The call of duty for TIME foreign correspondents inevitably has its hazards. New Delhi Bureau Chief Marcia Gauger was inside the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, in November of last year when it was attacked and burned by an angry mob. She was the only journalist present, and her first-person account of the siege and subsequent rescue became part of a TIME cover story. Nairobi Bureau Chief Jack White was in Kampala for this week's World story on the Uganda elections when he and Photographer Bill Campbell were trapped for two hours at the downtown cable office under a hail of government mortar and machine-gun fire. All the first aid needed when it was over was for a broken suffered by Campbell in a jump from the top of a court yard wall to reach the safety of the American embassy.

In Poland, with Soviet tanks poised across the border, Correspondents Barry Kalb and Erik Amfitheatrof prepared themselves for the rigors of the Polish winter. Kalb, who has been monitoring the Poles' increasingly restive mood for two years, trailed the leaders of Solidarity, the nation's new labor union, as they crisscrossed the country to attend meetings with workers and government officials. He eventually interviewed ten of the 18 members on Solidarity's presidium. "I have become quite fond of the Polish people over the course of this assignment, and have made a number of friends --among them, members of the party," says Kalb. "For everyone's sake, I hope their experiment with a more humane and democratic form of Communism is allowed to succeed."

Amfitheatrof had just returned to Rome from the earthquake-shattered villages of southern Italy when he was called to help Kalb in Poland. With a Polish visa, prudently obtained back in August, he was able to fly directly to Warsaw and spend part of a day with Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa at church and at Walesa's home outside Gdansk. "The Poles are marvelously brave and calm," observes Amfitheatrof, who along with Kalb witnessed last week's emotional unveiling of the workers' monument in Gdansk. "Whatever the future holds for them has enormous implications for Eastern Europe and quite possibly the whole world."

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