by Lee Trimble
Ignoring Robert’s warning, Roklikov carried on, preventing the C-47 from stalling out by extending the flaps to their fullest and keeping the speed up. They were going far too fast. Roklikov hit the treetops at the edge of the field, then dropped the plane down sharply into it. The wheels hit the turf with a savage jolt that shook the whole aircraft to its uttermost nuts and rivets. Hurtling and bouncing up the field, rapidly running out of space, Roklikov jammed both feet hard on the brake pedals; the C-47 lurched forwardly violently, almost tipping over on its nose, before settling tail-down and slewing to a shuddering halt, just 40 feet short of the pines at the end of the field.
The crew and passengers emerged from the plane physically and emotionally shaken. They were in the midst of a featureless, snow-covered field, and dusk wasn’t far away. Robert and his team inspected the C-47 and found that both flaps and both elevators had been damaged, probably where they’d hit the treetops on the approach. Wonderful – now they had two planes to fix. Lieutenant Roklikov seemed to think he’d done a pretty decent job in the circumstances.4
Maiya approached Captain Trimble. ‘Where will you and your men sleep tonight?’
He’d made up his mind about this before leaving Poltava. He’d stayed at the Red Army quarters at Staszów before, en route to Kraków, and didn’t fancy repeating the experience. ‘We’ll sleep in the plane,’ he said.
There was shock and a trace of anxiety in her eyes. ‘You will not come into the town with us?’
No, they wouldn’t. Aside from the fact that they had no transportation for their personal luggage, it was a five-mile walk. Also, the plane was full of valuable parts, tools, and gasoline. Maiya tried to persuade him, but he insisted: the Americans would stay in the plane.
While this conversation was going on, one of Robert’s men, who had wandered off toward the road, had met a Polish woman who lived nearby.5 Hearing about their situation, she invited the whole crew to stay the night at her home. Robert agreed gladly, and dispatched two of his men to go with her and get a cart to transport the luggage.
What happened next still made Robert seethe. The typewriter keys clacked loudly as he typed …
While they were gone, the Russian crew left for Staszow, walking. The Russian crew went into this lady’s house while the two Americans were there and informed her that if the American personnel stayed there it would mean trouble for her, therefore, the first night was spent in the C-47.
They arranged themselves as best they could inside the cargo compartment, and after a meal they bedded down. Robert, who was growing accustomed to improvised sleeping conditions, arranged himself a bunk by laying out his bedroll on top of the fuel barrels. Some of the other guys lay on the benches or the stretcher supports that were fitted for transporting wounded. It was going to be a cold and uncomfortable night.
How long they had lain there when the first faint rumbling sound began, nobody was sure. It came from somewhere in the distance, growing rapidly, a thumping, grumbling sound that was unmistakably that of horses running – lots of them. Peering out the window, Robert could make out the shapes of horsemen in the silvery light of the full moon – Cossacks, two dozen of them cantering in a circle around the plane, brandishing their weapons and whooping like a Sioux war party. That was worrying enough. Then they started shooting.
It was a sound that every combat airman knew and hated: the ping of bullets piercing the Alclad skin of an airplane. Who were these guys, and why were they shooting? Was this an enemy raid? There were Cossacks in German service as well as in the Red Army. But this was a hell of a long way from the front line. As another round zinged through the fuselage, Robert became acutely conscious of the eight 55-gallon barrels of high-octane fuel he was lying on. One bullet in the wrong place, a spark, and they’d all go up in one almighty fireball.
Something had to be done. Defense was out of the question; between the seven of them they had only their side-arms, against more than twenty Cossack riders armed to the teeth. A couple of the men hastily improvised a flag from a pole and a white rag, opened the cargo door an inch, and waved it. There was a distant shout, and instantly the firing stopped. The thundering hoofbeats slowed and came closer.
A few of the Cossacks trotted up to the door and dismounted – a little unsteadily. One of them was clutching what appeared to be a liquor jug. He was a huge man, like an unholy hybrid of Santa Claus and Genghis Khan, with a great black beard, a fur hat, and bandoliers across his broad chest. He barked an incomprehensible inquiry in slurred Russian.
