by Noel Hynd
Chapter 16
Germany – Soviet Occupied Eastern Zone - June 1948
In his mother’s home, once he returned, Otto Kern slept fourteen hours a day, often waking up shivering or screaming, thinking of friends in the war whom he had seen blown apart. Each day, he and his mother would wander and scour for food, looking through dumpsters used by occupying soldiers or in buildings that had recently collapsed.
Eventually, his mother found some of his old civilian clothes. The clothes no longer fit. They were several sizes too large. Her uncle, an aging, deaf tailor in his eighties, altered Otto’s clothes for him, bringing them down several sizes. He washed his lice-infested, shredded military garb in cold water in the town square, carefully removing his papers, then storing the papers in the breast pocket when the uniform was again dry.
Then Otto went to find his wife and child whom he hasn’t seen since 1941. He brought with him the remnants of his uniform.
The apartment house where they had once lived had been destroyed by bombs and artillery. But Otto asked at several local cafes until he acquired leads. The leads brought him to the door of his wife, a few streets away from where their home had been. When he showed up at the door, Teresia, too, was astonished.
“I thought you were dead,” she said to him.
“I should be. But I’m not.”
They fell into each other’s arms and both sobbed uncontrollably.
Otto Kern now settled in to a shabby apartment where he slept on a hard floor with his wife and son. There was no electricity but they had blankets. They huddled together each night against the cold. Both his wife and son seemed at first like strangers, then as the first two weeks of his return went by, he got to know them again. He also found items in the apartment that disquieted him. One was a set of socks that belonged to a man. There was also a man’s shirt and a pair of shoes. He asked Teresia about these items.
“There was a man who lived here for a few weeks,” she explained. “He brought food and some money. He kept us alive.” She paused. “It was known that I was attached to him. So I was protected. So was your son. I always hoped you’d return,” she said. “But I didn’t think you would.”
“This other man?” Otto asked. “Russian? British? American?”
“No. German. Wehrmacht.”
“Do you wish to leave with him?”
Tearfully, she shook her head. “No,” she answered. “He’s gone. He was a good and decent man,” she said. “Educated. He was trying to get to the West.”
“I’m happy you’re alive.” Kern answered.
“Russian internal security people spotted him one day when he went out for air,” she said. “This was about a month ago. They had been looking for him. They came here and they knocked on my door. Three of them. Huge blond men. Tartars. When I didn’t open it, they kicked the door in. They dragged him downstairs and pulled him out into the street. They shot him. Twice in the head. I still hear his screams. I still hear the silence after the first shot.”
Teresia paused again.
“Then I hear the second shot. I hear the Russians laughing. I later saw pieces of his skull and his brains in the street. I assure you,” she said. “He will not be coming back.”
More weeks went by. Kern took the only job he could find. He worked as an apprentice to a baker for pennies a day and three loaves of bread. His wife, however, found a job as a “hostess” in a bar frequented mostly by East German Army officers, but also by a few noisy, boisterous Russians who talked too much and groped all the women.
Teresia had had a university friend named Nora who was in the anti-Hitler underground at Humboldt University. The two women had exchanged correspondence after the war. The friend was still alive but her husband had been killed in the war. Their home had been destroyed. She had been resettled into a small flat, ground floor, less than two rooms in the Western Sector of Berlin.
For her own safety, Nora wanted people living with her, despite the tiny quarters. With a man and a growing boy in the small quarters, everyone would be safer. The distance was under ninety miles, an easier voyage on foot than going to the Western Sector and having to cross rivers and Allied troop checkpoints.
The family planned to set out to do it on foot, each carrying a small canvas sack. They armed themselves with kitchen knives and planned to leave on a Sunday morning.
But they did not leave in time. East German police accompanied by a Soviet military officer arrived at their door the Friday before their intended departure. The security squad arrested Kern. His new clothes were confiscated. He was forced to put on his old uniform and go with them.
