Beyond the Call (43 page)

5
.   Vergolina,
Reflections
, p. 19.

6
.   This is the name given by Rudy Vergolina (
Reflections
, p. 21, although he misspells it ‘McNiesch'). He gives no further details, and no definite identification has been made. It is possible that the man was Gunner J. McNeish 2979918 of the Royal Artillery, who was a POW in Stalag XX-A at Torun, Poland (‘Prisoners of War of British Army, WWII', unpublished data held by the Naval and Military Press, Ltd, available online through
ancestry.com
). Stalag XX-A was in the area where Vergolina says he met McNeish and had been liberated on 1 February.

7
.   Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, p. 166.

8
.   B-17G 43-37687 eventually returned to England and rejoined the 96th Bomb Group. She was at last given a name –
Crash Crew
– and flew more missions before the war ended (William MacLeod, personal communication to Lee Trimble, 12 February 2014). She survived the war, and returned to the USA, where her story ended in the great post-war aircraft graveyard at Kingman, Arizona (Freeman,
B-17 Flying Fortress Story
, p. 233).

9
.   According to Rudy Vergolina (
Reflections
, pp. 27–8), Jim McNeish was ‘sent on to a British embassy' before the rest of the group left Lwów. This must be a mistake, as Lepawsky (
History of Eastern Command
, ch. VI, p. 21) records that Captain Trimble brought two British POWs disguised as aircrew to Poltava on 17 March.

10
. Lepawsky,
History of Eastern Command
, ch. VI, p. 21.

11
. See McDonald and Dronfield,
A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy
(London: Oneworld, 2015).

12
. Lepawsky,
History of Eastern Command
, ch. IV, p. 66.

13
. Lepawsky,
History of Eastern Command
, ch. VI, p. 21.

14
. Booth, Cable PX 27223 to Deane and Eastern Command.

Chapter 14: Far from Home

1
.   Wilmeth (‘Report on a Visit to Lublin', p. 9) gives the number as seven, but official communications at the time (e.g., the cable from Stalin to Roosevelt cited below) give a figure of seventeen. Seventeen seems to include these seven plus other sick Americans who were later evacuated with them.

2
.   Wilmeth, ‘Report on a Visit to Lublin', p. 9.

3
.   Beadle, ‘Joint Statement'; Wilmeth, ‘Report on a Visit to Lublin', p. 12.

4
.   Wilmeth, unpublished memoir, cited in Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, pp. 163–4.

5
.   The meeting occurred on 12 March (Wilmeth, unpublished memoir, cited in Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, pp. 148–9, and Wilmeth, ‘Report on a Visit to Lublin', pp. 6–8).

6
.   Wilmeth, ‘Memorandum to General Deane', p. 8.

7
.   Wilmeth, unpublished memoir, cited in Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, p. 149.

8
.   Ibid.

9
.   Wilmeth, ‘Report on a Visit to Lublin', p. 10.

10
. For example, the version of a telephone message from Wilmeth to Moscow on 16 March, stating that there were no more ex-prisoners in Lublin or expected there (Golubev, Letter to Maj. Gen J.R. Deane).

11
. Wadley (
Even One Is Too Many
, p. 114) infers from Deane's actions and sequence of decisions that his intelligence concerning ex-POWs was more extensive and detailed than he acknowledged in his memoir, and that he must have had covert sources.

12
. Deane,
Strange Alliance
, pp. 198–9 (dates of telegrams given by Deane differ from those in official archives; his dates are one day later; official dates are given here).

13
. Roosevelt cabled Stalin: Deane,
Strange Alliance
, p. 198; Roosevelt, telegram to Stalin, 17 March 1945, in US Department of State,
Foreign Relations
, p. 1082.

14
. Deane,
Strange Alliance
, pp. 198–9; Stalin, telegram to Roosevelt, 22 March 1945, in US Department of State,
Foreign Relations
, pp. 1082–3.

15
. Harriman, cable to President Roosevelt, 24 March 1945, in US Department of State,
Foreign Relations
, pp. 1084–6.

16
. Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, p. 158.

17
. Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, p. 165.

18
. Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, p. 165.

19
. Foregger, ‘Soviet Rails to Odessa', pp. 852–3.

20
. Hall, ‘Supplement No. 4 to Interim Report on Odessa Transit Camp'.

21
. Foregger, ‘Soviet Rails to Odessa', p. 855; Harriman, cable to US secretary of state, 11 June 1945, in US Department of State,
Foreign Relations
, pp. 1097–8.

