Beyond the Call (15 page)

Robert was driven to a farm about five miles outside Staszów, close to the spot where the B-17 had made its forced landing. There was a sense of déjà-vu – the snow-dusted homestead just like the one near Lwów that he had trekked to in the dusk. But in every other way it was as different as it could be. For one thing, the place was full of Russians, who appeared to be there to guard the American flyers.

Lieutenant Tillman and his officers were accommodated in the house, and the enlisted men in the barn, accompanied by Russian minders. It was almost a shock to see the crew – they looked so clean and well dressed. Not quite fit to go out on a date, maybe, but fresh and healthy in their rumpled flying gear, clean-shaven and cheerful. The contrast with the ex-POWs couldn't have been more stark. But they were still delighted to see a fellow American climb out of the jeep, and they greeted Robert as if he were their brother, shaking his hand and telling him over and over how good it was to see him. They were also pleased to see his sack of rations. The Russians had fed them, but it wasn't much.

Robert couldn't help feeling a bond with the nine men – a sensation he hadn't felt since leaving Debach, of being among combat airmen, bomber boys, with all the shared experiences that implied. But they seemed so young to him now, even though there was barely any difference in age. Tillman himself was short and slightly built, and as fresh-faced and bright-eyed as a schoolboy. He had the cockiness of a
born hotshot who believed he was hell on wings. Only a few months ago Robert had been much the same.

The Russians and the Polish family were sorry to see their American friends depart. They had grown close in the past few days. Again Robert witnessed the cordiality of Russians toward people they saw as comrades in arms, and marveled at the contrast with the flip side, the harsh detestation of anyone outside that group. One of the Russians, a rather lugubrious, gentle-looking captain with the Order of the Red Star pinned to his tunic (Soviet soldiers wore their medals even in combat), had given Tillman a signed photo of himself. He'd written an inscription on the back in English: ‘A token in remembrance for friends in fight against German Nazis.'
²

Some of the American sergeants weren't quite so fond of the Russians, claiming that their soft cotton underwear had been filched by soldiers while they were bathing in the cedar tub in the yard.
³
There was also some tension with the Russians because of the way they regarded the Poles. Tillman and his men had been warned not to mix with the locals;
⁴
they ignored the advice, and found that most of the Poles detested and feared the Russians, and dreamed of escape to America or England.

Of all the farewells, the most heartfelt was from the Polish farmer's family. Their son Tadeusz was an airman too, far away in England, and they had lost touch with him during the German occupation. Tadeusz Kratke had been a fighter pilot in the Polish Air Force and had fought in the defense of Warsaw in 1939. Escaping the country after the German and Soviet conquest, he had made his way to France, and eventually to Britain, where he joined the RAF.
⁵
The family believed that Tadeusz was based somewhere near London, but they were hazy about English geography and they'd had no word of him for three years.

Seizing her opportunity, the farmer's young daughter had written a letter to her beloved brother, and she pressed it into Lieutenant Tillman's hands, imploring him to deliver it.
⁶
Your colleagues in trade from America are our guests
, she wrote.
They are going to London in a few
days, maybe my letter will reach you. Beloved Tadzik
,
⁷
thanks to the Highest God we are glad of peace and good health, still living on the old place. We are uneasy about you. … Embracing with love, your sister, parents, and Hela
.

In order that the Americans should recognize him if they found him, she gave them a photograph of Tadeusz: dashing in Polish flying gear, he was a fine-looking, boyish young man with a huge sunshine grin; just the sort who would be idolized by his kid sister.

Pocketing their missives and mementoes, Lieutenant Tillman and his crew took their leave of their Polish hosts. To Robert's eyes the departure from the homestead was about as different as could be from the last one he had witnessed. A happy parting of friends. The number of men was similar, though; now that their custodial duty was over, the Russian soldiers were going back to their barracks at Staszów, and they piled aboard the transports along with the ten Americans.

The vehicles rumbled off down the icy farm track, the family standing at the gate to wave them off. The young girl was breathless with joy at the prospect of being in touch with her brother again.

