QB VII (2 page)

During the war many thousands of other Polish officers fled to the Soviet Union, where they were interned and later massacred in the Katyn Forest. The Soviets had designs to take over Poland and naturally a Nationalist officer corps stood as a threat to this ambition. At the end of the war, the Soviet Army stood at the gates of Warsaw and did not budge to assist the Nationalist underground in an uprising but allowed the Germans to destroy them.

The Free Poles were to remain in England, rightfully bitter, tightly knit, and forever fanning the dream of a return to their homeland. When the call went out on the matter of Adam Kelno it quickly reached the entire Polish Community.

On the face of it, things seemed clear enough. Dr. Adam Kelno was a Polish Nationalist and when he returned to Warsaw he was to be eliminated by the Communists just as the officer corps had been in the Katyn Massacre.

Within days of the launching of the inquiry, sworn statements began to come back to Monza along with offers of personal testimony.

I HAVE KNOWN DR. ADAM KELNO FROM 1942, WHEN I WAS SENT TO JADWIGA CONCENTRATION CAMP. I BECAME ILL AND TOO WEAK TO WORK. HE HID ME AND SAVED ME FROM THE GERMANS. HE SAVED MY LIFE.

DR. ADAM KELNO OPERATED ON ME AND NURSED ME BACK TO HEALTH WITH GREAT CARE.

DR. KELNO HELPED ARRANGE MY ESCAPE FROM JADWIGA.

DR. KELNO OPERATED ON ME AT FOUR O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING WHEN HE WAS SO TIRED HE COULD HARDLY STAND UP. I DON’T THINK HE EVER SLEPT FOR MORE THAN A FEW HOURS AT A TIME.

HE SAVED MY LIFE.

On the day of the commission, the camp was visited by Leopold Zalinski, a legendary figure of the Polish Nationalist underground during the occupation. His code name, Kon, was known by every Pole. Kon’s testimony erased any doubts. He swore Adam Kelno to be a hero of the Nationalist underground before his imprisonment and during his years as a prisoner/doctor at Jadwiga. With letters and testimonies from two dozen others without conflict, the commission cleared him.

In a moving ceremony at Monza attended by many Polish colonels of the Free Forces, Dr. Adam Kelno was sworn in as a captain and his pips were pinned on him by his cousin.

Poland had been taken from these men but they continued to remember and dream.

2

The Sixth Polish Hospital

Foxfield Cross Camp-

Tunbridge Wells, England—March 1946

M
AJOR
A
DAM
K
ELNO
walked slowly from the surgery tugging at his rubber gloves. Sister Angela untied his surgical mask and dabbed the perspiration from his head.

“Where is she?” Adam asked.

“In the visitor’s lounge. Adam?”

“Yes.”

“Will you come to my flat?”

“Yes, all right.”

“I’ll wait.”

As he walked the long dim corridor, it was obvious Angela Brown’s admiration was more than professional. It had been but a few short months that they had worked together in surgery. From the onset she was impressed by his skill and a kind of dedicated zeal in which he performed half as many operations again as most of his colleagues. His hands were magnificent.

It all happened rather plainly. Angela Brown, a commonplace sort in her mid-thirties, had been a capable nurse for a decade. A first short marriage ended in divorce. The great love of her life, a Polish flyer in the RAF, was shot down over the Channel.

Adam Kelno was nothing like her fighter pilot so it became a new kind of love. A rather magic spot in time the instant he peered over his mask and caught her eye as she placed instruments in his hands, his quick decisive hands and the closeness of spirit as they worked together as a team to save a human life. The exhilaration of a successful operation. The exhaustion of a failure after a difficult battle.

They were so lonely, both of them, and so it happened in a very undramatic but lovely manner.

Adam entered the visitor’s lounge. It was very late. The operation had lasted more than three hours. There was a look of stunned anticipation on Madame Baczewski’s face. Afraid to ask. Adam took her hand, bowed slightly and kissed it then sat beside her.

“Jerzy has left us. It was very peaceful.”

She nodded, but dared not speak.

“Is there anyone I should call, Madame Baczewski?”

“No. There was only us. We are the only survivors.”

“I think we had better put you in a room here.”

