As a neutral country, Switzerland was required to keep its internees from escaping. They had chosen Adelboden as a permanent internment camp because there was only one gap in the high peaks that surrounded it. The place was a natural fortress and completely isolated from the outside world.
For the arriving crews, it seemed as if they had somehow been transported into a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. From the flak-torn skies over Germany, they were now living in Shangri-la.
Their arrival also turned out to be a boon to the local economy. After the war began, tourists had stopped coming to Adelboden. Now, the United States government had agreed to reimburse the hotel keepers and restaurant owners for their internees’ room and board. The fliers had money and little to spend it on. Many of the local girls were both attractive and available.
It was no German stalag.
Andy’s crew moved into the seven-story Nevada Palace Hotel, which had been built as an exclusive spa in the late nineteenth century. All the upstairs rooms had balconies that faced the alpine peaks. The resort had its own skating rink, and the ski slopes were within easy walking distance. Glittering glass chandeliers lit the hotel’s bars, lounges, library, and piano recital room.
Adelboden soon began to fill up with new internees. Hundreds of British soldiers and airmen also began arriving from prisoner-of-war camps in Italy, from which they had been set free after Benito Mussolini had been driven from power. Soon, the Americans were enjoying the spectacle of Indian Sikhs and Nepalese Gurkhas promenading along the town’s snow-clogged streets.
While the spirits of most of the men skyrocketed, Andy found himself increasingly demoralized. He hadn’t volunteered to fight so that he could spend the war schussing on ski slopes, or relaxing in the hotel spa, or lounging at a restaurant with one of the local girls. He could only imagine the privations of all the fliers who had ended up in German prisoner-of-war camps. It was embarrassing.
In February, Andy was granted a chance to get back in the war.
One afternoon he was teaching English to the village children when a telegram arrived for him from Bern. It was from Allen Dulles. He requested that Andy visit him there immediately. The Swiss authorities agreed to give Andy a pass to do so.
When Andy arrived at the rail station in Bern for his appointment, Dulles escorted him back to his apartment through a street lined with dense linden trees, the branches of which helped to obscure them from view.
The spymaster was living in an undistinguished apartment building at 23 Herrengasse in the oldest part of Bern. It was from here that he operated a network of scores of spies across occupied Europe.
“I am being constantly watched,” he told Andy, adding that both the German Gestapo and Himmler’s SS were well aware that he was a spy, and that they often had him under surveillance.
Once inside the apartment, Allen Dulles told the young lieutenant that he had been impressed with the way Andy had refused to divulge any information after his plane came down in Switzerland the previous September. He thought Andy was discreet and intelligent, two qualities that were important for an important undercover assignment he wanted him to undertake.
He told Andy that he had arranged a direct exchange of seven German officers interned in Switzerland for seven interned American airmen. If Andy agreed, he would be one of them. The exchange would serve a higher purpose.
For months, Dulles had been gathering vitally important intelligence information from his network of agents in anticipation of the Allied invasion of Europe. He had also recruited a source in Germany who was privy to the most secret cable traffic between the Wehrmacht high command and the German foreign ministry. There was far too much material to send by encrypted code and he needed a courier.
Allen Dulles wanted Andy to memorize the information and carry it back in his head to OSS headquarters in Virginia. An admiral on the OSS staff would debrief him when he got there.
Dulles said that the intelligence could save the lives of countless Allied soldiers, and Andy immediately agreed to help. It was a daunting intellectual challenge, but one perfectly suited to his cerebral gifts. He remained in Bern for a week while studying page after page of documents.
The catalogue of intelligence data included the force dispositions of every German division in France, detailed descriptions of specific fortifications along the French coast, recent German production figures from its armament industries, and the code names and real names of important Germans who were secretly spying for the Allies.
A week later, Andy told Allen Dulles that he was confident he could remember everything he had been given to memorize, and Dulles proceeded to schedule the exchange.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Americans would travel by train across Germany and France to the French village of Hendaye, where they would cross a bridge into Spain. The seven German internees would not be released until the Americans were safely across the border.
On the morning of March 3, 1944, the seven American officers, dressed in civilian clothing, were escorted to the Basel train station. Half the station lay in Switzerland, and the other half in Germany.
The cavernous waiting room was deserted when they arrived. Looking toward the German half of the station, Andy saw that they had adorned the walls with massive red banners and swastikas. Several German officers were waiting for them at the other end.
As the Americans approached, one of the German officers marched toward them. He was a major and wore the black uniform of Himmler’s SS. A death’s-head symbol was emblazoned on his peaked cap, and he carried a dagger at his side. Stopping short, he gave the Americans a stiff-armed salute and shouted, “Heil Hitler!”
This one is a true believer, thought Andy, as the officer began barking a torrent of German at them. Andy suddenly remembered Allen Dulles telling him in Bern he was under constant surveillance by the SS. What if Andy had been covertly photographed with Dulles, and the Germans matched that photo to the one in his identity papers?
