Outside the dispersal hut, Adam was sitting in a sagging armchair with broken springs, eyes closed, face turned up to the sky, trying to focus on the weak sunshine instead of dwelling on his grievances. For several days now he’d watched enviously as his colleagues donned their yellow mae wests, grabbed their goggles and kitbags, and rushed off to the airfield. Half an hour later, the engines of the Lancasters would rev up, and the planes would roar down the runway and lift off. At the end of the day the airmen would stagger back to the base and discuss the dogfights and their narrow escapes.
During his training on the twin-engine Beech 16s, Adam had found it difficult to contain his impatience. He couldn’t see the point of doing exercises in planes so different from the powerful four-engine Lancasters he’d be flying, and he was fed up with the condescending manner of some of the British officers. Now that the training period was over, he couldn’t wait to get started. He hadn’t met the Group Captain who had been on leave when he arrived, and he chafed at the incompetence of the RAF commanders who were so short of pilots yet left him there to stew.
Shifting around in the chair to relieve the pressure of the springs, Adam had just closed his eyes again when he was summoned to see the Group Captain, who had recently returned to the base.
He sprang up, smoothed down his hair and, as he sprinted towards the office, he went over in his mind how he would let his superior know he was keen to start flying without making it sound like a criticism. When he entered, the Group Captain was standing with his back to the door, pinning markers on a large map of Germany. Adam was about to make his prepared speech when his superior turned around and the words died in his throat.
‘Mr Czartoryski, isn’t it? I believe we’ve already met.’
Adam swallowed and nodded. It was Charles Watson-Smythe, whom he’d met at the Europejski Hotel the night the Englishman’s fiancée had thrown a glass of champagne in his face. The recollection of that night, and the humiliating conversation that followed, was still vivid in his mind.
As on the previous occasion, Sir Charles had the upper hand. He took advantage of it by prolonging the uncomfortable silence, giving Adam ample time to reflect on his misfortune in having the man he’d cuckolded as his commanding officer. There was nothing Adam could say so he waited, looked down at his shoes, and wished he’d never set eyes on his superior’s vindictive fiancée.
‘I seem to recall that when we met in Warsaw, Mr Czartoryski, you had joined the Polish Air Force, whose career was unfortunately cut short by the Luftwaffe. So now we’ve come full circle. You’ve joined the RAF in England and I’ve been appointed to this squadron because of the Polish flyers.
‘Perhaps you recall that I speak a little Polish. Life is quite wonderful with its twists and turns, don’t you agree?’ His voice was mellow but his eyes threw darts.
Adam nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Absolutely wonderful.’ The words almost choked him.
Watson-Smythe stroked his chin. ‘Everyone says that Polish airmen are daredevils. Do you think recklessness is a national trait, Mr Czartoryski?’
The conversation was about to become a minefield. Adam replied carefully, ‘We think that the sooner Hitler is defeated, the sooner Poland will be free, sir.’
‘They say you Poles know how to die but you don’t always know how to live.’
Adam bit the inside of his lip to suppress a retort. In the circumstances, it wouldn’t be wise to react to the provocation.
Watson-Smythe was flicking through a log book. ‘The Polish chaps certainly seem to chalk up a lot of successes. More than the British crews. I find that very strange, given their, ah, less than distinguished performance in 1939. How do you account for it?’
Adam pulled at his tie, which suddenly felt very tight. He wanted to say that their training made them sharper and more alert. Their loose formations, spread wide at various altitudes, gave each member of the squadron a clear view of the sky, instead of being hemmed in by the close formations that the British air force favoured, which risked collisions with their own planes. And they were taught to fly right up close to the enemy. He could still remember his instructor reiterating, ‘Don’t fire till you can see the whites of their eyes.’
Struggling to keep his voice even, he said, ‘We had weak planes, sir, not weak pilots. They were outmoded and didn’t have sophisticated equipment, so instead of relying on radar and radio, we had to use our eyes and concentrate on what was going on around us.’
‘So the Polish airmen are good at using their eyes, are they?’ Watson-Smythe said in an insinuating tone. ‘From what I hear around the village, that’s not all they’re good at. I hear they’re rowdy troublemakers, and no female is safe with them around. The local high school has warned its girls to keep away from gin and Polish airmen!’
Adam looked down to conceal a malicious smile. If Englishmen knew how to court their women and make them feel desirable, they wouldn’t lose their sweethearts to the Poles. But, as he was well aware, after the incident at the Europejski Hotel, Watson-Smythe had a score to settle.
