Beyond the Call (22 page)

9 MARCH 1945: BETWEEN LUBLIN AND THE UKRAINIAN BORDER

S
ERGEANT
B
EADLE WAS
woken from a fitful doze by the jolting of the boxcar as it came to a halt. Looking out through a gap in the boards, he saw buildings: a rail station and a town beyond. Where
they were he had no idea; just another stop on the tortuously slow journey. In the two days since it had been loaded up in Lublin, Beadle reckoned, the train couldn't have covered more than 40 or 50 miles.

Near him other men were waking up and looking around, in that slow, painful way of men who are cold to the bone. Some went on sleeping. Others just stared, hollow-eyed, at nothing. A few were cheerful; just the belief that they were heading for home was enough for them. There were more than 50 men in the car;
²⁴
it was so crowded they could only lie down to sleep in shifts. The Russians had given them some food – black bread, a little luncheon meat, and some sugar and oatmeal – but it had run out some time ago. The boxcar had no source of heat, and it was bitterly cold.

With an effort, Beadle slid back the door and dropped onto the snow beside the track, stamping his feet to try and bring them to life; along the train, made up of a mixture of boxcars, other people were doing the same. Private Ronald Gould followed Beadle out of the car. Gould was English, an infantryman from the Royal East Kent Regiment – traditionally called ‘The Buffs' – who had also served in the Italian campaign. The Buffs had been fighting at Monte Cassino while the 45th was at Anzio.
²⁵
The two men had met in Lublin and formed one of those instantaneous bonds that spring up among fugitives and refugees; the temporary friendship of lost souls.

They looked up and down the tracks and across at the town beyond the station. Would it be safe to venture out? They had a little cash between them; they could try to buy some food. They knew by now that once this train stopped, it would probably be hours before it got going again. But maybe they shouldn't risk it. If the train did go without them, they'd be screwed.

Growing more and more hungry, Beadle and Gould waited in the boxcar as the hours dragged by. There was no sign of the train going any further today. Eventually they couldn't stand it any longer. They jumped out, hurried across the tracks, and plunged into the streets around the station, searching for somewhere they might be able to eat. It took a while, but they eventually found a place to buy some
food, and then began hurrying back toward the station. Dreadful as it was, the boxcar had become their haven: the only route to home and freedom.

It had gone. The section of track where the train had stood for hour upon endless hour was empty.

Their bad luck was almost beyond belief. If they'd gone into town when they first thought of it, rather than being cautious, they would now be rolling on toward Odessa with their bellies filled.

All was not lost. They had identification papers and a little money. There were other trains they could board, even if they had to wait. Eventually they managed to get aboard a train traveling east. At the Ukrainian border,
²⁶
they were forced to disembark by Russian soldiers. They stepped off the train and into a maze of Soviet bureaucracy. Their identification papers were not adequate; they would need new ones. Given into the care of two Russian official ‘guides' (armed guards), Beadle and Gould were taken to a town some twenty miles further east, where the Communist commandant would issue them with the appropriate papers.

At this next town, they acquired three new traveling companions who were in the same situation. Two were British ex-prisoners of war from Lublin who were trying to get to Moscow: a Scottish sergeant called Montgomery and Flying Officer Panniers of the Royal Air Force.
²⁷
The third man was a Canadian civilian. The town commandant gave all five men the papers they required. Then he informed them that they should proceed to Lwów. That meant heading back into Poland – back the way they had come. To compound their confusion and dismay, there was a mix-up, and the five men were taken into the custody of two new guards for the journey to Lwów. Aboard the train it was discovered that their newly issued papers, which had been in the possession of the previous guards, were now lost.

At least it wasn't far to Lwów, and they had a little food: a loaf-and-a-half of black bread and ten grams of sugar (about two teaspoons) between the five of them. The ramshackle little party disembarked at Lwów station. Their guards told them that they would escort them
to the Lwów commandant, who would give them another new set of papers. Beadle and his friends pleaded for food. The guards refused: no food until they had seen the commandant.

