Beyond the Call Read online

  As 1944 wore away, Donovan made request after request for permission to put OSS agents into Poland for intelligence-gathering purposes.13 The requests were denied. In fact, there were so many requests from the OSS, continuing on into 1945, that a dispassionate observer might wonder if they were deliberately designed to distract the Russians from more subtle infiltration efforts.

  In November 1944, Major General Edmund W. Hill was posted to Moscow, where he joined the American Military Mission as head of its air division and overall commander of all USAAF units and activities in Russia.14 Hill’s previous appointment had been in Britain, as CO of the Eighth Air Force’s Composite Command.15 Seemingly an innocuous umbrella organization for various specialized units, Composite Command included the 492nd Bomb Group, the unit that provided airlift services for the OSS. The modified Liberator bombers of the 492nd were used for parachuting agents into occupied territories. General Hill was deeply involved in operational planning for OSS mission-drops.16 If the Military Mission in Moscow had wanted a man who was intimately connected with the operational structure of the OSS in Europe but was not officially an OSS officer, they could not have chosen better than General Edmund Hill.17

  All the elements that would be needed for a covert operation in Soviet-occupied territory were coming into place.

  When Captain Trimble stepped out of his transport onto the frozen ground of Poltava on 15 February 1945, he knew nothing about such things.18 But he was about to begin learning.

  Soon he would find out first-hand about the Soviets, including what they thought about Americans and about a lot of other things in this war. He had already seen the bewildering contrast between the wonderful, warm hospitality the Russians could show and the callousness that was the other side of it. What he didn’t know was how deep the callousness could run, and how horrifying the effects could be. A seasoned veteran of air combat he might be, but in many respects he was still an innocent in the ways of war. The Eastern Front could teach a man about the uttermost ends of war, and how human beings could become beasts.

  There were Russian sentries already on hand as Robert and the other passengers disembarked, and a jeep was waiting to take them to the American camp. The sentries had their bayonets fixed: the long, sword-like Russian type that looked particularly threatening. Robert glanced enviously at the men’s fur-lined caps; he’d have to snag one for himself as quickly as possible.

  The jeep sped across the snowy field. Drawing into himself against the biting cold, Robert had little attention to give to his surroundings. There were few planes scattered about: a couple of C-47s and two or three battle-scarred B-24 Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses bearing a mixture of bomb group markings (presumably these were the salvaged planes that he was here to ferry home). Most of Poltava’s aircraft – its squadrons of Russian Yak fighters – were dispersed at the far end of the field. The only thing nearby with Soviet markings was a two-seater biplane that looked like a relic from World War I – a Polikarpov U-2 that the Soviets used for light local transport.

  Robert was taken to the officers’ quarters – a wooden barracks hut among a cluster of identical buildings lining the edge of a dreary roadway. Looming over it all was a row of old apartment buildings, blackened by fire and bomb-damaged. He had been instructed to report to the commanding officer immediately on arrival, so he deposited his kit and set off for headquarters. Following a sign nailed to a dead-looking tree beside a muddy road, he walked past the broken façades of more burned-out buildings and found the HQ of Eastern Command, which was another wooden shack. It was even less impressive than Debach HQ, which had at least had nice trees around it.

  Robert went in and, having expected to be kept waiting, was admitted to the CO’s office with startling speed. Here he got his first view of the man who was about to turn his life upside down and scare the living daylights out of him.

  Colonel Thomas K. Hampton was a man of indeterminate age and even more indeterminate status. His premature baldness made him look older than he probably was, and his heavy eyebrows, solemn eyes, and long jaw enhanced the effect. Robert would know him for quite a while before discovering that there was a good deal of humor and warmth in Colonel Hampton; right now, he had little enough to be humorous about.

  The status of his command was uncertain. In terms of its administrative position, Eastern Command was equivalent to formations like the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, and yet it had hardly any infrastructure, no subordinate units, and its complement of aircraft was limited to a handful of transports. In scale, it was on a par with a small transport and maintenance battalion, and yet its senior officers were at the very center of relations between the war’s two most powerful combatant nations.

