Beyond the Call

by Lee Trimble

  One of those incidents was Captain Trimble’s arrival at Poltava on 17 March (the day before King) carrying four POWs disguised as American airmen. But that was a small affair – a mere irritant – compared with others that struck the Russians as deeply suspect.

  On 22 March, a B-24 Liberator piloted by Lieutenant Donald Bridge of the 459th Bomb Group, based in Italy, made an emergency landing at the airfield at Mielec, Poland.8 The bomber had run low on fuel during a raid, but was otherwise undamaged. This caused the Soviets to be immediately suspicious, and they barred Lieutenant Bridge from taking off once the plane had been refueled. After two days, Bridge decided that he wasn’t going to wait around for Soviet approval. Claiming that they were just going to check on their personal belongings, he and his crew went out to their aircraft and started it up. Avoiding Russian attempts to block them, they took off and flew back to their base in Italy.

  The very same day that Lieutenant Bridge landed in Poland, another American B-24 took off from the Soviet base at Kecskemét in Hungary, bound for its home base in Italy. On board was a stowaway, a Captain Morris Shenderoff, who was one of the Soviet aircraft engineers at Kecskemét.9 Morris Shenderoff was American by birth and citizenship, but also part-Russian. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, as a teenager he was taken back to the mother country by his Russian parents. The family decided to stay in the Soviet Union. Although young Morris Shenderoff wanted to go home to America, the Soviets took away his US passport.

  When war broke out, Shenderoff, who had become a mechanic, was drafted into the Red Army. After a series of appalling experiences on the Eastern Front, he was severely wounded and transferred to the Air Force. He ended up working as an engineer at the base at Kecskemét. The NKVD were suspicious of him, especially when he made friends with the crew of an American B-24 that was under repair. He told the Americans his story, and the pilot, Lieutenant Charles Raleigh, agreed to fly him out. Shenderoff boarded the B-24 in his capacity as engineer, and the crew took off, telling the Soviets that it was a routine test flight.10 As soon as they were airborne, they set a course and flew to Italy.

  When the bomber landed at Bari in Italy, Shenderoff identified himself to the American authorities and pleaded for asylum, claiming what he believed were his rights as a US citizen. He was taken into custody, interrogated, and detained while a decision was made about what to do with him. The Soviets, furious about his defection, began making strident demands for his return.

  General Antonov informed General Deane that all these Americans’ actions had caused ‘extreme perplexity’ to Red Army Air Force personnel. Indeed, Captain Melamedov, the officer at Mielec who had allowed Lieutenant Bridge’s plane to land was ‘so put out’ that ‘on the very same day he shot himself’.11 Antonov laid all these crimes at the door of General Deane and demanded that he do something about them. While the Soviets waited for a response, all movements of American aircraft and personnel in Soviet territory were barred.

  Tensions escalated further. At Poltava, General Kovalev started laying down plans for dealing with Eastern Command in the event of a sudden escalation to war between the United States and the USSR.12 All he had at his disposal was a technical battalion, an engineering battalion, and a unit of SMERSH, the Red Army’s counterintelligence branch. Each unit was briefed accordingly. If hostilities broke out, the American camp would be surrounded, all American planes and munitions would be seized, and American radio communications would be shut down. Any US personnel caught outside the camp would be detained at special facilities in the city of Poltava.

  The Americans knew nothing of these plans, but they were acutely aware of the atmosphere of tension and imminent breakdown. Eastern Command began working round the clock to secure its classified documents, and it was noticed that the adjutant had begun wearing his pistol on duty.13

  Presented with a choice of a diplomatic – maybe even military – face-off or a conciliation, the United States didn’t hesitate: it chose conciliation. The war wasn’t won yet, and the West might need Soviet help to defeat Japan. The generals and the politicians involved cited sensible reasons for the diplomatic path they took, but in truth the Americans had simply been wrong-footed by the sheer brazen self-righteousness of the Russians. From this moment on, all American pressure on the Russians over the evacuation of ex-prisoners of war came to an end. The day before the Soviet order that grounded American aircraft, Ambassador Harriman had still been up in arms, writing to Foreign Minister Molotov ‘setting forth our complaints regarding the treatment of our prisoners of war liberated by the Red Army’.14 That wouldn’t happen again.

