Beyond the Call Page 5

  After a while, an attendant came looking for him and told him to come at once. Robert stood up and went to face his doom. To his surprise, he was taken to a different office, where he was met by an entirely different embassy official – a tall fellow who greeted Robert with a smile. Again no name was given, but at least this time he got a warm welcome.

  ‘Captain Trimble, come in and sit down. Colonel Helton gave you a strong recommendation.’

  Robert felt a surge of relief at the mention of Helton’s name. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I came here as an officer of the Army Air Forces, and I intend to go home the same way. I don’t know what all that business about civilian suits and flying to Sweden is all about, but I’m a pilot. I can’t change my skin, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I understand, Captain. We’ve changed our minds; we can go back to the original arrangement. You’ll be going to the Soviet Union.’

  ‘And I’ll be ferrying planes back to England, like Colonel Helton said?’

  ‘Yes … and other functions as deemed necessary. You wouldn’t want to be bored, right, Captain?’

  ‘No, sir. What would the other functions be?’

  Somehow he never got told about the other functions. Suddenly the official became very busy, and Robert was escorted away by an attendant.

  Like an aero engine on a cold morning, the bureaucratic machine had got off to a halting, juddering start. But now that it had been set in motion, it turned with a will, and Robert was swept along in the prop wash. In short order, he was equipped with travel warrants and other requisites for the long and roundabout journey to the USSR. He was also photographed and fingerprinted for ID documents. Unlike the plain, regular War Department AGO card he and every other officer carried, this was a real embassy-issue passport. Still unsure what intentions the military machine had for him, and whether they would be for good or ill, Robert lost the cheerful countenance he usually wore when a camera was pointed at him, and stared with deep suspicion into the lens.

  The photo was printed, and he signed it; then it was fixed into the passport, and ‘American Consular Service’ was stamped across it.

  He was now officially part of the machine. Unofficially, and though he didn’t yet know it, he had passed beyond the bounds of the Army, and was now in the orbit of the Office of Strategic Services.

  To the end of his life, Robert never understood what had gone on in the embassy, even in the light of what came later. It was almost certainly a bureaucratic screw-up: a case of mistaken identity. In 1944, the OSS, in cooperation with the British Special Operations Executive, had established a base in Sweden – the Westfield Mission.4 In early 1945, Westfield was being used as a way station for field agents (known as ‘Joes’) being infiltrated into Germany and German-occupied Poland.5 They did indeed have flights going to and from Sweden virtually every night, taking supplies and ferrying Joes. When Robert showed up at the embassy, having been passed along from the OSS/SOE handler, the embassy attaché (probably an OSS officer from the headquarters round the corner in Grosvenor Street) believed he was a Joe, and treated him accordingly. The ‘change of plans’ was presumably the result of the realization that Captain Trimble was actually the pilot for the Ukraine mission.

  It was all too easy for such a mix-up to occur. A lot of Joes were being processed for infiltration missions. Whole networks of them were built up behind German lines. Joes were trained at the OSS’s British bases, either in London or one of the secret ‘areas’ in the countryside, and then passed along to Area T (Harrington in Northamptonshire) for air transportation. Typically they would liaise with their mission handlers at a safe house, which would be a shabby, partly furnished place, often in a London backstreet, exactly like the one Robert was sent to.6 For all OSS personnel other than the handlers and mission briefers, there was a strict culture of silence surrounding Joes. For everyone, from the administrators who processed them to the specialist aircrews who transported them, there was a code of conduct: You do not ask a Joe any questions about himself, and you do not tell a Joe anything that he doesn’t need to know.7

  The OSS attaché at the embassy might have been a little puzzled by Robert’s uniform on an agent, but it was common for OSS personnel in England to wear AAF uniforms in order to blend in with the people they had to mix with at the training and operational bases.8 The fitting for a civilian suit was also part of standard procedure; the OSS clothing depot was nearby, in Brook Street, Mayfair, and the tailors there could create any kind of clothing, from authentic European work overalls to civilian suits and even enemy uniforms, all with the correct stitching styles and labels.9

  Having realized their error, the anonymous officials at the embassy put Captain Trimble back on his proper intended course and sent him on his way, shaken and puzzled by the experience but completely innocent of what was in store for him.

