They plunged deeper into detours on tortuous dirt roads on the thin excuse that the main highways were closed due to “technical difficulties.”
At evening their winding course brought them to the southern approach to Berlin, where they were once again halted in the town of Werder before the rail crossing. The accompanying Russian major exchanged words with his people, then ordered Sean to have his convoy remain in their vehicles.
Big Nellie nudged Sean, pointing to the woods that ran alongside the rails. On close look one could see that the ground in the woods was pocked with thousands of holes dug out by human hands and covered with tree branches, corrugated metal, cardboard, and lumber scraps.
These holes were home for tens of thousands of liberated slave laborers and concentration-camp victims from eastern Europe. They had worked their way to Werder in an attempt to get back to Poland and Russia.
The trained eyes in the convoy sized it up quickly. There was no facility for registration, food, or medical help.
A train of some eighty open freight and cattle cars jiggled back and forth blocking the road crossing, and puffed to a stop. It was followed by an awesome sight of thousands of refugees suddenly pouring from their holes in the forest. Some held a single pack or suitcase. Some had nothing. A line of bayonet-bearing Russian soldiers held at bay this growing horde of the backwash of war.
A Russian officer blew a whistle; the guards opened their line. An insane scramble ensued as the mass of human misery swept up to the train. They shoved and kicked and clawed and screamed their way aboard. Old, young, and weak were hurled mercilessly down the rail bed. In but a moment the cars were crammed beyond capacity.
Another whistle and the line of soldiers re-formed and clubbed back with rifle butts those who did not make it. Pleas fell on deaf ears. The train chugged into motion with its bulge of misery.
The Russian in Sean’s car giggled. “See how anxious they are to get home.”
Sean and the others looked at him with revulsion. It was, in a moment, a ten-year indoctrination course.
Sean snapped on the ignition, fought to keep from shouting at the outrage. The convoy cleared the crossing, watching the unsuccessful refugees trudge back to their holes to wait for another train on another day.
Just beyond Werder they saw a now familiar sight. The bridge ahead was blocked by a pair of submachine-gun-toting Mongols who waved the convoy to halt.
Sean was blind with anger. He pressed his foot on the accelerator and beaded in on the bridge.
“That a boy, Major,” Blessing said, “frig ’em!”
The Russian began to yell, “Nyet! nyet!” He tried to shove his foot on the brakes. Sean jammed an elbow into his ribs and at the same moment Blessing and Big Nellie clamped him frozen.
The convoy closed up behind Sean and bore down on the bridge at seventy miles an hour!
The Mongols waved their guns threateningly! At the last split second they leaped over the bridge rail into the river and the convoy passed over.
At seven o’clock, thirteen hours after their departure, Sean’s convoy had traversed the German landscape endlessly for a mere forward gain of a hundred miles.
At last they pulled into the former SS Kaserne in Babelsberg, a suburb of Potsdam, across the Havel River from Berlin. Before coming to a proper halt, Sean was pounced on by A. J. Hansen’s gangly orderly who saluted, then grabbed his arm. “General says get up to his quarters before the Russkies get ahold of you.” The two trotted over the parade grounds as a half-dozen Russians descended on the convoy to liberate their man and to find a Major Clark Gable.
No smile greeted Sean from Andrew Jackson Hansen, First Deputy Military Governor of Germany. “Come in, Major Gable,” he scowled. “Goddammit, O’Sullivan, I friggin’ well told you to keep your ass out of trouble.”
“Sir, I have been the epitome of restraint ... only ...”
“Only what!”
Big Nellie came in. “Only we saw something at Werder.”
“The Russian refugee transfer point?”
“Yes, sir,” said Sean.
“That still didn’t give you license to run those bridge guards into the river. The next convoy will face concrete road blocks. Sean, you’ve got to learn to hold your water. This isn’t Rombaden and this isn’t your show.”
“Yes, sir.”
Big Nellie watched Sean try to digest the end of one war, the beginning of another. Again he would be the soldier without the gun ... patience, restraint, wisdom.
The journalist looked out of the window, down into the courtyard of the Kaserne. “Looks like a prison.”
“The Russians insist our presence is hypothetical until the Potsdam Conference signs a treaty,” Hansen said.
“Will I be able to get into Berlin and look around?” Big Nellie asked.
“Maybe. It would make our position more difficult if you were to write a column on what you saw today.”
Hansen could have invoked censorship, but preferred to put the matter to a reliable old friend in another way. Big Nellie nodded that he understood.
“Check in with the intelligence office and tell them what you saw today.”
Big Nellie said he would and left. Hansen took Sean to the next room, where Major General Hiram Stonebraker and Colonel Neal Hazzard waited.
Stonebraker was known in Air Corps circles as a salty, hard-shelled genius with the speciality of air transportation. He was considered the true creator of the Hump Airlift, which flew supplies from India to China. Transferred into Europe as the war ended, he was detached for advisory duty to the President for the forthcoming conference at Potsdam. This was to be his last mission for he was slated for retirement.
Colonel Neal Hazzard, commandant-elect for the American Sector of Berlin, had been an outspoken fighting soldier most of his career. A wound gave him the choice of discharge or military government. He was brash, direct, honest.
“Tune out Moscow,” Hansen said. Hazzard went to a half-dozen places in the room where the Russians had planted microphones. To counter it, a member of the staff had rigged up a two-cell battery connected to a buzzer, which set off a steady hum when connected. This noise, directed into the microphones, screened out the other voices from the Russian listening post in the basement.
“Okay, Sean,” Hansen said, “what happened today?”
He related the bizarre incidents. It tallied with reports of a half-dozen other American convoys which had come to Berlin on other routes. It added up to a plan of deliberate harassment. The “welcoming” officer was always below the rank of the American convoy leader. This was a deliberate belittlement. The negotiating officers were always above the rank of the American—Russian logic set to establish their people as superiors.
Sean looked squarely at the three men as he finished his story. “Had I been given freedom of action in my orders, I could have gotten the convoy through to Berlin on the autobahn.”
“That’s a rash statement,” Hansen said. “We are in no position to afford the luxury of an incident.”
“There would have been no incident,” Sean said firmly. “They were bluffing.”
“What makes you think so?” Stonebraker asked.
“Ask a pair of wet Russian soldiers.”
“That will be all,” Hansen cut in. “My orderly will show you to your quarters. There will be a guard on your door. Other than intelligence interrogation, talk to no one.”
“Yes, sir.”
When he left all that could be heard for a time was the steady buzz into the wire taps.
“We’re getting our pockets picked,” Neal Hazzard growled. “We should have captured Berlin. Now, we compound the original stupidity by giving the Russians two lush German provinces for a foothold in this rock pile.”