22
. Rees,
World War Two Behind Closed Doors
, p. 393; Plokhy,
Yalta
, pp. 304–5. The Russian POWs knew what to expect, and there were many suicides in Western holding camps and aboard the troopships among prisoners faced with repatriation.

23
. Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, p. 161.

24
. Decades later, Robert was unable to recall exactly where this episode took place, other than that it was near Lublin. The description of the setting and the circumstances indicate that it was probably in the vicinity of the small town of Pulawy, 25 miles north-west of Lublin.

25
. By 1944 the total number of subsidiary camps involved in the Holocaust had grown to 660, and most served as accommodations for slave laborers taken from the main extermination camps (Herbert, ‘Forced Laborers').

26
. Sella,
Value of Human Life
, pp. 105–10.

27
. Russian ex-POWs who fought with Polish partisans against the Germans ‘were tormented by the thought: will they, former POWs, be accepted in their own country. Unfortunately, very often their apprehensions were found to be justified' (R. Nazarevich, quoted in Sella,
Value of Human Life
, p. 109).

28
. The murder of German prisoners was quite commonplace on the Eastern Front, just as the murder of Soviet POWs by Germans had been. What was unusual here was the mode of killing.

Chapter 15: Isabelle

1
.   Bartov, ‘White Spaces and Black Holes', p. 324.

2
.   Gross,
Revolution from Abroad
, pp. 179–82; Parrish,
Lesser Terror
, p. 48; Yones,
Smoke in the Sand
, p. 79. The number of prisoners said to have been killed by the NKVD varies from source to source. Twelve thousand is the figure given by Parrish, and probably includes Ukrainians murdered throughout the city during the panic. Three thousand is a more widely cited figure. Because of the city's history, there had long been ethnic tensions between its German, Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish populations, which were ripe for exploitation by powers such as the SS and the NKVD.

3
.   Yones,
Smoke in the Sand
, pp. 79–81.

4
.   ‘All labor which the government shall judge useful in the best interests of the nation.' Wording of the law of 4 September 1942.

5
.   Bories-Sawala,
Dans la gueule du loup
, p. 56.

6
.   Figure from Ministère de la Production industrielle, 18 February 1943, quoted in Association pour la Mémoire de la Déportation du Travail Forcé, online archive.

7
.   Herbert, ‘Forced Laborers'. Beyer and Schneider (
Forced Labor
, part 1, p. 3) put the proportion of forced labor at one-fifth of the labor force.

8
.   Herbert,
Hitler's Foreign Workers
, p. 219.

9
.   Ibid, p. 130.

10
. Ibid, pp. 369–73.

11
. Formerly part of Germany, now Opole, Poland.

12
. Lefèvre, ‘La Fin Tragique de Trois STO'.

13
. Colonel Wilmeth (‘Memorandum to General Deane', p. 4) believed that the warnings about the curfew and German spies were given mainly to intimidate American visitors, but Captain Trimble's experiences suggest otherwise; there really was a paranoia.

14
. The crew of AAF pilot Second Lieutenant L.E. Moore, who passed through Lwów en route to Poltava, found a body on the street outside their hotel; they were told by Russians that the man had been a spy (Fitchen, Mission interrogation of 2nd Lt Moore crew, p. 2).

15
. The ships that took liberated prisoners from Odessa were British troopships. Nineteen such vessels departed from the port between 7 March and 22 June 1945 (Foregger, ‘Soviet Rails to Odessa', pp. 855–7).

Chapter 16: Bait and Switch

1
.   The official exchange rate through Russian banks was 5 rubles to 1 US dollar (Wadley,
Even One Is Too Many
, pp. 131–2). This rate was designed to be favorable to the Soviets, and a fairer rate would have been between 12 and 17 rubles to the dollar. On the black market, rates of up to 175 or even 200 rubles to the dollar could be obtained, and at Soviet insistence the Military Mission had barred US personnel from taking advantage of this exchange rate (Lepawsky,
History of Eastern Command
, ch. V, pp. 89–93).

Chapter 17: Blood Sacrifice

1
.   Kaluta, vol. I, ch. II, pp. 26–7; vol. II, ch. I, p. 1.

2
.   Trimble, cable T 3706 to Gen. Deane.

3
.   Antonov, letter to General Deane, 30 March 1945, reproduced in Borch, ‘Two Americans'.

