European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

You know, for a 15 year old boy who suddenly found himself in a guerrilla squad and was given a horse, it was real fun.

Of course, it did not soothe my pain not to be in the Uprising.

After all my sisters were there, my mother stayed in Warsaw too, and my grandma as well.

And me, so far without an injury... nothing happened to me.

I’m in the guerrilla troop, moving away from Warsaw.

Having crossed the Pilica we reached a village, where a large guerrilla group was stationed in a forest,

around a thousand soldiers. The25th Piotrków Infantry Regiment.

‘Lanca’ decided to join this unit, because it was a small group.

Just around 150 people. The 25th Regiment was quite a big unit. It was a regiment, a thousand people.

They gave us a warm welcome, they even gave us pay.

Yet the very first night ‘Lanca’ ordered to saddle up horses, pack the wagons and he retreated from the unit, God knows where.

In fact, he just took the pay and ran away.

The good thing was that our commander, lieutenant ‘Osuch’ was on friendly terms with the commander of the regiment in Włodzimierz,

and he supported us and the major accepted us in the regiment after all.

In this regiment we secured its position in the village of Mechlin. For almost a month.

But after this time we went to another place, a bad one, because it was close to a road.

It ended sadly, because the Germans attacked. It was too close to the road and these people died.

Yet we luckily were left unharmed. Nobody attacked us.

Contrary, in the Mechlin village, where we stayed for almost a month,

they organized a sweep operation, attacking us with all the forces of Kalmucks, those Vlasov followers from the RONA.