The Second Day, Near Łódź

(Source)

Schütze¹ Jürgen von Lüttwitz was hunkered down, grimacing as Polish machine gun fire whipped over his head. He had been told that the Poles would be an easy victory, seems that someone had forgotten to tell the Poles!

"Unteroffizier Hartmann! Shouldn't we try to flank this position, we'll be here all day if we don't maneuver!" von Lüttwitz yelled over at his sergeant, who turned to him with a grin.

"Regular Clausewitz aren't you Junge? For your information, we're expecting visitors at any moment! Now shut up and keep your head down!" Hartmann knew the men were impatient and scared. It wouldn't take much to make them run. His job, as he saw it, was to keep them focused on staying alive.

Looking at his watch one more time, Hartmann wondered where the damned Luftwaffe was.

Elżbieta Chlebek gasped as another explosion rocked the stopped train. She could hear the roar of German aircraft passing down the line, machine guns chattering, bombs falling, her world was a sea of heat and smoke.

The door at the back of the car slammed open, the conductor, his uniform bloodied, and his head bare, yelled out, "Everybody off the train, get into the woods if you can! Move, move!"

She grabbed her bag, one of the men yelled at her to leave it, she ignored him, the bag contained her medical supplies. As a medical student she was fully prepared to help anyone who was injured.

As she scrambled off the train, she noticed that there were already a number of injured people. Some were trying to get to cover, some of those were limping badly. She also noticed that some people were on the ground, some not moving. She went to help the nearest when she felt a hand pull at her shawl.

"I told you to leave the bag, missy!"

She turned and kneed the man in the groin, he appeared to be some sort of railway official, no doubt used to having his way with passengers. As he grabbed his crotch and dropped to his knees, another man stepped to her side.

"What are you doing Miss? You need to get to cover!"

She noted that the man was an officer in the army, before saying, "I'm a medical student, these people need help!"

He pulled her arm, leading her to the nearby trees, "After the battle Miss, if you stay in the open, you too will need help!"

She let herself be led away, she could hear that the Germans were returning. The sounds of the aircraft engines, the whistle of bombs, and the machine gun fire were approaching rapidly. As were the sounds of the screams of those being attacked.

Von Lüttwitz buried his head below the lip of the shell hole. The earth was quaking and moving as if trying to throw him into the air, which was filled with steel fragments from the attacking aircraft.

The aerial attack on the Polish positions seemed to last forever as the German infantry hugged the earth, waiting for the whistles of their officers to get them advancing again.

Von Lüttwitz's hearing slowly returned, he could hear Hartmann shouting at the squad to get up and move. He arose from the shell hole, his K98k rifle at the ready, bayonet fixed, advancing towards the Polish positions. He realized that at some point he had wet his trousers. He was still trembling, no wonder his father and uncles had said little of their experiences during the Great War.

As they advanced, the Polish positions seemed to be deserted, he looked to his corporal, Hermann Rösch, and asked, "Have they fled?"

"No, probably just pulled back to their main position, these are temporary field works, meant to slow us down ... Damn it!" Rösch raised his MP 38 as a Pole staggered from the ruin of a collapsed trench. He fired but not before the Pole got a shot off.

Von Lüttwitz felt a burning sensation on his left arm, looking down, he saw a torn sleeve and blood. He was wounded!

The Polish officer, his name was Bogusław Gulczyński, was standing guard as Elżbieta treated the wounded as best she could. The railway official she had kneed earlier had recovered enough to threaten her with arrest for assault. Lieutenant Gulczyński had dissuaded him from that course of action by threatening to have the railway official arrested for cowardice.

"I'm not in the army, you have no authority here!" the man had blustered.

The lieutenant had simply tapped the holster of his sidearm and said, "This is war, different rules old boy. I suggest you make yourself scarce."

The man had moved off, leaving Elżbieta to finish treating one last woman. As she looked to her patient, she realized that she had died of her wounds while she spoke to the lieutenant.

Elżbieta had sat back with a sigh, the lieutenant patted her shoulder and said, "We should be moving on Miss, this train is going nowhere until the wreckage ahead is cleared and a new locomotive can be found. Where are you headed?"

"Warszawa, my family is there, I was attending university in Kraków, but all classes were cancelled because of the German invasion." she was at a loss for what to do, for some reason she trusted this young man in uniform.

"Ah, perhaps we might travel together. I am going to Warszawa to take up a position on the General Staff."

"How do we get there?" Elżbieta asked.

"Ah, leave that to me, I'm sure I can arrange transport." with that, the lieutenant began to walk towards the nearby town, Elżbieta followed, she could think of no other course of action.

The Sanitäter had cleaned and bandaged von Lüttwitz's wound, which was nothing more than a scratch according to the Sani. Von Lüttwitz wasn't so sure, it certainly hurt worse than any scratch he'd ever had.

"Come on Jürgen, on your feet boy. That's not even enough for a Verwundetenabzeichen²." Unteroffizier Hartmann chuckled as he said that.

Von Lüttwitz was somewhat chagrined by Hartmann's comment, he didn't want to seem weak. He was something of an oddity in the unit to begin with, the 30th Infantry had been raised in Schleswig-Holstein, von Lüttwitz was a Saxon. A number of the other men had wondered how he had wound up in the 30th.

Truth was that he had been in Lübeck when the Anschluß³ had occurred, he had been caught up in the patriotic fervor which had followed and had enlisted immediately. If he had waited to be drafted, he would have been in a Saxon unit, but he hadn't. Some of the other men thought him to be an idiot for volunteering. Most of the other men were draftees.

"Let's get you over to the company tailor and patch your tunic up, we'll be moving out again tomorrow. The Poles are putting up more resistance than the General Staff had planned for. Truth be told, we took far too many casualties breaking through the Poles first line. Now come on!" Hartmann led the way, von Lüttwitz followed sheepishly. He still had a lot to learn about being in the Army.

¹ Private (Schütze)

² Wound Badge, the German equivalent of the U.S. Purple Heart.

³ The Anschluß was the joining of Austria and Germany into one country in 1938.