  Chapter 3

  THE LONG WAY ROUND

  29 JANUARY 1945: BETWEEN PARIS AND MARIGNANE, FRANCE

  A HEAVY, RELENTLESS DRONING filled the passenger compartment of the C-47 Skytrain – so loud and so constant, it was physically oppressive. It was different from the sound Robert was accustomed to. The two Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp engines that powered the C-47 made less noise than the four Wright Cyclones that propelled the huge weight of a B-17 into the sky; but it wasn’t just the tone and volume of the engine noise that sounded different in Robert’s ears – it was the way it resonated through the airframe. He was accustomed to the sound thrumming into the cockpit, not vibrating around the hollow tube of a passenger cabin.

  That was another thing – he wasn’t used to being a passenger. It didn’t seem right to be sitting out back when he should be up front, with the half wheel of the control column in his hand and eight men on the other end of the interphone, ready to follow his orders.1

  He shifted uncomfortably in the steel dish that passed for a seat. Some C-47s were fitted out for carrying cargo; a few were set up for VIPs and had real seats. Most were like this one: troop carriers designed for airborne infantry. The seating comprised two long benches, one down each side of the fuselage, with shallow steel hollows designed to receive steel butts; if you were unlucky and had the regular fleshy kind, you were in for a hell of a ride. Robert glanced around at the other passengers – miscellaneous servicemen on their way to who knew where. They didn’t seem to be enjoying it any more than he was. A few were trying to carry on conversations over the noise, some were staring into space, and a few were reading letters.

  Robert looked through his jacket pockets and extracted a rumpled piece of paper. He looked at it a moment, puzzled, then recognized his Lucky Bastard certificate. Still where he’d put it that evening back in Debach, when the world was a more dangerous but slightly less confusing place.

  In another pocket he found his brand-new passport. He flipped it open and looked idly through it. It had his planned route written in it, in the form of a list of countries it was valid for: ‘British Isles, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and necessary countries en route via Casablanca …’2

  … Casablanca. What he’d have given to go to Casablanca again! His itinerary had been changed at the last minute, rerouted via Paris. As always happened in this war, days of waiting around had turned suddenly into desperate urgency, and he had to make do with whatever flights were available. Right now he was somewhere over the middle of France, having taken off a couple of hours ago from Paris. The plane was due to land soon at Marignane on the Mediterranean coast, where he had to pick up a connection to Italy, or wherever a ride happened to be going. It was a long, roundabout journey from England to the Ukraine, avoiding the huge, lethal but ever-shrinking blot on the map known as the Third Reich.

  But Casablanca was out. Robert sighed and put the passport back in his breast pocket.

  His first and only visit to Casablanca had been a momentary idyll on the way to combat. It was the tail end of May 1944, and Lieutenant Robert M. Trimble was running late for the war.

  He and hi
s crew, having been put together at March Field Army Air Base in California, hadn’t yet been assigned to any unit. They were caught up in the general rush to get men and equipment to Europe in time for the D-Day invasion. They had one another and they had a brand-new Consolidated B-24 Liberator, which they were tasked with ferrying to England. They would be posted to a bomb group on arrival. While most crews flew the northern route, with stops at Labrador, Iceland, and Northern Ireland, Robert’s was sent via the southern route, from California via Arizona, Florida, Trinidad, Brazil, and North Africa.3 And even that, it seemed, was too straightforward for Robert M. Trimble. Flying into Fortaleza, Brazil, he was taken sick.

  He’d had surgery on a wisdom tooth just before departure, and an infection set in. His jaw was on fire, his throat swelling, and he could hardly breathe. After landing at Fortaleza, he was taken directly from the plane to a hospital. The rest of the crew spent a week waiting for Robert to improve.4 They found diversion with the local women and in the challenge of keeping their belongings dry in the daily torrential thunderstorms. Finally their command decided that the war couldn’t wait; they were ordered to get going, healthy or not, on the next leg of their journey.

