My Uprising
         For me the Uprising started on 28 July 1944 when I was mobilized. I was assigned to the first aid post in Chelmska Street. Together with a few colleagues I spent the whole night in a barn on the bank of the Vistula River. We watched the flares being sent up over the river. On July 30 we were orderd to return home. The next mobilization order came on 1 August around noon. My mother wanted to stay with me as long as possibile so we both took a carriage to Chelmska Street.
         Two hours before the W-hour our first aid post was relocated. We moved all our ecquipment to Stepinska Street not knowing that German troops are stationed opposite our post, near Lazienki Park. At 05:00 p.m. the shooting began. We saw a boy falling in the street so we run out with dash carrying a stretcher and wearing armbands. We were caught in the rain of bullets that fell on us together with leaves. The boy on the stretcher was killed and the four of us took cover under the roof over the entrance to a bomb shelter, many of which had been built by the Germans in the city squares. Having seen what had happened, Wanda - the fifth member of our group - run to us carrying bandages but she was immediately shot in both hands. Some boy also took cover in our shelter. Then, suddenly, we heard the Germans. They threw a grenade, which fell on Stasia Stawska's belly. The boy grabbed it and threw back immediately. A moment later another one - an egg grenade - was thrown in. The boy threw it back again. We could hear the Germans talk. At that moment the boy run out of the shelter. I do not know if he managed to escape. One of my friends - Tenia Zdziarska - went outside waving a white handkerchief. Unfortunately, she was shot, and the bullet went through a clavicle. The Germans came. Tenia could not move. We pretended to be civilians (we had thrown our armbands into the stormdrain in the shelter's floor). One of the Germans said they would take her to hospital and ordered the rest of us to go towards Lazienki Park. Once there, we were lined up against a wall, and one of the Germans started aiming his rifle at us. We were terrified! My whole life flashed before my eyes, and I knew that those were the last seconds of my life. Then another German came running and shouting "halt! halt!". The soldier aiming at us lowered his rifle. We narrowly escaped being executed. We were orderd to go into the building opposite Lazienki Park. We spent the night together with its residents in the basement. We demanded that the Germans take Wanda "Czarna" (Black) (I do not remember her real name), who had been shot in the hands, to hospital. German nurses were to take care of Tenia, who had been shot in a clavicle. Indeed, on the following day a lorry came and took Tania, who was lying on a stretcher, and Wanda to hospital. They both survived the war. There were three of us left: Stasia Stawska, Wanda Choryd "Biala" (White) and I. (After the war Wanda Choryd became a professor of psychiatry). Three girls in our unit were named Wanda so we had to use nicknames: Biala (White) - for the one with blond hair, Czarna (Black) - for the one with dark hair (Wanda Szeruda) and Wandzia (a diminutive form of the name Wanda) - for me, Wanda Pienkowska.
         Wanda "Biala" overheard a conversation between the German soldiers. They had just been withdrawn from the frontline and did not know what exactly was going on in Warsaw. We approached an officer and told him that we wanted to go home but a soldier lying on the roof shot at anyone trying to cross the square. We told the officer: "Tell him not to shoot at us." And so he did. Wanda and I parted with Stasia, who went another way. We run until we reached Chelmska Street. Then we came to an incline which we had to climb to get to Mokotow. The slope was covered with potato plants. We crawled upwards among the plants, with bullets whizzing over our heads. Finally, we reached Pulawska Street near the place where it crosses Woronicza Street. We moved on relying only on our instincts because we did not know who was in control in this part of Mokotow. In order to cross Pulawska Street we had to wait until dusk because the street was under constant enemy fire. We waited in an abandoned flat and ran across after it had got dark. We headed for the sector command in Szustra Street (today Dabrowskiego Street). When we got there our real babtism of fire started as the Germans began to bomb the area. The house which served as the command's headquarters was swaying, plaster was falling off the walls and the ceiling, window panes were shattered, gaping holes like windows were opening suddenly in the walls. We were surrounded by the roar of explosions and growing piles of rubble. It was difficult to find a place to hide because any place might have been hit by a bomb and annihilated.