As they shambled out under the grand arched entrance of the railroad station and set off down the broad, tree-lined avenue that led to the city center, it seemed to Sergeant Beadle that he would never find his way out of this cursed country. He was doomed to shuttle slowly from one commandant to another, back and forth, collecting more and more useless sets of papers, getting colder and hungrier until he finally died of despair.

Lost in thought and faint with hunger and fatigue, he hardly noticed at first the two men walking toward the little group, apparently on their way to the station. When he realized that they were looking curiously at the prisoners, he studied them closely. They were wrapped up against the cold, but they were dressed unmistakably in American uniform. Proper uniform, not the ragged remnants worn by POWs. One was an Army Air Force officer, a young fellow with an open, friendly face; the other was a sergeant, stocky, dark, and serious-looking.

Beadle halted; so did the two Americans.

‘Help,' Beadle said, and took a step toward them. ‘Help us, please.'

Chapter 12

AMERICAN GENTLEMEN

6 MARCH 1945: BETWEEN RZESZÓW AND LWÓW

A
T FIRST, IT
was just flecks of snow that flickered past the cockpit windows of the B-17. But within minutes, the flecks had grown to a thick cascade splattering against the windshield. Visibility dropped dramatically. Captain Robert Trimble glanced at the compass and the other instruments, and eased the control column forward, dropping the bomber gently down to a lower altitude. At around 500 feet, in the failing light and the snow, he could just about make out the railroad tracks he'd been following for the past ten miles.

Getting to Poltava was going to be harder than he'd anticipated.

The journey that had started in the field near Staszów yesterday morning had begun to get interesting a few minutes after take-off. Robert had made a rapid turn to get on course for Lwów before the plane's meager supply of fuel was exhausted. It was no use; so much had been used up taxiing the salvaged aircraft to its take-off field, there wasn't going to be anywhere near enough to make it. When number three engine sputtered and cut out, Robert decided to head for the Soviet airfield at Rzeszów and make an emergency landing. He, Lieutenant Jessee, and Sergeants Picarelli and Matles stayed the night there. The Russians were hospitable, as they invariably were when they didn't feel suspicious of you. Evidently the Soviet colonel's complaint about Captain Trimble's behavior had not reached Rzeszów. Next morning, unaware of any reason to detain it, the Russians happily refueled the B-17 and allowed it to fly on.

With the tanks full, Robert had hoped to skip Lwów and reach Poltava in one hop. He was anxious to be done with this side mission and return to what he now viewed as his sole purpose in this country – getting American prisoners home.

But the weather had been deteriorating for days, and it was starting to snow as they boarded the plane. This wasn't looking good. But the journey wasn't a long one, and the snow was sparse. Robert's flight plan was indirect; with no proper maps for Lieutenant Jessee to work with, they were reduced to following the railroad tracks, the compass, and Jessee's own knowledge of the lie of the land between Kraków, Lwów, and Poltava. Robert flew at a perilously low altitude, where the dark strand of the railroad showed clearly against the snowy landscape.

For the first few miles out of Rzeszów it went well, but the snow suddenly worsened: the few flakes multiplied rapidly into a vortex, an onslaught of snow that obscured the view, while down below it settled on the tracks, gradually erasing their dark line.

Robert's gut reaction was to drop still lower, and he eased down to 200 feet – dangerously low even in good weather – and then lower still. His eyes were tearing up with the cold and the strain of looking for the fading tracks. Somewhere ahead, dozens of miles away but rushing toward them at about 150 miles per hour, was the city of Lwów. As far as Robert could recall, it had few, if any, buildings higher than three or four stories. But there would be factory smokestacks scattered about. At least there wouldn't be any barrage balloons.

