Beyond the Call

by Lee Trimble

  Arriving at the station, Robert bought the tickets and waited anxiously. Gradually the men, women and children drifted in. Miraculously, none had been stopped. There were Russian soldiers at the station, but they didn’t seem to object; as long as the American officer was responsible, they didn’t care what he did with the refugees. (Had they known that there were POWs in the party, it might have been different.) Kraków’s proximity to the front line made it a more dangerous place to be at night, but it also meant that there was a constant flow of refugees – mostly Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians – passing through. And it meant that the NKVD had less of a foothold. There was a lag between the movement of the Red Army’s front line and the appearance of the full apparatus of state security. As Robert would learn, in some towns it was surprisingly easy to get Russian approval for channeling liberated prisoners to the railroad – until the NKVD moved in and leaned on the town commandants.4 After that the barriers would come down; there would be no more blind eyes.

  For a second time, Robert went through the happy ceremony of departure, accepting the hugs and blessings and fond farewells and watching the train as it steamed out of the station, beginning the long haul to Odessa and freedom.

  Over the next couple of days, he went through the ritual several more times. At least one of his contact agents was still in the area; seizing the opportunity presented by the circumstances in Kraków, the agent dispatched small groups to the edge of town, where Robert would pick them up and put them through the same routine, drifting inconspicuously through the city to the station. Most were POWs, but there were a few refugees from the death camps as well. He lost count of the numbers but figured that he must have put at least 150 souls aboard trains during those couple of days at Kraków.

  But the soul he had most wanted to bring to freedom – the ticket he had most wanted to buy – was not among them. Baby Kasia had not made it through that cold night on the outskirts of the city. Robert’s heart had come close to breaking as they laid her to rest, still wrapped in his scarf, on a secluded patch of ground near the roadside and raised a little cairn of stones over her. She had found a different kind of freedom from the pain of the world.

  THE LITTLE STOCK of rations was long gone, and his money vest was almost empty. It was time to go back to Poltava and replenish his supplies. The thousands of dollars Robert had brought had been spent in a few days; he would need to bring more next time. Altogether, the money had set almost 200 people on the road to freedom, but there must be thousands more out there.

  Robert had almost completely forgotten about the bird dog who’d accompanied him from Rzeszów and was surprised to find him still at the hotel. Like his predecessor in Lwów, the man was annoyed at being abandoned, and probably worried about his neck if his superiors found out. Robert spun him a tale about following up a report on a downed bomber which had turned into a wild goose chase, and the man seemed satisfied.

  The bird dog got them places on a flight to Lwów, where they managed to pick up one of the regular Russian transports going to Poltava. Robert had a hard time believing that less than ten days had passed since he’d taken off from the base, still confused, innocent, and rather naive for a combat veteran.

  When he gave his various reports to Colonel Hampton, Major Kowal, and Captain Fitchen, it was difficult to recall some details, and impossible not to fixate on others. Describing the inside of the Birkenau camp, he broke down, and had to pause and collect himself before going on. It wasn’t just what he’d experienced personally in Poland that had affected him, it was what he had learned about the world and about human nature. Something in him had altered, and would never be quite the same again.

  Kowal and Hampton had seen for themselves some of the things Robert described – the atrocities committed by Russian troops against Polish citizens, in particular – and sympathized with the emotions he felt. But Auschwitz was altogether outside their experience.

  To Robert’s surprise, Hampton told him that he would be taking a break from his mission. Hopes were high at the Military Mission that the Soviets had had a change of heart about POWs. Colonel Wilmeth and Colonel Kingsbury, having been kept confined to Poltava for the past ten days, had been joined two days ago by a second small team from Moscow, led by a Major Paul Hall, which was intended to go to Odessa and inspect the reception facilities for POWs there. The Soviets had blocked Major Hall as well. However, word had now come through that both teams were definitely going to be allowed to proceed.5 A Russian plane was being provided to take Colonel Wilmeth’s party to Lublin in Poland, and Major Hall would be flown to Odessa. Both officers were busily preparing the huge quantities of equipment and supplies that would be needed.

