QB VII [antikvár]

1 "November 194.5—Monza, Italy The corporal cadet stepped out of the guard hut and squinted out over the field. A shadowy figure ran through the knee-high grass toward him. The guard lifted a pair of binoculars. The man, half stumbling, carried a single battered suitcase. He waved and gasped a greeting in Polish. It was a familiar sight these days. In the backwash of the war, all of Europe had become a tangled river of refugees, east going west, west going east, and burgeoning refugee camps all but collapsed under the swell. Hundreds of thousands of liberated Polish slaves roamed about desperately seeking contact with their countrymen. Many wound up here in Monza at the Fifteenth Free Polish Fighter Wing of the Royal Air Force. "Hello! Hello!" the man shouted as he crossed out of the field and over a dusty road. His run had slowed to a limp. The corporal cadet stepped up to him. The man was tall and slender with a high-boned face capped with a head of solid white hair. "Polish, Free Polish?" "Yes," the guard answered, 'let me take your suitcase." The man leaned against the guard to stave off fainting. "Easy, father, easy. Come, sit down inside my hut. I will call for an ambulance." The guard took him fey the arm and led him. The man stopped suddenly and stared at the flag of Poland which flew from its staff just inside the gate and tears came to his eyes. He sat on a wooden bench and held his face in his hands. The corporal cadet set the suitcase down and circled the handle of the field phone. "Post number four, send an ambulance. Yes, a refugee." As the man was driven into the confines of the camp, the guard shook his head. Ten a day? A hundred some days. What could be done but put a few hot meals into their