Otto reasoned he was going to be executed and tried to kiss his wife a final time. But the security people pulled him out of the apartment and down the front stairs before he could manage any contact. They took him to a local jail, a damaged railroad car, where he was held for two weeks. Then there was a hearing in a makeshift court in another converted railroad car that sat at the town train station.
Justice was a chancy commodity. Some men were sent back to jail. Some men were sent by train east to fulfill a sentence of hard labor. A few would be freed. Some would be executed at the police barracks across the street. The square was heavily guarded by soldiers. Wives were not allowed to attend their husband’s hearings.
Otto Kern was led into the makeshift courtroom in wrist and ankle chains.
A judge sat on a bench above him. The man looked stern. He spoke with a Russian accent. He wore a Soviet uniform with a red star. But the man was also slight of build and wore spectacles that recalled Trotsky. He wore a brushed mustache that recalled Stalin. Kern took him to be a doctrinaire apparatchik more than soldier. He had heard of the type.
Kern pleaded his case, recounting his university days, his marriage, his young family, and his six years in uniform. The man squinted through his eyeglasses. He looked impatient, disinterested.
“You have military papers?” the magistrate asked.
Kern said he did. He produced the tattered remnants of his only official record.
“Where is your discharge?” the magistrate asked.
Kern told the story of his time in camps, how the Americans had turned him over to the French and how the French had dumped him in Leipzig but were so anxious to get rid of him that they hadn’t given him official discharge papers. That made him an escapee, subject to execution.
The magistrate sniffed in apparent skepticism. He eyed the papers in front of him for several seconds. Then he laughed. Kern was shocked. If there was something humorous in these damnable records, he didn’t know what it could have been.
“You served in the Ninth Army. The Army of the Vistula?” the jurist asked.
“Yes.”
There was a slur to the Russian’s speech. Kern gradually gained the impression that the man may have been drunk.
“Who was your final general?” the judge asked.
“Theodor Busse.”
“Where did you become a prisoner?”
“We surrendered to Eisenhower at the Elbe.”
“Where did you fight earlier in the war?”
“Outside of Moscow.”
“Do you remember the fortification lines set by the Red Army?”
“Not clearly. But the talk was they stretched from Vyazma to Mozhaysk. The actual distance was more than a hundred kilometers.”
“You have an extraordinary memory, soldier.”
Danke, mein Herr.
The magistrate sniffed, blinked twice, and folded the papers. He handed them back to Kern. “I fought against you,” the Russian said. “You were a bloodthirsty and stubborn opponent. What final words do you have to say?” the magistrate asked.
Kern’s heart fell through the soles of his shoes. He was certain he would receive a death sentence. He turned to see if he could catch a glimpse of Teresia and his son outside. But the shades were drawn. He turned back and looked up into the severe, icy-blue Russian eyes.
“Well? I’m
waiting! Speak! Address the court of the people,” the Russian said.
Desperately, his mind a jangle of conflicting thoughts, he looked the Russian in the eyes, through the specs, and above the facial hair.
“Alle begrüßen den wunderbaren Stalin!” Kern said. All Hail the Great Stalin. Then in Russian he added the same, “Vse privetstvuyut velikogo stalina!”
Surprised, the magistrate managed a short laugh. “Ha!” Then a second laugh. “Ha! Where did you learn that?”
“From my friends in university many years ago.”
“Which university?”
“Humboldt. In Berlin.”
“I know where Humboldt is. You had friends who were Communists?”
“Yes. Many.”
“Where are they now?”
“I assume they have all been killed. Either by Nazis or air raids. If the Nazis knew they were Communists, they would have been sent to the Russian Front. They may have all died there. I do not know.”
“The magistrate summoned a court clerk. They huddled over an official ledger. The was a low conversation in Russian, then German. Kern guessed that the magistrate was in this job because he could read and write Russian and German.
The magistrate wrote instructions on a flimsy slip of paper.
