Beyond the Call (30 page)

The locomotive thundered toward her, shaking the ground under her feet. Holding her sign in the air, Isabelle waited for freedom … or death.

In the cab, the engineer peered ahead through the rushing smoke and steam. Suddenly he spotted the tiny figure; he swore and yelled a warning to the fireman. The brakes slammed on, the wheels locked, shrieking on the rails, scrubbing off speed as the train bore down on the woman. Isabelle closed her eyes and prayed. The locomotive slid and shuddered, throwing forward a huge billow of steam that embraced her, blanking her from sight.

As the train came to a halt, the engineer, fearing the worst, jumped down from the cab and ran through the fog to the front of the engine. As he got there, the steam cleared. There was the young woman. She was still standing, her face pale, close enough to reach out and touch the engine in front of her.

They stared at each other.

The engineer came to his senses first, and shouted at her in Polish: ‘Well, come on, woman!' he said. ‘Don't just stand there – we're late!' Whipping off his cap, he waved it in the air. Isabelle snapped out of her stupor. At that moment, cheers broke out from every direction: dozens upon dozens of women emerged from their hiding places among the trees and came hurrying down the slope toward the train.
With a cry of ‘
Allons! Allons en France!
' Isabelle flung her sign aside and joined the other women swarming along the trackside and clambering in through the car doors.

The American had proven himself. They were on their way to freedom.

T
HE
S
OVIET CAPTAIN
glared at Robert as he walked away. He had no further excuse to detain him. When five hours had come and gone, it was obvious that nobody was coming to board a train, let alone four hundred people. ‘Maybe they saw you and your men and changed their minds,' Robert suggested. The captain knew he'd missed something, but there was nothing he could do. He might even have been wondering if this whole charade was an elaborate bluff to distract the NKVD from something more important going on elsewhere.

Robert bade the captain a polite farewell and walked out into the cold sunshine, heading back along the well-worn route toward the city center, tired but triumphant.

I
T WAS TIME
to go.

Robert had packed, and was ready to leave. Tucking the empty money vest into the top of his kit bag, Robert turned and looked at himself in the mirror, straightening his tie.

He was leaving Lwów. Several days had passed since the departure of Isabelle, and his money and store of rations were about used up. What was more, he was being recalled. It seemed his aggravation of the Soviet authorities in Poland had built to the point where Moscow had taken notice. Whether it was bunking in Polish homes rather than official Soviet barracks, holding off senior officers with a pistol, smuggling POWs, or bamboozling suspicious NKVD captains, sooner or later something had to give.

But he'd be back, he told himself. There was a mission in this country still unfinished. He figured he'd exfiltrated as many as a
thousand people out of Poland since the middle of February, but there were still a lot of strays out there: Americans, British, French, and all the nationalities of the Allied nations. The numbers were getting fewer, but the cases were all the more desperate. Those that remained tended to be the ones least able to care for themselves: the sick and the starved. They were likely to be a major challenge for one man on his own. But there had to be hope. Maybe he'd have to return with another salvage team as cover.

Isabelle and her compatriots had reached Odessa safely. This morning the news had reached him at the hotel, having found its way back along the chain of railroad workers to Lwów: ‘Liberation of France successful,' said the cryptic note. He'd known it would be okay; once people were on the train for Odessa, they were likely to be let alone.

Robert put on his parka, thankful to have it back. He'd been to the station the day before to collect it. Józef had been there, back at work in his usual window, a little paler than he'd been before, but still in one piece. As well as his parka, Robert got from him an account of how the rendezvous had worked out.

A jeep with a Russian driver had been provided to take Robert out to the airfield. He tossed his kit bag and pack in the back, climbed in, and the jeep sped off across Mickiewicz Square and up the grand avenue. The Soviets for once were falling over themselves to be helpful, so long as it meant he was leaving the country. Or maybe they just wanted to be sure he'd go.

The C-47 took off, and as it circled around to head east, Robert looked out the window. The city was emerging from its winter shell. The snows were thawing slowly, and out in the countryside streaks of green were showing through the white. A fanciful person might have taken it as a symbol of warmth and hope for the future.

In fact, the opposite would have been truer. The Russian bear was stirring from its winter lethargy, and was about to tighten its claws around its possessions. The Soviets had decided that the time had come to curtail American movement once and for all. Their patience with American interference in their territory had come to an end. As
Robert looked down from the C-47 climbing over Lwów, he had no idea that he was seeing the city for the last time. His mission was over, and he was about to be launched on a course that would thrust him right to the sharp end of US–Soviet relations and push the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of war.

