by Lee Trimble
Wilmeth challenged the Russians about the way they were housing the ex-prisoners in prison-like conditions rather than just sending them on their way to freedom. They needn’t even go to Odessa, he argued; Eastern Command had plenty of planes and could fly the POWs out to Poltava twenty at a time, making several flights a day. The Soviets told him that would not be possible. There were no airfields at Lublin, or at any of the other POW concentration points. Wilmeth knew from speaking to American pilots at Poltava, as well as from the evidence of his own eyes, that all the towns had airstrips. Anyway, American pilots could land and take off from a field if it was large enough. The Russians flatly denied this: there were no proper airfields and it was not possible to take off from an ordinary field.
In that case, Wilmeth asked, why could the ex-prisoners not be put on trains to Odessa or Poltava as soon as they came into Lublin? Why keep them confined for days and weeks? Because, came the Soviet response, the trains to Odessa were intermittent, and there was no rail connection to Poltava. Colonel Wilmeth visited the Lublin rail station and spoke to the Polish stationmaster. Why yes, there was a train to Odessa every day, the stationmaster said, and there were regular trains to Poltava as well. But the Russians continued to insist that there were not. And anyway, no travel could take place without proper permits, and these could not be obtained instantly.
On 28 February, his second day in Lublin, Colonel Wilmeth met Colonel Vlasov, the Soviet head of POW repatriation in Poland, who came all the way from his new headquarters at Praga (by plane, from one non-existent airfield to another) to take a look at the American interloper.
The meeting took place in the office of the town commandant. It was rather crowded, with all the Soviet officers who had been at the previous meeting attending this one also. Wilmeth quizzed Colonel Vlasov on how many ex-prisoners had so far been evacuated to Odessa. More than 3,000 Americans, Vlasov claimed, 800 of them having been sent by rail just in the past week. (He was lying; 3,000 was more than the entire number of American POWs received at Odessa throughout the whole period;18 but Wilmeth didn’t know that then.) And how many were still unaccounted for in Poland? How many altogether had been liberated from POW camps by the Red Army? Vlasov did not know.
Colonel Wilmeth felt that this was not good enough. It was time to stop pandering to these Soviets, he decided.
‘Colonel Vlasov,’ he said, ‘I would like you to obtain permission for me to’ – he counted off on his fingers – ‘one, move to Praga to cooperate with your department there; two, have direct communication with the Military Mission in Moscow; three, visit all the POW collecting points at Praga, Kraków, Łódź, and the two yet to be established, wherever they may be; and four, to visit Odessa.’19
Vlasov’s face darkened as Wilmeth’s requests were communicated to him by his interpreter. ‘Colonel Wilmeth,’ he replied, ‘I believe it has already been suggested to you by Captain Purtautov’ – this was the bird dog who accompanied the American party everywhere – ‘that you and your comrades go back to Poltava soon. I endorse that suggestion. You should return there tomorrow, and await the answer to your requests.’
‘I’m not returning to Poltava,’ Wilmeth said. ‘On the contrary, more Americans are coming here. Ten contact teams are currently en route from Great Britain via Tehran. The teams, each with an airplane and a jeep, will go to each of the POW collection points in Poland. The Soviet government will provide billets and food, and the United States government will provide everything else.’
As an attempt to bulldoze the Soviets, it was imaginative and bold, but completely ineffectual. It was true that ten small POW contact teams were coming from London, but so far they had yet to be granted entry to the USSR.
Colonel Vlasov was unfazed; he suggested blandly that Colonel Wilmeth might like to go to Moscow to discuss the plan with General Golubev, the Soviet officer in charge of POW affairs. Colonel Wilmeth declined. His patience was almost worn away now.
‘Just this month,’ he said angrily, ‘the President of the United States and Marshal Stalin both signed an agreement at the Yalta Conference. It contained provisions for the handling of liberated prisoners of war. That agreement, signed by Marshal Stalin himself, gives me the right to receive immediate information about released Americans and to have immediate access to the camps where they are being held.’ He stared at Vlasov. ‘I have a copy of the agreement with me. Would you like me to loan it to you? You could read it tonight.’