“Very good,” he said, pleased with himself.
The judge summoned a guard, a tall, thick German who carried a tremendous Luger on his belt. He towered over Kern. The guard came to where Kern stood. The German took Kern roughly by the arm.
“Unlock the prisoner,” the magistrate said.
The guard was surprised and hesitated. Then he obeyed. He removed the irons from Kern’s legs. Then he unlocked and removed the manacles from Kern’s wrists.
Kern looked back up at the bench. The magistrate peered down on him.
“The German People’s Socialist State has made its decision. All hail to our magnificent leaders of the socialist revolution. The People’s Republic of Germany hereby grants you a one-time stipend of five hundred marks, comrade,” the magistrate said. “You may take this draft to the state bank tomorrow. Present it. You will receive your cash. Otherwise, you are free to go. These are your new discharge papers verified by this court,” the judge said, handing across the desk a set of new documents. “Please leave.”
Incredulous, Kern opened his mouth to thank the judge. But the guard jerked him backward and removed him from the courtroom before he could say anything. He pushed him along in front of him and moved him through the heavily guarded front entrance to the square where Teresia waited. In his other hand, he carried the wrist and ankle chains.
There in the public square, ex-soldier Kern reunited with his wife, a comparatively free man. The next day Kern presented himself to the bank to receive his stipend, which broke down to the equivalent of twenty American dollars for each year he had served the state.
But Otto and Teresia had made their decision and knew they could not count on being so lucky again. The following day, Monday, they started out on the road that led north. They carried two bags of food and clothing and their child and they set out on foot for the long walk to Berlin.
They arrived a week later. Nora, Teresia’s old friend, welcomed them. She mentioned that a male friend of hers named Wolfgang, a former soldier, had been hired by the Americans to unload cargo at Tempelhof. Nora introduced Kern to Wolfgang. The rumor was that the Americans were engaged in some new operation that would immensely increase traffic at Tempelhof. They urgently needed more strong young men with clear and honorable discharge papers.
“I have new discharge papers,” Kern said. “The court gave me a fresh set.”
“Go tomorrow at dawn with my friend Wolfgang,” she said. “He will introduce you to the right people.”
Otto slept on the floor, huddled together with his wife and son. He rose the next morning and joined Henrik on the one-kilometer walk to the airfield. He did not return for fifteen hours. Teresia was beside herself with worry.
But when Kern did arrive, he had a bag of food and a smile. He was also covered with white powder. The Americans had hired him to unload cargo and had given him the bag of surplus food to take home. The white powder was flour. He was asked to return the next day and be part of a permanent squad of workers.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to save three lives.
Chapter 17
Berlin - June 1948
On June 26, 1948, an American pilot in his mid-twenties, Air Force Lieutenant William Lafferty, returned to Rhein-Main from a C-47 trip to Tempelhof Airfield in Berlin. He had flown supplies to American service personnel stations in Berlin. Ordinary, good-old-USA-style stuff: food, cigarettes, American newspapers and magazines, liquor, soft drinks, snacks, and beer.
Tempelhof lay in the center of the American Zone. Big and sprawling, it had once been a bowl-shaped, grass-landing field and before that, a parade ground. It had been built by the Nazi regime in the mid-thirties. In keeping with Nazi philosophy, it later became huge and grand.
Its main building was thought to be the largest building in the world, so large that it housed all the airport facilities plus, during the war, and an underground hospital and a Messerschmitt factory. The good news was that the runway was five thousand feet. The bad news was that the runway surface was pierced steel, sometimes jagged, and always tough on tires. One project that was underway was to replace and reinforce Tempelhof’s landing strips with Marston Mat: PSP, perforated steel planking. The tough new matting material was tough enough to accommodate larger heavier planes.
