Judgment in Berlin: A Spy Story

by Noel Hynd

  Truman now faced a Congress where Republicans and conservative Southern Democrats formed a powerful voting bloc against anything he wished to propose. Hot-button political issues quickly emerged. Strikes and labor-management conflicts destabilized major industries. Housing and consumer goods prices soared. Inflation rose.

  In 1945 and 1946, American farmers had refused to sell grain for months even though it was desperately needed in the United States and to stave off starvation in Europe. Unionized industrial laborers demanded wage increases.

  In January 1946, less than ten months after Truman took office, a steel strike involving nearly a million workers became the largest in the nation's history. A coal miners’ strike followed in April and the railroad workers struck in May. In response, Truman seized the railroads. But two key unions struck anyway, shutting down the entire American rail system. For two days public anger raged. Truman’s anger raged equally.

  Truman handwrote a belligerent, punch-in-the-mouth style message to Congress that called on military veterans to form a lynch mob and destroy the union leaders.

  “Let's put transportation and production back to work, hang a few traitors, and make our own country safe for democracy,” bellowed the man known for “plain speaking.”

  A top aide named Clark Clifford intercepted Truman’s incendiary message, toned it down, and convinced Truman to deliver a softened message to Congress. Truman’s second message wasn’t must cooler than the first one. He called for a new law, where any railroad strikers would be drafted into the army. As he concluded his congressional address, he received a message that the strike had been settled on presidential terms. Nevertheless, a few hours later, the House joyously voted to draft the strikers. Opposition Senator Robert Taft did everyone a favor and killed the bill in the Senate.

  After the settlement of the railroad strike, labor action continued as part of daily life for Harry Truman. The president's approval rating plummeted from eighty-two percent in January 1946 to fifty-two percent by June of 1946. Then it hit thirty-two percent later in the year.

  Republicans took control of Congress in 1946 for the first time since 1930. Democratic Arkansas Senator William Fulbright politely suggested that Harry Truman was in over his head and should resign. Truman was having none of it. More plain speaking followed. The president replied that “Senator Halfbright" was an “overeducated son of a bitch,” and he was going to pay him no attention.

  In the spring of 1948, as he prepared for the 1948 presidential elections, Truman broke with the New Deal by initiating an aggressive civil rights program that he termed a moral priority. Truman's proposals were not well received by Congress. The “Solid South” rejected anything involving civil rights. The Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond of South Carolina prepared to run against Truman in 1948 to insure his defeat.

  Meanwhile, there was a nightmare scenario for the United States in Asia. A savage civil war raged in China where the Nationalists tried to hang onto power against the Communists under Mao Zedong. The Nationalists had been major wartime allies and had large-scale, popular support in the United States, along with a powerful, noisy lobby.

  At Truman’s behest, General George Marshall spent most of 1946 in China trying to negotiate a compromise. He failed. When he returned, he convinced Truman that the Nationalists would never win on their own and a very large-scale U.S. intervention to stop the Communists would significantly weaken U.S. opposition to the Soviets in Europe and would probably also fail. Already, by spring of 1948, Truman was under fire from many Americans for "losing China.” And China had not yet even been “lost.”

  In Europe, the picture wasn’t much better thanks to an aggressive position by Joseph Stalin and the Red Army. Logic in the American capital suggested that withdrawing from Berlin and not issuing the Deutschmark in that city was the safe and logical thing to do. To many, withdrawing from Germany completely made even more sense.

  Privately, Truman sought the council of his secretary of defense on the issue. Forrestal’s opinions were all over the place. These days, Forrestal had a couple of agendas that set many teeth to rattling. He was endlessly antagonistic toward the Soviet Union, fearing Communist expansion in Europe and the Middle East. Along with Secretary of State George C. Marshall, he strongly opposed the United States' support for the establishment of the State of Israel.

  “The establishment of a Jewish state in the Middle East will alienate Arab nations for the next century,” he told anyone who would listen. “We need the Arabs as allies. T.E. Lawrence proved that did he not? The petroleum reserves in North Africa are vital for both military and civilian industrial expansion.”

