JÓZEF ERBAN, a venerable and distinguished resident of Bolesławiec, was a professional senior sergeant in the 7th Telegraph Battalion in Poznań. His September memories are a retrospective written in 1970 and made available for our review. They are something between an autobiographical diary and an essay. In 1920, he took part in the Polish-Bolshevik War as a telegraph operator with the 5th Company of the Podhale Rifle Division. After the victorious campaign, he fell ill with a leg condition resulting from the exhausting campaign that had devastated his health. Later, he returned to the army.
/.../ “I remember the day when general mobilization was announced. Sergeant Krzywicki, a colleague from the personnel records office where I worked, rushed in, extremely excited—and called from the doorway:
- Józek! At last, war with the Huns!
We kissed each other on both cheeks, promising ourselves a part in the great adventure. Soon afterward, fate separated us, and we never met again.
/.../ I was in the barracks in Jarosław. September 3, 1939, 4 p.m. In the courtyard, I saw a group of officers and non-commissioned officers standing beside the command post and engaged in conversation. Curious, I went over to them. I recognized Major Łysak, Captains Lekrzycki, Piątkowski and others. Suddenly, we heard sirens wailing both in the barracks and in the city. Almost simultaneously, the growing roar of aircraft engines could be heard. I was carrying a private pair of binoculars on my chest. The approaching aircraft caused no alarm, and Captain Lekszycki began admiring how evenly and majestically the machines were flying. At one point, I saw a dozen or so of them flying quickly from the direction of the bright sun toward our barracks. Overcome by a bad premonition, I lay on my back on the ground and looked through the lenses at the aircraft. Jesus—black crosses on the wings! I only had time to shout: Germans! Take cover! At this tense moment, our brave soldier Švejk—Captain Lekszycki—called out threateningly:
- Sergeant! I’ll turn you over to the military police for spreading defeatism! He did not have time to carry out his threat, because the first bombs fell and a powerful blast knocked him hard to the ground. Hunched over, I ran to a splinter trench dug in the officers’ allotment gardens. The trenches were already filled with both soldiers and civilians.
The spasmodic howl of the diving Nazi machines and the rising whistle of falling bombs, followed moments later by powerful detonations and tremors, formed the hellish setting for a grim drama of destruction. From my hiding place, I watched intently as the aircraft turned in tight banking maneuvers, their bomb-bay doors opened, and heavy iron fell downward. It seemed that every bomb was headed for my trench. It was a hellish feeling; I crouched down, expecting a painful blow at any moment. More than once, a hot blast buried us under masses of sand and earth. Well, this must be the end... Fortunately for us, it hit the neighboring trench. Eight dead, more than a dozen wounded. A day of judgment began in the barracks: bombs fell without pause, the detonations merging into one tremendous roar. Buildings hit directly were burning. People—mostly women—screamed in terror, running from place to place, often dying as they fled. Sirens wailed, church bells moaned; all of this intensified the chaos. Medical orderlies had their hands full, and the stretchers were full of bloody human remains. Several bombs hit the material warehouses. In a strange, and perhaps criminal, twist of circumstance, their roofs had been covered with new galvanized sheet metal several weeks before the outbreak of war. A target—as clear as a frying pan. The warehouses burned like torches.
Black, greasy smoke /from lubricants/ drifted across the courtyard, stinging the eyes and filling the entire square. There was also wild panic and terror in the city, because several bombs hit houses, flooding them and burying their residents under the rubble. The German pirates also dropped incendiary bombs, causing violent fires. As I was later told, at the 24th Field Artillery Regiment, after the unit left the barracks to go to its concentration area, one gun remained without its right wheel. One of the soldiers left behind in the regiment dragged the gun over with the help of his comrades and propped it against a garbage bin in the barracks courtyard. During the raids, several shots were fired from it at our enemy, of course without any effect. Only a few little clouds in the sky testified to the crew’s determination and our helplessness.
After approximately 25 minutes, the aircraft flew west to their bases, while we set about removing the effects of the air raid. The grim balance of the first bombing of the barracks was nineteen military personnel and civilians killed and forty-six wounded. After the raid, when the sirens and church bells fell silent, it seemed to us that an eerie, cemetery-like silence had engulfed the barracks... Only the crackling of burning buildings and the calls of rescuers restored our sense of reality. Firefighting and the removal of the damage began. From all around, the dead were carried in and laid on their backs in an open area of the barracks courtyard. Some were terribly mutilated. Bloody stains marked the wall of one of the buildings, as fragments of human bodies had been carried that far, while beneath the wall the blood thickened in the dust.
In the base’s carpentry shop, they began making the first coffins, but soon there were no boards left, and the bodies began to be buried in the allotment gardens, wrapped in coats. Thus ended the third day of the war in Jarosław. Not a trace of the Germans on the ground, and yet so many victims...”