‘Ya amerikanets,’ Robert said. ‘Americans.’
‘Amerikantsy?’ Genghis repeated. His hedgerow beard opened up in a broad grin. ‘Amerikantsy!’ he cried. He turned to his men and shouted: ‘Amerikantsy!’ They all laughed uproariously. Robert wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. They were a forbidding band. They all wore heavy fur caps and long riding coats, but all different (the Cossacks had a casual notion of uniform when on active service), and all were armed to their grinning teeth.
Genghis tilted his head back, took a slug from his liquor jug, and thrust it at Robert with a grunt that could have been a threat or an invitation. Guessing it was the latter, Robert took the jug. He recognized the stuff: the local blue-colored beetroot liquor they called ‘three beets’. Looking around the ring of satanic faces, he felt like it was drink or die. He drank. Genghis was delighted. More jugs were produced and passed from hand to hand. The Cossacks drank; the Americans drank. There seemed to be no shortage of the stuff.
By this time, some of the Cossacks had a campfire going. The Americans were exhorted to come out of their plane and join them at the fireside. A couple of the Cossacks brought out instruments, and soon there was singing and dancing. To the accompaniment of the wild, fiery music, clapping and laughter, the riders took turns at the hopak, the Ukrainian folk dance, squatting and kicking in the firelight. Robert and his men, who by now were half-plastered, were not allowed to sit out the dance, and there were roars of laughter all round at their attempts to mimic the squat-kicking steps. Presiding over it all was the bearded bulk of Genghis, with his ever-present jug of three beets.
It was an image from a dream, burning itself into Robert’s memory: the Slavonic faces in the flickering firelight, beards split by demonic grins. Most wore crossed bandoliers, some with an extra one as a belt; they sported rows of gaziri across their chests, the cigar-like pouches that had originally been for gunpowder cartridges but were now just decoration. In the Russian tradition, they displayed their medals on their coats. Every man was heavily armed – aside from their rifles, each had a shashka at his belt – a huge weapon like a cross between a cleaver and a short sword. With the heady music, the reek of liquor and woodsmoke, and somewhere off in the darkness, the snorting and chafing of the hobbled horses, a man could imagine himself having strayed into another age of the world …
The next morning, Robert woke face-down in the snow beside the embers of the fire. Luckily, his parka and the dying warmth of the fire had saved him from hypothermia. His head was out of bounds, and his tongue seemed to have gone AWOL. He looked up just in time to see Genghis emerge from the door of the C-47, where he’d apparently spent the night on a very convenient bed made up on top of some fuel barrels. He spotted Robert, strode over, and embraced him. He slapped him on the back, and laughed as Robert stumbled to his knees and puked in the snow.
Around them harnesses were jingling as the horsemen mounted up. Genghis swung into the saddle, called an order, and they wheeled about. Spurring their horses to a canter, they took off across the snowy field and were gone, like smoke on the wind.
Chapter 10
RUSSIAN ROULETTE
MEMORABLE AS IT had been, the night of the Cossacks was best left out of the report. Skipping discreetly over it, Robert inserted a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter and continued his sanitized version of the narrative:
The next day quarters were arranged at another Polish house, and the remaining nights wer
e spent there.
This time they ensured that the Russians didn’t know about the arrangement.
By the time Maiya and the Russian crew returned from Staszów – having walked all the way – it was one o’clock in the afternoon, and the Americans’ hangovers had faded. This turned out to be the pattern every day (the late arrival of the Russians, not the hangovers). Robert suggested the Russians get up earlier in the morning. They were supposed to be helping with the salvage operation, but couldn’t be much use if they only put in half a day’s work each day. But nothing changed, and in customary Soviet fashion they contributed more in the way of obstruction and irritation than practical aid.