  A few days later at a press conference, when asked if America would risk war with the Soviet Union over Berlin, President Truman cut through the complicated maze of contingency thinking with some plain thinking and plain speaking.

  “We shall stay in Berlin,” Truman declared. “Period.”

  Chapter 8

  England – May 1948

  Bill Cochrane and his wife, Laura, and their five-year-old daughter, Caroline, arrived in Southampton, England on the brisk morning of May 19, 1948, and stepped off RMS Queen Elizabeth. At Southampton, they hired a car, piled their suitcases into it, and set out for the West Country for a few days of touring before a rendezvous with their prospective landlady in Cambridge.

  They arrived in Bath in Somerset later the same day.

  Bath was still rebuilding from the war. The Luftwaffe had raided the city many times during the Blitz, the German night-bombing offensive against Britain's cities. German attackers flew overhead on their way to nearby Bristol, which was bombed severely throughout the period. Bath remained largely untouched, however, until later in the war and the start of the so-called Baedeker Blitz, named for the famous German tour guidebooks which were surely being read in Berlin. During the Baedeker Blitz, the Luftwaffe chose targets more for their cultural and historical significance than for military value. The Baedeker raids on Bath were in revenge for the bombing of Rostock by the Allies, and possibly because Hitler thought Churchill was in Bath at the time. The air attacks destroyed parts of the Royal Crescent, Circus and Paragon, the Assembly Rooms, and the main hotel, The Francis.

  “The attacks came at night in three waves,” a lady in a sweet shop, the proprietress, told Bill midafternoon when she saw Bill and Laura looking out of the front window of her shop at the reconstruction.

  “The first two were bombing runs, intending to destroy buildings and set us all on fire. The third strafed the civilians who had been driven from their homes with machine-gun fire.”

  “Horrible,” Cochrane muttered with sincerity.

  “Were you here or in America?” she asked.

  “America, primarily,” Cochrane said, not mentioning his tour in Berlin in 1943.

  “You were lucky.”

  Caroline found a small cake she wanted. Indulgently, her father bought it for her.

  Bill and Laura walked hand in hand in the main square, surveying the remaining damage and the reconstruction in progress. Caroline pranced ahead or behind her parents as she saw fit. On the English streets, the Cochranes mostly saw thin women and men with war injuries. At one point the couple stopped and bought their daughter a puzzle for entertainment that evening. The family then piled back into the car, changed directions, and headed for the home of Laura’s sister, Beatrice. They arrived at Beatrice’s place to the west of Bath early that evening. They unpacked to stay for three days.

  Beatrice had a housekeeper, Mrs. Downs, who killed, cleaned, and roasted a chicken for dinner. Over the evening meal at a wooden table in an old farmhouse that dated from 1750, they chatted while Caroline played with her puzzle. The table was tucked into a nook adjacent to the kitchen.

  Laura and Beatrice had never been close. Beatrice, dour and occasionally tart-tongued, was eleven years older and had been away at an oppressive boarding school in Windsor by the time Laura was five. There had been a middle brother who had died of influen
za in 1940. The passing of time, and Laura’s move to the United States, had not made the relationship any warmer. The conversation was guarded and hesitant.

  “So what will you be doing in England, Mr. Cochrane?” Beatrice asked, midway through a third cream sherry and halfway through the meal.

  “Please call me William. Or Bill,” Cochrane answered.

  “Bill,” Beatrice said.

  “I’m on what I would refer to as a ‘working sabbatical’ from my position in the United States,” he explained.

  “What the bloody damned hell is a ‘working sabbatical’?” Beatrice inquired.

  “It means my husband is on sabbatical, but typically, he’s still working,” Laura said.

  “Oh,” said Beatrice. “Work. Isn’t that what a man is supposed to do?”

