Under the Jackboots I

Out of the wild marshes and the dark forests strode soldiers of Poland's Underground Army. They bore aloft their country's red-&-white flag, marched into the Russian lines, presented "declarations of collaboration" to Red Army commanders: "We meet the forces of the Soviet Union on Polish soil as our co-belligerents in the fight against our common enemy, Germany. We bring to your knowledge that there is in existence in these territories an administration secretly organized by the Polish State under the yoke of German occupation. . . ."

Thus, in London last week, the Polish Government in Exile pictured the first meetings of Polish and Russian forces. They were meetings fraught with uncertainty: can the Polish underground and the Red Army cooperate on soil whose ownership is bitterly disputed by their respective Governments? Reported London: In two localities the Red Army had "shot" underground soldiers; in 14 localities cooperation had been "satisfactory."

Secret State. Poland's underground fighters have been toughened and tempered by four bloody, silent years of warfare with the Nazis. Poles are proud that the Nazis have never found a Polish Quisling. A few small-fry Poles have collaborated with the enemy; the nation's true leaders have preferred torture and death. Poles call their secret state the legitimate heir of Poland's prewar Government. The emigre Cabinet is the secret state's head until elections can be held in a free Poland. The hidden state within Poland runs an administrative system, army, political forum, courts, press, radio and even schools under the Gestapo's jackboots.

Secret Life. Underground couriers shuttle fantastically from Poland to Britain across the face of the shackled Continent. Inbound, they drop by parachute into Poland's night from Allied planes. A secret radio, SWIT (meaning dawn), has operatives who carry transmitters in handbags, dodge from hideout to hideout.

The underground's 140 clandestine newspapers--some printed in postcard size, others on finest imported stock--circulate perilously from hand to hand. They print Winston Churchill's speeches the day after their delivery. Through these newspapers the four Polish parties (Nationalist, Polish Socialist, Peasant, National Labor), which give allegiance to the London Cabinet, carry on political debate. Most of the home press stands left of the London emigres, talks of land reform, opposes any return of feudalistic privilege.

Underground courts pass judgment on ultrabrutal Gestapomen. Special squads carry out the sentences. A British artist, working from a description supplied by a Polish underground officer, limned one of these epics of revenge (see cut). Several months ago death was decreed for Gestapo-man Franz Buerckl, Governor of Warsaw's Pawiak Prison. One day, as Buerckl walked the streets with wife and child, a Polish fiddler whipped a tommy gun from his violin case, shot Buerckl down, fought it out with his motorcycle escort.

Secret Army. How strong is the Underground Army? The Poles claim 300,000 men, but this is probably an exaggeration. It is an army bivouacked deep in the homeland's pine and birch forests. It uses light arms cached by the old Polish Army, snatched from the Germans or parachuted from abroad. As a rule it has, until recently, avoided open battle with the heavily armed occupation forces.

Last month, the Poles say, a force of 4,000 Germans, equipped with tanks and planes, surprised an underground camp. After a day's fighting and severe losses, the Poles broke out of a German ring, dispersed in the forest, left behind 400 dead and wounded enemies. More typical exploits: setting fire to German tank cars, derailing German troop transports, raiding Gestapo prisons, burning down German colonists' villages in retaliation for Polish Lidices.

Civil War? Most of the story of the Polish underground filters through the London Polish Government which claims but has yet to prove that it controls the bulk of the resistance forces. Certainly opposed to the London Government is Poland's young Partisan underground, led by Polish Communists. The Partisans are probably dominant east of the Curzon Line, in territory claimed by the Russians and among Poland's old White Russian and Ukrainian minorities.

Just how the two undergrounds will react to each other and to the Russian occupation remains to be seen. But the Polish people have not forgotten an old tradition of resistance to foreign masters; their undergrounds have kept a stubborn nation alive for the day of reckoning.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.