Colonel Vlasov declined the offer. The meeting came to a frigid end.
That had been a week ago now, Wilmeth reflected as he gazed across the rooftops of Lublin, and he had made barely any progress since.
The day after the meeting with Vlasov, 267 American and British POWs were loaded aboard a train and dispatched to Odessa. More continued to drift into town. They were put in the same stinking, ramshackle building. Over the ensuing days, using what limited money he had, Wilmeth purchased soap and toothbrushes for the POWs, as well as lightbulbs, brushes and brooms, and other requisites to make the building more habitable. He also bought picks and shovels so the men could dig latrines.
He tried repeatedly to make contact with the Military Mission in Moscow, requesting more money and reporting the situation, but his messages didn’t seem to get through the Soviet system.20 He asked if he could contact Moscow or Poltava by radio, but the Russians told him there was no radio available. What about the one in the plane he had come in? he asked. It was broken, they told him. The barefacedness of the Soviets’ lies was breathtaking.
If it hadn’t been for the Polish people, Colonel Wilmeth’s mission might have been utterly futile. With each batch of prisoners that came into town, he heard stories of the help that ordinary Poles had given. They had taken the wandering foreigners into their homes, in spite of the risk of trouble from the Russians, and fed them despite the fact that they had so little themselves. In Lublin, the Polish Red Cross provided meals for newly arrived POWs, arranged billets with local families to ease congestion in the official camp block, provided medical facilities and paid hospital bills for the sick, and even helped buy gasoline for Colonel Wilmeth’s jeep. To avoid the ruinous official rates for exchanging dollars for rubles and zlotys, and barred by regulations from using the more profitable black market exchange, Wilmeth came to an agreement whereby the US Embassy would reimburse the American Red Cross in Moscow.21
By prior agreement with his British counterpart in Moscow, Wilmeth shouldered responsibility for caring for British POWs to the same degree as Americans. He visited French POWs, who were kept in a separate camp, in conditions even more squalid. The burden of responsibility was almost too much to bear. As the days went by, no messages reached Wilmeth from General Deane.
Convinced that the Soviets were blocking communications both ways, Wilmeth decided to get a message to Deane directly. On 5 March he made four copies of a report containing a true account of his experiences in Lublin thus far, put the papers in sealed packets, and gave them to four trusted POWs – two Americans and two British.22 He put the four men aboard a train to Moscow, with instructions to deliver the packets into the hands of General Deane. Of the four, surely at least one would get through.
On 7 March, another batch of POWs was prepared for departure. Fifty-four American and British prisoners were given a rudimentary wash, had their clothes disinfected, and were loaded into a boxcar destined for Odessa.
Among them was Sergeant Richard J. Beadle, who had arrived from Warsaw three days earlier, after his arduous month-long journey from Stalag III-C.
The boxcar stood in the Lublin marshaling yard all that night and most of the next day before finally being hitched to a train and departing. The Russian commander of the holding camp said that the delay was a punishment for the men’s poor discipline during bathing earlier.
A couple of days later, Colonel Wilmeth was informed by Colonel Vlasov that two of his secret Moscow-bound couriers – the American officers – had been caught and detained at
Warsaw, where they had been trying to board a plane.23 Red Air Force guards had also arrested an American ex-POW doctor Wilmeth had sent to a camp near Warsaw to investigate a report that there were hundreds of sick Americans there. Vlasov was furious; Wilmeth had no right to send unauthorized messengers through Soviet territory. Wilmeth insisted that he had every right. Again he offered to let Vlasov read his copy of the Yalta agreement.
Colonel Wilmeth went on with his tasks with a heavy heart, but also with iron in his soul. From this moment on, he would have to fight every step of the way just to be allowed to stay in Lublin, let alone do any good. Meanwhile, two of his secret messengers were still at liberty and might still get the truth to General Deane.