  “Sadly, Laura states the situation very well,” Cochrane said. “But it’s not the worst thing by any means. The lectures, the discussions if you wish to call them that, don’t start till the midpoint of the autumn semester. October. During the summer, my time is mine. Laura, Caroline, and I hope to travel from Cambridge to the north of England, down toward Bath again, and perhaps to Ireland. Neither my wife nor I have ever visited the Ring of Kerry.”

  Beatrice’s eyes wandered during the conversation and settled on Caroline with a squint. The girl, in response, gripped her mother’s hand and partially hid behind the Queen Anne chair where Laura sat.

  “That sounds fascinating,” Beatrice said, making it sound less than even exciting.

  Beatrice then changed the direction of the conversation back to her usual subject, herself. She was the proprietress of several hundred acres of orchards – apples and pears – as well as a herd of sheep and goats. The farm, she allowed, was doing well. But a man whom she referred to as “old Cronin” had suffered a stroke in the last months. Cronin and his wife Pricilla had been live-in caretakers on the estate since 1935. The couple was no longer able to manage. They were hoping for an exit or at least for diminished duties.

  Beatrice was looking for a new couple to live in and fill the void, she explained after dinner and after she and her guests repaired to a cramped library. But Beatrice couldn’t find anyone able-bodied and suitable.

  “There are stories all over the newspapers about the walking dead of France, Germany, Russia, and Belgium,” Beatrice intoned. “But no one ever speaks of our poor, lonely, old England. Unemployment soars but many excellent jobs go begging.” Her land, she complained, cost as much to maintain as it earned. “I’d sell some off but there are no buyers,” she said. “Everyone is bankrupt.”

  “It’s very difficult everywhere,” Cochrane offered.

  “We’ll keep our eyes open in Cambridge,” said Laura. “Perhaps there’ll be a couple who might be interested in working a farm.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Laura. We’ll do that,” Cochrane said.

  “That would be wonderful,” Beatrice said, brightening, “but you might as well be looking for the Holy Bloody Grail. We supposedly won the war but we don’t have heat or food. Lucky some of us even have shelter.”

  On a side table by itself, there was a photograph that Bill Cochrane’s gaze involuntarily settled upon. The photo was in crisp black and white and had obviously been taken somewhere in England several years earlier. In it, a younger, prettier version of Beatrice was in a Wren’s uniform with a man in a military uniform and another woman.

  “My dear departed husband,” Beatrice said when she saw Bill and Laura’s eyes flirt with the photograph. “I miss him to this day, I do admit. That is I as a Wren. I did my time and service. We all did. Proudly. The other lady is my friend Cordelia.”

  “A lovely name,” Cochrane commented.

  “I remember her,” Laura said. “She was your friend at university.”

  “True. Her father was a Shakespearean actor in the West End. He named her for the ‘good’ daughter in King Lear.” Beatrice motioned back to the photo. “Cordelia’s husband was away in India at the time.”

  “He survived the war, I hope?” Laura inquired.

  “Survived the war, yes. Then just dropped dead one day last year. No warning.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m sorry,” Laura said.

  Beatrice’s late spouse wore the uniform of a lieutenant colonel, probably infantry, Cochrane surmised, being more than familiar with British army rankings and responsibilities. In the photo, everyone was smiling. It was probably pre-1939, Cochrane reasoned further. After the significant fighting started and the air raids became nightly events, there wasn’t so much to smile about.

  A “phony war,” the British called it until it wasn’t phony. Done by Christmas. It didn’t turn out that way. Behind the people in the photograph, a long cricket ground stretched out, sunlit, unsullied, and mown. On the photo there was an inscription in faded ink, but Cochrane couldn’t read it and didn’t try. Cochrane guessed Beatrice loved the picture because it was sweet, perfect, and never changed for the worse, unlike the present.

  Beatrice ripped considerably into her late husband who had mismanaged his military pension as well as the land and hadn’t left her very well off in terms of cash.

  “Half the brains and a tenth of the bank account of my first husband if you ask me,” Beatrice said, a remark that both Bill and Laura chose to leave alone.

  “Do you remember my first husband, Laura? Charles?”

  “Never met him.”

