The look on Trixie’s face silenced him. ‘It doesn’t matter if a rifle is fired by a man or a woman, to the SS trooper it kills the result is just the same. If the SS win, women will be executed alongside the men, therefore they have the right to fight and die just as surely as men.’
It was one of those strange moments when silence descends, when all noise and all talking suddenly ceases. It was as though the world was taking a breath. It was as though the world had been suddenly made mute by the horror it was about to witness. Trixie looked around at the men and women manning the barricade, and wondered what they were listening for. She strained her one good ear.
There…
Far off she could hear the scrunch of steel on stone, could hear the faint thud-thud-thud of a steamer’s pistons, could hear shouted commands drifting towards her through the sharp, crystalline cold of the afternoon.
A boy, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, darted around a corner of a building and shouted a message. ‘The Anglos are advancing through Southgate. Ten minutes.’
‘Soldiers of Warsaw, prepare yourselves,’ Trixie shouted.
Now all they could do was wait and she suddenly came to understand how lonely it was to command. Every one of the men and women lining the barricade was waiting for her to say something. She began to pace up and down, shouting at the pale-faced WFA soldiers as she went. ‘Hold your fire until the Anglos are within fifty yards. Don’t waste your shots. When a man falls, one of you without a rifle will take his place. I will shoot anyone stepping back from the barricade. There will be no retreat, there will be no surrender. This is your time, people of Warsaw. This is your time to kill.’
The first steamer lumbered around the corner five minutes later. The SS had taken the rubber tyres off the wheels and screwed in large spikes; now the wheels smashed and crushed the street cobbles as the machine passed. Swathed in steel and steam, the huge steamer huffed and puffed its way, slowly, inexorably, towards the barricade. Once it faced them head-on, it stood poised for a moment crouching like some great fire-breathing dragon that had escaped from the depths of Terror Incognita. Then it began to lurch forward, gradually picking up speed, obviously intent on ramming the barricade. Behind the machine swarmed a mass of black-uniformed SS troopers. There was a rat-tat-tat as two Gatling guns housed in nacelles on the top of the steamer opened fire and instinctively Trixie threw herself to the ground. Bullets smacked into the house to her left. Windows smashed, showering glass down onto the road. Somewhere to her right she heard a scream. The steamer picked up speed. It seemed unstoppable, a huge lumbering force of Nature.
‘Steady, you useless bastards,’ shouted Trixie. She blushed. She couldn’t believe someone of her rank and her breeding could use such profanities. Sergeant Wysochi had a lot to answer for. But when she saw the effect her words had on her troops – they were actually laughing – she was encouraged to go further. ‘Look at them… there are so many of the fuckers even you useless bastards can’t miss.’
There was a round of louder laughter.
The SS lumbered forward. Eighty yards… seventy yards… sixty yards… fifty yards.
‘Fire!’
The soldiers of the WFA began to fire, working their Martini-Henry rifles for all they were worth, pouring fire into the advancing SS. In an instant the bright Winter’s sunshine was shrouded with a cloying, choking cloud of cordite.
‘Hold hard,’ Trixie screamed as the steamer hit the barricade. For a moment she thought the barricade would buckle but the tons of earth and timber that they had laboured to pour into its construction withstood the charge. Now Corporal Zawadzski’s men began to fire down into the ranks of the SS swarming around the beached steamer. A man fell back from the barricade, his face mashed by a bullet. Instinctively Trixie brought her brute of a pistol up, took aim at the SS advancing towards the barricade and pulled the trigger. The Mauser bucked back in her hand, raking her injured shoulder with pain as she worked the trigger and fired again and again and again. Frantically she fired shot after desperate shot into the black mob of the SS, firing until the hammer of her pistol clicked on an empty chamber.
It looked hopeless: the SS were coming forward like a black wave, hosing the barricade with their automatic weapons. Then little Corporal Michalski and his band struck, hurling their fire-bombs down, turning the whole of Uyazhdov Boulevard into an inferno. In a moment the fashionable tree-lined avenue was turned into a living, burning Hel.
‘Now!’ she yelled and two boys – children really, neither was more than ten – leapt over the top of the barricade in a suicidal attempt to throw firebombs into the cabin of the steamer. One was cut down by machine-gun fire but the second managed to thrust his bomb through the driver’s observation port. There was a ‘wooomph’ as the bomb exploded and in that instant the sound of pounding steam pistons and scrabbling wheels was accompanied by the screams of the steamer’s crew as they were burnt to death.
Then, like the ebbing of a tide, the ferocity of the fighting seemed to suddenly falter and, as she watched, the SS began to retreat.
There was a shout from the barricades. ‘We’ve beaten them. They’re running for it.’
‘Keep firing,’ bellowed Trixie, ‘for fuck’s sake, keep firing. Kill as many of the fuckers as you can. Make them remember. Make them scared. Make them dead.’
And as she screamed out her orders, Trixie realised that she had never been happier in the whole of her life.
Comrade Major Hartley stood stock-still in front of Archie Clement’s desk as the Colonel idly played with his pencil, rolling it backwards and forwards between the fingers of his right hand. Finally Clement stopped his fidgeting and slowly raised his gaze.
‘So, waddya gotta say for yourself, Major?’
‘We encountered greater resistance than we had anticipated, Comrade Colonel. But I am confident…’
‘Con-fee-dent. Gracious me, Hartley, that’s a real two-guinea word, but ah gotta say iffn ah was standing in your boots ah wouldn’t be feeling con-fee-dent. No, Sirree. Iffn ah had seen two hundred of mah men blasted to buggery and the rest being forced to retreat by a pack of no-account Rebs, ah don’t think ah’d be using a word like con-fee-dent.’
Hartley swallowed hard. The perks and benefits that came with being a high-ranking member of the SS were one thing, but they were granted only after having taken an oath of death or glory. And as the performance of his men this afternoon could hardly be termed glorious
…
‘The Poles have used tactics which are bestial and violate every code governing civilised conduct in war.’
Clement looked at Hartley as though he were mad. ‘You joshing me?’
‘No, Sir: the Poles have children hurling incendiaries from rooftops. They have booby-trapped buildings.’
‘Mah, mah, what ruffians we are fighting. Children… boobytraps… whatever will them Rebs think of next? Cuss words? Obscene gestures? You better quit your bellyaching, Comrade Major, ‘cos ah ain’t used to having my SS boys having the shit kicked outta them by Rebel scum.’
‘They are fanatical, Comrade Colonel, and their commander is a madman…’ Hartley paused and then corrected himself. ‘… a madwoman.’
‘Them Rebs are commanded by a woman?’ asked Clement, suddenly evincing a little more interest.
‘Our Balloon Corps Observers report seeing a woman with long blonde hair organising the defenders and one captured Varsovian has confirmed this under interrogation.’
‘This woman’s gotta name?’
‘The prisoner didn’t know her name. All he was able to say before he died was that she was the same woman who led the attack on the barges. It is typical of these Polish scum that they would force women to fight like men.’
‘By mah reckoning, this woman is fighting better than a man, iffn the way she booted your ass this afternoon is any indicator.’ Clement took a long swig of his glass of Solution. ‘You better saddle up, Major Hartley, and get your boys ready to toe the line. You gonna attack again but this time ah’m gonna help you out by making sure that there’s a heavier artillery barrage before you let rip, a barrage so heavy that it’ll pound them Rebs to dog shit. And seeing as you caught me in a forgiving mood, Hartley, ah’m gonna allocate the six newly arrived armoured steamers to your assault. But listen real tight ‘cos ah don’t want there to be any misunderstanding: your objective is to take
