Chapter 27 - Counter Attack
‘Well?’ Katka asked, following Jan as he walked slowly away from the radio station. But instead of answering her he said nothing. He looked at the ground, stepped carefully between the rubble that littered the pavement and the road.
‘Are you my father or aren’t you?’ she asked, but like we often do when we ask the most important questions of all, she said it silently. The words remained lodged inside her throat.
‘The Germans will attack again any moment.’ Jan said, turning to look directly at Katka, ‘They’ll be quick to reform and strike back. It’s what they do.’
Katka nodded. She couldn’t speak.
They walked in silence to Wenceslas Square. It was empty. The air above quiet and clear, barely a cloud in the sky. A perfect spring morning. They stood side by side at the top near the museum and looked down at the long corridor of buildings as it sloped downwards towards Mustek.
‘Yes.’ Jan said.
‘What?’ Katka replied.
‘Yes, I am.’ he said again, ‘I am your father.’
Katka looked at him.
Jan looked away in the direction of the square again, but he put out his hand to hold Katka’s in his. And Katka smiled at him and in reply he smiled a sad smile. Katka could read the sorrow in his eyes and the expression on his face told her that good things can never last. ‘When the Nazis attack in the morning I’ll be one of the first to die.’ his expression said.
And he was right.
The attack came the next day. It was at the very moment the sun was rising and Jan was one of the first to be hit. The howling sound of a stuka, it tore into Katka’s dream as she lay sleeping in the last hour of the night.
‘What was that?’ she said at once. They had taken shelter in the hallway of a house and there had been other fighters there too, those who were now charged with guarding the barracks. Although there really was no sign that the soldiers within would be trying to fight their way out. They had all but given up, lost the will to fight on and had retreated willingly inside the shelter of the large fortress like compounds they had commandeered on the outskirts of the city centre.
‘They’ll be coming back, they’ll be coming back.’ Jan had tried to tell everyone, ‘There are others on the outside of the city. We have word. Tanks even, artillery, they’ll attack again as soon as it gets light and then they’ll come storming out of those barracks faster than rats from a flooded hole!’ But it didn’t matter how much he shouted, raved like a madman, he could not make himself heard.
‘The war is over. The Germans will surrender as soon as it gets light.’ the others said. They told him to be quiet, to keep his voice down because as soon as it got dark and the chill of the evening took hold and the fires that burned in the streets weren’t enough to keep them warm, people sought shelter wherever they could. In doorways, in the hallways of the big apartment blocks that made up most of the city where anyone who had ‘fought the Nazis’ that day could come in and get warm and be fed. Katka ate soup that was handed to her in a chipped bowl. She ate it down and hadn’t realised how hungry she had been. She hadn’t eaten in days it seemed.
Jan did not eat at all. Instead he watched Katka and he smiled. He asked if she was tired and if she wanted him to ask for a bed where she could sleep. But she told him she wanted to stay awake, she could not sleep, not tonight and not because of the war. ‘I want to be with you, dad.’ she said, putting the used bowl to one side and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
I want to hear about you because it’s probably the last chance I have, she thought, and because she knew he would die in the morning. She knew this happiness could not last. And it really was happiness. It was the first time in her life that she actually had a parent. Although she tried not to think about that, instead she asked Jan questions and she listened. She asked about her mother and the life they’d had when she was very young. She asked questions and she got only the vaguest replies, but it did not matter, it did not matter at all because everything Jan told her sounded so normal and this is exactly what she wanted to hear.
I am normal, she told herself as she finally slept. She slept with her head rested on her father’s knee and her arms wrapped around herself. His arm was resting on hers and she slept soundly.
But it did not last long.
The howl of the stuka, angry like a wasp in a jar, only louder, deeper, more malevolent as it dropped down from the sky. It let loose its egg shaped bomb and the blast must have been the first to rain down on the city that day, one of hundreds as the Nazis fought to regain control.
Boom!
The blast took the door of the building right off its hinges; not shattered or splintered, but taken off intact and it spun through the entrance hall where they had slept. It was followed by a blast of air that sent the contents of the hallway, including Katka, spinning across the floor.
When Katka sat up her ears were ringing. She could taste blood in her mouth.
‘I’ve been hit. She said. Then, when the panic set in she shouted, ‘I’m hit, I’m hit!’ and blindly she fumbled for her father as the hall filled with smoke, choking black and smelling like burnt wood.
Her father didn’t reply though, not for minute of more, or what seemed that long, and when she had hold of him, held her hand on his face as he flopped like wool onto the floor, she felt her hands come back sticky with what she knew at once to be blood.
It was his blood.
‘Dad!’ Katka screamed, and this served to wake him and he groaned.
‘Katka, are you alright?’ he asked, voice straining against the sound of bombs cracking the concrete of the road outside. They were falling as heavy as a storm now.
‘I’m alright, but you’re wounded.’ Katka said and not for the first time she found herself pushing against the weight of a wounded form as she struggled to lift him and to carry him outside.
‘Through there.’ someone shouted to her, directing the way through the back entrance of the building because in the backstreet there were no bombs falling, not even smoke because the thick building acted as a shield to the choppy bomb blasted air.
