by Noel Hynd
Airlift commander General William Tunner knew a public relations bonanza when he saw one, however, and quickly okayed the continuation of what was now officially named "Operation Little Vittles." What began with a pilot's sense of decency and generosity with spare handkerchiefs and candy his crew bought at the local commissary, soon spread throughout the airlift, with 25 participants in his squadron alone.
Within days Halvorsen's home base in Alabama got in on the act, with the commanding officer declaring any handkerchief seen would be requisitioned for Little Vittles. The American Confectioners Association donated tons of candy for the children of Berlin.
The treats arrived at Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts, where local school children assembled the candy parachutes and sent them on to Germany. But it wasn’t just chocolate. It was hope and a symbol of freedom.
Chapter 64
Berlin – August 1949
On the third evening following Dale Halvorsen’s first candy bombing of Berlin, Bill Cochrane left on an important mission of his own. Major Pickford’s office had equipped Heinrich Roth with a finely forged German driver’s license. Roth tucked it into his pocket a few inches away from a Mauser as he prepared to take another lucrative night shift with Bill Cochrane. Roth had driven tractors before the war and Kubelwagens during it, the Kubelwagen being the Wehrmacht version of the Jeep.
Sgt. Pearson said he had a few Kubelwagens kicking around the hangar he ruled. Cochrane thanked him. Pearson hesitated, then continued. “One other thing, Major. Lewis. About those Germans?”
“What about them?”
“They have their own society and social order within Tempelhof,” Pearson said. “We try to keep the Nazis out of here but can’t always. There’s friction between the city Germans and the ones from the countryside, the ones who served, the ones who opposed Hitler. It’s all smooth on the surface when we look at it from the outside, but you never know what’s going on beneath the surface, who’s got a score to settle, which guy is going to suddenly go crazy, which guy’s got his own agenda.”
Cochrane nodded. He sighed. “Much like our own army, right?”
“If you want to look at it that way, sure.”
“Thanks for mentioning it,” Cochrane said.
“There’s one thing that you should keep in mind, sir. One thing to not get involved in.”
“What’s that?”
“Payback. That’s what I mean about ‘agenda.’ There’s a lot going on here. Debts that some Germans reckon are unpaid from the war. They have a way of settling things. You don’t want to get in the way of it.”
Cochrane’s eyes narrowed. “Keep talking,” he said.
“Well, I hear things here, sir. Stuff that Major Pickford doesn’t hear because he’s not here day to day, hour to hour with the men.”
“Do you report what you hear to Major Pickford?”
“Oh, sure thing. Of course. But sometimes I get the idea that Major Pickford, no disrespect intended, sir, just doesn’t get a grasp of the intensity of what I hear. It’s one thing to get it in a report, another thing to actually overhear what the men are saying.”
Cochrane processed it. “Can you give me some specifics?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, I can.” A pause then as Pearson guided Cochrane to a secluded area. “That Russian officer, the brute who runs the clubs and the black markets?”
“I know who you mean. Kovalyov?”
“That’s the one, sir. There’s going to be some fireworks there. Everybody hates the man.”
“With reason from what I hear. I also know all about Demmin.”
“Might not be till you’re back stateside,” said Pearson. “But it’s like waiting for a shoe to drop or a hammer to come down on that guy. I wouldn’t get too close. I wouldn’t be hanging out anywhere near his place more than you had to, sir.”
Cochrane patted Pearson on the shoulder.
“That’s all I got to say on that subject, sir.”
“Thank you. That says quite a bit.”
“Aside from that, if you’ll excuse my saying so, sir,” Pearson said, the mood changing abruptly, “the Germans you employ, Roth and Kern, are happy as pigs rolling in manure.”
“Why is that?”
“They like the money and they hate the Russians.”
“Sometimes life reduces to simple equations,” Cochrane replied.
“How much do you pay these guys?”
“A hundred bucks each in advance for a night like this,” Cochrane said. “And it’s not me who pays, it’s Uncle Sam. Let’s hope that nothing interferes with their enlightened point of view,” Cochrane said.