  “Oh, yes. Correct. Charles was Catholic. A ‘bead mumbler.’ Family wasn’t speaking at the time, were we?”

  Laura gently shook her head. Cochrane’s eyes drifted to his daughter. Beatrice’s gaze followed Cochrane’s. “Wonderful little lady, isn’t she?” Beatrice said admiringly of Caroline. “You’re lucky people, the two of you. You survived the war and you have your little girl. You Americans are so lucky.”

  “I’m still English,” Laura said.

  “Like the bloody devil, you are,” snorted Beatrice.

  But the stay in Somerset passed quickly and easily. In their rented car, Bill, Laura, and Caroline explored the area, driving on narrow, winding roads that they shared with tractors, past small fields and high hedge banks. They visited the stone megaliths of Stonehenge outside of Salisbury.

  Both of Laura’s parents had died during the war. She wished to visit their grave site out in Devon, so they drove out farther west, found the graves at an ancient churchyard in Mortonhampstead, and spent a final day with Beatrice.

  Then they packed the car again. They said their goodbyes till who knew when, exchanged too-cordial embraces, and headed to Cambridge.

  Chapter 9

  USA - May 1948

  i

  A twenty-five-year-old American pilot named Glenn Taylor spent the last two years of World War II flying C-47s and C-54s around the European theater, moving men and supplies around France, Holland, and, after the war ended, the Allied-occupied Western Zone of Germany.

  Taylor had never officially flown combat missions, but he had flown in combat zones. More than a few times the aircraft he piloted had been hit by small-arms fire from the ground. Taylor had never shied away from any danger in his life, enemy bullets being just one of those daily annoyances on certain days during a previous part of his life.

  After the hostilities ended in the Pacific theater, he had also been a co-pilot on thunderous four-engine B-17s that he flew over the “hump” of the Himalayas down into India. On other occasions, back in occupied Germany after the war, an RAF buddy entrusted him with a Spitfire. Taylor took a few tours with that noble British aircraft and then followed with more with a captured Messerschmitt. If it had wings, Taylor loved it.

  In 1946, he was one of the thousands of American warriors demobilized. He returned home to Norfolk, Virginia, considering himself one of the “lucky ones” - those who had found excitement, had honorably served their county, and survived the war without injury. Now they felt ready to find a good wife, start a career, and a family.

  But he couldn’t find the right
woman. He missed his airplanes and he missed aviation. He almost longed for the daily exhilaration of being shot at and missed. In the civilian world, he tried to become an air traffic controller but there was a wait of several months for training. He attempted to secure a job as a commercial pilot or co-pilot, but there was a glut of more experienced men who had flown combat. Trying to stay in the field, he put his dreams on hold for a while and became a welder and a mechanic at Washington National Airport, maintaining and fixing new jet engines. He was extraordinary at what he did. “Just give me two strips of aluminum,” he liked to say, “and I can build a warbird from scratch.”

  One evening in Washington his boss, Frank DelVecchio, came to his workstation and tapped him in the shoulder. “There’s a guy in a suit here from the government who wants to talk to you,” the boss said. The boss’s tone of voice was ominous.

  “About what?” Taylor asked.

  “He didn’t say. Go talk to him and you’ll find out.”

  “I’m still on my shift.”

  “It don’t matter none, Glenn. Go talk to him.”

  “Did I screw something up?”

  “Who knows? The guy’s got a burr up his ass, so I didn’t ask. He don’t look like someone we want to mess with, but if you need me to stick up for you, give me a holler. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okey-dokey,” Taylor said, setting down all his tools except one. Glenn knew how the real world worked so he tucked a steel wrench into his belt in case the proposed conversation went the wrong way.

  Taylor found his visitor waiting in a small office on the second floor of the hangar. The visitor stood with his hands behind his back, looking down through a window at workers on the main floor of the hangar as they labored over engines and engine parts. The man had a military haircut but wore a plain gray suit. He didn’t look like a pencil-pusher from a desk job. The man had the presence and the physique of a bodybuilder. And, oddly, he had what Taylor recognized as a New York accent.