Once We Were Brothers by Ronald H. Balson Page A

Piatek. Whatever you want to call him.”
    Ben paused, with a look of disgust, and took a sip of tea.
    “Two days later, the first of the refugees began arriving in the pre-dawn hours. Just a few at first, some pushing carts loaded with their clothes and possessions, or their babies in quilts. By midday there was a steady stream. They spent the night on their way to Eastern Poland and the Russian territories. From them we learned about the horrors of the invasion and how we were hopelessly overmatched.
    “You know, Catherine, ‘ blitzkrieg ’ means ‘lightning war.’ Germany unleashed 1200 war planes. Bombers, fighters. Much of our air force never got off the ground. We had thirty-five divisions against a million and a half well-armed troops. In short order, the Polish Army was decimated.
    “To put this all in perspective, in 1939 Germany had 2.5 million well trained ground troops. England had a small professional army. The U.S. had less than 500,000 ground troops and would not reach 1.5 million until mid-1941. Poland had less than 300,000 land troops which were initially called the frontier defense force.
    “Germany’s defense budget for the years immediately preceding the invasion exceeded $24 Billion. By contrast in the four years before the invasion, Poland had an aggregate defense budget of substantially less than one billion. Poland had a single mechanized brigade, while the Germans committed six Panzer divisions, which were combined with motorized infantry and motorized artillery.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know the difference between a brigade and a division,” Catherine said.
    “Generally speaking, a military division has between 10,000 and 30,000 men. It’s made up of regiments or brigades. A brigade could be between 3,000 and 5,000 men. I only bring this up to point out the enormous disparity in the strengths of the two armies. Germany went through Poland like a hot knife through butter.
    “Krakow fell in seven days, and we knew that the bombs would soon come to our town. The Polish defense plan was based upon the expectation that England and France would provide a second front. Our only hope was the West. Every day we heard reports that England and France were sending troops. One afternoon, Otto ran up to our bunker shouting that 60,000 English troops had landed in Danzig. Of course, it was only a false rumor, nothing more than a wish.
    “On September 9th, again on the Sabbath, the bombs began to fall on Zamość. We were on our way to our synagogue when we heard the drone of the Stukas and the thunder of the bombs. Hundreds of dive bombers strafed the streets, bombs fell everywhere, like a meteor shower, destroying buildings, shops, churches and schools indiscriminately. On Harowajszowska Street, in a poor neighborhood, a bomb exploded on a synagogue and hundreds of worshippers were incinerated.”
    “Was there no defense for Zamość?” Catherine said.
    “We had practically nothing to use against aircraft or armored vehicles. People gathered their hunting rifles and shotguns. We were throwing pebbles at the apocalypse. The bombers flew at us without any countermeasures. It was target practice for them.
    “One Stuka flew very close to the ground, maybe to see the fear in the eyes of the people he was slaughtering, but his wings clipped a steeple and his plane twirled and crashed in a field. The pilot was thrown from the cockpit and lay in a potato farm, broken and bleeding, awaiting his turn in line at the gates of hell, when one of our elementary teachers, Mr. Kazmierecz, reached him. ‘We’re not soldiers, there’s no army here,’ he yelled at the dying pilot. ‘Who are you trying to kill?’ And with his last breath the pilot answered, ‘Poland.’
    “People scattered in every direction, many of them to the woods to hide. But for me, all I could think about was Hannah. I had to get to Hannah. I dashed through the rubble in the streets, past the frantic women and children who ran