Chapter 17

BLOOD SACRIFICE

POLTAVA, UKRAINE

T
HE STORM HAD
been gathering slowly, over many weeks and months, but when the lightning fell on Poltava it did so with shocking suddenness. Soviet mistrust of American activities in Poland had swollen to a dangerous level.

Captain Trimble and Colonel Wilmeth both rode the skirts of the storm into Poltava, landing just before it broke. Both officers had helped to stir up the tempest. Now, as it swept across Eastern Command, both would find themselves maneuvered into positions where they would have to help their comrades weather it. For Captain Trimble the part he would be forced to play would reveal to him the sickening duplicity and dishonor of politics on the grand scale.

On 28 March, Major General S.K. Kovalev, commanding officer of the Poltava Air Base, on instructions from Moscow, issued an order forbidding all flights by American aircraft.
¹
All transports belonging to Eastern Command and Air Transport Command were grounded. Salvaged bombers waiting to be ferried back to their units were barred from leaving. More than a dozen rescued combat crews from the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces – more than 180 men – were stranded. The Soviets even refused clearance for the evacuation of six wounded airmen whose injuries were too severe for Eastern Command's little hospital to treat properly.

In Poland, ongoing salvage work on downed American aircraft was brought to an immediate halt. The salvage teams were detained by
the NKVD, and the planes they had been working on, together with their transports, were sealed.
²
From now on, the local Soviets said, all force-landed American aircraft would be regarded as trophies of war and would be repaired and flown out by the Red Army Air Force.

Tensions escalated.

On 30 March, General Aleksei I. Antonov, Red Army chief of staff, wrote an indignant letter to General Deane, in which he set forth a list of actions by individual American personnel that had ‘violated the order established by the Command of the Red Army'. Apparently oblivious to the irony, Antonov upbraided the Americans for having breached the code of good behavior that was expected between allies and having perpetrated a ‘rude violation of the elementary rights of our friendly mutual relationship'.
³

Antonov didn't mention the unauthorized exfiltration of ex-prisoners of war, because he didn't know about it; no Soviet officials did (although a few NKVD bird dogs on the ground in Poland clearly suspected that Captain Trimble had been up to something nefarious under cover of aircrew rescue). But Antonov did complain stridently about the behavior of Colonel Wilmeth, who had insisted on staying in Lublin beyond the agreed date of 11 March, for no good reason that the Russians could see (or were willing to recognize).

But Wilmeth's misdemeanors were minor compared with the actions of three otherwise obscure individuals. Two were American bomber pilots, and the third was a Russian engineer. Each one had perpetrated deeds which proved in Stalin's eyes that the Americans were engaging in espionage and giving secret aid to anti-Soviet Polish partisans.
⁴

The first of these men was Lieutenant Myron King, one of the dozens of B-17 pilots who made forced landings in Poland in early 1945.
⁵
On 3 February, Lieutenant King's Fortress,
Maiden USA
, was damaged in a raid on Germany, and he had to make an emergency landing at a Soviet airfield near Warsaw.
⁶
After a two-day stopover, King was ordered by the Russians to fly on to another Soviet base, escorted by a Soviet plane. During the flight, the B-17 crew discovered
that a young Polish man had stowed away. They thought little of it, believing him to be an official interpreter working for the Soviets. Unable to pronounce his Polish name, they called him ‘Jack Smith'. He was suffering from the cold, so they allowed him to put on some spare American flight clothes. Jack Smith confided to the Americans that he had an uncle in London, and begged them to let him come with them when they flew back to England.

When the two planes landed at Szczuczyn airfield, the presence of Jack Smith was quickly discovered by the Soviets. He wasn't an interpreter. The fact that he was dressed as an American airman caused instant suspicion. It appeared to the Russians that Lieutenant King was attempting to assist a disguised Polish saboteur to escape the country.
⁷
The B-17 was seized and the crew was detained. The Russians kept the Americans in effective custody (although not actually under arrest) for seven weeks, transferring them from Szczuczyn in Poland to Lida in Belarus. Eventually, on the understanding that charges would be brought against Lieutenant King by the American authorities, the crew were cleared to fly on to Poltava, where they arrived on 18 March. It was only when other suspicious incidents occurred that the Russians started believing that King's actions were all part of a covert American plot.

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.