and the entire headquarters was abuzz with excitement, as if this one act could turn the entire Uprising around. I was so irritated by this that although I was on shift, ready to be sent back into the field, I waited in the bunks to avoid the seemingly irrational celebrations. My eyes were closed, but my mind was racing, cycling through images of the previous days’ conflict.
“Pigeon.” I hadn’t heard Sword approach, but he was right beside the bed, almost within arm’s reach, as he always seemed to be.
“What?” I said, irritably.
“There are people asking for you out front.”
I wasn’t surprised to find Piotr and Mateusz standing in front of the headquarters. Piotr seemed to be vibrating with a manic excitement, but Mateusz had his hands in his pockets and was staring at the ground.
“Come with us,” Piotr greeted me quietly. “We’ll leave at dawn. We’ll be in Lodz by tomorrow night.”
“I wish I could,” I said truthfully. Escaping to Lodz with Elz·bieta and her family seemed like some fantastic dream. “But I can’t. I made a vow to fight to the death if that is what it takes to free Poland, and I mean to keep it.”
A cheer went up along the street, and we all turned to see the cause of it. I immediately recognized the odd vehicle moving slowly down Długa Street as the famed and unusual tank. I had never seen such a vehicle: it was armored like a normal tank but low to the ground and missing its turret. Someone had fixed a Polish flag to a pole on the front, and the vehicle was surrounded by people—children riding on its flat top, others scrambling to touch it, as if contact could somehow bestow them good fortune.
“What good does it do for bright young men such as yourself to sacrifice themselves in a losing battle?” Piotr asked.
“I have to believe it means something,” I said, pursing my lips. “If not, then I’ve lost almost every friend I’ve ever had for nothing.”
“These are hard questions,” Mateusz conceded. “But not questions you can solve in the heat of war, Roman. Step away from it. Come with us.”
“Why? Why do you even want me to?” I asked, frowning. “Your family has been so good to me, right from the beginning. Why?”
“I’m a flawed man,” Piotr said, “but...”
Whatever he said then was drowned out by the roar of the engine as the tank rumbled past, moving to the barricade at the end of the street. We all turned to follow it with our eyes as it continued along the way, waiting for the sound to pass so we could talk again. But the crowd on the street was growing by the second. Families were running together, pouring onto the street from apartment buildings nearby, and soldiers were filing out of my battalion headquarters.
“What is it doing?” Piotr asked.
“The tank?” I said, jarred by the abrupt conversational shift. “It’s a victory lap, I think.”
At the bottom of the street, the tank stopped at one of our makeshift barricades, almost two meters high, made of furniture from nearby apartments. The crowd surged to help dismantle it so the tank could proceed. In the thick throng of people, the vehicle disappeared from our view. All I could see was the Polish flag, fixed to a pole at the front of the vehicle, blowing gently in the breeze.
“A crowd should not be gathering like this,” Piotr muttered to himself, shaking his head. “It’s not safe! What if the Germans fire a shell into the neighborhood? What if a plane goes overhead and sees how many people are on the street?”
“Hey, Pigeon!” Sword called, looking more animated than I’d seen him in weeks as he ran from the headquarters behind me and started off toward the tank. “Come and see?”
I shook my head just as Piotr stepped toward Sword.
“Hey, kid,” he called. “Come here. Go back inside, and get your commander to clear the street.”
“I’m sorry,” Sword shouted above the roar of the crowd, motioning toward his ear. “What did you say?”
Piotr and Sword closed the distance, and as they chatted a few meters away from us, I turned to Mateusz. He looked exhausted, as if Piotr’s sudden exuberance was as tiring for him as combat had been for me. Mateusz was tucked behind a pillar, his back to the stone, his legs crossed at the ankles and angled toward the front door of my barracks.
“What’s gotten into Piotr?” I asked him. “He’s not