Unfortunately, the Kratke family had been right to be concerned about Tadeusz. The letter never found him. It remained in the possession of Lieutenant Arnold Tillman for the rest of his life, along with the photograph of the smiling young Polish pilot. In March 1942, almost three years earlier, while his family was still living under Nazi occupation, Tadeusz's Spitfire squadron had been sent on an escort mission to France. Forced to turn back due to bad weather, and with hardly any fuel left, they found the south-west of England blanketed in thick fog. It was impossible to locate their airfield; the pilots couldn't even see the ground. One flew right over the airfield at low altitude without knowing it was there. Ten of the twelve Spitfires crash-landed; the squadron commander hit a cliff and was killed. Flying Officer Tadeusz Kratke crashed badly and was pulled from the wreckage injured and almost blinded. It was said that his face was so cut up, it lived up to his name (
kratke
means ‘grille' or ‘checkered pattern').
⁸
By the end of 1944, his squadron had been posted to Belgium, and he was no longer a part of it.

Whether he ever returned home to the farm near Staszów, whether his sister and parents ever saw him again, is not known. Most Polish veterans did not go back to Poland. By the end of the war, the country was no longer the same homeland they had left behind, and expatriates who had served with the Western Allies were regarded with suspicion by the Communist authorities, as a potential source of nationalist resistance. This was not the country the Polish veterans had fought for, that they had been driven from in 1939, and to which they had yearned to return in triumph. Most of them turned their backs on it in bitterness and regret, feeling that they had been betrayed by the Allies with whom they had served, who had signed away their independence at Yalta.

When the convoy of vehicles reached the town of Staszów, Robert parted from his new friends and went on with the Russians. He still had his onward journey to make and would have to bunk at a Red Army barracks that night. He gave Lieutenant Tillman and his men a
per diem
and a share of the rations he'd brought, and told them to take his ride back to Rzeszów. There would be a C-47 there to take them on to Lwów. Robert gave them directions to the Hotel George, where an officer from Eastern Command would collect them and arrange a flight to Poltava.
⁹

In exchange for their rescue, Tillman's crew bestowed a new nickname on Robert Trimble. In their conversation during the journey from the farm, Robert had mentioned that the people of Eastern Command, aware that they were way off the map of public consciousness, called themselves the ‘Forgotten Bastards of the Ukraine'.
¹⁰
Somebody – Robert couldn't recall who – suggested that it didn't suit him; he was more like the Fighting Bastard of the Ukraine.

It was the kind of thing men say when they're young and flushed with optimism, and whoever said it had no idea that they were talking to the one member of Eastern Command who really was on the front line, with a battle to fight. Captain Trimble hoped he could live up to the nickname. He believed in that minute that there was no length he wouldn't go to to save the vulnerable and defy Soviet interference. As long as they didn't kill him, he would go on until everyone was free.

Chapter 8

KASIA

22 FEBRUARY 1945: LEMOYNE, PENNSYLVANIA

R
UTH
T
RIMBLE STOOD
by the parlor window, her little granddaughter clutched in her arms. Together they peered up and down the length of Hummel Avenue, looking out for the paperboy. It wasn't something they did every day, but today was a bit special.

Here he came, pedaling his bicycle along the sidewalk under the trees, head down against the sleety drizzle. As he flashed past, the folded
Evening News
sailed across the small front yard and landed with a thud on the porch. Ruth stepped out, scooped it up, and hurried back into the warmth.

Setting Carol Ann down, Ruth shook the slightly soggy paper open and started eagerly scanning the columns. On page 4 she found what she was looking for, and sat back with a contented sigh.

L
EMOYNE
, Feb. 22. Mrs. Robert Trimble, 815 Hummel Avenue, has received word that her husband, Captain Trimble, has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Previously, he was awarded the Air Medal and two Oak Leaf clusters. He was stationed in England and is now in the Far Eastern War Theater. …

Ruth frowned at that last sentence. Eleanor had clearly told the reporter that it was ‘Eastern', not ‘Far Eastern'. But maybe the
Harrisburg Evening News
wasn't aware that there were Americans in Russia. Everyone was obsessed with the Far East and Germany; the
news was all about Iwo Jima and the push to the Rhine, and nobody paid any attention to obscure little corners of Eastern Europe.

