by Noel Hynd
He was grateful to be alive. Millions of less fortunate men of his generation were not. He was grateful to be American in the middle of the twentieth century, to be blessed with good health and freedom from any of the horrible war injuries that would define the lives of so many. He felt, he realized, humbled by his many experiences and his good fortune over having survived so much.
He was still rummaging through all of this as he walked from Foggy Bottom to the Mall. But he realized that beneath the surface, something was gnawing at him, something left over and unspoken from his debriefing that morning.
It took him several minutes to pinpoint it. But it was right there in the forefront of his mind when he reached his destination, the third bench from Constitution Avenue on the north end of the Mall. A man whom he hadn’t noticed because he was mentally four thousand miles away spoke.
“Hello, Meatball,” said the man.
And there before him was his rendezvous agent, Irv Goff.
They greeted each other warmly. They began to talk as they walked eastward toward Georgetown. There was banter, stuff going back and forth, catching up on personal notes. They had not seen each other since that day in London many months ago when Cochrane had departed for occupied Berlin. Finally, noticing Cochrane’s hesitancy, Goff asked what was on his mind.
“Nothing of real interest, Irv. Just a lot going on, stuff that’s unresolved.”
“Bullshit, Meatball. There’s something. You’re holding back.”
“Okay, you’re right. There’s something that still bothers me, Irv,” he said. “Jim Forrestal.”
There was an awkward hesitation, then Goff continued. “What about him?”
“Jumped, pushed, or fell?” Cochrane said. “I’m not convinced that he actually committed suicide.”
“Well, he’s dead all the same, isn’t he?”
“No suicide note, for example,” Cochrane said. “Wouldn’t an articulate, erudite, neat man like that have left a note?”
“How can you propose logic on a mind that’s not acting rationally, Bill? Look, the official report said -”
“I don’t believe the official report,” Cochrane replied sharply. “I did some digging because the death bothered me. I liked Jim. I considered him a friend and a damned decent man, regardless of personal politics. Same as you. I think Senator Vandenberg is a gasbag, but I agree with him that politics should end at the shoreline.”
“What are you proposing with this?” Goff asked.
“There’s an explanation that Jim was reading that poem and broke off in the middle of it. He left the room, crossed to the kitchen, and tried to hang himself with the sash of the bathrobe. The sash broke and he plunged. Suicide. Very convenient.”
“What’s wrong with the story?”
“Everything, damn it! I don’t believe a word of it, and I particularly don’t believe ‘official stories’.”
Cochrane continued, unleashing a rant.
“Listen, Irv. The death was marked a suicide before there was even an investigation! The young naval kid testified that Forrestal was sleeping when he checked the room five minutes before his death,” Cochrane said. “There was nothing on his desk and he wasn’t writing anything. That’s what the kid said. That’s what he testified in the official inquiry. But what was in the newspapers was different. Jim’s brother thinks he was murdered, and I do, too.”
“The inquiry is sealed. How did you see the testimony?”
“I went and found the hospital kid myself. That’s what he told me.”
Cochrane continued as Goff’s eyes narrowed.
Angry now, Cochrane continued. “Why is it that when Jan Masaryk goes out a window, we assume the Soviets pushed him. When Forrestal goes out one, we assume the opposite,” Cochrane said. “We also know that Jim sanctioned hit squads, eastern Europeans from what I hear, and from what I’ve seen, tried to implement pro-Western policy where necessary. There’s no damn security in the psychiatric hospital. How do we know some squad working for the other side didn’t come in and return the favor?”
“So it’s contagious, huh, Bill? The craziness?” Goff said. “You worked damned hard, your sabbatical got compromised, and now you’re spouting the same crap that Jim and his wife, Jo, kept saying.”
Cochrane stopped walking and turned sharply
“Am I? Or am I onto something, Irv? Maybe there’s something to it!” Cochrane snapped.
Goff studied his shoes for a second and didn’t respond.
Cochrane lost his temper. “Listen to me, Irv, goddamn it!” he shouted, practically nose to nose. “Trotsky finally gets it with an ice ax in 1940, after the NKVD thugs failed to find a window high enough for him. Masaryk goes out a third-story window in Prague and Jim Forrestal goes out a sixteenth-floor, narrow window in Bethesda. And another how-many-dozen anti-Soviet politicians or writers have joined them going out of windows and off balconies? No, listen!” he said as Goff tried to interrupt and calm him down. “Someone who hated Jim’s worldview murdered him! There are Red fingerprints all over this and everyone’s looking the other way. Try to convince me otherwise!”
“And maybe you’ll go out a window yourself if you don’t keep your mouth shut.”
Cochrane shoved furiously at his friend. “What the goddamned hell does that, mean, Irv?” he demanded. “Tell me that!” he barked, turning on his friend and grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket. “What the damned hell did you mean by that?”
They stood facing each other on a sunny, warm summer day in the American capital, neither backing up an inch, Bill Cochrane’s eyes alive with fire, Goff’s powerful hands on Cochrane’s wrists to restrain him.
Gradually, Cochrane relaxed his grip on Goff’s jacket.
After several seconds, Goff answered. “I didn’t mean anything by that, Bill. I made a bad joke. I apologize. In the end, Jim was a good man. A loyal American. You have a right to entertain your doubts and ask your questions. People, the FBI maybe, the intelligence community, should look hard into it. You’re right. I’m sorry, okay?”
