me too.” The Oberst looked downright miserable. According to protocol he was required to evacuate all female personnel from battle zones. “But as you see for yourself, we’re surrounded by insurgents. Right now, it’s impossible.”

But apparently the resolute woman had worn down the Oberst with her persistence, because several hours later he gave the order to relocate part of the radio operations and all female workers to another district of Warsaw near the airport that was securely in German hands and much safer than the Old Town, which was the most contested area.

“Sir, will we take the equipment with us?” Lotte asked him.

“No. It’s too sensitive to vibration and we need some equipment here. I’ll send a delegation to retrieve spare transmitters from the airport to set up in your new location. But I need to find someone who knows to handle it,” he said.

“May I volunteer?” Lotte said, hoping this might give her the opportunity to send a message to Ewa.

“You?” He looked her up and down and then muttered, “Oberführerin Kaiser will probably demand my head for this, but since I don’t have men to spare and you need to relocate anyway, why not? Wait here.”

Minutes later he returned and said, “I have arranged an automobile to take you to the airport and then to your new location in Ohota where you’ll meet the other Helferinnen. Pack your things and be outside in five.”

“Thank you, Oberst. I’ll do everything to your satisfaction,” Lotte said and rushed to the basement to grab the few things she owned, before she walked to the back of the building where an olive military vehicle with a fabric roof, called a Kübelwagen, already waited for her. The passenger door opened, and she climbed inside, rendered speechless when she recognized Johann in the driver’s seat.

“You?” she asked him, glancing at the backseat where two soldiers with submachine guns sat and grinned at her, introducing themselves as Heinz and Martin.

“Oberst Braun asked us to escort you to the airport for some important radio equipment,” Johann said and started the motor. “I don’t expect trouble, but just in case: do not, I repeat do not, get out of the vehicle unless I tell you so. Understood?”

“Yes.” Lotte nodded.

They’d almost reached the airport when they ran into a roadblock and bullets hit their vehicle. Lotte suppressed a scream and glanced over at Johann. He clenched his jaw, his eyes looking straight ahead.

“Get down,” he said without looking at her and put the gear in reverse. But before he could race away, about a dozen insurgents appeared and more shots rang out. The two men in the back rolled down the windows and fired.

Lotte huddled in the foot space of her seat and pressed her hands against her ears. Suddenly volunteering to retrieve the equipment didn’t seem like such a good idea. She saw a shadow in the air and heard a loud bang, followed by Johann’s voice. “Damn!” He pushed the brakes to the floor and the sudden stop of the vehicle caused Lotte to plop against the passenger seat.

“They threw a metal bedframe out of the window, you can—” Heinz said, but the rest of his sentence was drowned by more shots.

“Can you see where the shots are coming from?” Johann called out to his comrades. Lotte had never experienced him in action, and his grace under fire impressed her. His calm and steady voice helped to tamp down her own fear. With him by her side, she’d survive. At least she hoped she would.

Johann had grabbed his own submachine gun and fired at the men outside the car. Half-deaf, Lotte crouched deeper into her confines, the only sound registering in her brain, the punch of bullets against the Kübelwagen’s metal skin.

The stench of Cordite penetrated her nostrils and she gagged. After a few minutes the shooting stopped, and Lotte could feel the sighs of relief of her companions. She poked her head up to get a clear view, but Johann pushed her down again.

“One more enemy at two o’clock, but I can’t get a clear shot,” came Martin’s voice from the back.

“Let’s see if we can draw them out. Give me cover,” Johann said and opened the door, stepping outside with raised hands. Lotte almost died of terror when she heard him shout, “Don’t shoot. I have an injured man over here.”

“Step away from the vehicle and keep your hands up,” came back the shouted reply in passable German, laced with a heavy Polish accent.

Lotte looked at Johann and she saw the tension on his face.

He’s not sure this is going to work, but he’s willing to try. Why? Because of me?

“Where’s the fourth person?” their attacker’s voice rang out.

