I still hope and believe that one day Krystyna might read this, and will then understand that there was not one tragic wartime parting in her life, but two.
11
THE PILOT
I was born on a small farm in Kraków Province, the województwo of Kraków, about twenty kilometres to the east of the city. It was open farmland all around, although there was a village close by called Pobiednik. I had three brothers and a sister. My father was called Gwidon Roszca, my mother Joanna. Our family was poor and I was often hungry as I grew up. My parents always made sure I attended school, which I enjoyed.
When I was aged eleven my father succeeded in selling a large number of his herd of cattle to a man he knew only as a local landowner. The money briefly made a great deal of difference to my parents, but for me the sale had a much more important impact. It turned out that the landowner was an important aristocrat and legislator, and during the transaction he must have noticed me. After the sale of the animals, I discovered to my shock that I too had been sold, and that I was to move in with his family as a companion for his own child. Can you imagine how horrible that felt? I believed I had been rejected by my parents, discarded as unwanted. I had failed in everything. My mother cried for three days and nights, and my father would not speak to me. Later, I was to discover that it was not a form of slavery but a voluntary arrangement that might be brought to an end at any time, and that the intentions of all the adults were good, if misguided. I was not to know that at the time.
One day, not long after, I was dressed up and driven to the centre of Kraków itself, where I was deposited at the rear entrance to a large and beautiful house in the Old Town, not far from St Florian’s Gate and overlooking part of the Rynek.
That house was to become my permanent home. I was just a girl from a poor farm so I was overwhelmed and intimidated by the family’s wealth: there were dozens of servants, and the house was opulently furnished and richly decorated. My re-education and new upbringing began on that day, and one of the first things drilled into me was a need to be circumspect about the family and their ways. That discretion is still with me, but I can tell you that Rafal Grudzinski, Count of Lowicz, was one of the most wealthy and influential men in Kraków. Apart from the fact that he owned great stretches of farmland, and several manufacturing companies in the north of Poland, there is little I am able to say about him. I have no idea what has happened to him or his wife since the Nazis and Soviets invaded our country.
I was educated, I was groomed in the courtesies and manners of the class I had joined, I grew up. I spent the years 1928 to 1939 with the Grudzinski family, fulfilling the role that had been created for me when I was given up by my parents. That role was something I did not understand at first, but eventually I learned that Madame the Countess had become unable to bear more children after the birth of her only son, Tomasz.
I was eleven when I was taken to the Grudzinski household and by the time I was sixteen I had become, as I thought, a full member of the family. In my heart I knew I was still just a little peasant girl, but the grooming had given me a superficial sheen acceptable to this important and socially prominent family.
The count was a renowned and enthusiastic sportsman: he was a swimmer, a horseman, a shooter, a sailor and a climber. He went in for all of these activities in a wholehearted way, competing whenever competition could be found. Poland was mostly a poor country, but the count was rich beyond anything I could imagine. In 1934, just after my seventeenth birthday, he developed an interest in aviation, bought a small and fast aircraft, learnt to fly it, and within a year was competing at international level in several European countries: the south of France, along the Baltic coasts of Germany and Poland, in Austria, Sweden and Estonia. At first he would disappear from Kraków for a week or two at a time, then return either jubilant or dispirited, but it was not long before he was expecting the family to follow him to these events. The countess showed no interest in any of this, so it meant that Tomasz and I, and a retinue of servants, were the recruited support team.
I should describe what was developing between Tomasz and me. At first I had been completely in awe of him – he was the same age as me, just a few weeks older, but he had been born into an easy and affluent way of life. I found him difficult and arrogant. I think it is true to say that for some time we wholeheartedly loathed each other.
But within a few years, around the time we started accompanying Count Lowicz to his sporting events, matters became rather different. I found I was only happy when I was with Tomasz, and whenever we were separated, such as the weeks we spent at our different schools, I pined for him and dreamed up a hundred schemes for escaping somehow from where I was so that I could be with him. I knew without being told that he was feeling the same about me. For both of us the count’s long trips to flying competitions were a chance to be together for several days at a time.
During the first two trips to air races – one was in Monte Carlo, the other on the Adriatic coast of Italy – I barely registered what was happening, so full of joy was I to be with Tomasz. Both meetings were a cheerful chaos of boats, crowds, hot sunshine and annoyingly noisy aircraft. But then we travelled to Tallinn in Estonia, where the race itself was just a part of a much larger festival of sailing and flying. Although it was high summer it was cooler than it had been in the other places, there were not the same crowds and people were much more interested in the actual flying. For me, during the first day and a half, it meant that while the count was busy with his mechanics and his plane Tomasz and I had plenty of time together alone.
Then it happened. One of the count’s racing friends asked Tomasz if he would like a flight in an aeroplane. Tomasz agreed, climbed into the spare seat at the rear and was flown around the harbour and along the coast before returning. Then it was my turn.
We took off and within the space of a few seconds everything in my life simply changed.
