Beyond the Call (4 page)

Chapter 1

ONE LUCKY BASTARD

30 DECEMBER 1944: DEBACH, ENGLAND; BASE OF 493RD BOMB GROUP, US EIGHTH AIR FORCE

T
HE WINTRY AFTERNOON
light was beginning to fade to dusk as the formation of B-17 Flying Fortresses streamed in over the Suffolk coast. The individual bombers began peeling off from the formation, joining the airfield circuit and lining up to land. Some, shot with holes, were limping as they covered the last leg of their journey home. One Fortress was absent, its crew having bailed out over the sea.
¹
The 493rd Bomb Group, along with the other groups in its division, had been to bomb the marshaling yards at Kassel, Germany, and they hadn't been welcome.

Landing lights glittering on their wings, the heavy bombers touched concrete with a rubbery squawk and rolled on down the runway, swung onto the taxiways, and headed, engines rumbling, toward their dispersal areas around the airfield. Some jolted, wings tipping awkwardly, as they taxied over the pits and breaks in the concrete. Debach (pronounced
Debbidge
by locals, to the bewilderment of some American personnel) was the last of the heavy bomber airfields built for the Eighth Air Force. The construction was poor, and the runways had already deteriorated to the point where the 493rd might soon have to move elsewhere.
²

Avoiding the worst pitfalls, B-17
Big Buster
eased to a halt on its hardstanding. In the cockpit, Captain Robert M. Trimble and his copilot, Lieutenant Warren Johnson, went through the elaborate ritual of shutting down the shuddering aircraft, flicking switches and sliding
levers. One by one the four huge propellers chopped and swished to a halt, and a hush punctuated by the ticking of cooling metal settled on the cockpit.

‘Home she comes!' said a voice on the interphone.

Trimble and Johnson smiled at each other as the last switch was flicked and the dials dropped to zero.
Home
– now there was a thought to heal a weary heart. Captain Trimble and his crew had been in England for nearly six months, and flown their fill of missions: today had been the 35th, and their tour of duty was complete.
³
Robert Trimble had beaten the odds, and it was time to go home. Home, where his wife, Eleanor, and the baby daughter he hadn't yet seen were waiting for him. Little Carol Ann had been born exactly two months ago, while her father was flying into Germany on his 25th combat mission, heading for the fearsome target of Merseberg. As if fate was working in his favor that day, the bombers were recalled due to low cloud over the target, and they flew back to England unharmed.
⁴
That had been a lucky day, and this was another.

One by one the crewmen dropped through the escape hatch onto the concrete. Some stretched their stiff backs; a few went to the edge of the concrete, unfastened the layers of coveralls, heated suit, pants, and underwear, and watered the frosty grass, sighing with relief. Tired but jubilant, the nine men tossed their gear on the waiting jeeps and climbed aboard, joking and taunting one another, free of the silent gloom that often came over them as the adrenaline drained away at mission's end. Captain Trimble dropped into the jeep's passenger seat.

‘The CO wants to see you, sir,' said the sergeant driver as he put the jeep in gear.

‘Me?' said Trimble, startled. ‘
Now
?'

‘At your convenience, sir.' The sergeant crunched the gears; the jeep revved and swerved away.

Captain Trimble gripped the edge of the windshield as the overloaded vehicle sped across the field toward the complex of buildings in the far distance. He couldn't imagine why the CO would want to see him, but he didn't give it too much thought. Dog-tired
after seven hours of piloting the Fortress through flak, fighters, and ungodly cold, he rode back to the airfield HQ with happy thoughts of home swimming in his head, violently jolted though they were by the jeep's bouncing progress. By the time the crew was dropped off at the debriefing room, he had forgotten all about the summons.

It was shaping up to be a good weekend. The Trimble crew were not the only men whose tours were done – their squadron-mates under Lieutenant Jean Lobb had also completed today. As wingman to the group leader, Lobb had been on Trimble's starboard nose all the way to Germany, but had to drop out of formation with supercharger failure before reaching the target (leading to a tense moment of urgent re-forming as Lieutenant Parker crawled up from the rear to take his place). Luckily for Lobb, he was credited with a sortie, despite bringing his bombs home with him.
⁵

With end-of-tour celebrations, and New Year's Eve tomorrow, it was all good cheer for the homeward-bound boys.

D
ESPITE THE CAROUSING
that went on in the mess that evening, Robert Trimble had the best night's sleep he'd had in months: no mission in the morning, no fear of a mission alert during the day; just a beautiful future to look forward to, a future with Eleanor and baby Carol Ann. He wondered if Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, had changed at all in the months he'd been away. One thing was for sure, he reflected happily: it had changed by the addition of a brand-new baby girl …

Rested and groomed, Robert put on his dress uniform – olive-drab jacket with tan pants and shirt, the sharp combination known as ‘pinks & greens' – and set off for his appointment at group headquarters. Unlike the permanent airfields in the States, Debach sprawled over a tract of otherwise untouched Suffolk countryside, and the routes between the technical and domestic sites, the airfield and the munitions stores were winding country lanes lined with hedgerows. In no hurry, Robert strolled along under the winter-bare sycamores. It was quiet, with the group out on a mission.