“She’s applying pressure to the gunshot…”

“Tell her to get out.”

Lotte gasped, but when Johann looked at her and nodded, she gathered all her courage to crawl over the driver’s seat.

“Nice and slow,” Johann murmured without looking at her. She stepped out of the Kübelwagen and stood on the street, her knees shaking, her palms damp, as she watched their attacker step out from behind his cover with the rifle pointed straight in their direction.

“Now?” came the whispered question from the backseat.

“Not yet,” Johann whispered back, barely moving his lips. “Wait. Wait.”

Lotte trembled so violently she thought she’d collapse to the ground any moment when the insurgent made his way towards them. As soon as he was completely in the clear, Johann sprang into action. He dropped to the ground, pulling Lotte down with him and at the same time he yelled, “Now!”

Heinz and Martin fired at the man standing across the street, who crumpled to the ground into a heap of lifeless flesh. Johann wasted no time. He hauled Lotte up, and shoved her into the Kübelwagen, even as the others jumped out and dragged the metal bedframe aside to clear the street. Johann turned the vehicle and they barely managed to jump inside before he sped off down the street.

“Good job. That was close,” Johann said to his men, taking a turn to find another route to the airport.

“We need to radio headquarters about the new roadblock when we arrive at the airport,” Martin said.

Lotte pressed herself into her seat, her knuckles turning white as she held on for dear life, trying to banish the image of the dead Polish fellow from her mind.

“Are you alright?” Johann asked her as he turned yet another corner to pass through the Wola district. With the main road blocked, he needed to drive through the residential area mostly under German control.

“I’m fine. That was…” she answered with a shaky voice.

“War,” Johann said, his hands gripping the steering wheel and a muscle in his jaw giving a tic as he gritted his teeth.

Yet another barricade stopped their journey, but this time it was a German road stop and after presenting the proper documentation, they were allowed to pass.

“Drive slow, they are rounding up every last soul in this area,” the SS man controlling the barricade advised them before waving them through.

About two blocks along on Wolska Street, the main road passing through the Wola district, Johann halted the vehicle to let pass hundreds of civilians being frogmarched away. Lotte noticed two SS officers watching the spectacle from the side of the road. One of them was a very long and thin man wearing an ankle-length black leather coat despite the suffocating summer heat.

“Who are these people?” Lotte asked, but Johann gave her only a deadpan stare.

“They’re SS,” Martin said. “The smaller one is SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Reinefarth, commander of the Reinefarth Kampftruppe and the other one,” Martin pointed, “ is SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger. They’ve been called in to do away with the partisans.”

“Special brigades for the dirty work. Better not to get in their way,” Heinz added, and the tone of his voice made Lotte’s blood chill in her veins. She swallowed hard, pressing her fingernails into the flesh of her palm, her nerves strung tight.

In front of them black smoke spiraled from buildings set on fire and the sound of intermittent gunfire pierced her ears. Bodies lay everywhere, strewn on the streets like rubbish. SS troopers went from house to house, dragging women, children and the elderly outside, marching them along the street.

“Where are they taking them? What are they doing to them?” Lotte all but screamed, fighting the urge to jump out and do something. Anything.

Nobody answered.

Johann moved the Kübelwagen around the hundreds of civilians, each one looking more desperate than the next, and all clutching onto their most valuable possessions. Women carried their babies. One small child clutched a stuffed teddy bear, its bottom paw torn, the other one well chewed on.

A few blocks down the road they passed an empty lot with heaps of corpses three feet high covering the ground. Lotte gagged as she saw how another group of civilians got shoved inside the yard under the lash of rifle butts. Then she heard the shots of the firing squads that’d been waiting for them.

“Stop!” She screamed, pounding her fists on Johann’s biceps. “You have to stop them! Make them stop!”

Johann pushed down the accelerator and the Kübelwagen sprang forward, even as Lotte felt two strong arms grabbing her from behind. She slumped against the seat, whimpering.