         We received an assignment to "Baszta" battalion. Our first job there was peeling potatoes in the kitchen (it was organized in the school on the corner of Woronicza Street and Krasickiego Street). With the hospital run by the Convent of St. Elizabeth filling up with the wounded, additional provisional wards were set up in the surrounding houses. There were a lot of survivors from the scattered units. We were quartered at 20 Krasickiego Street and assigned as nurses to various first aid posts. I was separated from Wanda "Biala". I was assigned to the post at 18 Lenartowicza Street. We were brought meals from the kitchen in Woronicza Street. The woman who brought us food had a nickname "Mamcia" (Mommy) and she was responsible for organizing provisions (I have met her once in Gdynia after the war but I think she was just on a holiday trip).
         During the day the boys broke into some German warehouse and found some clothes. We received green blouses, brown skirts and grey coats made of blankets, which were extremely heavy. I was very glad because I had left home wearing only a grey dress made of thin cloth and a thin pullover. The garments I got were to be my only clothes for the next several months. One of the nurses working in my post was Zofia Zdziarska, the sister of Tania, who had been wounded on the first day of the Uprising. During the day we tended our wounded, and in the evenings we walked to Pola Mokotowskie to get water from a well. The Germans were using tracer ammunition therefore we had to wait for a short break between rounds to run across Lenartowicza Street. Having crossed the street we were well covered. It was much more difficult to cross the street on the way back when we carried a bucket full of water. Sometimes we managed to return to the post with the bucket only half full, but we considered ourselves lucky anyway because having any water meant a lot.
         Even in those circumstances life was not too bad until "lowing cows" - incendiary missiles nicknamed for the sound they made in the air - started flying. After 12 of them flew over our post, all nearby trees were completely leafless, houses swayed and even the cobblestone in the street cought fire. We moved our wounded to the boiler room of the house at 126 Pulawska Street, but before long the German airforce commenced another air strike bombing all larger buildings. I was about to finish dressing the wounds of "Bialynia", who was a courier and was wounded in a hand and in the stomach at the racecourse in Sluzewiec [the course was a heavily defended German position during the Uprising - translator's note]. Then I heard a loud crash: something was crumbling and the air filled with dust. I jump out on the staircase to check if we would be able to get out. The stairs were covered with rubble but there was a way out. The building standing next to ours turned into a pile of debris. Having calmed down our wounded I run to my cousins'. The Grendyszynscy lived nearby in Krasickiego Street. I wanted to clean off the red brick dust that I was covered with, and which made me look like a wraith. My uncle Kazimierz, despite aunt's protests, decided to go back with me and help dig out the people buried in the basement of the collapsed house. I remember my aunt crying after him: "Kazik, don't leave me alone". We were running along the yards at the back of Pulawska Street when the bombers came back. My uncle shouted something. He probably wanted me to lie down along the fence, which was what he must have done. I saw some boys jump into a ditch and I jumped after them. It turned out that the ditch was partly covered. A moment later some dirt fell on our backs and the sunlight poured into our hiding place. When we climbed out we could not recognize the yards. Just next to our ditch there was a huge bomb crater, and on a heap of dirt ejected by the explosion lay my dead uncle. I did not have enough courage to go and tell my aunt about it. Besides, we were moving with our wounded to Lenartowicza Street. She learnt from the soldiers who were picking up the wounded and the dead. In the evening the aunt asked me to come. The uncle lay on a provisional bier in the living room in a pool of blood. His scapula was torn off and he had a hole in the head. He was buried in Dreszer Park. A week later their only son called Zuk was killed too. He was also buried in Dreszer Park.
         One of my wounded had been shot in rather peculiar circumstances. The boys had cought a horse somewhere. One of them had been cleaning the horse while another one had been cleaning his shotgun. When the latter had accidentally hit the horse with the stock the shotgun had gone off and he had been hit in a thigh. His thigh was full of lead shot, which could not be removed in the primitive conditions we had to deal with. So the not-very-valiant soldier could not walk and had to lie in our post.
         We were stationed in Lenartowicza Street until the end of our fights in the Uprising. On 18 September we saw American B-29 "superfortess" bombers dropping supplies. They flew in a formation as if it was a parade. We looked in the sky full of hope, and the view was magnificent. They flew very high over ground to avoid the fire of the German air defence. Unfortunately, most of the supplies fell into German hands.
