Henry's story

My memory is hazy on a lot of things in my early years. I remember my father as a kind-faced man, strong and tall. He worked at an office in the city. My grandfather lived a few blocks away from me, I remember him as well.

I remember burning my hand on my mother's stove when I was maybe two, I remember a dog chasing after me at the age of around three. I've always been afraid of dogs. I remember the flashes of explosions across the fields on the horizon when the war began, and I remember my family crowding together on a train to leave my boyhood home behind.

But I have to say, there is one of the earliest of my memories that I can see perfectly clear in my mind. I was just over eight years old, standing in an empty courtyard, looking up at the sky. There was a smell of burning flesh and plastic in the air, and small fires and debris littered the gravel around me. I was alone and nearly naked...and all of a sudden soldiers walked into my courtyard.

They saw me, and I was deathly afraid that they would shoot me. I wanted my brother and my father, and I huddled against the cold brick wall, hoping that they wouldn't torture me. One of the soldiers, reached out and grabbed me, and said something in a language I couldn't understand. He brought me back with him, and from those moments, it's as if there was a pillow in my head. Everything is numb after that.

One thing I know is that I'll always remember standing in the yard looking up past the evil brick and electrified fences at the cool blue sky.

Part One: Flashes of Light On the Horizon

Peter's story

Peter affixed his signature to the final page of a legal document with a flourishing signature. He underlined it in an extravagant way, and blew on it to help it dry. He set it down with the others, and finally feeling satisfied enough to take his smoke break, he walked out along the office hallway toward the stairwell. It was the first day of September, and still quite warm outside.

Peter's secretary Daniele nearly bumped into him as she walked out of an adjoining office with a stack of copies, greeting him with a timid, "Hello, Mr. Miczimikowski." That was Peter's unwieldy full name, rarely used by his friends.

Peter ignored her, making his way to the end of the office hallway. There was a wide window by the stair, with a beautiful view westward over the entire city and the flat fields beyond. The city and suburbs stretched out below Peter's high office building, and the horizon was almost perfectly flat.

He stopped, halting with the impression that some great hand was reaching above the moorline of the horizon miles away. No—it was a great burst of flame and smoke, rising what must have been hundreds of feet into the air. Peter watched it with some astounded curiosity, watching the column of fire as if it were a dream.

The sonic boom came after, ratting the windows of the building. More brilliant bursts of light shot up from the horizon, and came closer and closer, through the suburbs, cutting through buildings like the lightning bolts of a displeased god. Peter stood transfixed, detached. And then came the roar of the planes...

"Attention, attention," came a hurried voice over the intercom. "We are at war. Everyone immediately evacuate the building, and go to your families. Attention, we are now at war."

The human voice seemed to wake Peter, and he rushed down the stairs as the bombers approached the city. As he made his way down the flights, the explosions sounded louder, but still he clutched onto his briefcase and hat, almost at a run.

There was a loud bang and the lights went out. Peter stumbled and slid down a flight to the landing, and cursed. He pulled himself to his feet and opened the nearest door, sending a beam of light down the stairwell. Patting his bruised thigh, Peter walked slowly down the last flight, opening the final door and walking into the lobby of the building. Loud explosions were rending the air outside, and the very walls were vibrating with the inhuman force of the bombs.

Peter walked as if in a daze out of the lobby, looking around at the ashen-faced citizens who were taking cover inside. Outside past the windows, the building across the street was gutted, and fire and bodies lay across the busy city avenue.

"We're as safe on the outside as we are on the inside," said a man in a dust-covered suit, regarding the bodies. Everyone seemed to be stunned; if not from the gore and blood outside, then from the ruptures and shocks running through the ground from the falling bombs.

"What's going on? Someone tell me?" Peter asked no one in particular, turning around to look for anyone from his office that he knew.

"We're at war, don't you know," the man said. He was the only one talking from the two dozen or so congregated in a huddle in the lobby. "I expect they'll call up the draft soon. We're being invaded right as I'm speaking to you."

"By the Russians?" Peter asked.

"No, God bless them. The Germans."

"Christ," exclaimed Peter. "I have to see my family."

The bombs were still falling on the city, and many of them sounded close. Peter leaned against a concrete pillar and waited, entertaining the notion that a bomb could fall on his building and kill everyone inside it in a split second.

The bombs came in waves; for a few minutes warheads could be heard whistling down, ending in sharp bursts, then heavy, brutal-sounding bombs, and then a period of silence. One of these periods of silence went on a few minutes, and Peter said, "They must be on a break. They couldn't possibly have that many planes."

"I will stay here," said the young man. Peter nodded, and opened the office door. He drew back at the scent of burning gasoline and god-knows-what-else, but pressed on, walking down the pulverized sidewalk.

A crater had taken the place of the building across the street, so deep it had cracked the sewer below. It was one of the busiest streets in Warsaw, but now instead of taxis and traffic, the street was full of charred bodies and crushed glass. Peter covered his mouth with his tie, aware of a rapidly-falling asbestos dust coming from the bombs. A plane roared overhead, and he looked up.

The sky was shadowed by what looked like thousands of bomber planes, each bearing the mark of the Iron Cross as they flew low in the sky. They were returning to their bases, replenishing their bombs from the destruction.

Peter paused, disoriented by the smell and sight of the carnage, and the sound of the wounded screams, stepping around torn limbs and papers, and cursed and shook his fist into the sky at the waves of German squadrons.

Henry's Story

Later that night, when my father Peter got home, my grandfather told me that he made sure that his family was safe, and then stood under the shower all night. I was two and a half years old, so I can't say I remember it perfectly.

We spent the night huddled together as the Germans bombed the railroads and factories. The bombing of the morning and afternoon had been just to kill. Our air force had been destroyed. I remember the bombs, or at least I think I do. If I try to grasp it, it disappears, but late at night when I'm almost asleep, I can feel the shocks of vibrations as clearly as if it were that September night again, and smell the smoke.

The next day my father received a letter saying that he was to be drafted into the Polish Army, and would report at 3 o'clock in the afternoon to the Warsaw Barracks to receive his weapons and uniform. It must have been surreal for him to be pushed from a comfortable job at an office to carrying a rifle in the marshes and fields, but he never once complained, from what I know. He loved his country, and served to defend it.

My memory is still as sharp as it always was, I'm not as old as I look. My father went through a lot in the field, and lived to tell the tale.