I wanted to be, I had to be, a flier. I pleaded with the man for another flight, but that was not possible for some reason. I had to be content watching the count and his twenty-odd friends and competitors roaring past at what looked like immense speed. Tomasz too seemed keen to learn to fly, and while we watched the long race we talked excitedly of how we could arrange some lessons.
A few weeks later, while we were still taking lessons at an airfield near Kraków, the count presented Tomasz with a little two-seat RWD-3 high-wing monoplane.
I qualified as a solo pilot within three weeks.
Two months after that, at the end of yet another week of extended lessons with his tutor, Tomasz confessed to me that he was not a natural pilot, that he usually felt sick in the air, that the movements of the plane frightened him, and that whenever he took the controls he felt paralysed by terror. He said he knew he was never going to be able to fly solo.
But he agreed that I had taken to the air as if it were my natural element. From that day, with Tomasz’s encouragement, the RWD-3 became in effect my own plane, although I never flew anywhere without Tomasz in the seat behind me.
Flying became our lives together. A private airstrip was carved out of a long piece of the count’s estate a few kilometres to the north-east of the city. We were free to fly as often as we liked. We took advantage of that freedom. At first I was guiltily conscious of what had happened, that I had leapt ahead of Tomasz. I did not know of any other woman pilot, in Poland or elsewhere. Flying was a man’s sport, and to be a pilot was a male prerogative. One day I confessed these feelings to Tomasz, but he immediately told me not to be foolish. He told me he loved to fly with me, that the feelings of fear and sickness had left him, and that he saw our flying as a way of our being alone together.
I was in love with Tomasz, but I was passionate about flying, obsessed with it. Every time I took off that passion increased.
Money partly insulates the wealthy from the perils of history, so while we were falling in love with each other, and flitting about the Polish skies, we were to some extent i
mmune from the large and dangerous political changes that were taking place in other European countries. Not that we were blind to them. In fact, it was soon impossible to ignore them because the rise of fascism and communism in countries bordering ours was a real concern.
Much against my private wishes, though not in fact Tomasz’s, the count bought his son a reservist commission in the Polish Army, and he joined the Poznań Uhlan Regiment. It meant that Tomasz was often away, but somehow I managed to shut out the realities and our loving friendship continued whenever he was at home.
In the following summer I entered my first air race: the Challenge Tourist Trophy, flown on a course above the dykes bordering the Zuider Zee in the Netherlands. I came sixteenth. At the next race two weeks later, in a valley in Austria, my little aircraft suffered engine trouble and I was forced to land early. I damaged the undercarriage when I made a sudden landing in a field.
Two weeks later, with the plane repaired, I entered another race in Pomerania: the IG Farben Classic Cup. I came in fifth. After this race I started to become recognized. I was not just the only woman pilot taking part, I was actually beating most of the men. A newspaper published my photograph and a magazine interviewed me. Tomasz said he had never felt so proud of me.
Later that week Tomasz asked me to marry him.
It was almost as if this simple act of love set in train the upheaval that was to drive us apart. At the same time as Tomasz proposed to me, the Nazis in Germany were making an endless stream of demands on the Polish government, and issuing threats against the Polish people. A strip of our territory lay between Germany and the German-speaking port of Gdańsk – Hitler wanted it removed. The noises from the east were no more reassuring, with Stalin’s avowed aim of collectivizing by force the whole of Europe. He intended to start with those countries lying immediately to the west of the Soviet Union.
So we were in no doubt about what was going on in the world around us. However, for Tomasz and myself there were many more problems on our minds. When we broke our news to the family, expecting a joyous response, we were appalled when we discovered how hostile his parents were. Madame the Countess, in particular, said immediately that she would disallow it. She was abusive to me, calling me a semi-literate peasant and a parasite, and accusing me of trying to get my hands on their money.
It was a shocking end to an illusion. For the second time in my life I felt rejected by people I thought I could trust. The illusion of happiness ended, but the practical form of it continued in an unnervingly undefined way. Tomasz and I went on living in the family house in Kraków, with nothing more being said aloud, but the atmosphere was thick with unstated resentments. He and I escaped to go flying together whenever we could, but even that was becoming more difficult because of the threats of war.
We knew how dangerous the situation was becoming when Tomasz was called up from the reserve. He left immediately and I did not see him again for nearly two weeks. It was a nervous time for me, because with Tomasz gone my position in the household was ambiguous and tenuous. Then he returned, striding sensationally into the house in full uniform. He had never in the past disguised his admiration for the valorous traditions of the Polish Cavalry Brigades, and as a first-class horseman and the son of a count he was ideal officer material. He had joined the Uhlans, and was now a First Hussar in charge of a cavalry troop of more than a hundred men.
My heart melted to see him in his splendid uniform, but I was full of dread and fear. The Germans had fleets of warplanes and hundreds of battle tanks – I could not imagine how brave horsemen armed only with sabres and revolvers could put up any resistance at all, should it come to that.
