When the military cracked down last week in Poland, TIME'S team was on the inside, behind the wall of silence, pushing to get the story out. The night that a "state of war" was declared by the Polish government, Correspondents Richard Hornik and Gregory Wierzynski and Photographer Henri Bureau were already in Gdansk, covering what turned out to be the last meeting of the Solidarity union's national commission. Photographer David Burnett, on assignment for TIME, was in Warsaw. In the capital, at least at first, near normality reigned--sunshine, snow and only a few soldiers. "Getting the right picture to show the mood was extremely difficult," reported Burnett. "There wasn't an overwhelming military presence you could photograph. There was only a growing sense of doom."

Until the story broke through the blackout, coverage of Polish events was dominated by TIME'S Bonn bureau, which relied heavily on its network of contacts in Stockholm, Vienna and Eastern Europe to funnel in information. Bureau Chief Roland Flamini, having returned from Poland four days before the crackdown, had an advantage in evaluating the scene and the fragments of data seeping in. Flamini had visited Katowice, the mining center where many of last week's clashes occurred, talked with Polish Archbishop Jozef Glemp and shared a journey from Gdansk to Warsaw, and a cup of tea, with Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa. Says Flamini: "I calculate that at least half the people I talked to in Poland are now under arrest."

Photographer Bureau, also on assignment for TIME, became one of the first journalists to get out of Poland. To avert suspicion, he left all his camera equipment in Burnett's care and departed by train for West Berlin Monday night (see Press). With him went 30 precious rolls of his and Burnett's film. Burnett himself left by train two days later. Correspondent Wierzynski, who arrived in West Berlin by train at week's end, reports that "news gathering in Warsaw came down to finding Polish friends who might know something--an account from a person recently returned from another city or from a worker in one of the big plants outside town." A Polish-born American, Wierzynski says, "I left behind family and a country that only a few days ago was alive, blighted by penury, perhaps, but sustained by freedom and hope. Now the country is in shock and oppressed by the belief that worse is yet to come."

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