‘We have to get further away.’ Katka said and once outside Jan seemed to recover. It was only temporary though, within a few paces he was stumbling awkwardly. Blood had saturated his clothes. ‘I’ll get you to the hospital.’ Katka said and she pulled him along the road, her shoulder pressed into the underside of his arm as the black X-shapes of stukas circled above.
There were about five of six of them in total. They were focusing their attention on the buildings on either side of the square, taking apart the city piece by piece, thud after thud, and with the action of a great hammer they rained down blow after blow.
‘We have to find shelter.’ Katka said, shouting above the sound of city being ruined. Although her father wasn’t listening. The effort was too much for him. He flopped uselessly from Katka’s grip onto the ground and like a fish out of water he gasped for air. Katka put her ear to his mouth she could only just about make out his words. ‘Run.’ he told her, ‘save yourself and run.’
But Katka refused, She dragged him as far as she could, towards the shelter of a passageway between two building on the square. It was an old fashioned shopping arcade, narrow enough to give a small amount of shelter and there were others hiding in there too. ‘We will be safe here.’ Katka said, ‘Even if the buildings are hit, the shrapnel won’t get to us here.’
Someone handed her a canister of water and she held it to Jan’s lips. Whoever had given it to her tried to say something too but Katka wouldn’t listen. She fed the water to Jan’s open mouth and didn’t even stop pouring when it spilled across his lips and his chin and she ignored the fact that his eyes were shut and she ignored the jerk of her arm as someone began pulling at her sleeve.
‘Stop.’ someone whispered into her ear. ‘It’s no use, he’s gone.’
‘He’s gone.’ Katka repeated, ‘Gone.’ she said again and turning to the face at her side. A grey face with a thick moustache beneath its nose. She said to the face, ‘He was my father and now he’s gone.’
In reply the face said callously, ‘Soon we’ll all be gone. The Nazis are flattening Prague.’
Katka stayed with her father until his body was cold. She stayed next to him with his hand in hers and she did not think. She did not move for the rest of the day. She was dead inside and only the occasional voice would rouse her, the occasional bursts of conversation as people nearby talked about the situation outside.
‘The Americans are not coming.’ someone was saying.
‘The Nazi tanks are in every street now.’ said someone else.
‘The radio station is destroyed.’
‘They’ll be dragging people from their houses soon, more shootings on the pavement.’
It was impossible to tell how long Katka sheltered there. Time slipped by unnoticed, neither noticeably fast or slow, but eventually it got dark, then light again as the sun rose for a second morning and it was silent then.
Somehow the fighting had ended.
‘Are you my father or aren’t you?’ she asked, but like we often do when we ask the most important questions of all, she said it silently. The words remained lodged inside her throat.
‘The Germans will attack again any moment.’ Jan said, turning to look directly at Katka, ‘They’ll be quick to reform and strike back. It’s what they do.’
Katka nodded. She couldn’t speak.
They walked in silence to Wenceslas Square. It was empty. The air above quiet and clear, barely a cloud in the sky. A perfect spring morning. They stood side by side at the top near the museum and looked down at the long corridor of buildings as it sloped downwards towards Mustek.
‘Yes.’ Jan said.
‘What?’ Katka replied.
‘Yes, I am.’ he said again, ‘I am your father.’
Katka looked at him.
Jan looked away in the direction of the square again, but he put out his hand to hold Katka’s in his. And Katka smiled at him and in reply he smiled a sad smile. Katka could read the sorrow in his eyes and the expression on his face told her that good things can never last. ‘When the Nazis attack in the morning I’ll be one of the first to die.’ his expression said.
And he was right.
The attack came the next day. It was at the very moment the sun was rising and Jan was one of the first to be hit. The howling sound of a stuka, it tore into Katka’s dream as she lay sleeping in the last hour of the night.
‘What was that?’ she said at once. They had taken shelter in the hallway of a house and there had been other fighters there too, those who were now charged with guarding the barracks. Although there really was no sign that the soldiers within would be trying to fight their way out. They had all but given up, lost the will to fight on and had retreated willingly inside the shelter of the large fortress like compounds they had commandeered on the outskirts of the city centre.
‘They’ll be coming back, they’ll be coming back.’ Jan had tried to tell everyone, ‘There are others on the outside of the city. We have word. Tanks even, artillery, they’ll attack again as soon as it gets light and then they’ll come storming out of those barracks faster than rats from a flooded hole!’ But it didn’t matter how much he shouted, raved like a madman, he could not make himself heard.
‘The war is over. The Germans will surrender as soon as it gets light.’ the others said. They told him to be quiet, to keep his voice down because as soon as it got dark and the chill of the evening took hold and the fires that burned in the streets weren’t enough to keep them warm, people sought shelter wherever they could. In doorways, in the hallways of the big apartment blocks that made up most of the city where anyone who had ‘fought the Nazis’ that day could come in and get warm and be fed. Katka ate soup that was handed to her in a chipped bowl. She ate it down and hadn’t realised how hungry she had been. She hadn’t eaten in days it seemed.
