European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Defeat in Okecie

In 1943, I got into the Home Army.

So, unfortunately, I wasn’t fighting with my friends from scout times in the Warsaw Uprising,

because I was already a Home Army soldier, stationed at the 7th Infantry regiment called ‘Garłuch’ at Okęcie.

It turns out that the commander of the regiment, major ‘Wysocki’,

it was his pseudonym, his real name was Babiarz,

found out that the Germans had fortified the airport strongly.

They had collected a huge load of arms, machine guns and so on.

The Home Army had very few weapons, actually none.

We just had these grenades and our platoon had two machine guns from the WWI, without the feeders.

You had to insert each bullet separately into the barrel, because otherwise there was no shooting,

because we didn’t have those clips which work as magazines for the bullets.

The commander of the regiment, at 4 o´clock gave an order to not attack those hangars.

I don’t know why this order was not given at 1 or 2 o´clock.

And the ‘W’ hour (hour of attack) was at 5 o´clock.

The order brought by the liaison officer got there, but at 17.30, it was too late.

The attack was carried out by a group of barely armed men from the ‘Kuba’ battery.

Within half an hour 125 men were killed.

I bear personal grudges towards the commander that he had not given the order at least an hour earlier.

After all he knew there were no phones so the orders had to be carried out on foot.