  At a personal level, the Americans got on well with the Russians. There were frequent parties at the officers’ and enlisted men’s clubs, and gatherings at the base’s theater and Russian restaurant, to which the Russians brought their vast talent for lively celebration and a real air of hospitable warmth. But then there was the official relationship, which was policed by the NKVD and colored by two sets of values and principles which were worlds apart.

  About half of Colonel Hampton’s time was devoted to diplomatic liaison with his Soviet opposite number, Major General S.K. Kovalev, overall commander of the Poltava base. Besides being an enthusiastic reveler, Kovalev was a cunning diplomat, whereas Hampton didn’t really have the temperament for it. He regarded it as his duty to put the interests of American service personnel first and had no patience with Soviet obstruction and little ability with diplomatic doublespeak.

  There were one or two officers in Eastern Command who, while not exactly sympathetic to the Soviets, empathized with the Soviet viewpoint; they regarded Hampton as needlessly antagonistic.19 He had been barred by the Russians from flying into Poland because they believed he was gathering political intelligence (which was how they viewed reporting on Soviet misconduct).20 He never neglected to stick up for his men. There had been sporadic incidents in which unknown Russian soldiers had shot dogs belonging to American servicemen. Hampton informed General Kovalev that his men took ‘a very serious view of such cruelty to animals’, and warned that if the men ever caught a Russian soldier injuring a dog, ‘I refuse to take any responsibility for what might happen to the Russian.’

  Robert would grow to like Colonel Hampton, and eventually learned first-hand about the stresses of his position. He greeted Robert with a sour smile. ‘Welcome to paradise, Captain Trimble,’ he said.

  Robert laughed, and murmured something about being keen to take up his duties. Hampton looked oddly at him and asked if he understood fully what his duties were.

  ‘Why yes,’ said Robert. ‘I’m here to ferry those salvaged aircraft back to their groups.’ He guessed that the Forts would be going to England, and the Libs to Italy, and wondered if they’d all have to go via the tortuous Tehran route.

  Hampton frowned sternly at him. ‘You’re not here to be a ferry pilot,’ he said. ‘Didn’t they brief you in London?’ He demanded to see Robert’s passport, and studied it closely while Robert felt the first prickles of cold sweat. ‘When the clearance request came through from Tehran saying you were down for temporary duty only, we had to query USSTAF about your appointment, to be sure we had the right man.21 Seems we do. Have you taken a look at this passport, Captain?’ Hampton said. ‘This is a diplomatic passport, identifying you as a United States government official.’ He handed it back. ‘You should’ve been briefed on this back in England.’

  Robert had a dizzying sense of déjà-vu; suddenly he was back in that office in the US Embassy in London, objecting stridently while they tried to hustle him into being a spy.

  ‘You’re not here to be a ferry pilot,’ Hampton repeated. ‘I have enough pilots for the work we do here. That was just a ruse to get you out here. Your appointment comes from the Military Mission in Moscow. You’ll be working with the OSS, Captain Trimble; you’re going to be our agent in Poland.’


  WHEN ROBERT BUNKED down that night, his head was spinning. He was exhausted; it seemed like days had passed since setting out from Rostov that morning. Whole days of bewilderment, briefing, and suppressed indignation. He’d been lied to, right from the start. He could excuse his old commander, Colonel Helton – he’d almost certainly been just as dumb about this as Robert himself. But somebody somewhere, in the shadowy upper reaches of the chain of command, had cooked up a lie and made him eat it.

  His course was set, and there was nothing he could do about it. They’d caught, plucked, and basted him without him even realizing it. How could he have been so stupid? The thought that he had traded the opportunity to go home to Eleanor – even if it was just a couple of weeks – for this … this nightmarish mission that sounded like a one-way ticket to a garrote or a firing squad, it was enough to make a man weep.