Eleanor had been so startled when the letter came; it looked so official, and she thought for a terrifying minute that it portended something awful. It was just over a year since her brother Howard had been killed in combat, and Eleanor was jittery over every communication.

The citation said that the medal was awarded to Robert because he had ‘distinguished himself by heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight'. It was a belated recognition of his service as a pilot with the 493rd Bomb Group.

Heroism … extraordinary achievement
… Ruth recalled the distraught boy he had once been, his heart breaking when his father abandoned them. It hadn't been so many years ago. He'd been forced to grow up fast, and just look at him now! As with so many other young boys who'd been transformed into men, it was a wonder what he was able to bear, and how much he was expected to give for his country.

Ruth wondered where her boy was this minute: whether he was as safe as she and Eleanor hoped, whether he was warm and comfortable, and what he was thinking about.

 

Near Kraków, Poland

S
COOPING THE SNOW
out from a deep drift at the base of a tree, Robert fashioned a burrow about three feet deep and five feet long. Wrapping his bedroll around him, he fastened it around his middle, pulled up the fur-lined hood of his parka, and crawled into the burrow, curling into the confined space and pulling his pack after him to close off the hole.

At last he was out of the savage wind that was whipping across the frozen fields. His stiffened limbs began to relax, and the warmth he had built up in his core by trekking into the forest and digging the burrow spread to his extremities.

Clicking his pocket flashlight on, he rummaged in his pockets for the D-ration candy bars he had stashed there. With his head cradled on the wall of his cave, he unwrapped an almond Hershey bar and munched it down. Cheeks still bulging with chocolate, he unwrapped another. With the cold and the exertion, his body craved calories, and it was hard to stop once he started.
¹
Restraint had to be exercised. There were others who needed the nourishment more than he did. His heavy pack was stuffed with K-and D-rations, but he guessed from experience that it wouldn't be enough.

Getting out of Kraków hadn't been difficult. He was short on time because of the diversion to Staszów, so he hadn't even bothered checking into the hotel; he'd simply paid for a ride out of town. This time he'd created a diversion by making conspicuous arrangements for transportation to pick him up from the front of the hotel. Meanwhile he slipped out of a side entrance. The bird dog who'd been with him since Rzeszów didn't even know he'd left the building. At this stage in his mission, the NKVD still had no suspicion that Captain Trimble was doing anything other than authorized aircrew recovery operations. However, the more frequently he disappeared, the more likely they were to guess he was up to something. This was a mission that was going to get harder as it went along.

Finishing off his second candy bar, Robert put his mittens back on and settled down to try and get some sleep.

As so often in this environment – as so often for all the scattered people in the world – his thoughts drifted homeward, and he wondered what the women in his life would be doing this minute. Eleanor would be finishing work, riding the bus across the Market Street Bridge, the endless line of lanterns flicking hypnotically past the windows. In the house on Hummel Avenue, lamps would be alight in the windows, casting a warm glow onto the street, and his mother would be lighting the stove and starting the dinner, and … and he almost saw his father sitting at the kitchen table, his tie loosened, leafing through the evening paper. But he wasn't in the picture anymore. That was an image from a long-dead era. Instead there was the figure that Robert couldn't quite see – the tiny shape of the child.

What did she look like? What was this life that had come from him but that he had never seen? It was no good – he couldn't see her, couldn't conjure the feelings that he imagined ought to be there when he thought of her. All he had was a kind of longing that he could do nothing with.

But he could picture the house, and picture Eleanor going up the steps to the lighted porch. The lights – the lanterns on the bridge and the glowing windows of the houses along the street – evoked the very essence of home. In blacked-out England there were no lamps in the street, there was no welcoming glow in the windows. In Poland, you rarely saw a town at night; it was too dangerous to be out after dark.

… And so he thought of home. And in the comfort of those thoughts, he found sleep at last.