She tried to speak but her mouth went into a trembling spasm and tiny little grunts of agony emerged. “He said ... get me to Dr. Kelno ... he kept me alive in the concentration camp ... get me to Dr. Kelno.”

Angela arrived and took charge. Adam whispered to have her put under.

“When I first met Jerzy Baczewski he was so strong like a hull. He was a great Pole, one of our foremost dramatists. We knew the Germans were out to destroy the intelligentsia and we had to keep him alive at any price. This surgery was not that difficult. A healthy man would have gotten through this, but he had no stamina left after two years in that putrid hell hole.”

“Darling, it was you that told me a good surgeon has to be impersonal. You did everything...”

“Sometimes I don’t believe my own words. Jerzy died a betrayed man. Lonely, his country taken from him, and a memory of unbelievable terror.”

“Adam, you’ve been in surgery half the night. Here, darling, take your tea.”

“I want a drink.”

He poured a stiff one, tossed it down, and poured another. “All Jerzy wanted was a child. What kind of a damned tragedy are we? What kind of curse is on us? Why can’t we live?”

The bottle was empty. He chewed at his knuckles.

Angela ran her fingers through that thicket of white hair. “Will you stay tonight?”

“I would like that. I don’t want to be alone.”

She sat on the footstool before him and lay her head in his lap. “Dr. Novak called me aside today,” she said. “He told me to get you out of the hospital for a little rest or you’re going to break down.”

“What the hell does August Novak know. A man who has spent his life fixing oversized noses and transplanting hair for balding British gentry in his singular quest for knighthood. Get me another drink.”

“My God, turn it off.”

As he began to arise she grabbed his hands and held him, then looked pleading and kissed his fingers, each one.

“Don’t cry, Angela, please don’t cry.”

“My auntie has a lovely little cottage at Folkestone. We’re welcome there if we want to go.”

“Perhaps I am a little tired,” he said.

The days at Folkestone all went so quickly. He was renewed by long quiet walks along the leas on the cliffs overlooking the sea. France was across the Channel in shadowy outline. Hand in hand in silent communication they walked wind-blown along the shrub-lined rosemary path to the harbor and in the distance the sounds of the band concert at the Marine Gardens. The narrow little streets had been bombed out but the statue of William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, remained. The steamer to Calais left daily again and soon there would be vacationers for the short summer season.

The evening chill was dulled by a crackling fire that threw odd shadows over the old low-beamed ceiling of the cottage. The last lovely day had ended and tomorrow they would return to the hospital.

A sudden moroseness came over Adam. He drank rather heavily. “I’m sorry it’s over,” he mumbled. “I don’t remember such a beautiful week.”

“It need not end,” she said.

“Everything for me must end. I can have nothing that is not taken from me. Everyone I have ever loved has been taken from me. My wife, my mother, my brothers. Any who have survived are in virtual slavery in Poland. I can make no commitments, never again.”

“I’ve never asked for one,” she said.

“Angela, I want to love you, but you see, if I do, I’ll lose you too.”

“What’s the difference, Adam. Well end up losing each other without even giving it a chance.”

“There’s more to it, you know that I am afraid for myself as a man. I have this deadly fear of impotence and it’s not the drinking that does it. It’s ...so many things that happened in that place.”

“I’ll keep you strong, Adam,” she said.

He reached out and touched her cheek and she kissed his hands. “Your hands. Your beautiful hands.”

“Angela, would you give me a child right away?”

“Yes, my darling darling.”

Angela became pregnant a few months after their marriage.

Dr. August Novak, executive surgeon of the Sixth Polish Hospital, returned to private practice and in a surprise move, Adam Kelno was moved over a number of seniors to be named head of the hospital.

Administrative work was not what Adam desired but the enormous responsibilities at the Jadwiga Concentration Camp had trained him for it. Along with budgets and politics, he managed to keep his sure hand in as a surgeon.

It was so good to come home these days. The Kelno cottage in Groombridge Village was a few miles from the hospital at Tunbridge Wells. Angela’s belly was filling beautifully with their child and in the evenings they would walk, as always, hand in hand in communicative silence up the wooded path to Toad Rock and take their tea at the quaint little café. Adam drank much less these days.