Jan did not eat at all. Instead he watched Katka and he smiled. He asked if she was tired and if she wanted him to ask for a bed where she could sleep. But she told him she wanted to stay awake, she could not sleep, not tonight and not because of the war. ‘I want to be with you, dad.’ she said, putting the used bowl to one side and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
I want to hear about you because it’s probably the last chance I have, she thought, and because she knew he would die in the morning. She knew this happiness could not last. And it really was happiness. It was the first time in her life that she actually had a parent. Although she tried not to think about that, instead she asked Jan questions and she listened. She asked about her mother and the life they’d had when she was very young. She asked questions and she got only the vaguest replies, but it did not matter, it did not matter at all because everything Jan told her sounded so normal and this is exactly what she wanted to hear.
I am normal, she told herself as she finally slept. She slept with her head rested on her father’s knee and her arms wrapped around herself. His arm was resting on hers and she slept soundly.
But it did not last long.
The howl of the stuka, angry like a wasp in a jar, only louder, deeper, more malevolent as it dropped down from the sky. It let loose its egg shaped bomb and the blast must have been the first to rain down on the city that day, one of hundreds as the Nazis fought to regain control.
Boom!
The blast took the door of the building right off its hinges; not shattered or splintered, but taken off intact and it spun through the entrance hall where they had slept. It was followed by a blast of air that sent the contents of the hallway, including Katka, spinning across the floor.
When Katka sat up her ears were ringing. She could taste blood in her mouth.
‘I’ve been hit. She said. Then, when the panic set in she shouted, ‘I’m hit, I’m hit!’ and blindly she fumbled for her father as the hall filled with smoke, choking black and smelling like burnt wood.
Her father didn’t reply though, not for minute of more, or what seemed that long, and when she had hold of him, held her hand on his face as he flopped like wool onto the floor, she felt her hands come back sticky with what she knew at once to be blood.
It was his blood.
‘Dad!’ Katka screamed, and this served to wake him and he groaned.
‘Katka, are you alright?’ he asked, voice straining against the sound of bombs cracking the concrete of the road outside. They were falling as heavy as a storm now.
‘I’m alright, but you’re wounded.’ Katka said and not for the first time she found herself pushing against the weight of a wounded form as she struggled to lift him and to carry him outside.
‘Through there.’ someone shouted to her, directing the way through the back entrance of the building because in the backstreet there were no bombs falling, not even smoke because the thick building acted as a shield to the choppy bomb blasted air.
‘We have to get further away.’ Katka said and once outside Jan seemed to recover. It was only temporary though, within a few paces he was stumbling awkwardly. Blood had saturated his clothes. ‘I’ll get you to the hospital.’ Katka said and she pulled him along the road, her shoulder pressed into the underside of his arm as the black X-shapes of stukas circled above.
There were about five of six of them in total. They were focusing their attention on the buildings on either side of the square, taking apart the city piece by piece, thud after thud, and with the action of a great hammer they rained down blow after blow.
‘We have to find shelter.’ Katka said, shouting above the sound of city being ruined. Although her father wasn’t listening. The effort was too much for him. He flopped uselessly from Katka’s grip onto the ground and like a fish out of water he gasped for air. Katka put her ear to his mouth she could only just about make out his words. ‘Run.’ he told her, ‘save yourself and run.’
But Katka refused, She dragged him as far as she could, towards the shelter of a passageway between two building on the square. It was an old fashioned shopping arcade, narrow enough to give a small amount of shelter and there were others hiding in there too. ‘We will be safe here.’ Katka said, ‘Even if the buildings are hit, the shrapnel won’t get to us here.’
Someone handed her a canister of water and she held it to Jan’s lips. Whoever had given it to her tried to say something too but Katka wouldn’t listen. She fed the water to Jan’s open mouth and didn’t even stop pouring when it spilled across his lips and his chin and she ignored the fact that his eyes were shut and she ignored the jerk of her arm as someone began pulling at her sleeve.
‘Stop.’ someone whispered into her ear. ‘It’s no use, he’s gone.’
‘He’s gone.’ Katka repeated, ‘Gone.’ she said again and turning to the face at her side. A grey face with a thick moustache beneath its nose. She said to the face, ‘He was my father and now he’s gone.’
In reply the face said callously, ‘Soon we’ll all be gone. The Nazis are flattening Prague.’
Katka stayed with her father until his body was cold. She stayed next to him with his hand in hers and she did not think. She did not move for the rest of the day. She was dead inside and only the occasional voice would rouse her, the occasional bursts of conversation as people nearby talked about the situation outside.
‘The Americans are not coming.’ someone was saying.
‘The Nazi tanks are in every street now.’ said someone else.
‘The radio station is destroyed.’
‘They’ll be dragging people from their houses soon, more shootings on the pavement.’
It was impossible to tell how long Katka sheltered there. Time slipped by unnoticed, neither noticeably fast or slow, but eventually it got dark, then light again as the sun rose for a second morning and it was silent then.
Somehow the fighting had ended.