  It sounded too good to be true, but Moscow had decided to treat the Russian concession as being in good faith. Meanwhile, Captain Trimble was going back into Poland with a team of his own – a salvage team. Lieutenant Tillman’s B-17 was still on the ground at Staszów. Robert knew the location, was familiar with the general area, and had been commended by his former commanding officer as a pilot who was skilled at getting bombers into the air from tight spots.

  Robert didn’t know what to think. He suspected that the Russians wouldn’t play nice for long, and his heart went out to all those people who would remain stranded while he was tinkering with broken bombers.6

  There was a little piece of consolation. Having lagged behind him all the way from USSTAF headquarters via the War Department and England, the news finally caught up with him – he had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. A token of appreciation for 35 combat missions’ worth of outstanding service.

  Robert’s spirits couldn’t be kept low for too long; he was cheered to discover that Lieutenant Tillman and his crew were still at Poltava, as large as life and full of beans. They were still waiting for the transport that would take them on the circuitous route back to England. They greeted Robert even more like an old friend than they had at Staszów. Tillman had a camera, and was making a record of his adventure. He snapped Robert’s picture on the step outside the Operations Office. Robert, enjoying the atmosphere of bonhomie, gave the camera a big smile, but the weariness in his eyes couldn’t be disguised.

  A dollar bill was produced – possibly one of the ones Robert had given them – and made into a short snorter, passing from hand to hand for everyone to put their signature on. The tradition had begun back in the 1920s but had caught on in a big way in World War II. A traditional short snorter was meant to commemorate a journey by air; everyone on board would sign the bill, and the owner would preserve it.7 During the war, servicemen had begun using them as autograph books, picking up the signatures of people they met on their travels, scrawled any which way, all over the back and front of the bill.

  Tillman signed the front ‘Lt A.A. Tillman, Air Corps’,8 and copilot Stan Neese added his name beside it. Next came navigator Cornelius F. Daly, squeezed into the gap along the top edge. Robert inscribed ‘R.M. Trimble, Capt. A.C.’ on the back, and in the margin, in commemoration of the rescue from Staszów, he added ‘Fighting Bastard of the Ukraine – 25 Feb 45’.9

  Only the officers signed the snorter. (There were social barriers even among combat airmen.)10 Robert didn’t notice who had produced the bill, and didn’t see who kept it. The snorter went on its way, gathering more signatures, and eventually vanished and was forgotten, along with the other human minutiae of the war.11

  That day in 1945, Robert was again conscious of the gap that separated him from these other young men. Horsing around, posing for pictures, they seemed so carefree. Physically they were hardly more than boys, with the innocence of childhood still in them; but they were also men of war. Their bombs had inflicted death and devastation. They had seen friends die; they had faced death themselves and withstood it, and would go on to face it again and again before this war was done, and maybe succumb. And yet they were still youths at heart, each man believing himself the immortal center of his own universe.

  It was only
when you saw the suffering and the aftermath up close, lived among it, and knew that your own world and everything in it was just as vulnerable to the inferno – only then did you discover your place and your purpose. Robert Trimble had been to the abyss, and looked over the edge, and could never see anything the same way again.

  Chapter 9

  NIGHT OF THE COSSACKS

  17 MARCH 1945: POLTAVA – THREE WEEKS LATER

  IN A POOL of light cast by a single desk lamp, Captain Trimble sat alone in the gloom of the deserted Operations Office. He took a sheet of paper and fed it into the typewriter.

  HEADQUARTERS

  EASTERN COMMAND

  US STRATEGIC AIR FORCES IN EUROPE

  APO 798

  RMT/rte

  17 March 1945

  SUBJECT: Report on Flight to Rzeszow, Staszow, Lwow, Poland.

  He paused and stared at the row of place names. How innocuous they looked on paper. Yet the memories associated with them were still raw, and would never entirely heal – wounds on top of wounds.

