Betrayal In Berlin: A Spy Story by Noel HYND

Author:Noel HYND [HYND, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Cat Tales Publishing LLC, Los Angeles, California
Published: 2022-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

Berlin – February 1950

Having returned to a divided Berlin, Bill Cochrane was suddenly “Mr. Lewis” again, an identity that he slid into as easily as some men slide into a weekend overcoat. To some of his contacts, he was simply, “William.” There was little need for Bill Cochrane to reveal any more to most people.

Larry DeWinter and his people in Washington and Langley had successfully arranged Cochrane’s lodgings and office, for which Bill was grateful. Thus Cochrane planned to take his first day back and maybe part of the second to look around his immediate surroundings and renew his feeling for the city. Officially, Bonn had become the “provisional” capital of the newly created West Germany in 1949. But “provisional” was exactly that. Like London, Paris, and Moscow, Berlin, rather than Bonn, was still the region’s most important city.

Among the significant changes since William Cochrane’s departure in 1949, however, was the top of the military command. General Frank Howley – “Howling Howley” as he was called from his contentious meetings with stubborn Soviet counterparts – was gone, replaced by General Maxwell Taylor, a West Point man, who had successfully commanded the U.S. 101st Airborne, the “Screaming Eagles,” in Italy during the war.

Cochrane knew the layout of Tempelhof, plus its quirks and how it functioned, so there was no learning curve on where things could be found or how to get things done. Much of the airport personnel remained the same. He had only been gone six months, after all, though some shift workers had changed.

There were still battalions of DPs – displaced persons – working the heavy cargo assignments at the airports, and the prettiest German girls operating the food trucks. Bill also observed that there was still an enormous daily cargo assignment coming in and going out of the airport. Huge roaring C-57s took off and landed every two or three minutes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had successfully lengthened the landing strips to accommodate the larger, heavier aircraft. The smaller C-47s, the Gooney birds, were still present. They were as noisy as ever. But they were used with less frequency and mostly for smaller freight and passengers. Cochrane could not look at them without thinking with pride of the early days of the airlift.

Many of the smaller aircraft had been shifted to nearby airfields with shorter landing strips that could accommodate the smaller planes. With amusement, Bill noticed that there were dozens of durable old warbirds that carried the blue bands that circled the signature white American star within the blue circle. Planes with blue bands had been used in the D-Day invasion. These were the lucky ones, the ones that had survived.

The smaller aircraft in and out of Tempelhof shuttled Americans and Brits to England and back. There was also the occasional Frenchman – usually proffering wine or brandy as an expression of thanks to the cabin crew – to Paris or the Cote d’Azur for a weekend. Most of the passengers were on the official travel sheets.

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