“Will do, sir,” Pearson said. “Of course, Lt. Halvorsen is getting all the publicity now. Not much room in the paper for folks like you or me or Major Pickford.”
“Let’s hope it remains that way.”
For the rest of that evening, it did.
Roth and Kern had borrowed their Mausers out of Major Pickford’s private collection, the weapons to be returned, hopefully unused, by the end of the evening. Sgt. Pearson supplied two battered Kubelwagens. Cochrane drove one of the vans with Roth with him. Kern drove the other.
They headed toward the Eastern Sector fifty meters apart, staying within each other’s view. There was no checkpoint entering the Soviet Zone, unlike the American, British, and French Zones, but there were patrols. The streets were unlit. It wasn’t difficult to see a Soviet patrol – usually no more than two or three vehicles – approaching. Soviet headlights had a distinctive yellowish glare.
They arrived at the Rathaus in Lichtenberg shortly after two AM. Kern parked his vehicle a block and a half away and around the corner from the town hall. The neighborhood was as quiet as an undiscovered tomb. Cochrane and Roth’s vehicle crept past the town hall, which looked dark until their Kubelwagen got close. In the front entrance alcove of the town hall, there was the tiny orange glow of cigarettes. Then the forms of soldiers were visible. Two young Soviet guards were on duty, both smoking.
One was tall, one was squat. A Mutt-and-Jeff team, two mismatched tinhorns, Moscow style – except these guys had carbines and weren’t funny. They sat in front of the two large front doors, frosted as Cochrane recalled, with bars and a grate.
Cochrane kept his eyes on the uneven, pockmarked road ahead as their vehicle rattled past. Roth was the official spotter, sitting low in the back seat.
“Red Army uniforms and armed with carbines,” Roth said softly. “They look like conscripts.”
“Did they pay any attention to us as we passed?” Cochrane asked.
“None. Looks like they have a bottle, also.”
“Fine,” Cochrane said. “Too bad they don’t have two. Well, I’m not going to supply them.”
Cochrane and Roth circled the block the long way, then drove past the rear of the town hall. There was an empty half-block behind the building, heavy rubble across the lot. The obstacle course made the evening both more complicated and easier.
Cochrane pulled his vehicle to a halt behind two burned-out vehicles, unidentifiable corpses of cars, their chassis stripped down to the frames. He cut the engine. Roth got into the front seat, and they sat for two minutes to see if they drew any attention. They drew none.
Cochrane had to trust a German with his life. “Where’s your Mauser?” he asked Roth.
Without words, Roth drew the weapon from under his coat. He laid it on his lap.
“Loaded?” Cochrane asked.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I loaded it myself.”
Sehr gut, Cochrane said. “Keep it on your lap. Try not to use it. But if it’s a choice between using it and spending twenty years in a Soviet prison….”
Cochrane’s voice trailed off. Roth smiled. There could not possibly have been anything amusing about twenty years in a Soviet prison, but Roth smiled anyway.
Cochrane drew a breath. “Cover me,” he said.
Cochrane steppe
d quickly from the car, crouched low, and moved as swiftly through the shadows as he could. As he approached the rear of the town hall, the jagged rubble in the back lot slashed his ankles and shins. The unsteady footing nearly brought him down. Twice he went down in a hard wobble. His knees hit sharp stones and rough cement. The pain barked at him.
He came to the windows at the rear of the building, the ones he had unlatched, and forced one up from the outside. It lifted. He lifted the other. He left them both a few inches open.
He turned and signaled to Roth that he was going to enter the building. Roth drove away to get Kern, using only his dim lights. Cochrane took a place in the shadows flush against the building. Then of all things, moments after Roth had driven away, he heard voices.
Russian!
Cochrane pressed himself as hard as he could against a side wall, obscuring his silhouette by nestling behind a thick drainpipe that ran perpendicular up and down the outer east wall of the building. Under his coat, his hand found his pistol.