9 MARCH 1945: BETWEEN LUBLIN AND THE UKRAINIAN BORDER
SERGEANT BEADLE WAS woken from a fitful doze by the jolting of the boxcar as it came to a halt. Looking out through a gap in the boards, he saw buildings: a rail station and a town beyond. Where they were he had no idea; just another stop on the tortuously slow journey. In the two days since it had been loaded up in Lublin, Beadle reckoned, the train couldn’t have covered more than 40 or 50 miles.
Near him other men were waking up and looking around, in that slow, painful way of men who are cold to the bone. Some went on sleeping. Others just stared, hollow-eyed, at nothing. A few were cheerful; just the belief that they were heading for home was enough for them. There were more than 50 men in the car;24 it was so crowded they could only lie down to sleep in shifts. The Russians had given them some food – black bread, a little luncheon meat, and some sugar and oatmeal – but it had run out some time ago. The boxcar had no source of heat, and it was bitterly cold.
With an effort, Beadle slid back the door and dropped onto the snow beside the track, stamping his feet to try and bring them to life; along the train, made up of a mixture of boxcars, other people were doing the same. Private Ronald Gould followed Beadle out of the car. Gould was English, an infantryman from the Royal East Kent Regiment – traditionally called ‘The Buffs’ – who had also served in the Italian campaign. The Buffs had been fighting at Monte Cassino while the 45th was at Anzio.25 The two men had met in Lublin and formed one of those instantaneous bonds that spring up among fugitives and refugees; the temporary friendship of lost souls.
They looked up and down the tracks and across at the town beyond the station. Would it be safe to venture out? They had a little cash between them; they could try to buy some food. They knew by now that once this train stopped, it would probably be hours before it got going again. But maybe they shouldn’t risk it. If the train did go without them, they’d be screwed.
Growing more and more hungry, Beadle and Gould waited in the boxcar as the hours dragged by. There was no sign of the train going any further today. Eventually they couldn’t stand it any longer. They jumped out, hurried across the tracks, and plunged into the streets around the station, searching for somewhere they might be able to eat. It took a while, but they eventually found a place to buy some food, and then began hurrying back toward the station. Dreadful as it was, the boxcar had become their haven: the only route to home and freedom.
It had gone. The section of track where the train had stood for hour upon endless hour was empty.
Their bad luck was almost beyond belief. If they’d gone into town when they first thought of it, rather than being cautious, they would now be rolling on toward Odessa with their bellies filled.
All was not lost. They had identification papers and a little money. There were other trains they could board, even if they had to wait. Eventually they managed to get aboard a train traveling east. At the Ukrainian border,26 they were forced to disembark by Russian soldiers. They stepped off the train and into a maze of Soviet bureaucracy. Their identification papers were not adequate; they would need new ones. Given into the care of two Russian official ‘guides’ (armed guards), Beadle and Gould were taken to a town some twenty miles further east, where the Communist commandant would issue them with the appropriate papers.
At this next town, they acquired three new traveling companions who were in the same situation. Two were British ex-prisoners of war from Lublin who were trying to get to Moscow: a Scottish sergeant called Montgomery and Flying Officer Panniers of the Royal Air Force.27 The third man was a Canadian civilian. The town commandant gave all five men the papers they required. Then he informed them that they should proceed to Lwów. That meant heading back into Poland – back the way they had come. To compound their confusion and dismay, there was a mix-up, and the five men were taken into the custody of two new guards for the journey to Lwów. Aboard the train it was discovered that their newly issued papers, which had been in the possession of the previous guards, were now lost.
At least it wasn’t far to Lwów, and they had a little food: a loaf-and-a-half of black bread and ten grams of sugar (about two teaspoons) between the five of them. The ramshackle little party disembarked at Lwów station. Their guards told them that they would escort them to the Lwów commandant, who would give them another new set of papers. Beadle and his friends pleaded for food. The guards refused: no food until they had seen the commandant.