4
.   Harriman, memo on meeting with Stalin, 15 April 1945, quoted in Dobbs,
Six Months in 1945
, p. 195.

5
.   Detailed narratives are given in Borch, ‘Two Americans', and McDonough,
Wars of Myron King
.

6
.   The name is usually given as ‘Kuflevo' (e.g., Borch, ‘Two Americans'; McDonough,
Wars of Myron King
, p. 103). There is no place in Poland with that name. It might have been Kuflew or Huta Kuflewska, which are in about the right location. There was a Nazi concentration camp at Kuflew, but no record of an airfield has been found. The actual location might have been Mińsk Mazowiecki, where there is a modern air base. Alternatively, the crew interrogation report (Fitchen, Mission interrogation of Lt King crew, pp. 1–2) implies that the ‘airfield' might have been just a farm field.

7
.   In the version of events told by the Russians to General Deane, it was claimed that Jack Smith was a known ‘terrorist and saboteur' and that Lieutenant King had knowingly helped him disguise himself as an American airman (Deane, Cable M-23583 to Gen. Marshall).

8
.   Detailed narrative given in Borch, ‘Two Americans'. Borch gives Bridge's rank as first lieutenant; Deane (Cable M-23583 to Gen. Marshall) gives it as captain, apparently mistakenly.

9
.   Detailed narrative given in Borch, ‘Two Americans'.

10
. Slavin, letter to Deane, quoted in Deane, cable MX-23677 to Gen. Marshall. (Slavin gave the pilot's name as Roli; according to Borch it was Raleigh.)

11
. Antonov, letter to General Deane, 30 March 1945, reproduced in Borch, ‘Two Americans'.

12
. SMERSH report to Stalin, 2 April 1945, quoted in Dobbs,
Six Months in 1945
, p. 195.

13
. Kaluta, vol. I, ch. I, pp. 8–9.

14
. Harriman, cable to secretary of state, 2 April, in US Department of State,
Foreign Relations
, pp. 1086–8.

15
. Halifax, letter to US secretary of state, in US Department of State,
Foreign Relations
, pp. 1088–90.

16
. Hill, cable M-23792 to Hampton, 10 April 1945, quoted in Kaluta, vol. II, ch. I, p. 7.

17
. Hill, cable M-23828 to Hampton, 12 April 1945, quoted in Kaluta, vol. II, ch. I, p. 7.

18
. Hill, Cable M-23827 to Gen. Spaatz, 12 April 1945.

19
. Hampton, cable T-3550 to Gen. Hill, 11 April 1945. Adding to the confusion, Hampton had been informed that the ‘B-17' would be arriving that day, 11 April.

20
. Foregger, ‘Soviet Rails to Odessa', pp. 852–5.

21
. Kaluta, vol. II, ch. I, p. 4.

22
. The aircraft photographed at Poltava on 12 April matches the serial number and description given to General Deane by General Cannon (Cannon, Cable M-51026 to Gen. Deane, 11 April 1945).

23
. Kaluta, vol. III, photo 19–21.

24
. In response to the SMERSH report on actions at Poltava in early April, Stalin ordered, ‘Calm Comrade Kovalev down. … Prevent him from taking independent actions' (Dobbs,
Six Months in 1945
, p. 196).

25
. License discovered by Tom Lingerfelter. Described online at
www.heritagecs.com/1928_Balloon_Pilot_license.htm
(retrieved 26 February 2014).

26
. General Deane had been informed in detail about the flight. He passed the full details on to the Soviets, but not to Eastern Command. It was a high-ranking crew that took Morris Shenderoff to Moscow, hand-picked on behalf of Lieutenant General John K. Cannon, commander of Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranean: pilot Major Walter C. Cannon (possibly a relative); copilot Captain James R. Mayer; navigator Captain Arthur F. Butler; engineer Second Lieutenant Melton E. Bloom; and radioman Staff Sergeant James W. Wells. Shenderoff was escorted by Captains Harold W. Crowell and Beverley H. Tripp of the Corps of Military Police, and by Major Orfutt and Lieutenant Colonel Stepanovich, American officers who spoke Russian. Lieutenant Colonel Stepanovich was responsible for delivering Shenderoff into Soviet hands (Cannon, Cables MX-50976 and M-51026 to Gen. Deane, 11 April 1945; Deane, Letter to Lt Gen Slavin, 11 April 1945).