“I think it’ll be better once I’m trained on the C-54. It’s a better plane and can carry more cargo. Some of the C-47s I’ve flown were shot up over Normandy and have been repaired over and over again. They should be junked.”
Apparently, just talking to Rob had been enough to ease the tension, and Greg started to tell us stories about what was now being called “Operation Vittles” by the Americans and “Plain Fare” by the British.
“You should see these Germans go at it. In the time it takes to grab a sandwich and a cup of coffee, they’ve unloaded the plane and are ready to move on to the next one. And then there are dozens of kids, with their faces pressed up against a chain link fence, watching the show. They’re our cheerleading section. They’re also in our pockets for candy. One kid told me he doesn’t eat the chocolate but uses the Hershey bars for trade. He was about ten years old, and he was smoking!”
After a few more stories, Greg tapped his watch to let us know he had run out of time. He was flying the plane that night to Iceland and then on to Labrador and finally to a base in Nebraska that he hoped would be its final resting place.
After retraining on a C-54 in Montana, Greg, along with other squadrons from bases around the world, returned to Germany. Originally, all of the planes flew out of Tempelhof in the American Sector and Gatow in the British Sector, but with additional supplies needed for the upcoming winter, a third airfield was critical. Working around the clock, 20,000 German men, women, and children, under the direction of the Western powers, cleared and built the airfield at Tegel in the French Sector in only sixty days. With the completion of the French runway, the Russians realized the Airlift would continue indefinitely, and on May 12, 1949, the Soviets reopened the land routes into the city.
With assistance from the Air Forces of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand, and with volunteers from Canada, flights continued through September in order to ensure adequate supplies for the Germans of a free Berlin. This was an incredible achievement for all concerned, but for the British, who were still clearing debris caused by German bombs, it was nothing short of remarkable.
On the train to London following our visit with Greg, I asked Rob why he had never mentioned me to his family. I wasn’t thrilled with the answer because I learned that Rob had yet another girlfriend in his past. It was beginning to look as if I was just the latest of a string of women who lasted as long as Rob stayed in town.
“When I lived in Atlanta, I dated a girl named Arlene,” Rob explained. “I made the mistake of mentioning her in a letter home. The next thing I know, I get a letter from Mom, and it’s twenty questions time. I decided that I’d tell them about you when I had something definite to say.”
“Do you expect that at any time in the near future you will have something definite to say to them?” I was so hurt, and I could hear it in my voice.
“Maggie, right now everything’s up in the air. I’m going hiking in Wales next week with Jake from the office. I’ll use the time to plan my next step. Remember, I’m from out West; things move a little slower out there.” Taking my hand in his, he said, “Please don’t read anything into this business about Arlene. It was never serious.”
But I had to know if Rob was serious about me because now there was a deadline. He had been officially notified that his assignment in England would terminate on 30 August 1948, which was only ten weeks away. With the way things were going, it seemed as if Rob would return to Atlanta in September, and I wondered if our relationship would end when we said good-bye on a Liverpool pier.
It all came to a head in Mrs. Dawkins’s parlor. After five days of hiking in the mountains of Snowdonia, Rob’s big decision was that he was going to pursue an advanced degree in engineering. He would have to move quickly, as all of the schools were overcrowded because of hundreds of thousands of servicemen going to college on the GI Bill of Rights. Nothing was said about our relationship.
I sat perfectly still. I knew if I said anything, I would start crying. As deeply hurt as I was, I was not surprised. I didn’t know what Rob McAllister had been like before the war, but his war experiences had left him with a reluctance to make any decision that affected anyone other than himself. Although he had leadership qualities and the intelligence to lead, he abdicated those responsibilities to others. In that way, no one would be hurt, or in the extreme, die because of a decision he had made. It also extended to his personal life in his unwillingness to commit to me.
When I finally found my voice, I told Rob that whatever his plans were, they obviously didn’t include me, and there was no point in continuing a relationship because he would be returning to the States in a few weeks. I asked him to show himself out, and I went upstairs. I heard him call out, “What’s that supposed to mean?” but I continued up to my room. From the third floor, I could hear Mrs. Dawkins asking Rob what all the ruckus was about, and then I heard them go into the kitchen. Ten minutes later, Rob was knocking on my door. If I hadn’t been so depressed, I would have been in a panic because Rob was above stairs.
Whispering through the door, he said Mrs. Dawkins had said it was okay to come up, but I truly didn’t want to talk to him. I came from a hard-drinking town and saw more than my share of unhappy marriages, including my parents’. Early on, I had made a decision that I didn’t want to be in a relationship that was anything less than ideal. In this case, the hard truth was that Rob’s feelings did not equal mine.
After work on Monday, Rob was waiting for me outside the AES offices, and he asked if I would walk with him to the park. Sitting on a bench in Hyde Park, I looked at the ground littered with fallen petals of some unidentified flower. In another week, they would be replaced by the blooms of midsummer. Rob sat next to me in silence. If he was hoping I would be the first one to speak, he was going to be disappointed. But then I realized he was trying to figure out a way to say what was on his mind. After several minutes, he finally spoke.
“When I returned to the States in March ’45, I went to Boca Raton, and a bunch of us would go to the clubs in Miami Beach. As far as the people in Miami were concerned, and the same thing later when I went to Los Angeles, the war was over. Patton was across the Rhine, 300,000 German troops had surrendered, the air war over Germany was winding down, so it was party time. It’s true the worst of the fighting was over in Europe, but what about the Pacific? Everyone’s dancing while Marines and sailors were dying by the thousands in the battle for Okinawa.
“It was the same thing when I went home on leave. I met guys who had been discharged from the Army, and they had never seen one minute of overseas service. The Army decided it was a waste of money to deploy them even though there were tens of thousands of guys who had seen plenty of combat, who didn’t have enough points to go home. Did that make sense?
“I couldn’t relax. Everyone was pissing me off. My neighbor tells me he’s going crazy because of all the overtime he’s putting in for the railroad. I flew three missions in six days, and he’s complaining about making overtime. My dad keeps asking, ‘What are you going to do with your college education?’ I hadn’t even been discharged at that point.
“It was worse in Atlanta. By then the war was over in the Pacific, and the newspapers and radio ads were all saying, ‘We’re looking to the future.’ Great. Fine. But what about the guys in the VA hospitals or the families of flyers who were getting letters from the War Department informing them that their son’s body had finally been located in a cemetery in Germany, and what did they want to do with the remains? I was angry ninety percent of the time.