  It was an overnight flight of some twelve hours over 1,946 miles of open ocean to Dakar, on the very western tip of Africa. They flew through almost continual electrical storms that played havoc with the radio. Lieutenant Walter Hvischuk, the navigator, did a superb job, bringing the ship in right over the Dakar runway at noon the next day, 5 May 1944. Co-pilot Warren Johnson had sole charge of the controls, while Robert formed an intimate bond with the cockpit floor, curled up in a ball in the small space behind the seats. When they landed in Dakar, he was again carried off to a hospital. This could become a way of life. His temperature was around 106 degrees, so they packed him in ice and gave him sulfa drugs (the first antibacterial drugs he’d had since the wisdom tooth operation).5 He was so sick, his swollen throat had to be intubated.

  The crew hung around in Dakar for ten days, watching movies, or swimming at the beach, or lying in their cots in the hot, dirty camp where everything was covered in a layer of red dust. Eventually they were sent on to Marrakech, Morocco, with a temporary substitute pilot, a Captain Van Eden, taking the controls. Robert was left behind, too sick to be moved. It was looking like they might lose their commander – Robert was likely to end up being reassigned to a different crew. He might even be facing a discharge on medical grounds.

  After the boys had gone, Robert stayed in the hospital another ten days. Eventually he was well enough to lift his head from the pillow. What he saw of his surroundings wasn’t reassuring – heat and red dust, and camel dung. The dust and dung got everywhere, even into the hospital, spreading a stench into the wards.

  The doctors wanted to send him back stateside to convalesce. Robert wasn’t having that, and he rebelled. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing his ship, his crew, and maybe even his chance to fight in the war. He’d trained long and hard to fly combat, and doctors’ orders weren’t going to hold him back. Still weak but running on a mixture of adrenaline and inborn stubbornness, he got himself discharged, hitched a ride on a B-25 Mitchell bound for Marrakech, and set off in pursuit of his crew.

  For a brief moment, as the B-25 came in to land, he thought he’d succeeded; he recognized his Liberator parked near the runway at Marrakech. It was definitely his ship – the markings were clear. After landing, he walked over to take a look. It was his all right, but it had a sad, dilapidated look, its silvery surfaces glaring dully under a layer of dust in the blazing Moroccan sun. As Robert walked around it, he noticed that two engines were gone, cannibalized by ground crews. Nobody was going to be flying this crate anywhere. Where was his crew? And what in the world had happened to the ship? (He discovered later that the substitute pilot, Captain Van Eden, had vanished immediately after landing, and Marrakech’s ground crews began cannibalizing the plane for spare parts.)

  Unable to find his friends, Robert boarded his ride again, and flew on to the next destination – the coastal city of Casablanca. On the approach to the airfield, the pilot, who obviously had a reckless streak similar to Robert’s, decided to buzz a camel caravan; a memorable experience. A B-25 Mitchell is an unusually noisy aircraft – much louder than a Fortress or a Liberator, despite having only half as many engines6 – and to have one come over at high speed at an altitude of 50 feet would be a pretty alarming experience. As the green monster blasted overhead, Arabs and camels scattered across the desert in a cloud of dust and panic. Robert decided that buzzing caravans in Africa was much more diverting than chasing coyotes over New Mexico.7

  In Casablanca Robert finally caught up with Warren, Walter, and the rest of the boys. They had taken up residence in the colonial splendor of the old Italian Consulate building. Abandoned after the defeat of the Axis in Morocco, the building had been used by the US Army as an evacuation hospital during the Tunisian campaign;8 now that the war had moved to Italy, it had become a hostel for American airmen.9 The men had good beds, real bathrooms, and excellent food cooked by the consulate’s Italian chefs, who remained in residence despite the radical change in occupancy. For most of the men who passed through, it was the greatest comfort they had experienced since leaving their own homes. For Lieutenant Robert Trimble, after the dust and dung of the Dakar hospital, it was paradise.