  Official POW contact, such as it was, now passed to the British, who were allowed to send a team into Poland, on terms similar to those endured by Colonel Wilmeth. Having regarded the British as the more suspect of its allies, the Soviet Union now seemed to be coming around to the view that the United States was the one to watch. It was as if the Russians were realizing that the open-handedness of the Americans, with supplies, intelligence, and general cooperation, might be some kind of ruse.

  Lord Halifax, the British ambassador in Washington, advised the US secretary of state that Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, was ‘of the opinion that it would be better for the present not to renew the attempt to secure permission for contact officers to enter Poland’. Eden was convinced that ‘the Soviet Government suspects that the contact officers would, under cover of dealings with prisoners of war, proceed to contact Polish leaders, and, in fact to convert themselves into the proposed Observation Mission’.15 The Observation Mission was a scheme by the British and American governments to place observers in Soviet-occupied Poland to monitor and report on conditions there. Nothing could have been more guaranteed to provoke Soviet anger.

  And so the British and the Americans both began acceding to Soviet demands. At Russia’s insistence, court-martial proceedings were initiated against Lieutenants Donald Bridge and Myron King. In Italy, there were deliberations over whether Morris Shenderoff ought to be sent back to Russia.

  Flexing their muscles, the Soviets escalated their demands still further. They insisted on the removal of senior Eastern Command officers whom they didn’t like. The first to go was the commanding officer, Colonel Hampton. He had aggravated the Russians by commenting negatively on their behavior in Poland, by attempting to expedite Wilmeth’s journey to Lublin, by being combative in his dealings with his Soviet opposite number, and by generally standing up for what he saw as the rights of Americans.

  The Military Mission in Moscow acquiesced, and on 10 April, Colonel Hampton was officially notified that he was being relieved of his command (‘without prejudice’) and reassigned to USSTAF headquarters in Paris.16 As of 11 April, operations officer Major Michael Kowal would assume command. The Soviets were notified accordingly.

  They weren’t satisfied. Lieutenant General Nikolai V. Slavin of the Red Army General Staff, the Soviet liaison officer for the American Military Mission, wrote to General Hill to protest, and General Hill immediately cabled Colonel Hampton: ‘Have just received a letter from Slavin which states that Major Kowal has shown himself to be inamiable and frequently hostile … and was a source of deterioration of relationship.’17 The retention of Major Kowal at Poltava, Slavin said, was ‘absolutely undesirable’. Having held the command for less than a day, Kowal was relieved of it and notified that he too was being reassigned to USSTAF HQ.

  That left Eastern Command with a power vacuum. They had several majors at Poltava, but none of them were flyers. The AAF, like air forces everywhere, had a regulation that the officer in command of an air base must be a rated pilot. It happened that the ranking pilot at Poltava right now was none other than Captain Robert M. Trimble.

  On 12 April, bewildered and reluctant, Robert became the CO of Eastern Command. General Hill asked USSTAF to send a more experienced officer, but it never happened.18 Into the lap of Robert Trimble, the humble captain who’d already had far more than he’d bargained for since leaving Eng
land, fell the task of repairing the diplomatic damage that his actions had helped to cause. If the Soviets were conscious of the irony of appointing the one man who had done more than any other to defy Soviet control in Poland, they never showed it.

  As it turned out, Robert’s first day in command was also very nearly his last.

  FROM DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, 1,400 miles apart, two B-24 Liberators were heading toward Poltava. Both carried passengers who were important, but in very different ways. Both planes were scheduled to stop at Poltava for refueling before heading on again. One of them was destined to almost cause a diplomatic incident.

