Armageddon (85 page)

“That’s a bad question to ask me. How long you figure we’re supposed to go on like this?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Hilde, we’ve got to bend a little. I’m a nice guy.”

She shook her head. “That is just the trouble. You aren’t a nice guy. You are a rat, just like I am. We are two of a kind. I do not dislike you because you are a rat ... but I know you.”

“All right, so we’re both rats. Then what’s the harm?”

“Good night, Scott.”

Hilde tried to compose a letter to Erna, but found herself contradicting her own ideas.

When it came to a definition of love she did not know it. Scott was a wanderer who would never change his ways. Yet, she had never cared for a man as she did for him. She even desired him, but to give him sex would be the beginning of the end.

From the time she began to work for her first American family, Colonel and Mrs. Smith, a new experience began. The colonel was a great bear of a man who spoke softly and with warmth. He called her “Miss Hilde.” He was a gentle person, perhaps like Uncle Ulrich would be if she knew him better. The colonel’s children loved to cuddle on his lap for their story.

But there was strength in Colonel Smith too. One could tell that by the respect his officers showed, although they seemed at ease around him.

She and Mrs. Smith shopped together and she was allowed to join certain family outings, and after a while they even gossiped together. It was strange, this nice way the Americans treated each other. It was how an officer like Scott and a man from the ranks like Nick could share a brotherly love.

Hilde remembered her shock the first time she saw Colonel Loveless chase his wife through the garden calling, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”

And she remembered standing in the hallway in the morning listening at their bedroom door when Tony and Lynn jumped into bed with them and they all wrestled.

At first Hilde resented Ami laughter. Sure, the Amis could laugh ... they were not hungry. Their cities were not in ruins, but they laughed as much about themselves and their own failings as anything else.

In the rigid adherence to reverence for her father Hilde remembered little laughter and little warmth for anyone but Ernestine. She had never known a German man who did not take himself seriously. Perhaps, she wrote to Ernestine, the Americans deserve laughter.

Judy knocked on Hilde’s door the next morning as she sat before the mirror brushing her long, thick brown hair. Mrs. Loveless muttered something envious.

“Hilde, Colonel Loveless has managed to get three days off starting Saturday. We would like to get away, just anywhere. He hasn’t seen a thing of Germany except air bases.”

“I hope he isn’t called back to his office like the last time you tried to get away.”

“Never can tell.”

“Everything here will be fine.”

“By the way, it will be all right to entertain Captain Davidson here while we’re gone.”

“I don’t know if we will be seeing each other again.”

“Little fight?”

Hilde shook her head.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Hilde.”

She set the brush down and felt a need to speak to Mrs. Loveless. “In German we have a word. He is filled with
Wanderlust
... he is a rover.”

Judy lit a cigarette and sat on the edge of the bed. “A lot of people who care for each other see that life rewards in different ways. We say in America, half a loaf is better than none. Hilde, may I speak to you frankly?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“When I interviewed Mrs. Smith about hiring you, she was quite frank with me. As you know by their letters and gifts, they care for you very much. So do I. So, I talk as a friend. Mrs. Smith told me, one thing you will notice about Hildegaard ... she never laughs. And she said ... I don’t think Hildegaard has ever laughed from the day she was born. I don’t think she knows how.”

Hilde was surprised by the truth of the discovery.

“Scott Davidson makes you laugh. You are a happy woman when he enters the room. In the end, this might have to be worth a few tears.”

Shortly after Scott arrived in Germany he accepted a Permanent Change of Station status. The definition of Temporary Duty on the Airlift was vague and taking Permanent Station in Germany meant a lot of privileges. Anyhow, Scott didn’t really give a damn where he was stationed.

Hiram Stonebraker brought the first changes of his ways. As a chief pilot of an Air Wing he found himself constantly fretting about housing for his crews, their fatigue, the ground-controlled approach landings in the steep glide paths over crowded cities, a beacon which gave off a weak signal, and a number of other things he didn’t give a damn about before. And then came Hildegaard Falkenstein.

Stan Kitchek was glad about Hilde. He was a purist. He had a nice girl back in Seattle and would have her till hell froze over. He was riddled with guilt when he needed another woman.

