Tanks Amid the Eerie Calm

By Gregory H. Wierzynski

As the leaders of Solidarity gathered in Gdansk for their final, fateful meeting before the crackdown, TIME Correspondent Gregory H. Wierzynski was with them. He was scheduled to spend the entire next day with Lech Walesa and his family, an interview that never took place. After scouring Gdansk for details of the mass arrests and strikes, Wierzynski drove to Warsaw, into a setting of total censorship. It was five days after the military takeover that Wierzynski was able to make his way to West Berlin, from where he sent his reports. Among them was this personal look at Poland under siege:

Ironically, the day martial law was imposed in Poland and fear, pain and grief descended upon the country, the sun rose with unusual clarity and brilliance, following two bleak weeks of gray skies and snow. In Gdansk, where Polish hopes for freedom had begun and had now terminated overnight, all that could be seen of the roundup of Solidarity's leadership were riot police encircling the union headquarters.

On the road to Warsaw, I encountered Poland at its most beautiful--a perfect wintry landscape of rolling plains and snow-covered forests. I also encountered military vehicles--trucks, armored personnel carriers, light tanks and some light artillery--all heading south to Warsaw. The militiamen at checkpoints fingered newly issued machine pistols.

On the second day of martial law, the capital exuded an eerie calm. Shoppers were out early, as usual, queueing up at bakeries, butcher shops and vegetable stands, where few goods were available, also as usual. A Solidarity banner, evidently neglected by police, continued to hang bravely from a building on Paris Commune Place. Young mothers dropped off their children at nursery schools--the only educational institutions left open in all of Poland.

City sounds were muffled. The normally clogged streets were empty save for military and police vehicles. A few cabs were in circulation, but a number of them were occupied by secret police agents who had requisitioned them. Service stations, where drivers sometimes wait for 24 hours to tank up, had plenty of gasoline but, because sales were banned, no customers. Other public transportation was running normally, though the red-and-white buses and trams, caked with mud, dirt and ice, looked like sardine cans on wheels.

By midweek the presence of troops in the capital had increased appreciably. There was more of everything: patrols, soldiers with fixed bayonets, armored cars and a few tanks. I spotted a Soviet patrol car and several uniformed Soviet soldiers casually strolling in the center of the city. One man told me he had seen about 30 high-ranking Russian officers leaving a Soviet Air Force plane at Warsaw airport.

Most people were making an attempt to go to work. A foreign trade official told me, "It's too dangerous not to show up." But there was not much work to be done. With the telephones dead, virtually all businesses had come to a standstill. Owners of small private concerns, like carpentry shops, watch-repair shops and greengrocers, were in a panic. When their cars ran out of gas, they would be unable to get supplies and would have to shut down.

The strange and oppressive atmosphere was accentuated by the extreme cold. A small demonstration outside Solidarity's regional headquarters had been quickly dispersed by police manning a water cannon, a particularly effective weapon in below-zero weather. But the oppressors were as cold as the oppressed. In parts of the city, soldiers stood around small kerosene fires, stomping on the ground and rubbing their hands.

One bystander asked a soldier on guard at Warsaw University: "Why are you here?" His reply: "I don't really know. They never told us." The soldier was asked whether he would shoot civilians if so ordered. He shrugged and his face turned red.

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