Bill Cochrane drew a breath and backed off. He remained wordless.
“Easy, okay, Bill?” Goff said. “Easy does it. We see things. We hear things. There’s only so much we can do.”
Cochrane finally calmed.
“I’m sorry, too, Irv,” he said. “I shouldn’t have popped off. Let’s get some lunch.”
“Sounds good,” Goff said.
“But why would a man about to kill himself begin to copy an ancient Greek poem and not complete it?” Cochrane asked as they walked. “Got an answer to that?”
“Nope,” Goff said.
“I’m going to wonder about that for the rest of my life,” Cochrane said.
As they walked, Goff placed a supporting hand on Cochrane’s shoulder. Above them, the air traffic into National Airport continued. An airplane passed over them with a distinctive roar.
“That’s a DC-3 or a C-47,” Cochrane said without looking up, “depending on whether it’s civilian or military. I can tell without looking. A plane’s engine noise is like a man’s fingerprints. No two are the same. I’ll recognize that sound for the rest of my life.”
“So will the people of Berlin, Meatball,” Goff said. “So will the people of Berlin.”
Epilogue
New York City - November 10, 1989, 2:29 PM
On the speaker’s dais at New York’s Overseas Press Club, Bill Cochrane glanced into his audience. He found his wife, Laura, and his daughter seated on the aisle of the third row on the right side. Time had flown by, both today and in the recent decades. Caroline, all grown up now, had recently celebrated her twentieth-fifth-class reunion from university. As her father’s eye found her, she tapped gently at her wristwatch. It was a family joke that Bill Cochrane could talk forever given the opportunity and a choice subject.
Laura, seated next to her daughter, suppressed a smile. Her husband’s frequent mentions of Cambridge and the West Country of England had brought back
many memories.
Today had given him that opportunity. The airlift brought it out of him.
He moved toward his final words.
“After eleven months, the success of the British-American mission was a continuing embarrassment to Joseph Stalin and an overwhelming triumph for the Allied forces,” Bill Cochrane declared. “President Truman, elected for a second term, emerged as the Western strong man of the Cold War. Communism in America stopped in its tracks and the Truman administration stopped it in Berlin. All told, the airlift delivered close to two million tons of essential food and fuel to the people of West Berlin. It was impossible to do, but the Big Lift did it anyway.”
Now Laura tapped on her watch. The two women in Cochrane’s life exchanged knowing smiles.
“What could have been the start of World War III turned out to be one of history’s greatest humanitarian gestures,” Cochrane said as he moved his gaze from Laura and Caroline back to his audience. “While Berlin remained divided for four decades, the airlift remains an uplifting chapter in the city’s tumultuous past. It was the first battle of the cold war, and it was won by the West. Britain and America can be damned proud of what they did in Berlin.” He paused. “Ah,” he said, “I could tell you such great stories of what went on behind the scenes: tales, anecdotes, and intrigues within the larger picture of The Lift. But I won’t. I’m receiving important signals from the two people who matter to me most. My time for today is up.”
Cochrane’s audience rose and applauded with enthusiasm, not just for his talk but also for the Lift, itself. Laura and Caroline came to him as he stepped down from the speaker’s dais and hung around as he informally fielded questions from those who had the time to stay.
One question was tricky. He was asked, as an intelligence officer, if he had ever returned to Berlin in the years that followed, a time when the Western intelligence communities had a heavy presence in that city. He declined to answer the inquiry directly. But he did mention that Laura and Caroline, who had been with him in those ensuing years, did now speak excellent German.
They even had Berlin accents.
THE END
Author’s Note
For three hundred and twenty-two days in 1948 and 1949, the Soviet Union blocked all access to West Berlin – except the air. One hundred and one fatalities were recorded as a result of the Air Lift, which included forty British citizens and thirty-one Americans. Seventeen American and eight British aircraft crashed during the operation causing the majority of the deaths.
Regular flights to Tempelhof Airport ended in 2008, just short of sixty years after the end of the Big Lift. A few people who were children at the time, today remember the Lift and the dedicated men and women who flew it and supported it. Most of the immediate participants have receded into history along with the Lift itself.
Since 2008, the Tempelhof airfield has been a quiet, open space in the middle of Berlin. Today, the city’s free citizens go there to jog, relax in the open air, read a book, tap at their cell phones, skate, or have a picnic. The place has atmosphere as well as history.
There are three identical airlift memorials in Germany. The memorial in Berlin stands at a location named Der Platz der Luftbrücke where the Tempelhof airfield used to be. The airports in Celle and Frankfurt am Main also have memorials. The original memorial in Tempelhof was dedicated in 1951. The replicas in Frankfurt am Main and Celle, where bombers loaded with food and supplies also took off, were unveiled in 1985 and 1988.
The structures were designed by Eduard Ludwig (1906 – 1960), a German architect. He was once a student at the Bauhaus design school. He later worked with notable architects from the school. The curved concrete monuments have three claws facing westward to symbolize the three air corridors and the three Allied occupying forces. The design evokes a hungry hand reaching up toward the sky. The hand faces westward from where humanitarian help came, day and night, from the people of the Western democracies who wished to keep Berlin alive and free. The names of those who died are inscribed at the base of the structures.
Berlin Airlift Memorial at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport.
The Airlift Monument at Frankfurt, flanked by aircraft which flew
during the Lift, a C-47 in the foreground.
Noel Hynd
August 14, 2021