  The American and Russian commands at Poltava had been notified of the arrival of the two planes. One was coming from Moscow; aboard were General Deane and General Hill, who were en route to the United States. The other was coming from Bari in Italy en route to Moscow, carrying a passenger whose identity was not disclosed.

  Somehow, perhaps due to the shift of command, perhaps due to the strained relations between Americans and Soviets, and certainly due in part to the secrecy surrounding the Moscow-bound plane, wires were crossed, and nobody quite knew which of the two planes was coming in at which time. Eastern Command’s officers were under the mistaken impression that the aircraft from Italy, heading for Moscow on a ‘special Soviet mission’, was a B-17.19

  It was near lunchtime when the tower received word that a B-24 Liberator, call-sign 6E, serial 771, was approaching the field. Personnel who had been on standby were alerted. A ground crew and a refueling crew headed out to the hardstandings. The word spread that this was the Deane and Hill flight. Thoroughly accustomed to greeting planeloads of VIPs during the Yalta Conference, a reception committee of Russian and American officers hopped into jeeps and zoomed away down the road to the field. Among the party was brand-new commanding officer Captain Trimble. Robert wasn’t at all accustomed to VIPs. Colonel Hampton, doing all he could to ease the transition, was accompanying him, and would take the strain of the occasion.

  The heavens had decided to rain on Robert’s first day. The snows had thawed, and Poltava was being steadily soaked by spattering showers. In the open jeeps the officers pulled their collars up and their hats down, and waited for the plane to arrive.

  Robert wondered what was happening in Poland while he was greeting generals. How many Americans were still hiding out or rotting in Soviet holding camps? The grounding of American aircraft, still in force after two weeks, irritated and worried everyone, but to Robert it was profoundly frustrating and disturbing. He wondered where Isabelle was now, or little Kasia’s mother. Beadle, Vergolina, Gould, McNeish – he knew they had reached freedom. Then there were all those gaunt men, the hundreds whose names he couldn’t recall (if he had ever known them) but whose faces lived in his memory, who had been put aboard the Odessa trains.

  Had they made it? It was reported that Odessa was the one place where the Soviets were honoring their duty, but only because they were exchanging batches of Western ex-POWs for batches of their own.20 The fates of those repatriated Russians didn’t even bear thinking about.

  ‘Here she comes,’ said an officer sitting next to him, who was scanning the horizon. ‘Top brass, three o-clock level.’

  The familiar silhouette of a B-24 was curving in to land. It touched down and taxied toward the hardstanding where the ground crews and reception committee were waiting. The officers got in line. To Robert and a few of the other airmen, something didn’t look right about the aircraft. Normally a Moscow VIP like Deane would fly in Becky, Ambassador Harriman’s passenger-converted Liberator. But the plane that was taxiing in front of the rain-soaked line-up was a combat B-24 with unit markings on her tail fins, a shark’s mouth decorating her nose, and the name Judith Ann written on her fuselage. And unless those were just the empty cooling barrels protruding from the gun positions, she also appeared to be fully armed.

  Judith Ann rolled to a stop. The little parade of officers saluted and waved, a little uncertainly, and waited for the visitors to disembark and exchange polite greetings. The official photographer snapped a picture. The officers waited … and waited. Figures could be seen in the waist gun window, but nobody got out.

  Robert, with no experience of the proper protocol, thought perhaps the generals were waiting for him to come and greet them. Whatever it was, as commanding officer he’d better investigate. He glanced at Colonel Hampton, who nodded.

  At that moment, another jeep came racing across the field and drew up on the hardstanding. A group of Russian officers, looking like they meant serious business and all very conspicuously wearing pistols outside their greatcoats, jumped out and stood between Judith Ann and the reception committee.21 Robert walked toward the plane, but his way was barred by one of the Russians.

  ‘Instructions from General Kovalev,’ said the Russian officer. ‘No American personnel are to approach this airplane. It is engaged in a special Soviet mission. Refueling only is permitted. Please instruct your fuel men to begin their work. All other personnel are required to leave, please.’