If the Germans chose to detain him once he was across the border, there would be nothing the Swiss could do about it. The Nazis had routinely broken their promises since the war began. Once he was in the custody of the SS, they could do anything they wanted with him.
For one of the few times in the war, he felt a jolt of unreasoned fear. It was one thing to fly twenty-five bombing missions in a Flying Fortress, and quite another to be carrying secrets in one’s head that might affect countless lives in the upcoming invasion.
The SS officer completed his harangue and stepped back. A Wehrmacht captain moved forward to take his place. He accepted charge of the prisoners, and ordered them to follow an armed guard of several more soldiers.
They were marched to a waiting train on one of the platforms. Several of the cars were fortified with batteries of antiaircraft guns to defend the train against fighter attacks. Three military escorts would be going with them, the captain who had taken charge of them in the station, a sergeant, and a corporal. The seven Americans and three Germans occupied two compartments in one of the passenger cars.
After leaving Basel, the train moved north along the Rhine Valley, stopping at a number of rail stations along the route. At one of them, a young woman was walking along the platform, carrying a basket and pleading for donations to the German Red Cross. Andy gave her his last Swiss franc note.
More German soldiers came aboard as the train continued north. By the time it crossed the Rhine, hundreds packed the cars, with many of them returning to their units along the west coast of France.
Word quickly spread that there were American fliers aboard, and curious German officers stopped at their compartment. One was serving with a German tank regiment in Russia. He spoke excellent English and told Andy he had gone to Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He seemed wistful about his days living in the United States.
Another officer was both arrogant and confrontational. He was a Luftwaffe fighter pilot, and wore the Knight’s Cross around his neck. He d
eclared that the American bomber pilots were barbarians and that the German people detested President Roosevelt. One of the pilots laughed at him and said that was nothing compared to how the American people felt about Hitler. The officer stalked off.
Andy had brought a carton of Swiss cigarettes with him and had given several packs to the Wehrmacht sergeant accompanying the Americans. He was the only German in the escort who spoke English, and his name was Albert. He smoked incessantly.
“Albert,” Andy said, “you’re going to have a very sore throat by the time you leave us.”
“Ah, yes,” he replied with a grin, “but it will be the first sore throat I’ve had from smoking good cigarettes in five years.”
As the train continued on through the night, Andy talked with a Wehrmacht colonel who commanded an infantry unit along the Normandy coast. He kept assuring Andy that the German defenses in France were impregnable.
“Look,” he said, “we Germans cannot defeat you, but you cannot defeat us. Why don’t we come together and fight the Russians?”
Andy’s fears about being revealed as a spy subsided once they were in France. If the Germans had any suspicions that he was a secret courier, he assumed they would have taken him off the train in Germany.
In Paris, two Wehrmacht officers picked up the seven Americans in two Dodge station wagons with swastikas painted on the doors. One of them spoke English with a Scottish burr. He had been a peacetime lawyer in Edinburgh, Scotland, and enjoyed regaling Andy with quotations from Wordsworth.
After a ride across the city, they boarded another train that took them south through Bordeaux before finally reaching Hendaye, a town that bordered Spain along the southwest coast of France. From there, they were scheduled to walk across a small bridge over the Bidasoa River to Irun, Spain.
Aboard the same train as the Americans were about forty survivors of the Spanish Blue Division that had been fighting alongside the Wehrmacht in the Russian campaign. They had taken terrible losses, and were intensely bitter.
Somehow, they learned that the American pilots were crossing into Spain at the same time. On the bridge, they began screaming insults at the Americans. Many clearly wanted to fight.
The Spanish police intervened, and a Swiss diplomatic courier arrived to take the Americans by car to Madrid. There they were delivered to the U.S. embassy. Andy was immediately put on a plane to Gibraltar, and then on to Casablanca before crossing the Atlantic from Lisbon.
In Washington, he was met by an OSS agent and taken for his debriefing with the retired navy admiral. He was first asked to write down everything he had memorized from the documents Allen Dulles had given him. It took several days to complete the account. Afterward, the admiral and his staff spent another day going over additional questions with him.
When the admiral finished debriefing him, he took Andy aside and thanked him for taking on the perilous assignment. Andy said he hoped some of the information would make a difference, and the admiral told him it undoubtedly would.
“And now, Lieutenant, I want you to do something else for me,” he said. “I want you to forget everything that happened. I want you never to mention to anyone that you ever met or talked with Allen Dulles. Believe me, Lieutenant, it’s just as easy to forget as it is to remember.”
The End of a Tour
21 September 1944
Molesworth, England
Forty-first Combat Bomb Wing (A)
Brigadier General Robert F. Travis, Commanding
General Robert Travis was flying his final combat mission.
At the pre-mission briefing before the Stuttgart raid a year earlier, he had told the boys of the 303rd that he would finish his combat tour of twenty-five missions just as they were required to do. He had kept his word.
Bob Travis was now the only general officer in bomber command to finish a full tour.
His last mission was to Mainz, Germany. It would be his twenty-ninth. He had not taken the milk runs. Bob Travis had led many of the toughest combat missions of the war.
