Beyond the Call by Lee Trimble

Author:Lee Trimble
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

Chapter 12

AMERICAN GENTLEMEN

6 MARCH 1945: BETWEEN RZESZÓW AND LWÓW

AT FIRST, IT was just flecks of snow that flickered past the cockpit windows of the B-17. But within minutes, the flecks had grown to a thick cascade splattering against the windshield. Visibility dropped dramatically. Captain Robert Trimble glanced at the compass and the other instruments, and eased the control column forward, dropping the bomber gently down to a lower altitude. At around 500 feet, in the failing light and the snow, he could just about make out the railroad tracks he’d been following for the past ten miles.

Getting to Poltava was going to be harder than he’d anticipated.

The journey that had started in the field near Staszów yesterday morning had begun to get interesting a few minutes after take-off. Robert had made a rapid turn to get on course for Lwów before the plane’s meager supply of fuel was exhausted. It was no use; so much had been used up taxiing the salvaged aircraft to its take-off field, there wasn’t going to be anywhere near enough to make it. When number three engine sputtered and cut out, Robert decided to head for the Soviet airfield at Rzeszów and make an emergency landing. He, Lieutenant Jessee, and Sergeants Picarelli and Matles stayed the night there. The Russians were hospitable, as they invariably were when they didn’t feel suspicious of you. Evidently the Soviet colonel’s complaint about Captain Trimble’s behavior had not reached Rzeszów. Next morning, unaware of any reason to detain it, the Russians happily refueled the B-17 and allowed it to fly on.

With the tanks full, Robert had hoped to skip Lwów and reach Poltava in one hop. He was anxious to be done with this side mission and return to what he now viewed as his sole purpose in this country – getting American prisoners home.

But the weather had been deteriorating for days, and it was starting to snow as they boarded the plane. This wasn’t looking good. But the journey wasn’t a long one, and the snow was sparse. Robert’s flight plan was indirect; with no proper maps for Lieutenant Jessee to work with, they were reduced to following the railroad tracks, the compass, and Jessee’s own knowledge of the lie of the land between Kraków, Lwów, and Poltava. Robert flew at a perilously low altitude, where the dark strand of the railroad showed clearly against the snowy landscape.

For the first few miles out of Rzeszów it went well, but the snow suddenly worsened: the few flakes multiplied rapidly into a vortex, an onslaught of snow that obscured the view, while down below it settled on the tracks, gradually erasing their dark line.

Robert’s gut reaction was to drop still lower, and he eased down to 200 feet – dangerously low even in good weather – and then lower still. His eyes were tearing up with the cold and the strain of looking for the fading tracks. Somewhere ahead, dozens of miles away but rushing toward them at about 150 miles per hour, was the city of Lwów.

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