Suddenly a tall smokestack loomed up; not dead ahead, but close enough to give Robert and Picarelli a nasty start. It was no use – they would have to climb. Staying at this altitude was too dangerous, and the tracks could hardly be seen anyway. Robert pulled back on the column and the B-17 rose back up past 1,000 feet. From this point on all they had was the Fortress's instruments and their wits. Jessee would have to navigate by dead reckoning, using their compass bearing and speed to calculate their position minute by minute.

The vibration from the distorted propeller shaft in number three engine was getting worse, and the temperature gauge was rising,
beginning to overheat. On Robert's order, Picarelli shut it down and feathered the prop. They were now flying on three engines and hope.

When their calculations told them they were nearing Lwów, Robert cautiously began to descend through the storm. The city's streets and buildings emerged vaguely through the snow – just a maze of gray creases, striations and blobs in the white expanse. Descending further and straining his eyes, Robert was relieved to see the long northward curve of the railroad track where it ran into the rail station on the western edge of the city. Now he knew where he was. The main airfield of Lwów-Sknilow was close by. He banked the Fortress and began a long turn west-southwest, almost back the way they'd come; there, looming up under the nose, was the expanse of the airfield. Robert had been here before, but only as a passenger with a Russian pilot, never at the controls. He would have to guess where the runway was.

He took a wide curve around the field, judging his approach, then turned and lined up where he reckoned the runway lay, estimating it from a row of telegraph poles with red balls on the wires, which he knew ran across the line of approach. Everything was white, so he trusted to luck and scrubbed off the power. The Fort sank gently down – so reduced in weight, she seemed reluctant to drop the last couple of dozen feet. Straining his eyes between the whiteout and the instruments, Robert drew down the throttles. Flying by feel and experience, he pulled the column back, and felt the satisfying thump of a perfect three-point touchdown. That was good – but now they were rolling at 100 miles per hour into the whiteout instead of flying; there could be anything in the way – planes, buildings, vehicles. Pushing hard on the brake pedals (one for each of the two main wheels), he fought against the plane's urge to slew sideways on the snow. At last the Fort rolled to a stop, and sat rumbling and vibrating unevenly, like a bad-tempered dog.

There was little point in taxiing away, as they had no idea where they should taxi to, or even where the taxiways were. So, once the three remaining engines were shut down, the three Americans climbed
out of the plane, just in time to see a jeep racing across the field toward them, carrying a Russian officer. Uh-oh, Robert thought – was this where the consequences of pulling his pistol on the Soviet colonel came back to bite him? If so, how in the world had they known he'd be arriving here now?

The jeep swerved to a halt, and the Russian officer jumped out. He stared, with an expression that looked like a mixture of awe and worry, at the B-17 and the men who had emerged from it. He immediately began talking at them.

‘He says there's a cliff,' Sergeant Matles translated. ‘Didn't you know there's a cliff here? he says.'

‘A cliff?' Robert thought Matles must have misheard – why would an airfield have a cliff?

The Russian beckoned them to follow him. He walked out into the snow beyond the nose of the B-17 and pointed. The Americans looked, and their hearts quailed. There, just a few yards ahead of where the Fort had come to a halt, the ground fell sharply away in a steep bluff.
¹
The drop was more than a hundred feet, completely invisible from the line of approach. ‘Holy shit,' someone muttered. One pound less pressure on the brakes, one iota more speed on the dial, and they'd have been pancaked down there without ever knowing what had happened.

‘No,' Robert said in reply to the Russian's repeated query. ‘I didn't know. I've never flown in here before.'

He'd nearly never flown in anywhere ever again. He really would be glad when this mission was over. Salvaging planes was proving to be even more stressful than evading bird dogs and smuggling POWs.

T
HE
R
USSIAN JEEP
took the four Americans to the airfield headquarters, where they were treated to vodka and sandwiches by the admiring officers. This side of the Russian character – the warmth and humor, the loud, backslapping conviviality – was a strange contrast to the darker side, and almost, but not quite, made up for it. Once the ritual
hospitality was over, the Americans made their way into the city and checked into Robert's now familiar haunt, the Hotel George.