         On 24 September the Germans launched a full-scale attack on Mokotow. They used all available weapon against us. Everyone who was at least able to limp on his own grabbed a stick or a board to use it as a crutch, and, hiding in trenches and ditches, tried to escape toward the city centre. Three boys who could not walk and "Bialynia" were left. Zosia and I volunteered to stay with them. All civilians had left their homes running from the Germans. We carried the wounded to the basement. Then suddenly the cannonade stopped, and SS units entered the area. We pretended to be civilians. At first, the Germans ordered us to carry the wounded outside so that they could be transported to a hospital near Warsaw. Each of us took one of the wounded on her back and we dragged them up the stairs to the yard. We did not have enough strength to carry them any further. The Germans watched the whole scene smirking. Suddenly, they told us to carry the wounded back downstairs and go to a house in Krasickiego Street where they had found two wounded who, for some reason, had been left alone. It turned out that those two had guns hidden under their pillows so the Germans knew that they were not civilians. We carried them to our post and put them next to our wounded. All the time the Germans were telling us that they were going to take the injured to a hospital. One of the Germans told us to stay with the wounded, but then, another one who seemed to be from Silesia said in Polish "You go home". So we went out to the yard. The windows of the basement where we left our wounded were looking on the yard. When we were crossing the yard we heard gunshots, and we realized that the Germans killed the wounded boys who lay helpless in their beds. We froze in terror when we realized that at any moment we could share their fate. One of the SS soldiers, a Ukrainian, approached us and demaded a watch. Zosia, who was scared to death, took off her watch and gave it to the soldier without saying a word. Then we went away unmolested. I can only remember the names of two of our wounded: Kazik Kozieradzki and ...Wodkowski.
         We followed a group of people going towards the racecourse in Sluzewiec. On the way we met one of the residents of the house in which we had had our first aid post. He rode a rikshaw carrying "Bialynia" in the passanger's seat. He must have taken her out of the basement during the commotion as we had been carrying the wounded. Now he was helping her to get out of that hell. We reached a stable where we spent the night. In the morning lorries came and took all the elderly, wounded and mothers with children to Pruszkow [a town at the outskirts of Warsaw, in which the Germans set up a refugee camp for the people forced out of Warsaw during and after the Uprising - translator's note]. The rest of us had to walk.
         We were leaving the ruined Warsaw. When we were walking by the airport Soviet planes appeared in the sky and our German escort went hiding. Some women coming back from work in the field were walking along the shoulder of the road so Zosia and I joined them quickly. In this way we escaped from the transport to the camp in Pruszkow. When we reached Grojecka Street we saw a German checkpoint. We had no ID's! We saw some children pulling carts loaded with potatoes (It was Rakowiec, we were already outside Warsaw so the life there was going on as usual in comparison to what was going on in the city). We joined them and avoided the documents check. We ran across the field towards Otrebusy, where a station of the Electric Suburban Railay was. When we came at the station we were dumbfounded: there were fruit and vegetables stands. We were in a different world. It was hard to believe that the life there was so normal. I parted with Zosia at the station. She went to her friends in Grodzisk and I decided to go to the Wehrs, who had been our neighbours before the war, and had an estate next to ours. Twenty people had been already staying in the Wehrs' house when I got there. My aunt Jadzia Jokiel was among them. All the youth slept in straw together covered with blankets in a small shed. Aunt Jadzia slept with us as a chaperone.
         The people were transported out of Warsaw by trains. Therefore every day we went to the station and when the trains stopped or slowed down we handed out bread and water. The Germans tried to scare us off but we managed to help the exhausted passangers. When a German went to one end of the platform we immediately showed up on the other.
         Mr Wehr helped me get a new ID.
         From time to time Janek Jonkiel showed up in Grodzisk. His paid a short visit and disappeared again. As a member of the "Dark and Silent" [an elite formation of special operations officers dropped over the German-occupied territories to gather intelligence and engage in sabbotage operations - translator's note] he had to remain under cover. He revealed himself only to the closest family.
         At the beginning of October we heard news that the sick and wounded from Wola Hospital were to be transported to Milanowek, and that my mother's sister, aunt Marianna, was among the wounded. She had been admitted to hospital after she had been seriously injured in the explosion of a grenade thrown by a soldier of Vlasov Army. So we took the aunt to Grodzisk, but we could not stay there for too long because, despite the Wehrs hospitality, the house was too overcrowded to allow for any more guests. It was also more and more difficult to get provisions.

Wanda Thun nee Pienkowski

Wanda Thun née Pieńkowski nom de guerre "Wandzia" Home Army soldier, combat medic "Jeremi" Company 1st "Jozef Bem" Squadron of Horse Artillery, medical unit