Tomasz returned to Poznań, and I was alone again. I flew my plane whenever I could, but the emptiness of the seat behind me kept acting as a reminder of my increasing isolation.
One day, towards the end of August, I landed at the count’s private airstrip to be greeted by a man who had often visited the Grudzinski family house as a guest. I now discovered he was a senior staff officer, dressed in the uniform of the Polish Air Force: Major General Zaremski. My heart started thudding: I assumed immediately that he was waiting for me with bad news about Tomasz, but those fears were soon allayed.
The general explained what he wanted. The Polish government was facing the overwhelming might of the German Luftwaffe and was redeploying every fighting aircraft and every trained pilot. An invasion by the German Army appeared to be inevitable. At the same time, the government was rapidly moving offices and key staff out of Warsaw and into smaller regional cities and towns. They were recruiting civilians to perform passenger, courier or delivery flights across Poland. I was by this time one of the most prominent aviators in the country and the Lieutenant General of the Air Force, the commander in chief, had personally ordered that I be approached.
Naturally, when General Zaremski told me why he was there I agreed at once.
It was then I noticed a larger plane parked alongside the hangar at the end of the strip. This was to be my first assignment as a courier: I was to transport General Zaremski back to Warsaw as a passenger. As we walked across to the plane he told me not to ask how he and the aircraft had arrived at the airstrip, because the new emergency regulations forbade high-ranking officers from piloting themselves. I guessed the answer and said no more.
While the engines were warming up I pushed my little RWD-3 into the hangar, disabled it by detaching several control wires and removing the magneto cables, then locked it away. I wondered if I should ever fly it or even see it again.
A few minutes later I took off in the Air Force plane, and flew to Warsaw. The major general acted as my navigator. I did not mention that I had never flown a two-engined aircraft before.
A hectic week followed. I flew across Poland in a variety of different aircraft, some ancient, some modern, all of them unfamiliar to me. I flew single- and double-engined planes, and for one journey even a Junkers Ju-52 trimotor. I learnt as I flew. Staff meetings and defence strategy conferences were daily events. I frequently carried confidential documents in sealed bags. I have never been so excited in my life! On September 1, the sixth day of my unexpected recruitment into the air force, the Nazis invaded our country, crossing the border in huge numbers at many different points. Although it was mainly a land attack the Luftwaffe was active too, using dive-bombers to attack Warsaw and other major cities, and also attempting, with terrifying success, to put our own air force out of action.
I flew every day, and sometimes at night, frequently seeing German tanks roaming across our countryside and farmland. Sometimes I came under fire from the ground. Once I saw a squad of three Luftwaffe fighters high in the sky to the south of me – that morning I was carrying six army nurses to the town of Bydgoszcz, where the hospital had been damaged by bombing but was still functioning. They were critically short of nurses. To avoid those fighters I dived steeply towards the ground, seeking cover, but the Luftwaffe fliers did not spot me and an hour later I landed the aircraft safely. That afternoon I was back in Warsaw, ferrying a group of senior staff officers for an aerial view of the fighting.
I slept when and where I could, ate whenever I had the chance. The work was exhausting but exhilarating. I felt I was doing something practical to defend my country from invasion, even though every day brought more evidence that we were losing the war. One morning I was given a two-seat RWD-14 Czapla, and instructed to ferry a senior officer from Warsaw to Kielce. During the flight he told me that the German Army was advancing on Kraków from the west. After I had safely delivered him I immediately flew further south to Kraków, heading for the count’s airstrip. From the air there appeared to be no sign of the enemy, but I circled around three times until I was certain it was safe to land.
I taxied the plane to a large copse of trees growing on the side of the field. I parked it there, knowing there was no way of hiding the large and cumbersome aircraft from anyone on the ground, but hoping it would not be spotted from the air.
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bsp; The car I had used to reach the airstrip was still where I had left it, on the day the major general commissioned me. I started it up without difficulty and drove at breakneck speed into Kraków. As I passed through the outer areas of the city I could see that something terrible was already going on. Four columns of dark, roiling smoke were rising in the distance, on the western side. I saw several straggling lines of people, heading away in the direction from which I had come. They looked to be in a frightful and pathetic state.
I drove towards the centre of the city – I could see St Florian’s Gate, high and clean against the sky, but there were several fires close to it. The air was full of smoke.
The road that I was driving along towards the Rynek was unexpectedly blocked – a large house had collapsed across the street, and pieces of burning timber were falling from the two buildings that had been on each side of it. I slowed the car, appalled by the sight. I had never before seen such destruction, such evidence of human loss and tragedy: wallpapered rooms were exposed, pieces of furniture hung from the broken floors, flames licked at the huge pile of bricks and other debris into which the building had fallen, beams and rafters rested on the ground at crazy angles, some of them charred and smoking. The remains of children’s toys, clothes, fabrics, hung dankly like dead leaves.