As they shambled out under the grand arched entrance of the railroad station and set off down the broad, tree-lined avenue that led to the city center, it seemed to Sergeant Beadle that he would never find his way out of this cursed country. He was doomed to shuttle slowly from one commandant to another, back and forth, collecting more and more useless sets of papers, getting colder and hungrier until he finally died of despair.
Lost in thought and faint with hunger and fatigue, he hardly noticed at first the two men walking toward the little group, apparently on their way to the station. When he realized that they were looking curiously at the prisoners, he studied them closely. They were wrapped up against the cold, but they were dressed unmistakably in American uniform. Proper uniform, not the ragged remnants worn by POWs. One was an Army Air Force officer, a young fellow with an open, friendly face; the other was a sergeant, stocky, dark, and serious-looking.
Beadle halted; so did the two Americans.
‘Help,’ Beadle said, and took a step toward them. ‘Help us, please.’
Chapter 12
AMERICAN GENTLEMEN
6 MARCH 1945: BETWEEN RZESZÓW AND LWÓW
AT FIRST, IT was just flecks of snow that flickered past the cockpit windows of the B-17. But within minutes, the flecks had grown to a thick cascade splattering against the windshield. Visibility dropped dramatically. Captain Robert Trimble glanced at the compass and the other instruments, and eased the control column forward, dropping the bomber gently down to a lower altitude. At around 500 feet, in the failing light and the snow, he could just about make out the railroad tracks he’d been following for the past ten miles.
Getting to Poltava was going to be harder than he’d anticipated.
The journey that had started in the field near Staszów yesterday morning had begun to get interesting a few minutes after take-off. Robert had made a rapid turn to get on course for Lwów before the plane’s meager supply of fuel was exhausted. It was no use; so much had been used up taxiing the salvaged aircraft to its take-off field, there wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to make it. When number three engine sputtered and cut out, Robert decided to head for the Soviet airfield at Rzeszów and make an emergency landing. He, Lieutenant Jessee, and Sergeants Picarelli and Matles stayed the night there. The Russians were hospitable, as they invariably were when they didn’t feel suspicious of you. Evidently the Soviet colonel’s complaint about Captain Trimble’s behavior had not reached Rzeszów. Next morning, unaware of any reason to detain it, the Russians happily refueled the B-17 and allowed it to fly on.
With the tanks full, Robert had hoped to skip Lwów and reach Poltava in one hop. He was anxious to be done with this side mission and return to what he now viewed as his sole purpose in this country – getting American prisoners home.
But the weather had been deterioratin
g for days, and it was starting to snow as they boarded the plane. This wasn’t looking good. But the journey wasn’t a long one, and the snow was sparse. Robert’s flight plan was indirect; with no proper maps for Lieutenant Jessee to work with, they were reduced to following the railroad tracks, the compass, and Jessee’s own knowledge of the lie of the land between Kraków, Lwów, and Poltava. Robert flew at a perilously low altitude, where the dark strand of the railroad showed clearly against the snowy landscape.
For the first few miles out of Rzeszów it went well, but the snow suddenly worsened: the few flakes multiplied rapidly into a vortex, an onslaught of snow that obscured the view, while down below it settled on the tracks, gradually erasing their dark line.
Robert’s gut reaction was to drop still lower, and he eased down to 200 feet – dangerously low even in good weather – and then lower still. His eyes were tearing up with the cold and the strain of looking for the fading tracks. Somewhere ahead, dozens of miles away but rushing toward them at about 150 miles per hour, was the city of Lwów. As far as Robert could recall, it had few, if any, buildings higher than three or four stories. But there would be factory smokestacks scattered about. At least there wouldn’t be any barrage balloons.
Suddenly a tall smokestack loomed up; not dead ahead, but close enough to give Robert and Picarelli a nasty start. It was no use – they would have to climb. Staying at this altitude was too dangerous, and the tracks could hardly be seen anyway. Robert pulled back on the column and the B-17 rose back up past 1,000 feet. From this point on all they had was the Fortress’s instruments and their wits. Jessee would have to navigate by dead reckoning, using their compass bearing and speed to calculate their position minute by minute.