Nick didn’t get to do so much bumming around with Scott after Hilde came into the picture, but he was crazy about her. Scott had a judgment day coming all his life and Hilde was the first girl Nick knew with the stuff to pull it off. She showed it by not giving in.

The Air Force and Army had set up low-cost holidays in requisitioned German resorts in Bavaria. Scott’s leave was overdue. He had flown nearly a hundred flights to Berlin, but his own growing sense of duty kept him at his desk.

Stan and Nick Papas shoved off for Bavaria hunting a couple of new Schatzies. Scott stayed on to fly the general and Colonel Loveless to Burtonwood in England, recommissioned as the 59th Air Depot. Clint headed a team of production control people to try to break the bottleneck of the 200-hour overhaul.

The Skymasters went to a hangar known as Station Number One where the process began with a stripping of radios and instruments and continued from hangar to hangar where they were steam-cleaned to remove the coal dust, then parts and instruments and engines were broken down, rebuilt, tested, reinstalled, checked out.

Only five Skymasters a day could be completed on the line. Others were backing up in Germany awaiting overhaul.

Douglas and Lockheed Aircraft sent engineers over to consult with Clint on proper methods to stop tank leaks, a continuing menace. A special team from Erding Base was given a course on a sealing method known as TC-48 so they could teach it to all maintenance crews in Germany.

After the general and Clint Loveless finished their inspection Scott remained to confer on pilots’ complaints about hydraulic-system seepage, tire wear, faulty wiring, fire hazards, foreign matter in oil screens, and those other things a chief pilot worried about.

Five days after he arrived in Burtonwood, Scott picked up a renovated Skymaster at Station Number Five and flew it back to Rhein/Main.

Scott stood before the door of the Loveless house not having the slightest idea why he should return. Hilde opened the door, and felt a sense of relief on seeing him for the first time in two weeks, but stifled her joy.

“Bad penny,” he said.

“Come in.”

“Anybody in?”

“Colonel and Mrs. Loveless are out and the children are asleep. If I had known you were coming I would have kept them up.”

“I’m hungry,” Scott said.

He sat at the kitchen table. She served him cold chicken and noodles and dark bread.

I am so glad you’re back, she thought.

I must be crazy, he thought.

Chapter Thirty

“C
LINT!”
H
IRAM
S
TONEBRAKER BARKED
, “what have you done for Fassberg today?”

“For Fassberg, sir?”

“Goddammit, we’ve got to think about Fassberg! I’m away for a week on an inspection and Fassberg has fallen three hundred tons a day behind Celle. When you return for the staff meeting, you damned well better tell me what you intend to do for Fassberg!”

“Yes, sir.”

Stonebraker had gone to the States with his Logistics people to inspect a materiel depot built at Middletown, Pennsylvania, to support the Airlift. While he was gone, Lieutenant Woodrow Beaver struck!

Beaver had quietly written to Al Capp, creator of
Lil’ Abner
and father of the Shmoo, an American leprechaun put on earth to cure man’s ills. Beaver reckoned the Shmoo could be helpful to the Airlift.

The lovable pear-shaped little fantasy could be converted into beef, ham, or cheese if one was hungry. You could build a house out of a Shmoo or make them into dresses and shoes. Shmoos could be converted into any denomination of currency. There was nothing Shmoos couldn’t do.

Al Capp agreed to help. Beaver had some inflatable Shmoos made and all was in readiness for the moment Hiram Stonebraker left Germany on the Middletown inspection.

Beaver had Armed Forces Radio dramatically announce that Shmoos were coming to Berlin!

Ten every day would be parachuted and those lucky Berliners who found them could convert them at the Red Cross for
CARE PACKAGES
.

At the end of the week, the Shmoos had won the heart of the Berliners.

“Beaver! Get in here!”

Stonebraker shoved a
Task Force Times
under his nose. “Well?”

Beaver studied the paper earnestly. “You mean the photo contest to name the Airlift Queen, sir?”

“I mean the goddamned Shmoos!”

Beaver handed the general cables from AP, UP, INS. The Shmoo had stormed the front pages. NBC was sending a top team to document the life of a Shmoo from birth, through a dramatic corridor flight, and on to the German family who found him in Berlin. Three Soviet papers carried front-page editorials denouncing the Shmoos.

