Sala Świadectw

Danuta Pniewska

Speaking of war … my mother had 4 young brothers, my father had 3. They started taking all these young men into the army. Everyone was so upset by it all. I had some much younger cousins that we would see off to the train – they were so full of enthusiasm, saying how they would beat the Germans. Everyone was so fired up. John and I also wanted to go, but I was only 13 years old at the time, and they did not accept women in the military back then. Father was a sergeant or ‘plutonowy’ in the reserve, and was anxious to get back to Novogrod because he thought that there may already be papers waiting for him. He had been on some training, since there had been talk of war for some months already. So we returned to Novogrod, and the first thing that I did, with Zosia that I mentioned earlier, is that we went to sign up for the Girl Guides. We were in the first year of high school, where there was a Girl Guide section. We were immediately signed up for a first aid course. There was some sort of army base near Nowogrod, but nothing special. We worked in the military hospital there, on shifts, and people brought linens there, that we then sorted and arranged. And we attended the first aid course there. On the course, there was a young Doctor Mlinarski, who told us how in 1920 they had Girl Guides with them, and one of the Girl Guides was killed, and they were told to leave the body, but they refused and took her body with them in the wagon. We all cried and we all wanted to be such a heroine, dying in the arms of the soldiers. But the course lasted 17 days.

Polish