Finally the interview was over and he was curtly dismissed with a sharp glance that warned him to watch out. As he walked away, he wondered whether he had any future in the RAF.
He was mulling over his prospects over a glass of whiskey that evening when pandemonium broke out in the hut. The airmen were shouting and one of them grabbed the Daily Mirror from someone’s hands, tearing several pages.
Romek leapt up on a table, his face brick-red with anger. ‘The sons of bitches! The fucking bastards! And they’re supposed to be our allies! I knew we couldn’t trust them!’ He spat in disgust.
‘You’re a bloody moron,’ Tomasz was shouting. ‘It’s just German propaganda and you fell for it!’
Several others joined in the fracas, punches were thrown, and beer glasses shattered on the floor.
‘What’s all the fuss about?’ Adam asked Romek. ‘Did someone run off with your girlfriend?’
Romek had fallen in love with the dimpled village girl who served their meals. Betty had resisted the other airmen but she hadn’t been able to resist Romek. He boasted about his conquest at every opportunity, which irritated the others and often led to fights.
Before Romek could reply, Tomasz thrust the tattered pages of the Mirror into Adam’s hands. ‘You must be the only one who hasn’t heard. Here, look for yourself.’
As Adam read the news item, he raised the paper closer to his eyes, as though to ensure that not a single word escaped his attention. According to German Radio, the bodies of about four thousand Polish officers had been discovered in mass graves in Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, and they accused the Russians of their murder.
‘You can shout and break all the glasses you like, but you’ll never convince me it was the Bolsheviks.’ Tomasz was standing over Maciej, who looked as though he was about to hurl another glass into the fireplace. ‘Wake up, for fuck’s sake; why would they murder our soldiers? It’s obvious that the Germans would blame the Russians. Surely you don’t expect them to own up and say they did it?’
Maciej’s face was contorted with emotion. ‘You’re the one that should wake up! Have you forgotten how they marched into eastern Poland like a bunch of hyenas in 1939? While they were spouting propaganda about brotherhood and equality, they were deporting hundreds of thousands of Poles to Siberia. Reckoned they were subversive elements or bourgeois intellectuals or such like. They’re devious bastards. Just ask anyone who ever lived under Russian occupation.’
They were all shouting at Tomasz. Like Maciej, most of the men in the hut had become Russian prisoners when Russia invaded eastern Poland in 1939 and had been deported to remote parts of Siberia where they starved, froze and suffered at the hands of their Russian captors.
Maciej banged the table with his fist and his voice rose above the others. ‘People died like flies in their stinking gulags. If Hitler hadn’t broken his pact with Stalin in 1941, we’d still be rotting in those camps. They only let us go because circumstances turned them into our allies. They hate our guts. Polish bourgeois pigs, pimples on the arse of humanity — that’s what they called us. First chance they get, they’ll grab Poland by the balls — just wait and see.’
While the arguments raged back and forth, Adam was deep in thought. When he had given his report to the Polish government-in-exile, Sikorski, the Commander-in-Chief, had impressed on him that it was vital for the Allies to remain united in order to defeat Hitler. What would happen to that unity now, if it was discovered that Russia had murdered thousands of Polish officers in cold blood? From his insights into politics, he surmised that, in blaming the Russians, the Germans were putting the cat among the Allied pigeons to weaken the alliance. Would the British risk offending Stalin by giving credence to the German report?
Like Maciej and most of the others, Adam had no illusions about Soviet methods either, and was familiar with their ruthless quest for domination, which masqueraded as benevolent ideology.
He knew that hundreds of thousands of Polish academics, priests, businessmen, military and government personnel had been arrested and shot, or deported to Siberia during the Russian occupation of eastern Poland in 1939.
Adam sat bolt upright. Perhaps that’s what had happened to his father. From the moment he’d heard that his father had disappeared, he had assumed that he’d either been killed in battle or captured by the Germans. But it was possible that his father was one of the Polish officers shot by the Bolsheviks in that birch forest near Katyn. If that was true, he knew that his father would have died with dignity and without regrets, content that he had done his duty for Poland. Although he and his father had never seen eye to eye on most issues, he had a grudging admiration for the old warrior’s uncompromising principles. Adam sighed. He had always longed to discuss things with his father as an equal, to have his ideas taken seriously and respected, instead of being dismissed as puerile. But that would probably never happen now.
He felt a sense of loss rather than grief. His father would have died with his honour intact, knowing that he hadn’t disgraced his noble lineage. Adam wondered whether when his turn came he’d be able to say the same.