Headquarters occupied what had been a farm field this time last year, beside a lane connecting the main airfield with the little hamlet of Clopton (the equally tiny settlement of Debach was straddled by a couple of aircraft hardstandings on the far side of the base). Robert presented himself and was admitted to the commanding officer's inner sanctum – a modest set of offices in a Quonset hut.

Colonel Elbert Helton, CO of the 493rd, was an undistinguished-looking man. Placid and serious, with large ears and a touch of humor in his eyes, he looked more like a friendly small-town doctor than what he actually was – a seasoned bomber pilot with a long string of combat missions in the Pacific and Europe under his belt. The young Texan had been propelled up the ranks by the pressure of war, and he now commanded the four squadrons that made up the 493rd Bomb Group and the sprawling military base that housed them. He had only just turned 29 years old.
⁶

He waved Captain Trimble to a chair. ‘I just got done signing these,' he said, taking a paper from a small pile. ‘You might as well have yours now.' Robert took it and smiled. It was the customary document, signed by Helton and the other senior officers of the 493rd.

On This 30th Day of December Nineteen Hundred and Forty Four the Fickle Finger of Fate Has Traced on the Rolls of the

‘Lucky Bastard Club'
the name of
Capt. Robert M. Trimble 0-1289835
493rd Bombardment Group (H)

Having successfully completed a tour of operations in this European theater with ‘Butch' Helton's hard hitting hagglers he is hereby graduated as an Honor Student from Debach's College of Tactical Knowledge …

… Therefore it is fitting that he should be presented with this Certificate that all may know that he is truly a ‘Lucky Bastard.'

‘Congratulations, Bob,' said Helton. ‘You made it. You're on your way home.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Robert. He knew Colonel Helton well, and something in his tone of voice made him feel uneasy. Helton paused, then stuck a pin in the blissful bubble that Robert had been walking around in since yesterday.

‘You know you'll be called back, don't you? For another tour.'

This was exactly what Robert didn't need to hear right now. He knew it was a possibility, but Helton said it like it was a stone-cold certainty.

‘You're going home for now – you're entitled to 21 days' leave stateside – but at the end of it you'll be recalled. Maybe here, or maybe to the Pacific. The Army's got plenty of pilots, but not so many good ones, let alone experienced.'

That was true. Earlier that year, the length of a tour for bomber crews had been raised from 25 missions to 30. In September, halfway through Robert's tour, they raised it to 35. Who could tell when they might raise it again? Sending experienced pilots back into combat seemed all too likely.

‘I know your wife just had a baby,' the colonel said, ‘and I know you'd like to go home. But you go on and go home now, you're only going to be there for 21 days, and more than likely they'll send you right back.'

‘I see, sir.' Robert was wondering if there was a point to all this, besides wrecking his moment of happiness.

Helton stood up and took out a bottle of scotch and two glasses. ‘The last of the November special mission supply,' he said, pouring it out.

Robert smiled and took his glass. Part of his unofficial duties in the 493rd was as the commanding officer's whisky courier. Once a month he piloted the squadron hack up to Edinburgh and snagged a few bottles.

‘I have an offer for you,' Helton went on. ‘Maybe you'd like to take advantage of it.'

‘What kind of offer?'

Helton took a sip of whisky. ‘The brass want you, Bob,' he said. ‘They've asked me for a good man, and I'm giving them you.'

The whisky turned to battery acid in Robert's mouth. It wasn't healthy to get noticed by the brass.

‘That is, if you want to take advantage of it. They're looking for an experienced multi-engine pilot – someone rated on both the B-24 and B-17. You're the only one I know who'd like a job like this. They want to send you to Russia.' Robert's brain did a backflip.
Russia
? ‘You know we've got bases there?' Helton went on. ‘No, well neither did I, much. They were set up for shuttle mission support.'

Colonel Helton sketched in what he knew about the background. A shuttle mission was one in which a bombing force took off from its base, hit a target, then flew on to another base in another country; it was a solution to the problem of targets that were too far away for bombers to reach them and make it back to their home bases. The 493rd had never been involved in Operation Frantic (as the shuttle program was codenamed), so Helton couldn't tell Robert very much. He would be sent to the Eastern Command base at a place called Poltava in the Ukraine. Now that Frantic was on ice, the US detachment there had changed roles, and Poltava had become a base for salvaging US aircraft that had been damaged in combat and made forced landings in Soviet-occupied territory. Robert's job, as Helton described it, would be to collect salvaged bombers from Poltava and fly them out – either back to England or down to Italy.

‘The Soviets are itching to get their hands on our planes,' Helton said. ‘Given half a chance, they'll haul 'em off and tear 'em down to find out how they're made. Our guys are getting them patched up and the hell out of there before those Reds get the chance. You have experience of emergency soft-field take-offs, don't you?'

Robert nodded. Back in the summer he'd been forced to land his B-24 at a Luftwaffe fighter airfield in northern France. Anticipating either a firefight or captivity, he and his crew were relieved to be greeted by American infantrymen who'd captured the field a few days
earlier. After refueling and repairs, Robert had learned the hard way about the challenges of taking off a laden four-engine bomber from a short grass strip intended for single-engine fighters.

‘I thought so,' said Helton. ‘So, what d'you say?'

‘You mean I have a choice?'

‘Of course.' Helton paused. ‘There's a catch. They want you right now. You wouldn't get the chance to go home.'

‘Then I'd rather not, sir.'