H
E AWOKE A
little after dawn to discover that there had been a fresh fall of snow during the night, and the clouds had cleared. Pushing his pack ahead of him, Robert emerged from his burrow into a brightening world. Light was growing among the trees, and the sky was a pale blue-gray. The forest was filled with a close, hugging silence, in which the creaking of snow was like the grinding of boulders.

It was amazing how well you could sleep in a snow hole if you were tired enough. Rubbing his eyes and loosening his limbs, Robert packed up his bedroll, hoisted his pack, and set off through the forest. He had a map, a compass, a grid reference, and a goal. That was all he needed. So long as there was something to aim at, something good to do today, he felt he could win through this war, and find his way home.

He hadn't been walking long when he saw movement among the trees ahead. Two men, wearing the familiar ragged, bulked-out clothing of refugees, were standing in a clearing, faces turned toward the sky, apparently taking a moment to enjoy this rare interlude of morning sunshine.

Robert approached, thinking they must be from the POW group he was looking for, despite the fact he was still some way from the
rendezvous. But as he came closer, he noticed that one of the men had on blue-striped trousers beneath his overcoat – the same kind of stuff he recalled seeing on the inmates in the camp at Birkenau. The Auschwitz complex was only a few miles from here.

Suddenly the men noticed him, and began to back away nervously. Robert called out, ‘I'm American! It's okay!' They didn't seem to understand. Robert guessed that all they were seeing was the military clothing and the Red Army fur hat. ‘American,' he said again, pointing to himself and then spreading his hands to indicate his peaceful intentions.

The men stopped and let him catch up with them. One of them spoke a little English, and Robert managed to make them understand that he wasn't a Russian, and that he was looking for prisoners of war. A light of recognition dawned, and they broke out smiling. Shaking him eagerly by the hand, they indicated that he should follow them.

Neither of the men was in good health – one was a little unsteady on his feet and had a racking cough – so it was a slow trek through the woods. Robert reckoned they had gone a quarter mile or so when they came to a scatter of abandoned farm buildings. The two men called out a greeting, and Robert watched in astonishment as, in ones and twos, timid, ghostly figures emerged from the broken-down doorways of the sheds. There must have been dozens of them, some wearing the distinctive striped Auschwitz clothing, most dressed in the usual mess of salvaged coats and filthy-looking blankets.

It gave Robert a shiver when one of the men stepped forward and spoke in English, with an American accent. It never ceased to seem alien, hearing the voices of New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, California, issuing from the mouths of emaciated, peasant-clad ghosts in some out-of-the-way corner of Poland.

Robert explained that he was here to help get them out of the country. The news was received like a divine revelation. The POWs had no idea that the outside world knew about them. (The OSS agents, who couldn't compromise their own cover, did not necessarily contact the ex-prisoners they gathered intelligence about and gave out minimal information about their purpose.) Robert asked how many
of the people here were POWs. He'd been notified to expect a group about the same size as the one near Lwów, but there must be twice that number here.

Only about half of them were Allied POWs. The rest were refugees from Nazi labor camps, as well as some Jews who had escaped from the SS during the terrible death marches from Auschwitz in January. Some of the POWs were also death-march escapees, having cut loose from the march out of Stalag VIII-B at Lamsdorf,
²
about 50 miles to the west. Aside from the American and British POWs, there were civilian ex-prisoners. Their nationalities were mixed: French, Dutch, a handful of Poles. They had attached themselves to the POWs in the hope that they might help them to salvation, not realizing that the Americans were as firmly trapped in Soviet Poland as everyone else.

They had been living on a small stock of canned food looted from a storehouse in an abandoned camp, but it was almost exhausted. Robert looked at the circle of faces – some despondent and sick, others regarding him with hope and delight – and felt a flutter of panic at the thought of sneaking this many into the city and onto a train.

But there was no time to waste on worry. It was a long way back to Kraków, and with 50 mouths to feed, Robert's supply of rations wasn't going to last to the end of the day. He explained that he only had a little food but could give them plenty of money to buy more. He could only take responsibility for the Allied POWs, but he was willing to put all the civilian men who wanted to leave Poland onto a train for Odessa along with them. From there, they would be on their own. He had no idea whether the Soviets, or indeed the Americans or the British, would give them passage out.