  Robert’s first impulse when Colonel Hampton delivered his ambush was to rebel, to refuse as he had in London when they’d tried to make a spy of him (as he thought). But he suppressed the urge; it wouldn’t do here, in this back-of-beyond place, with this dark-eyed nemesis staring at him. So he bit back his indignation and asked what kind of ‘agent’ he was meant to be, what his task was, and what the OSS had to do with it.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Hampton, ‘we’re not going to parachute you into Berlin or anything like that.’

  Robert was glad to hear it. But when he heard what was going to be done with him, he almost choked. He listened dumbly as Colonel Hampton gave him his first unsettling glimpse behind the curtain.

  Eastern Command, the Military Mission, and the United States government were facing a humanitarian crisis. All across the disintegrating territories of the Third Reich, millions of prison camp inmates were being turned loose. Rumors were coming through that they were being abused, enslaved, and massacred. How true these stories were, nobody could tell.

  First had come the death camps, many of which were in the east of the Reich. In July 1944, the Soviets had liberated the death camp at Majdanek in eastern Poland, and even they were shocked by what they found there. In this instance they took their humanitarian responsibilities seriously, giving aid to the survivors and beginning trials of captured Nazis. By the end of 1944, they had even established a small museum at Majdanek memorializing what had been done there. Journalists from around the world were brought there to witness it.22 Behold the nature of fascism, the Soviets declared.

  Other kinds of camps were less horrifying, and Soviet sympathies were not moved at all. When Red Army units began encountering the dozens, then hundreds, of satellite camps and forced labor camps, they wanted no responsibility for them. The Poles and the Ukrainians could at least try to get home. The inmates from other nations had no hope at all.

  On 12 January 1945, the Red Army, having halted on the Vistula River to build up their strength, launched the massive Vistula–Oder Offensive, pushing deep toward Germany. The Soviet Union’s Western Allies watched anxiously as the Russian front line drew closer to the prisoner of war camps that were clustered around the German–Polish border. The stalags and oflags were filled with thousands upon thousands of American and British prisoners, as well as French, Dutch, Polish, Canadian, Australian, and every combatant nationality.

  Russia’s own people were also imprisoned, some in POW camps, many more in concentration camps, where they had been murdered in their thousands along with the other victims of the Holocaust.

  The Soviet attitude toward soldiers who had allowed themselves to be taken prisoner was well known. It had been articulated in Marshal Stalin’s infamous Decree of the Stavka of the Red Army Supreme High Command, Number 270, of August 1941, which declared that Red Army officers and commissars who became prisoners were ‘criminal deserters’ who had ‘breached their oath and betrayed their Homeland’. They should be shot by their commanders if possible, and their families would be arrested. The order, together with Stalin’s preamble to it, which equated all acts of surrender with cowardice and desertion – colored the attitude of Russian soldiers toward POWs for the rest of the war, and beyond.23 So did Stalin’s declaration, when asked to comment on the order, that ‘there are no prisoners of war, only traitors’.24 A further order, No. 0391, reiterated that deserters and traitors must be put to death.25 These decrees were made in the climate of shock and fear that came with the German invasion of the Soviet Union and were designed to encourage Red Army troops to fight to the death. The views they embodied took root.

  Would this attitude be limited to the treatment of liberated Russian POWs, or would it also lead to mistreatment of Americans, British, and others? In military and diplomatic circles in Washington and London, and in the British and American Military Missions in Moscow, they suspected that it would. They began to lay plans, and Poltava – that fragile little island of America in the vast Communist bloc – was their focus.

  Officially they professed to believe that the Soviet regime would do right. Accordingly they prepared transport, supplies, and contact teams for transfer to Poltava and on into Poland. As soon as the camps started being liberated, contact teams would round up American and British POWs and transfer them to holding centers where they could be given emergency care. Then they would be flown promptly to Poltava, where a hospital and accommodations would be established. From there, they could be transferred as quickly as possible via the Persian Corridor or the Black Sea ports, and shipped home.