  This must be the plane from Italy en route to Moscow. But why would a combat B-24 from a group down in Italy be engaged in special missions for the Soviets? Given all the US combat aircraft that had been salvaged and stolen by them, the arrival of this one now was deeply suspicious.

  ‘This is an American AAF aircraft,’ said Robert. ‘All American aircraft at this base are the responsibility of Eastern Command. I’m going to inspect it.’

  He went to pass the Russian officer, who barred his way again.

  Robert, his hackles rising, tried again. ‘As of today, I am the commanding officer here. All US aircraft landing at this base are subject to my clearance. I demand to know the full schedule and purpose of this aircraft.’

  He glanced at the pistols on the Russians’ belts, and at the cold stares they were directing toward him. He was acutely conscious of the tension that had set Poltava on pins during the past two weeks, and even more conscious that he might be about to whip the tension into a crisis, but there was something going on here that stank. Bracing himself, he pushed past the Russian officer, ducked under the tail of the aircraft, and pulled open the access door.

  Expecting the plane to be full of Russians, he was surprised to find himself staring at a group of startled American officers, including two immaculate Military Police captains. They sat on makeshift seats, and sandwiched between them was a disheveled, anxious-looking man wearing what appeared to be the uniform of a Soviet officer. His wrists were handcuffed. There were two other officers in the crowded waist section of the plane, a major and a colonel. Suddenly Robert felt very outranked.

  ‘I’m Captain Robert Trimble, officer commanding Eastern Command. What is the purpose and schedule of this flight?’ The officers glanced at each other and raised a skeptical eyebrow at his claim to be the CO, but said nothing. ‘This aircraft is not to proceed without my clearance. I’m not about to grant clearance to an aircraft that I believe to be suspicious.’

  ‘This is an approved flight to Moscow,’ said the colonel. Despite his American uniform, he had traces of Russian in his accent. ‘It has been authorized in advance by the Military Mission, Eastern Command, and the Soviet authorities.’

  Robert looked at the handcuffed man again, and at last he understood – Italy, Moscow, a Russian officer … This must be the man the rumors had spoken of – the Russian captain who claimed to be American, who’d got himself flown from Hungary to Italy in a bid to escape. Shenderoff, Captain Shenderoff. So they’d decided to hand the poor guy over to the Russians, had they? Not if Robert Trimble could do anything about it. The Soviets weren’t the only ones who could be obstinate.

  ‘It hasn’t been authorized by me,’ he said. He stepped past the colonel and squeezed along the narrow walkway through the bomb bay, heading for the front of the plane. (He’d forgotten how tight it was getting from one end of a Lib to the other.) In the radio compartment behind the cockpit, he took a headset from the opera
tor and ignored the stares of the pilots.

  ‘Tower, this is Trimble; I’ve got a B-24 here with no schedule and what looks like a Russian political prisoner on board. First, I want you to make clear to the Russians that this flight is not clear for take-off unless they fully disclose its purpose …’

  ‘Sir—’

  ‘Second, get Moscow on the horn immediately, relay the situation, and put them through to me.’

  ‘Sir, is that B-24 number 49771, with er, lemme see … a shark mouth paint job, yellow cowls, and checkerboard tail with black diamond?’22

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Sir, the Soviets have already cleared this flight, and we’ve had authorization from Moscow, no questions to be asked. We have to clear it.’

  Robert stood with the headset against his ear, wondering what to do next. Did he dare defy Moscow? In the silence that followed, he heard a hubbub of voices from the back of the plane, speaking Russian. General Kovalev himself had arrived on the scene and was loudly demanding to know what was going on.

  Kovalev was a small man with Asian eyes and a bald head, an exquisite manner and a permanent retinue of pretty female interpreters. He adored parties and, during the heyday of Eastern Command, had been an enthusiastic participant in officers’ club dances – drinking, dancing, and laughing the night away.23