“Get the hell out of here,” Stonebraker said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Beaver!”

“Sir?”

“What did you do for Fassberg today?”

“I sent them a Shmoo this morning.”

When Beaver was out of sound-wave blast, a WAF secretary brought in a little plastic Shmoo and set it on the general’s desk. The note tied around its neck read: “My name is Buff (Morgan) Shmoo and I have been presented to the boss by his devoted staff. I am guaranteed to triple housing procurement, break the bottleneck at Burtonwood, prevent fog at Tempelhof, predict the weather with unerring accuracy. I am a nice Shmoo and I desire only to serve humanity.”

“Where in the hell has the Navy been?”

“Taking care of the Air Force wives!”

Two Navy squadrons of Skymasters arrived, flush with spare parts, wealthy with mechanics, and stuffy with a pride that told them they could put more tons down in Berlin than any squadrons in the Air Force. Now a fleet of two hundred Skymasters forged the Air Bridge with a hundred more of the British.

A huge new transport, the C-74, arrived in Germany with twenty tons of spare engines! An engine Lift began directly from the States.

Globemasters and other new transports came to be used in flying special loads of heavy and bulky machinery. They brought in a dozen new generators for the Western Sector power plant.

Multimillion candlepower, high-intensity lights were installed extending from the center line of the Tempelhof runway through the St. Thomas Cemetery.
EVEN THE DEAD CANNOT SLEEP IN PEACE FROM THE AMERICAN AGGRESSION
, cried People’s Radio.

Superb new beacons and ranges lined the corridors; radar control became absolute; ground-controlled approaches in Berlin gave a promise that this was the miracle to beat ... General winter.

An army of transportation on the ground kept the rhythm of movement from mines and ports and depots and railheads and marshaling yards to the ready lines at the air bases in uninterrupted tempo.

New tie-down straps, new weight charts, new communication systems ... loading crews could empty a ten-ton trailer into a Skymaster in twenty minutes. In Berlin, unloading crews could unload ten tons in fourteen minutes.

A direct coal line ran from the Ruhr mines to the sacking plants at Hanau to the air bases at Celle and Fassberg. Mobile weather and operations trucks now briefed the pilots at planeside to cut down turn-around time.

Mobile canteens fed them at planeside; mobile maintenance trucks cured minor ills; turn-around time in Berlin was whittled to a mere thirty-two minutes from touch down through unloading to takeoff.

The immense weather-gathering data centers funneled in data and weather forecasts were changed every half hour. At Gatow in Berlin a method of using the canals to carry the coal by barge to the power plant cut out trucks and saved thousands of gallons of gasoline.

At Great Falls in Montana, MATS laid out an exact duplicate of the Berlin corridors where new crews were trained. Skymasters were loaded exactly as they would be at Fassberg, Rhein/Main, Y 80, Celle. They flew the Montana countryside along beacons and ranges duplicating those in Germany. They landed by GCA around beacons and at glide angles that matched Tempelhof, Gatow, and Tegel in every detail.

On Air Force Day in 1948 the Combined Airlift Task Force set down 6800 tons of coal in Berlin. The next day a special Lift of shoes, blankets, and warm clothing was flown in. Fifteen thousand children were flown out by the British to foster homes in the zones.

There were tears and smiles at Tempelhof. The people of Berlin showered the flyers with gifts that ranged from family heirlooms to trinkets made by school children.

As the first tests of winter were upon them, the American President announced that sixty more Skymasters were coming to Germany! The might of the American nation and the audacious British fortitude had been molded into the most magnificent use of the military in a time of peace.

It rolled now with unstoppable momentum from the engine build-up plants in Texas and California;

from the Materiel Centers around America;

by the Sealift, Marine X;

by the engine Lift;

by the assembly lines of the factories;

by the energy and ingenuity at Erding and Burtonwood and Hanau;

by the raw courage and the skill of the flyers;

by the sleepless hours and labor in bad light and cold of the mechanics and laborers.

As the Gooney Birds were retired one by one from the Lift the beat ... beat ... beat ... of the giant metronome that Hiram Stonebraker envisioned had been created with the hands of selfless dedication.