Ryszard was left with a permanent scar on his forehead from where the machine gun had been hitting against him. 132-136)Īfter several hours they emerged from the sewers. had been banging against my forehead the entire time we were walking. The smell was overwhelming.If you made a wrong turn you weren't likely to ever get out alive.The guy ahead of me was carrying a very heavy machine gun. The moment we entered, everything was swallowed by darkness.I landed deep in filth. The Polish underground fighters were ordered to escape to the City Center. 125) The Sewersīy the end of August 1944 the Old Town was surrounded by the Germans. She was only 17 years old, and suddenly there was nothing left of her life.At least a dozen of my buddies were killed when that tank exploded. There were rivers of blood.There were no remains that were even remotely identifiable. The resistance captured the tank and brought it to a square in the old town. Ryszard feared a trap and begged her not to go. She intended to go with others to capture the tank. She was a friend of Ryszard and told him that a German tank had been abandoned not far from their location. She dodged the sniper's bullets to deliver information between the different units. Henryka, a young Resistance girl, was a messenger. Lieutenant Stan collapsed at the feet of Ryszard. Lieutenant Stan surveyed the way ahead with his binoculars. They set out to capture a German weapons cache. Ryszard was a member of the Gozdawa battalion. 25,000 Polish soldiers, only 10% of them armed, with an ammunition supply of two to three days, went to war against a perfectly equipped German army having artillery, an air force, armoured forces, and all manner of infantry weapons at their disposal. The Polish underground resistance launched their attack on the German army. On 1 August 1944 the Warsaw Uprising began. #RITA COSBY IMAGES CODE#He began training for more aggressive action and took the code name of Rys. Ryszard became a courier and distributed hundreds of anti-Nazi leaflets. After the German attack they became part of the Polish underground resistance. A scouting organisation which organised camping trips and survival training. The Young Eaglesīefore the war Ryszard had joined the Young Eagles. Warsaw was in ruins and their home was destroyed. They arrived in Warsaw a few days after the heavy bombing of the 25 September. They turned the cart around and headed back to Warsaw. Before they got there the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east on the 17 September. The family fled Warsaw on a horse drawn cart and headed for the Romanian border. German planes bombed Warsaw where he was living as a 13 year old with his parents. Ryszard recalls the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939. She started by asking him what his first memories of the war were. She had immersed herself in the history of Poland and World War 2 and had many questions to ask him. Rita arranged to visit her father at his home in Virginia. Rita asked herself what horrors had her father endured before he emigrated to America. The identity card had the name Ryszard Kossobudzki on it.
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