  It was late, and Robert was dog-tired. It had been a tough flight back from Lwów. His ears still rang with the din of the B-17’s rough-running engines, and he could still feel the vibrating controls in his hands. Everyone else had gone to their bunks, and he longed for his, but HQ wanted this report instantly. He’d be stuck in front of this typewriter all night if need be.

  Captain Trimble was in hot water, and they wanted his side of the story. He’d pushed his luck this time, and his mission was hanging in the balance.

  After his reunion with the Tillman crew, Robert had been back at Poltava only 48 hours when the time came for him to load up and leave again. He put his kit together, drew rations for his team, got a batch of cash from the finance officer, and prepared to head back to Poland to begin salvage work on Lieutenant Tillman’s B-17 Flying Fortress.

  Colonel Wilmeth and his team were simultaneously preparing to fly to Lublin and inspect the POW facilities there. Moscow was holding its breath. If the POW situation started to rectify itself, Robert’s mission might not need to be continued. Personally, Robert wouldn’t lay a bent nickel on it, and he wasn’t the only one. It was maddening to have to suspend his work just when it was getting going, when he knew there were thousands of lost souls still out there in the cold wilderness …

  He forced his attention back to the typewriter. Where to begin? The events of the last three weeks were a confused and bewildering sequence of vivid memories and blurs, many of which had no place in an official report. The bullets pinging through the fuselage in the dead of night; the grinning, bearded giant thrusting a cup of rotgut liquor at him; the drag marks in the snow and the freshly turned earth in the quiet woodland; the terrifying flight into a snowstorm; the feel of the pistol in his fist; and the pitiful looks in the eyes of the emaciated prisoners.

  Always the POWs; it always came back to them. Whatever headquarters might say, there was no escaping his true mission; it had pursued him and caught up with him even when he was diverted to other duties.

  It was getting late, and the report still wasn’t written. Again, he focused his attention. Begin at the beginning.

  One of the base’s C-47s had been made available for the salvage operation. Robert and his team loaded their gear aboard. There were seven men altogether, including Captain Trimble as pilot and leader.

  Lieutenant Tyler E. Jessee was a seasoned navigator. He had come to this part of the world when he and his pals bailed out of their B-24 over Poland back in December. He had a good knowledge of the lie of the land and knew first-hand the political tensions, having been picked up by Polish partisans before being handed over to the Russians.1 Rather than being evacuated back to his unit (the 460th Bomb Group, based in Italy), he had joined the staff of Eastern Command.

  First Sergeant John Matles was from the Military Mission in Moscow.2 A very smart Romanian-born New Yorker, he had been an engineer before the war, a skill which would make him useful on this operation. His greatest value, though, was as an interpreter. Aside from English and his native Romanian, he spoke good Russian and Polish. It was his linguistic talent, his intelligence, and his commanding personality that had raised him – a mere sergeant – to a position of distinction in the US military-diplomatic service.

  In addition, there was a crew of four mechanics to fix up the downed B-17, under crew chief Sergeant Picarelli, another New Yorker. There were also two Americans catching a ride as far as Rzeszów. Aside from their personal kit and rations, the salvage crew filled up the C-47 with tools, spare parts, and a supply of gasoline. Then they waited for the Russian flight crew.

  Americans were not permitted to fly transport planes in and out of Poltava. Sometimes mixed crews were allowed, but the pilot had to be a Soviet officer. It was with sinking hearts that Robert and his men learned that their pilot for the trip to Staszów was to be Lieutenant Roklikov.

  Roklikov was notorious. He was careless, arrogant, and dangerous. Many military pilots had a daredevil streak (Robert himself was no exception, as RAF Balloon Command personnel could testify), but Roklikov was truly crazy – and incompetent with it. Colonel Hampton and General Hill had tried many times to persuade the Soviets to suspend him or transfer him elsewhere, but they never would. Maybe he was the son of somebody powerful, or had some nefarious role at Poltava; whatever it was, the Soviet commander, General Kovalev, would not accept that Roklikov was anything other than a brilliantly skilled, courageous pilot.

