Cold War

They climbed steadily to 14,000 feet and broke into bright summer sunshine. It was breathtaking. Soon the cockpit was as hot as a greenhouse. They stripped off their flight jackets and flew in their shirtsleeves. Jimmy Hudson was in a good mood for once. Sleep, showers and a party that included some good-looking girls the night before had cheered him up.

“So, you’ve been over here before, huh, Jay?” Jimmy asked conversationally.

“It’s J.B. and yeah, I flew over the North Sea quite a lot.”

“Doesn’t look any different from the Great Lakes to me,” Jimmy commented, peering down as the cloud cover started to tear apart and disintegrate.

“Not at the moment,” J.B. conceded.

Later, when they made landfall, Jimmy asked, “Is that Germany?”

“No, Holland. You filed the flight plan, for God’s sake,” J.B. reminded him, but Jimmy just shrugged and popped another stick of Wriggley’s gum into his mouth. J.B. concentrated on looking for recognizable landmarks and soon he found the distinctive line of offshore islands and the large inland lakes. The memories hovered around him like puffs of spent flak.

They turned south, picking up the radio beacons of Muenster, Hamm, Marburg, Glessen… A regular nostalgia trip, J.B. thought, shaking his head. Then he tuned their radio onto the frequency for Rhein-Main and all his memories shattered. Instead of strict radio silence punctuated by terse orders or reports, his ears were flooded with a jumble of voices coming over his earphones. It sounded like Grand Central Station at rush hour. Calls were coming in from what seemed like a dozen aircraft.

It took them five minutes just to get a response from Air Traffic Control, which then ordered them into a “holding pattern.” Now they were circling around like those gaggles he’d hated so much in the war, but at least visibility was good. They could see a score of other planes lazily drawing large circles in the sky like a giant mobile suspended from heaven. Forty minutes passed before it was their turn to land.

As their wheels touched down with a loud squeal, the air traffic controller barked through the earphones. “534, clear the runway as rapidly as possible. Report to operations ASAP.”

Well, that was a nice welcome, J.B. thought sarcastically as his eyes scanned the scene around them. There were planes everywhere, which at first reminded him of an operational base preparing for a “maximum effort” mission. Then, too, one would have seen four-engine aircraft in front of hangars with the cowlings open for maintenance. Others would have been taxiing to and from flight tests, while most would have been at their various dispersal points awaiting their fuel and cargo — the bombs dragged out to them on trailers. This felt different.

J.B. was struck by the large number of men in ragged civilian clothing unloading stuff from freight cars lined up directly beside the field. The stevedores worked energetically, transferring dirty sacks of coal from the train cars to wheeled flatbeds. The latter were hauled away as soon as they were full and replaced by empties. Like mechanical caterpillars, the tractors dragging two or three flatbeds crawled towards the waiting Skymasters. Here more ragged men set to work manhandling the coal sacks into the bellies of the planes.

Jimmy broke in on J.B.’s thoughts, exclaiming irritably, “Where the hell are we supposed to go?” There didn’t seem to be any follow-me jeep to receive them and they felt lost in the chaos. Another big difference to flying in the war, J.B. reflected. There had never been a feeling of chaos. There had been plenty of emergencies when the birds came home dragging broken wings, or smashed themselves on landing because the gear wouldn’t come down, or the pilot was shot up, but these only triggered efficient procedures for clearing the wounded and the wrecks out of the way.

“Call into control and ask for instructions,” Jimmy ordered.

J.B. took the mic. “Rhein-Main. This is 534. We don’t have a follow-me jeep. Where do you want us to go?”

After a moment, a harried voice replied, “The jeep should be there. Look harder.”

J.B. would have liked to say something rude back, but just then Jimmy spotted a jeep darting out from between two planes and bouncing so hard as it hit the taxiway that they could see daylight between the driver and the seat. It pirouetted in front of them on the taxiway and, sure enough, it had a follow-me sign on its tailgate.

They docilely followed it to a recently vacated spot beside the taxiway. As they left the tarmac, the nose wheel sank into thick mud, and they wallowed as their wing wheels dug in unevenly while turning around. J.B. was happy that Jimmy was at the controls as he would have had trouble handling the unfamiliar bird in these conditions. As Jimmy cut the engines, he and J.B. exchanged a look of “What-the-hell-have-we-gotten-ourselves-into.”

Sergeant Wells let down the ramp in the tail, and J.B. was the first out of the aircraft. Before he had a chance to look around, a harassed-looking lieutenant without wings on his breast came up with a clipboard. “534? Hudson, Baronowsky and Wells?”

“That’s right.”

“OK, follow me.”