He had asked for them.
Travis was now one of the most highly decorated wing commanders in the Eighth Air Force. Over the course of his combat tour, he took great pride in sharing each new citation with his father, Major General Robert Travis (Ret.).
14 October 1943
Major General R. J. Travis
16 Commercial Building
Savannah, Georgia
Dear Dad,
My last raid was considered to be the most successful one ever conducted against German targets.... I have been notified by General Williams that I have been put up for both the DFC and the Silver Star. They mean something anywhere.... My love to you, Bob
23 December 1943
Dear Dad,
Citation for award Silver Star reads, “For gallantry in action while serving as Air Commander of a Task Force of Flying Fortresses on a mission over Anklam, Germany, 9 October 1943. . . . En route to the target, the bombers were subjected to fierce and persistent attacks by enemy fighters.... General Travis had his force over the target and wrought vast destruction on vital enemy installations. The gallantry, skill and superb leadership displayed by General Travis reflect the highest credit upon himself....” I’m afraid there isn’t much other news. The food has been particularly lousy lately.... I must be getting old. Whenever I take a hard workout in squash it takes me two days to get over it. Much love ... Bob
On January 6, 1944, General Jimmy Doolittle had replaced Ira Eaker as commander of the Eighth Air Force. Less than a week later, he ordered his first maximum-effort mission. It was to be the biggest deep-penetration raid ever undertaken.
Six hundred fifty heavy bombers would participate, and for the first time in the air war, a fighter escort of hundreds of P-51s, P-47s, and P-38s would accompany the bombers all the way to the targets and back.
Bob Travis was chosen to command the First Air Division, which included 174 Fortresses and would lead the entire bomber train. The First Division’s target was an industrial complex in Oschersleben, Germany, which was then producing nearly half of the Fw 190 fighter planes built for the Luftwaffe.
When Travis’s division took off, the weather was clear over the Continent.
It didn’t remain clear over England. By the time Travis’s division was on its way to Germany, a dense cloud front gathered over the British Isles, preventing most of the fighter escort groups from assembling with the bombers.
With the weather continuing to deteriorate, General Doolittle ordered a recall of the bomber forces already in the air, as well as the fighter groups that had been assigned to escort them.
The First Division was closing in on Germany when General Doolittle’s recall order was issued. If Bob Travis ever heard the order to return to England, he never acknowledged it.
Most of the fighter groups assigned to escort Travis’s division opted to return to England with the other two. Only forty-nine P-51 Mustangs remained with the First Division as it continued on toward Oschersleben.
None of the American fighters were up front with the lead group.
General Travis was flying in the 303rd’s 8 Ball. It was the lead plane of the lead squadron of the lead group of the division. When he realized there were no friendly fighters covering his formation, the general radioed Fighter Control. He told them that he was without support, and asked for assistance. There was no response to his message.
Waiting for Travis near Oschersleben was the largest force of enemy fighters assembled since the October 1943 attack on Schweinfurt. Most of the German pilots were flying Fw 190s, which seemed fitting since the Eighth’s target that day was the largest industrial complex producing them.
The German fighters focused on Travis’s lead group. They attacked from every direction, nine o’clock, ten, eleven, twelve, one, and two, flying in combinations of three to eight planes at a time. Once the attacks began, there was no lull. As one wave came through the formation, the next wave was already positioning itself.
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One enemy fighter even attempted to ram the 8 Ball. A crash was only averted when pilot Bill Calhoun lifted his left wing at the last moment, preventing the imminent collision.
On the intercom, Bob Travis kept calmly calling out the attack vectors of the incoming fighters. It became a nonstop commentary. One of the machine gunners was finally exasperated enough to interrupt him, shouting, “Don’t call ’em so fast, General. I can’t shoot’em all anyway.”
Jack Fawcett, the 8 Ball’s bombardier, was manning the machine gun in the nose compartment. Between attacks, he watched as the Fortresses of the 303rd Bomb Group began to fall around them. One of the first to go was Baltimore Bounce, the Fortress flying on the 8 Ball’s immediate left. One of its wings separated from the fuselage just before it blew up.
Approaching the target, Fawcett was able to recognize the topographical features he had memorized in the prestrike photographs. After a short bomb run, he dropped his bombs squarely on the factory complex. The rest of the bombers followed suit.
As the 8 Ball turned from the target and headed for home, the Fortress flying directly behind it was set on fire by the next wave of enemy fighters. It spiraled downward, out of control.
Dozens of Fortresses went down under the relentless fighter attacks as the division fought its way back across the Continent. When the surviving planes finally reached the channel, England was still enveloped in thick fog.
Using homing beacons, the pilots of the 303rd were able to find Molesworth, but when they arrived, the field was completely socked in. From then on, it was every plane for itself.
In the 8 Ball, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Calhoun finally broke through the fog bank at an altitude of three hundred feet. Other bombers were descending through the low ceiling all around him, and he narrowly avoided two collisions before safely reaching the ground.
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