This visit would be less fraught than his previous one, he expected. It made a pleasant change for Robert having Sergeant Matles to interpret for him, rather than some Soviet bird dog. And he was looking forward to getting a good night's sleep. The beds at the George were the best: warm, comfortable, better than the cold fuselage of a plane, or even the bed back at Poltava that he'd barely had chance to sleep in, or his billet at Debach. The only bed he'd been in recently that equaled those at the George was the one at the US Embassy in London. And the only one that could better that was the one he'd shared with Eleanor. Whichever house in whichever town, there was nothing to beat that. It seemed such a long time ago now, and a world away.

Robert's thoughts were yanked back to the present by the discovery that he and his comrades were not the only Americans in the hotel. There were nine others, the crew of a B-17 which had crash-landed north of here just over a week ago.

B-17 43-38823, piloted by Second Lieutenant Jack Barnett of the 384th Bomb Group, had taken off from its base in Northamptonshire as part of a force bombing Berlin.
²
The Fortress took multiple flak hits over the target. With two engines dead and leaking fuel, and losing altitude rapidly, Barnett headed for Soviet territory. Coming out of the cloud base at 400 feet into a snowstorm, the crew located a field suitable for a crash-landing. The damage to both inboard engine nacelles had knocked out the landing gear, so there was no choice but to put the Fort down on her belly.

Barnett and his crew just had time to destroy the bombsight before being picked up by a Red Army unit from the nearby town of Rawa-Ruska, about 30 miles north-west of Lwów. They were accommodated in Soviet officers' quarters, under guard, and fed well. They were also provided with an interpreter. A local woman, she seemed to have no love for the Russians. She confided to the Americans that her parents, who were Canadian, had settled there in 1935; later they were
murdered by the Soviets. She believed that most people thereabouts hated the Russians more than they did the Germans.

After two days at Rawa-Ruska, Lieutenant Barnett and his men were taken to Lwów and lodged at the Hotel George. They were advised to keep off the streets at night during the curfew and not to carry sidearms in the hotel. And there they stayed, living in relative comfort, for the next week, waiting for someone to come and pick them up. Suddenly Robert's responsibilities multiplied threefold.

Barnett's B-17, despite the belly landing, was reckoned to be salvageable, which would mean an arduous task lined up for someone from Eastern Command.
³
Someone other than Captain Trimble, Robert hoped, as he listened to the story. He still had a way to go to get the Fortress he already had back to Poltava. But he would take Barnett and his crew – three officers and six sergeants – with him. As always, the Soviets were perfectly happy to allow downed American aircrews to be taken out via Poltava; only ex-prisoners of war were forbidden to go that way.

All thirteen Americans were going to be stuck in Lwów for a while. The snow was setting in, and there'd be no take-offs for at least a day or two. Also, work would need to be done on that number three engine. With the crew-and-passenger complement tripled, it was all the more important that the plane be mechanically sound.

Robert had barely got used to this new situation when another, rather more sinister, development occurred.

On the face of it, it seemed pleasant enough. The face in question was that of a nice Polish lady who spoke excellent English. She met Captain Trimble and Sergeant Matles in the hotel dining room, and introduced herself as Miss Esa Lowry, a teacher in one of Lwów's schools.
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She had been requested by the city commandant to go to the hotel and offer whatever help she could to any American servicemen staying there.

‘Souvenirs I can obtain,' she said. ‘Or merchandise, or money. Dollars for zlotys or rubles.' What she was offering, in effect, was to act as a go-between with the local black market. There was nothing
essentially wrong with that – it was the way of life in Poland – but something about this smiling lady made Robert's suspicious hackles rise. Miss Lowry became a fixture at the hotel, a constant presence in the dining room, and took a close interest in the comings and goings of all the Americans. Robert was certain she was in the service of the NKVD.