Meanwhile, Robert and his crew got on with the task of making the B-17 airworthy. They walked over to the field, and there she was, the nameless ‘687’, right where Tillman had left her, with her wheels in a ditch and her Plexiglas nose among the trees. An inspection showed that work needed to be done on the engines, props and landing gear, all of which had suffered damage either in combat or in the forced landing. Three engines were dead, and the fuselage was peppered with flak holes, some as big as baseballs.
With limited tools, no lifting gear, no transportation or power, it was going to be a hard slog. And the weather was deteriorating too. The sky, which had been bright for a couple of days, was growing sullen with snow.
As pilot, Robert’s second concern was how he was going to get this bird off the ground once it was patched up. The field it was in was no good at all: far too short. He searched around and found a neighboring field that might be just about big enough – if they were lucky. In order to get there the Fort would have to be taxied, which would burn up precious fuel. Also, between this field and the other was a ditch, which would have to be crossed somehow. Robert assigned the Russians the task of building a small bridge across it. And a path would need to be cut through the trees.
There was also the C-47 to be repaired, thanks to Roklikov. The flaps could be fixed in situ, but the elevators couldn’t. New ones would have to be flown in from Poltava. Maiya said they could be fixed at the Soviet air base at Rzeszów, but unfortunately the bridges between here and there had been blown. And they had no transportation anyway. Maiya asked Sergeant Picarelli, Robert’s crew chief, if he could give the Russians some oil from the C-47 so that they could fix up a truck they knew about in Staszów, which they could use to make their daily journey in reasonable time.
Robert overheard the suggestion, and intervened. Not a chance. Every drop of oil was going to be needed for the planes. He had learned (from the Polish farmer with whom they were staying, although he kept that quiet) that Russian soldiers had been coming at night and stealing oil and gasoline from the stranded bomber. The Americans actually caught them at it one night; the soldiers were threatened with arrest and stayed away. But oil would need to be drained from the C-47 to replenish the B-17. There wasn’t any to spare for trucks.
‘How much oil?’ Maiya asked at the prompting of the Russian mechanic.
‘Forty gallons,’ Robert said. ‘Ten gallons per engine.’
‘That is too much,’ said Maiya, translating the mechanic’s reply. ‘You do not need that much.’
‘I have considerable experience with B-17s and Wright engines,’ Robert said firmly, ‘and so does my crew chief. You do not.’
Over the course of the following week, poor Maiya was the mouthpiece for a regular stream of interference and objections from the Russian crew. She even disputed the field that Captain Trimble had chosen for take-off, insisting that it was impossible to take off from there. Although he had grave doubts of his own, Robert assured her that it would be fine.
He had walked it several times, pacing out the distance. It was about a thousand feet long, down a slope, leveling off in the last hundred feet, at the end of which was a frozen stream with a bank about two feet high. Robert had flown off short runs before, on turf and soft surfaces, but nothing as short as this. What the hell have I taken on here? he asked himself. I’m an idiot. One thousand feet. A B-17 Flying Fortress, fully laden with crew, guns, ammunition, fuel, and bombs, weighed in at 65,000 pounds, and needed 3,500 feet of good runway to get airborne. Even unladen, a Fortress was a monster, and would have trouble taking off in under 1,200 feet – on turf it would need more. And on a surface like this one, with eight inches of snow … it was anybody’s guess.
As if that weren’t enough of a challenge, there were limits to how good a repair job could be done. They fixed two of the damaged engines and replaced some propeller blades, but Sergeant Picarelli had discovered that one of the prop shafts was a little bent. There was nothing they could do about that. ‘She’ll run,’ he said, ‘but she’ll vibrate like hell. Might need to shut her down once you’re airborne.’
So the Fort was going to be underpowered. One thousand feet. It was going to take some skillful piloting. And this Fort was going to have to lose a little weight.
WHILE WORK ON the B-17 was slowly proceeding, an order came through from Poltava – a report of another downed plane that might need retrieving. This one was a little outside Robert Trimble’s experience: a P-51 Mustang fighter. But it was nearby, and needed checking quickly before the Soviets could get a team to it.