He drew it and held it against his chest.
The voices came closer. Either that or the soldiers were talking louder. He dared not budge. He could only slide his eyes sideways. They were about fifty feet from him. They stopped. The palm of his hand was wet against his pistol. He prayed that they would keep going and that Roth and Kern wouldn’t return and run smack into them. He did not want anyone to die this evening in this godforsaken place. For half a second, he wondered what he was doing here, then he dismissed the question. It had no good purpose. That question never did.
Nearby in the rubble, there was a rustling. Then squealing. Rats. Then there was a small explosion of movement as a gray cat leaped from hiding and took off after several rats, having dislodged the nest of vermin.
The soldiers stopped short, alerted by the noise. One of them flicked on a military torch. A beam traveled across the rubble and came within a few feet of the pipe behind which Cochrane hid. From a crack between the pipe and the cement wall, Cochrane could see the figure of the cat darting and weaving among broken concrete, bricks, and stones.
The young Russians laughed at it but suddenly there was gunfire. One of the young men tried to kill the cat, but the animal took off. One shot ricocheted near Cochrane, but two subsequent shots hit farther away.
They darted into the street and zigzagged, drawing the fire away from where Cochrane hid. One soldier aimed and fired after the fleeing feline. Cochrane had no idea whether the animal was hit or not, but by the expression of the voices, he reckoned it was a miss.
He saw the taller soldier touch the other man’s rifle, touching it downward in a gesture that advised him not to waste any more ammunition. There was more laughter and then the soldiers moved on. How Cochrane did not have heart failure right then, he didn’t know. His shirt was soaked and matted to his chest.
Cochrane held his position. Several minutes passed. His heartbeat subsided. Roth returned with Kern. The men huddled. Cochrane related what had happened. Kern and Roth reported that the guards were back in the front alcove; they had driven close by and checked.
“They’ll come around again,” Cochrane said. “We need to be in and out fast.”
No one disagreed. Using a flashlight as Roth stood guard, Kern, putting his electrical engineering background to good use, invaded the alarm box at the back of the building. There was a primitive circuit breaker. Kern killed the electricity, negated the alarm, and turned the electricity back on.
Cochrane went into the building first, then helped Roth, a larger man, through the basement window. They closed it behind them. They allowed a moment for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then hurrying, they ran up the stairs and passed through the first floor using only the faint light from outside. They climbed the steps in near darkness but used the flashlights with the lenses partially muffled when they reached the second floor.
The old building was alive with creaks. That was fine, Cochrane reasoned. The guards would be used to occasional building noise.
They reached the top floor where three Soviet soldiers had been stationed during Cochrane’s previous visit. Cochrane went past the benches where the soldiers had sat. He went to the window at the end of the corridor and established the rope ladders there as the escape route, if necessary, while Roth guarded the top of the stairs.
Hurrying, Cochrane used a screwdriver to pry the lock off the door to the records room. The lock gave way easily but with a creak. He pulled at the door. The door opened with a creak as well. He turned. In the reflected faint light from the flashlight, he saw Roth behind him, remaining vigilant and in place.
“Good man, good watcher,” Cochrane thought involuntarily. “I hope he doesn’t get killed.”
Cochrane pulled the door almost completely shut behind him. The records room had no full window but a narrow high air vent through which some light filtered. There were several sets of shelves. Many of the shelves were barren and dusty. Others had bound volumes. Record keeping was haphazard.
“Get going!” he told himself. “Once you take a step backward you walk away forever. Move, move!”
He swept the room with the beam from his hand torch. He went for the older volumes first. Several ledgers looked as if they were left over from prewar. Pure frustration. Nothing was what he wanted. Nothing made much sense. The books were sooty and gritty. Entries had been made in the ledgers by hand, but the handwriting was cramped, condemned, and spidery. The penmanship was just abysmal. No matter.