“Can we get our duffle bags first?” J.B. asked back, put off by the lieutenant’s tone. Yes, this was the Army — or rather Air Force — but surely saying “Hello” or “Welcome to Rhein-Main” wouldn’t have been a breach of military protocol?

“Hurry up,” came the answer. “We’ll be loading this bird and sending her to Berlin in the next hour.”

“What about a maintenance check?” J.B. reminded him.

“Is there something wrong with her?”

“No, she’s pretty new, but we did notice —”

The Lieutenant waved his objection aside. “Unless it’s something that’s gonna make her crash, it doesn’t matter.”

The three newcomers exchanged a look of disbelief. They might not know each other very well, but this casual attitude united them in a feeling of disapproval.

“What are you waiting for?” the lieutenant asked. Shaking their heads in silent disbelief, they collected their duffle bags, shouldered them, and followed their unfriendly guide. As they started towards the brick operations building, J.B. noticed one of the German loaders sweeping spilt flour into a dustpan in the wake of a C-47 that was waddling its way onto the taxiway. Another German held open an old, discarded sack and the first man emptied the flour dust into the sack. They then tied it with a piece of twine before running to jump aboard a trailer headed back in the direction of the railhead.

Was it possible the Germans were sweeping up dirty flour dust because they didn’t have enough to eat? That seemed incredible. Then again, they’d damn-near starved half of Europe, so maybe being hungry themselves was the best way to teach them not to try world conquest again. And yet he found the idea unsettling in some way.

In the main admin building, the newly arrived crew was taken to an office where they had to sign some paperwork before being handed over to a sergeant who announced that since all the accommodations on the base were already occupied, they had a choice between some tents or some tar-paper shacks on the other side of the Autobahn. “I hate tents,” Jimmy announced without giving J.B. or Wells a chance to comment. They were led to an exit where a weapons carrier waited. “That’s the shuttle to the Zeppelinheim,” their guide said.

“Looks great,” Jimmy muttered sarcastically.

They dragged their duffle bags over to the weapons carrier, and the snoozing driver sat up. “Zeppelinheim?”

“Do we have a choice?” J.B. asked back.

The private grinned at him. “Not really, Captain.”

They climbed in and bounced their way out of the airbase and onto a flimsy-looking improvised bridge over one of Germany’s famous Autobahns. To J.B.’s disappointment, the autobahn was empty and unimpressive. The roads in Michigan looked just as good.

On the far side, the weapons carrier turned to enter a gap in a double, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Here they found themselves in a huge compound that consisted of rows and rows of tar-paper shacks. Christ, he thought, this place looked like the photos he’d seen of Nazi camps — not the death camps, but POW camps and slave labourer camps.

“What is this place?” he asked the driver.

“Aw, I don’t know. We had to evict a bunch of foreigners. Looked like a bunch of hobos to me. All grimy and unshaven with mismatched clothes and clogs rather than shoes. All thin as sticks, too.”

“We evicted people?” J.B. remembered reading somewhere that there were millions of displaced persons in Germany. They had been dragged from their homes across Eastern Europe to work as slaves for the “master race.” When the war ended, they got stuck in Germany because the Soviets now occupied their homelands. Evicting them when they had no place to go seemed disgraceful. What the hell was going on here?

The driver turned to drive between two rows of huts and counted off as he drove past each hut. “One, two, three, four, five!” He came to a halt and pulled the hand brake. “This one should still be empty. We’re filling them up one after another. Someone will be over with sheets and blankets in a while.”

“Where are the showers and canteen?” Jimmy asked.

“The showers are over in that building there.” The driver pointed to a low, grey concrete structure that looked at least half a mile away. “Meals are all served over at the base.” With his thumb, the sergeant indicated the opposite side of the Autobahn.

As they climbed out, their feet sank and slipped in the mud. They dragged their duffle bags off the back of the weapons carrier and started for the open door taking big, clumsy steps to avoid puddles. Although J.B. knew it was going to be terrible even before he reached the door, he still wasn’t prepared. The huts were damp, filthy, and stinking. They were empty except for a pot-bellied iron stove and eight iron cots with stained and lumpy mattresses tossed carelessly over them. The floors were concrete and dotted with clumps of partially dried mud. No washbasin, no wardrobes, or closets. Not even a chair. Nothing — except probably fleas and bedbugs.

So, this was what being a POW or a DP was like, J.B. thought — and it was to be his home for the “indefinite” future. No marriage bed and honeymoon in Niagara Falls. No modern house in the suburbs with matching furniture and Patty’s colour-schemed rugs, drapes, and bathroom towels. No drive to work by car or modern office with a secretary out front. A tar-paper shack, a weapons carrier, and an outside toilet. He’d always thought that army life was pretty bad, but this was worse than any place he’d stayed during the war.