  Casablanca itself was a marvel, full to the brim with sunlight, gleaming on the Moorish colonnades and the white stucco of the old French colonial buildings. Ingrid Bergman was nowhere to be seen, but there were plenty of high-class young French ladies with whom to while away the drowsy hours. Summer was rising, and the Moroccan coast was a hot haven of turquoise sea and white sand, where both home and the war seemed far away. The men swam and bronzed their young limbs on the beach, and drank cold beer in the long evenings.

  It was a good place to pause on the way to war. With the prospect of a premature, violent death on the horizon, it was also a good place to reflect, if you were that way inclined. Most of the men were young, and full of the youthful certainty that life was theirs for the keeping. They didn’t believe they were going to die. Robert was young too – a few months shy of his 25th birthday – but he saw further than most, and felt the oppressive menace that was in the world. Unlike many of his peers, he understood that he might die in the inferno they were heading toward. The knowledge didn’t shake his resolve or his excitement, but it did give him pause for thought. Foremost in his thoughts now was Eleanor – and fatherhood.

  His last sight of her as the train pulled away – she was on board, he was on the platform, a reversal of the usual wartime farewell – was still clear in his mind, as were the words she said to him.

  For some time the tension had been building. At March Field Robert’s training had reached its final stages: he had completed the transition to the B-24, been assigned a crew, and trained with them in the intricate skills of managing a heavy bomber in tight formation, dropping dummy bombs by day and night onto imaginary targets in the Mojave Desert.

  He and Eleanor could both feel the war coming closer to them. She had followed him loyally from town to town as he went through his training, but now he would have to move on where she could no longer follow: overseas to the front line. He had received orders to fly up to Hamilton Army Air Base, near San Francisco, and pick up their brand-new B-24 (the very one that finished up being cannibalized in Marrakech).10

  Eleanor was only 21 years old, and she dreaded being left behind. She had nobody in the world. Just a few weeks earlier, she had received the news that her father had died (her mother had already passed on some years earlier), and within days the terrible blow that her beloved brother Howard, who had joined the Army right after Pearl Harbor, had been killed. After serving through the North African campaign, he had been badly wounded in Italy, and died shortly after. They had been intensely close, just a year apart in age, both keen basketball enthusiasts. Eleanor was knocked flat by the news. Robert was all
she had now, and her only home was wherever he was.

  Her forebodings had been growing ever since he was in advanced training and the war began to feel like a real, threatening presence that would soon come between them and force them apart, maybe forever. In November 1943 she had written to her best friend, Esther Burk, who was still living back in Lemoyne, Pennsylvania:

  I am so afraid for Robert and for us. … I know the time will come too soon when he’s off to the war. I am so afraid I’ll never see him again. I want to keep a part of him with me, you know, have a baby. He doesn’t want us to have a child yet though. He says the war will be tough. No saying what could happen. He doesn’t want to have a child if it can’t know its father. I never realized how important this was to him. He won’t say, but I think his father’s running out on the family has a lot to do with it. I think it’s important to him to be there for our kids. His talk doesn’t make me feel good about what’s coming.

  The feeling grew heavier and harder to bear. When the time came, Robert went with her to the train station at Riverside. She should have been waving him off, but instead she was the one leaving. There was no home for her in California now, and she was traveling back to Pennsylvania. Robert’s mother would be her companion through the rest of the war, and her life would be dominated by the routine of a drudge job.

  Robert looked uneasily at the trunk and two huge suitcases that were being loaded aboard the AT&SF Super Chief that would carry Eleanor as far as Chicago, and he wondered how she would manage it all. In a few short years of itinerant married life, they seemed to have accumulated an awful lot.

  The huge red-and-silver diesel locomotive stood hissing patiently on the track. Eleanor sobbed and clung to him, staring up into his face, preserving this last sight of him in her memory. Caught up in the excitement of the adventure that was ahead of him, Robert didn’t quite understand how much this moment meant to her. But he could see the tears, and the few words they exchanged stayed etched in his memory forever.