He went through several ledgers. Half-entered lists of people killed in air raids. Legal processes during the war. Criminal adjudication. A list of executions. He shivered. He put the ledgers back in the best order he could. Who knew how often anyone came through here? Who knew when the intrusion would be discovered?
Then fate smiled. After seven minutes of searching, Cochrane got lucky. There was one section that looked new, within the last few years. Postwar instead of prewar. He went to it. He opened the first ledger.
Years: 1945 through 1947. Bingo. A Soviet census. The census included deportations: work camps, labor camps, factories in Poland, factories in the Soviet Sector of Germany. Coal mines. Copper mines near Hettstedt, east of the Harz Mountains.
Cochrane fixed his sights on 1946, the last year of Bettina’s known whereabouts and possibly that of her man, Horst. He found the 1946 volume. Then, with a feeling of terrified elation, he figured what the damned hell, photography was impossible in here so he might as well help himself to the whole damned bunch, 1945 through 1947. He pulled a sack from under his coat. His heart was pounding like a hammer. His shirt was so wet that the sweat had soaked through to his jacket. A rough count as he started to bag them: a dozen ragged volumes.
His heart nearly stopped when Roth tapped on the door.
Cochrane moved to the door, but it was already opening. Roth ducked in, holding his pistol aloft. Cochrane cut his flashlight.
“Guards,” said Roth, perfectly calm, coming in and leaving the door slightly ajar, the Mauser still upright and ready. “Making rounds.”
Cochrane, not normally given to profanity, had to suppress a violent one.
They froze, barely breathing.
With the hand that didn’t hold the Mauser, Roth indicated the heavy padlock that they had removed. Cochrane nodded and touched it to be sure of what Roth was showing. Without words, Roth was indicating that the absence of a lock would be less conspicuous than one dangling from a latch. Roth had brains to go with his brawn. Cochrane appreciated that.
Cochrane stood back, letting Roth watch through the door that remained open a sliver. Cochrane’s gaze dropped to the floor. He saw a beam from a flashlight sweep the room. He heard footsteps. One of the guards had walked down the corridor and was giving everything a quick sweep. If the guard noticed the missing lock, they were in trouble. If he replaced the missing lock, they were in bigger trouble.
The footsteps stopped. Then they moved away, becoming fainter as they descended the wooden stairs. No
more flashlight beam.
Roth pushed the door open an inch. A tiny creak split the night. Roth stared out the crack of the doorframe. Sie sind gegangen, Roth said. “They’re gone,” he announced as easily as if he were announcing that lunch was ready.
Thank God, Cochrane thought. He knew he could have been dead. He was reasonably sure that he wasn’t. Not here. Not tonight. As for Roth, he thought, this guy wasn’t cool, he was icy. Roth stepped back out to the corridor where the soldiers had sat during the day.
Cochrane flicked his torch on again. He looked around the room, up and down, forward and back, forward again, taking a quick final scan of every shelf. He listened, waited, heard nothing further amiss.
If he had heard a shot at this point his heart might have stopped. He looked at his watch. Thirteen minutes gone. Lucky thirteen. Time to scram. Time to swipe everything he could.
He stuffed as many census and deportation volumes as he could into his sack. There was nothing of further interest. He subtly rearranged the shelves to mask the fact that he had snatched a dozen volumes. Fourteen minutes gone. At least get out to the relative safety of the upstairs landing. His head was pounding. Absolutely time to scram! A little voice inside him reminded him that the exit was as dangerous as the entry.
Cochrane stepped out of the room and tapped Roth on the arm. Together, they reaffixed the lock and its bracket to the doorframe. Roth still had his Mauser in his hand. Cochrane indicated that Roth should precede him. Stealthily, Roth started down the steps.
Cochrane followed, one set of steps at a time. He carried his Czech revolver in one hand, and the sack of stolen ledgers in the other. Roth stopped at the top of the steps on the second floor, holding a hand aloft. They heard voices again. They smelled cigarettes, the cheap foul-smelling, brown ones that Russians smoked.