On an evening in July he signed out at the hospital and his orderly put the groceries in the rear seat of his car. He drove to the center of town and in the Pantiles Colonnade he bought a bouquet of roses and made for Groombridge.

Angela did not answer to his ring. This always gave him a start. The fear of losing her hovered behind every tree of the forest. Adam juggled the grocery sack and fished for his key. Wait! The door was not locked. He opened it.

“Angela!”

His wife sat on the edge of a chair in the living room, ashen-faced. Adam’s eyes went to the two men hovering over her.

“Dr. Kelno?”

“Yes.”

“Inspector Ewbank, Scotland Yard.”

“Inspector Henderson,” the second man said, holding out his identification.

“What do you want? What are you doing here?”

“I have a warrant for your arrest, sir.”

“My arrest?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What is this all about? What kind of joke is this?”

Their sullen expressions denoted it was no joke.

“My arrest ...for what?”

“You are to be detained at Brixton Prison pending extradition to Poland to stand charges as a war criminal.”

3

T
HE SETTING WAS
L
ONDON
but the room seemed something out of Warsaw. Angela sat in the anteroom of the Society of Free Poles where walls were adorned with enormous sterile paintings of Pilsudski, Smigly-Rydz, Paderewski, and a gallery of Polish heroes. It was in this place and others like it around London that the hundred thousand Poles fortunate enough to escape perpetuated the dream of Poland.

Angela’s pregnancy now showed heavily. Zenon Myslenski comforted her as she wrung and knotted a handkerchief nervously. A tall door opened from an inner office and a secretary approached them.

Angela adjusted her dress and waddled in on Zenon’s arm where Count Anatol Czerny came from behind his desk. He greeted Zenon as an old friend, kissed Angela’s hand, and bade them be seated.

“I am afraid,” the dapper little aristocrat said, “valuable time has been wasted by contacting the government-in-exile. England no longer recognizes them, and we were unable to get any information from the British Home Office.”

“What in the name of God is it all about? Someone has to tell us something,” Angela emoted.

“All we know is that about a fortnight ago a certain Nathan Goldmark arrived from Warsaw. He is a Jewish Communist and a special investigator for the Polish Secret Police. He has a number of sworn statements from ex-inmates of Jadwiga, all Polish Communists, making various allegations against your husband.”

“What kind of allegations?”

“I have not seen them and the Home Office is most secretive. The British position is this. If a foreign government with whom they have a mutual pact requests extradition and establishes a prima facie case, they treat the matter as routine.”

“But what possible charges could there be against Adam. You’ve read the testimony from the investigation in Monza. I was there myself,” Zenon said.

“Well, we both really know what is happening, don’t we,” the count answered.

“No, I don’t understand it at all,” Angela said.

“The Communists feel it necessary to keep up a constant parade of propaganda to justify their seizure of Poland. Dr. Kelno is intended as a sacrificial lamb. What better way than to prove a Nationalist was a war criminal.”

“What in the name of God can we do?”

“We will fight this thing, of course. We are not without recourses. It will take a few weeks for the Home Office to review the matter. Our first tactic is to get a delay. Madame Kelno, I want the liberty of engaging a firm of solicitors who have been most helpful to us in these matters.”

“Yes, of course,” she whispered.

“Hobbins, Newton, and Smiddy.”

“Oh, my poor darling Adam. ... Oh, dear God.”

“Angela, please.”

“Are you all right, Madame Kelno?”

“Yes.... I’m sorry.” She pressed her white folded knuckles to her lips and drew deep sighs.

“Come now,” Count Czerny said. “We are in England. We are dealing with a decent, civilized people.”

The Austin taxi stopped in the center of the Pall Mall, found an opening in the opposite flow of traffic, and did a swift U-turn in a circle no larger than a halfpenny, stopping before the Reform Club.

Richard Smiddy jammed his bowler on tightly, tucked his umbrella under an arm, opened a tattered change purse and carefully doled out the exact fare.

“And a sixpence for you,” he said.

Thank you, governor,” the cabbie said, putting on his FOR HIRE light and pulling away from the curb. He shook his head as he pocketed the frail tip. Not that he wanted the war, mind you, but he wished the Yanks were back.