Red Army Air Force intelligence was keen to get its hands on all American aircraft types, and had formed top secret test squadrons to evaluate stolen examples.1 Some aircraft were more prized than others. In general, the US government was liberal about giving aviation technology to the Soviet Union: several aircraft types were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease, and the USAAF was generous with technical data on others.2 But there were exceptions. None of America’s cutting-edge technology (such as the Norden computing bombsight) was made available, and the AAF’s core combat aircraft were likewise off-limits. That included B-17 and B-24 bombers. It also included the new, ultra-secret B-29 Superfortress, which at that time was taking the war to Japan in the Pacific. The Russians would do almost anything to get their hands on a B-29, and by 1945 their spies had already accumulated a lot of data on the type. They were equally determined to capture examples of America’s state-of-the-art fighter, the P-51 Mustang.
The Mustang was a wonder of Anglo-American cooperation. Designed by the North American Aviation company, to a British specification, named ‘Mustang’ by the British, and powered by the same Rolls-Royce Merlin engine that drove the Spitfire, the P-51 had become the USAAF’s most successful escort fighter, the only one with the speed and range to take on the Luftwaffe in the furthest reaches of the Reich. Aside from the revolutionary new jet fighters that the British and the Germans were now bringing into service, the Mustang was the most advanced front-line fighter in the world. Whenever one was forced down intact in Soviet territory, there was a race to get to it.
Although the distance from Staszów to the reported landing site wasn’t great, it was much too far to walk. Robert managed to secure transport, and set off with First Sergeant John Matles as interpreter. Maiya and her comrades were left behind, under the watchful eye of Lieutenant Jessee and the repair crew.
In the deteriorating weather, it was a slow journey to the area where the Mustang had supposedly come down. They hadn’t been given precise coordinates, just a local area. After some hours of searching the fields, Captain Trimble and Sergeant Matles hadn’t found any trace of the fighter. Robert wasn’t altogether surprised. Reports of crash-landed aircraft came in all the time from local Soviet units, and were routed to Eastern Command via Moscow. The reports weren’t always reliable, and often salvage teams would go to the landing site and find nothing there.3 But it was annoying.
By this time, it was too late to travel back. Robert spotted a farmhouse and decided to ask if they could bivouac in the barn. It was a small, poor homestead, just a shabby little house and some outbuildings clustered around a dirt yard with a horse trough. But the farmer was friendly. Waving aside the request to sleep in the barn, he invited the two Americans into the house and gave them a bed.
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They paid for his hospitality with news of the war, which he was eager to hear. He lived alone, having lost his wife during the German invasion. They sat long into the evening, talking. The kitchen was cold, with no fire, and it quickly became obvious that the farmer had no food to offer his guests. They offered him a share of the rations they had brought with them. The old man looked embarrassed. Yes, he could use a little, he confessed. He had lost his cow and his chickens recently, and his stock of beets and potatoes from the last harvest was almost gone. Still, at least he had a home, he said, which was more than a lot of Poles could say right now.
While the food was being shared out, Robert took the opportunity to ask about the American plane that was said to have come down near here. Did the farmer know anything about it? No, he didn’t, and he quickly changed the subject. A little later, Robert brought the matter up again; this time the old man pointed out that it was getting late and they should turn in. He brought them a small dish of icy water to wash in, saying apologetically that it was all he had: his well had stopped working, and all his water had to be carried from a stream half a kilometer away.
Robert felt desperately sorry for the old man. His wife gone, and his livestock, his food, his well. It seemed all he had left was his house and himself. From the way things looked to Robert, neither of those seemed likely to survive much longer.
In the morning, the two Americans bade the farmer farewell, having shared their breakfast with him and left him their surplus rations. It might keep him going for a week or two.
As they drove down the cart road from the farm, Robert happened to notice some marks in the snow in the next field: long ruts like the wheel tracks of a small aircraft. Exactly the right size for a single-engine fighter. No sign of a plane, though – just an expanse of snow between the stands of trees with the wheel tracks disappearing into the distance. He pulled up and walked to the gateway.