Beyond the Call by Lee Trimble Read Free Book Online Page B

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.’
    â€˜I understand, Captain. We’ve changed our minds; we can go back to the original arrangement. You’ll be going to the Soviet Union.’
    â€˜And I’ll be ferrying planes back to England, like Colonel Helton said?’
    â€˜Yes … and other functions as deemed necessary. You wouldn’t want to be bored, right, Captain?’
    â€˜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 almostcertainly 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