Tempelhof was often beset by some of Germany’s worst weather. British and American pilots knew Gatow for its ease of access. The approach was clear, even on days with cloud cover, rain, or impaired ocular visibility. A morceau de gateau, the pilots called it, a piece of cake. Postwar, RAF flights as well as British civilian and diplomatic flights would fly from Wunstorf to the British airfield at Gatow in southwestern Berlin, west of the Havel River, in the borough of Spandau. Gatow was a former Luftwaffe training college and later a fighter base. The only quirk: right next door, after 1946, was a Russian military airfield, Staaken, with a runway of similar size and shape. A flight navigational error could drop a Western pilot down on a Soviet airstrip, with all the complications that such a misstep might include.
The shortcomings for the “piece of cake” were many. The base had never been designed for cargo. The off-loading area was no more than bricks cobbled into sand. Nor was there any rail link. But Gatow was also positioned next to the Havel Lake, which connected to the Havel River which connected to the River Spree and canals that allowed small barges to reach Berlin.
Lafferty was on the tarmac heading for some late food, a shower, and bed when he was intercepted by a highly agitated operations officer. “See that Gooney Bird over there?” the officer asked with a jerk of a thumb, indicating another C-47 being loaded.
“Yeah? What of it?”
“Command wants you to take it to Tempelhof.”
“What? I just got back from Berlin!” Lafferty protested.
“Then you’ll know the route.”
“It’s too dark.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Lafferty continued to protest. The base commander, Colonel Walter Lee, appeared out of the stark shadows. Colonel Lee walked directly in front of Lafferty and blocked his path.
“Problem here, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir!” Lafferty answered, saluting sharply.
“Good!” The colonel informed Lafferty in no-uncertain terms that the junior officer was making a return trip as soon as a cargo entirely of food and coal was packed in the second plane.
“Now, find a co-pilot and get your ass on the move up into that pitch-black sky and wear a smile as you do it!” Lee ordered.
“Yes, sir!”
Lt. Lafferty and the operations officer quickly stepped into the canteen. There they found an aviator who had arrived in Germany days earlier. The flyer was finishing a sandwich and
looked up. Lafferty and the operations officer moved to the man’s table and sat down. “Hey, flyboy,” Lafferty began. “Want to go to Berlin?”
Glenn Taylor, who had been repairing engines in Virginia two weeks earlier, looked up.
“Sure. When?”
“Right now.”
“You jerking me around?” Taylor asked, startled and with a laugh. He glanced at his Timex. It was almost ten PM. He looked back up and could see circles under Lafferty’s eyes.
“Nope,” Lafferty said.
“You know how to fly a C-47?” the operations officer asked.
Taylor leaned confidently back in his chair. “Sure do.”
“We’ll see,” Lafferty said. “Get some gear. What’s your handle, flyboy?”
“Glenn. Glenn Taylor. My friends call me ‘Nutsy.’”
A pause, then. “I just recruited a co-pilot named ‘Nutsy’?” Lafferty asked.
“Too late now, Lieutenant,” Taylor answered.
Thirty minutes later Lafferty and his excited co-pilot lifted off in the second C-47. They disappeared into the night sky over the ominously dark Soviet-controlled landscape of the Eastern Zone of Germany. Their cargo was coal for power generators and flour for bakers to provide bread for Berliners. Power and food.
They arrived in Berlin airspace in misty two-AM darkness, took a couple of bounces on the uneven runway, and came to a halt.
An all-night crew of DP’s unloaded the plane. Lafferty and Taylor stood by and watched, fueling themselves with black coffee and day-old bread. A maintenance ground crew that spoke Polish refueled the plane and checked the wheels and tires. Lafferty found a half-empty pack of Old Golds in his pocket. Ten smokes remained. He flipped the pack to the crew leader as they worked. They exchanged a thumbs-up gesture.
The American flyers took off again in the early dawn, planning to return to Rhein-Main. For the first time, Taylor saw a six-story building that they had not seen but had cleared by mere feet when they had landed.
“Was that thing there when we came in?” Taylor asked.