  It had required a determined stand by the very highest authority to remove him from just a single flight. Back in January, he was scheduled to pilot a C-47 from Moscow to the Crimea, carrying a group of senior officers from SHAEF headquarters to the Yalta Conference. They included General Eisenhower’s deputy, Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder. Tedder had heard about Roklikov from Colonel Hampton.3 Using the full weight of his authority, he argued with the Russians – taking it all the way to a marshal of the Soviet Air Force – and refused to be flown by the mad lieutenant. They relented, and Colonel Hampton piloted the plane to Yalta, with Tedder himself as co-pilot.

  Lesser authorities than the deputy commander-in-chief could try to go against the will of the Soviets, but they’d be wasting their time. And so Roklikov carried on flying routes in and out of Poltava. His attitude never changed, and his skills did not improve.

  Thinking about Roklikov got Robert sufficiently annoyed to overcome his tiredness as he wrote his report. The Russian’s misbehavior had begun the moment the C-47’s wheels left the runway. Robert began punching the typewriter keys:

  On take-off, Lt. Roklikov improperly flew over headquarters building, very low, with eight (8) barrels of 100 octane gasoline on board and nine (9) American personnel.

  The trip to Rzeszow was uneventful. At Staszow there was question as to whether the field was suitable for landing.

  That was when the fun really started. Having been to the crashlanding site, Robert knew the situation. The field was five miles outside the city. With no reliable road transport available to haul the parts and fuel, there was no choice but to locate a farm field big enough to land in, as close as possible to the Fortress.

  Robert, sitting in the freight compartment with his team and their mountains of stuff (several of the men, including Robert, were using the gasoline barrels as seats), could feel the C-47 descending and circling. His pilot’s sixth sense told him something wasn’t right – which was par for the course with Roklikov.

  Maiya, the Red Army interpreter, appeared in the forward doorway, looking anxious. It was a look she did well, with her, large, expressive doe eyes. This was the first time Robert had traveled with her since the journey to Auschwitz. ‘Captain Trimble will come to the cockpit, please?’ she shouted over the noise of the engines.

  Captain Trimble came to the cockpit, and didn’t like what he found there. Lieutenant Roklikov was experiencing an uncharacteristic moment of doubt. Through Maiya, he indicated that he would like Robert to take a look at the f
ield and say whether it was suitable for landing. The co-pilot stood aside, and Robert took his seat.

  ‘What do you think?’ Roklikov asked through Maiya. ‘Can we land?’

  Robert surveyed the landscape. It wasn’t as flat as the Ukrainian steppe, but it was fairly level, and some of the fields, although narrow, were long. With all the snow, it wasn’t easy to make out the boundaries, and the fields were interspersed with patches of woodland and what looked like fishponds or small lakes. He made out the shape of the stranded B-17, lying with its nose in the trees, and the gouges it had left in the field and hedgerow as it made its emergency landing. Robert instructed Roklikov to pick a field he liked the look of and ‘drag’ it to test its suitability.

  The Russian couldn’t even do that properly. He picked a field and, instead of dragging it at low altitude, just above stalling speed – a dry-run technique to test the length – he buzzed it, tearing through at high speed, almost brushing the treetops.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Robert said. ‘I didn’t even see it. What do you think?’

  Roklikov shrugged. ‘It’s all right, I think.’

  Figuring there wasn’t much point asking him to drag it again, Robert gave his consent to land. What followed was one of the worst displays of incompetent piloting he’d ever experienced. A cadet would have been ashamed of it. He was just glad he was strapped into a proper seat when it happened.

  Instead of turning into the wind – the simplest, most fundamental principle of landing a plane – Roklikov made his approach with the wind behind him. Robert could see the direction of the wind from the smoke of a distant factory stack. Not only was the direction obviously adverse, it was also a stiff breeze, about twenty miles per hour. Moreover, Roklikov had picked the very field the B-17 had tried to land in.