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War in the Street. First objectives were the barracks of the hated SS in Zoliborz, a northern suburb, and along Rakoweiecka Street in a Warsaw residential section. Then the Poles seized control of the suburbs of Ochota and Mokotow. At week's end the fiercest fighting was raging in the center of the city, where the underground patriots were dug in around the Saski Park and were battling for control of the main public buildings.
The German garrison, badly surprised by the uprising, called in aircraft to bomb Polish-held sections on two days, and sent tanks against the patriots' roadblocks; Poles risked their lives to burn the tanks with homemade Molotov cocktails.
But for all their bravery, the Poles were a 19th-Century army fighting a 20th-century war. Late in the week an ominous message came from General Bor: ammunition was running low. Polish officials in London, following the course of the fighting with desperate interest, feared that the uprising might have been called prematurely, before the Russians were ready to start their own drive.
But after a week of fighting the Poles were still holding out, and with something to sustain them that their comrades of 1939 had never had: the hope of rescue, by an army that hits hard and fast.