Warsaw - Alfred Lapies was 15 years old when he joined Poland's Home Army to fight the Nazi occupation in a battle that would claim 200,000 civilians and leave most of Warsaw in ruins.

Lapies boasts about the grenade he got to fight with halfway through the battle. But during most of the uprising he was as poorly-armed and outnumbered as the rest of Poland's army.

When he told his story on Saturday, on the 65th anniversary of the doomed but heroic Warsaw Uprising, a crowd gathered around his bench at a park near the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Lapies took off his wristwatch to show a scar left by a Nazi bullet. Voices rose in the crowd: "I would have never had the courage."

Lapies replied: "You would have the courage. If you would have seen it. If you would have seen so many friends die, and families. If you saw so many corpses, you wouldn't think about your life."

He added: "So many kids died. I was myself a kid."

Lapies hid in some bushes and aimed his grenade at a group of Nazi soldiers. But hungry pigeons and livestock - left behind by those who had fled Warsaw - gave him away, making noises and drawing attention.

Lapies was wounded twice as he ran away, but says he was lucky nonetheless.

"Those were terrible battles," he said. "Many didn't come back."

The battle lasted until October 2 and left some 18,000 Polish insurgents dead.

The Polish government in exile had expected the Soviet Army to help the Poles liberate the city. But the Red Army stopped on Warsaw's outskirts, allowing the Nazis to brutally repress the uprising.

Jerzy Zenon Kowalski, 83, called Moscow's move a "stab in the back," as the Red Army watched much of the fighting from across the Vistula river. It was in the Kremlin's interest to let the Nazis kill off the Poles and destroy possible future opponents to their own communist government, Polish historians say.

Kowalski joined the fighting in 1943 when he was 19 and soon became a member of the 2nd Storm Battalion "Revenge." His platoon, with all of two pistols, hid in barracks and raided gardens at night for potatoes and beets.

"When the uprising broke out, it was what we wanted. It had been in the making since 1939," said the veteran, now living in London. "The first four days were chaos. The Germans didn't know what was going on, and we didn't know either. They didn't expect the fury. People were so fed up that they wanted revenge."

The Soviet Union broke off diplomatic relations with the Polish government when it called for an International Red Cross investigation into the massacre by Soviet security police of some 4,000 Polish officers in Katyn Forest, near the Russian city of Smolensk.

"We were hoping for help from the East, but the East stopped ... The expectation was that the Red Army would be delighted (about the uprising)."

Kowalski said that Germany has apologized for its crimes against the Polish people, and its politicians had laid wreaths at World War II monuments and acknowledged their dark past.

But the Russians have still not taken full responsibility with respect to Katyn or the Warsaw Uprising, Kowalski said.

"Putin, even today, is afraid," Lapies said, referring to the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's reputed unease about Russian-Polish relations.

Putin is slated to visit Poland in September for ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. He has misgivings about visiting Poland, the Polish daily Dziennik has reported, and is working with Russian historians to prepare himself for accusations regarding the role of the Soviet Union in World War II.

"They know what crimes they committed," Lapies said.

For both of the veterans, the Warsaw Uprising was a heroic struggle, despite the impossible odds and high casualties.

Critics have called the uprising a strategic mistake that was planned too hastily and didn't take into account how poorly armed and outnumbered Poland's army was.

But Lapies has a reply to that view: "Thanks to this strategic mistake, today we have our freedom guaranteed."(dpa)