  Such a plan had worked before. The first mass liberation of POWs in Eastern Europe had occurred with the fall of Romania in August 1944. Their evacuation was arranged quickly by the American and Romanian governments, before Soviet forces took control of the country.26 There would be no such opportunity in Poland. The Soviets were eating it up in swathes, and already installing their Communist-friendly government.

  So things stood in mid-February 1945, when Colonel Hampton sketched out the situation to a bewildered Captain Trimble in his office at Poltava. Robert couldn’t imagine what all these vast political matters had to do with him. What could he possibly be expected to do about all those thousands of prisoners? It sounded like either there would be a massive airlift evacuation of POWs or a huge diplomatic fight between the Allies. Other than maybe flying a plane as part of the airlift, there didn’t seem to be anything he could contribute.

  He wondered when Hampton would get around to explaining his hair-raising allusions to Robert being some kind of agent, working with the OSS, and not being parachuted into Berlin.

  The official plans and preparations depended on Soviet cooperation. Theoretically, there ought to be no problem. Only four days ago, the latest ‘Big Three’ conference had ended at Yalta in the Crimea. (Poltava had experienced a brief resurgence of activity, with Eastern Command providing air transport services for the British and American delegations attending the conference.) Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had signed their names to an agreement which included provisions on the treatment of liberated prisoners of war.27 They must be kept separate from enemy prisoners; they must be fully cared for, sheltered, fed, and clothed; and full access must be given at all times for repatriation officers representing the POWs’ home nations to inspect the camps and evacuate their people.

  Stalin had signed the agreement, but it was doubtful whether he would even give permission for the Americans to conduct their own evacuation and welfare program, let alone cooperate actively with it. Hence the covert American preparations for an alternative way to get their men out. Whistling innocently, the Americans smiled benignly at the Soviet Union, while behind the Soviets’ backs the Military Mission and its contacts in the OSS arranged to bring in an unsuspecting outsider to do their work.

  ‘You’re being appointed assistant operations officer,’ Hampton told Robert. ‘Officially your role will be aircraft salvage and aircrew rescue. But that’s just your cover. What you’ll really be doing is penetrating into Poland to make contact with POWs. It’s your job to gather ’em up and get ’em to safety.’

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p; Robert was assured that the Soviets would tail him relentlessly and do whatever they could to track and restrict his movements. But they couldn’t touch him. His diplomatic passport, plus his status as an authorized US officer on sanctioned aircraft salvage business, should give him immunity from arrest and detention. That was the theory. As he would learn later that day, when his briefing got down to details and he met the two men who were going to be his contacts out in the field, his diplomatic status would actually put him in greater danger.

  He would just have to ensure that the Russians didn’t discover what he was doing, and watch them even more carefully than they watched him.

  Chapter 5

  A BRUTAL AWAKENING

  16 FEBRUARY 1945: BRZEZINKA, TWENTY MILES WEST OF KRAKÓW, POLAND

  A JEEP ROARED ALONG the road leading toward the village of Brzezinka, swerving to avoid shell holes and scatters of rubble. Its passengers clung on, bracing themselves against being flung out. Every 50 yards or so, the Russian driver had to slam on the brakes and lurch off the road to allow vehicles to pass the other way. The road was busy with traffic going both ways – artillery, supply trucks, ambulances, and troops going to and from the front line, creating a series of stop-go jams that went on for mile after mile.

  During each pause, Robert Trimble, sitting in the back seat of the jeep, noticed that the sounds of gunfire had grown a little louder. Almost immediately after he had disembarked from the plane at Kraków, the faint rumble had been perceptible. It had grown gradually to an intermittent thunder that sounded like it was coming from just over the next hill. Now, as the jeep halted on the edge of the village, it was just possible to make out the burr of machine guns in between the booms of Russian artillery and the thunder of German shells exploding. The sweeping Soviet advance that had begun a month ago had slowed to a halt a few miles from here, and the Red Army was fighting for every foot of ground.