This inspiring true story of veteran Air Force bomber pilot Robert Trimble, who laid his life on the line to rescue World War II POWs on the Eastern Front.Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-prisoners of war were abandoned to wander the war-torn Eastern Front. With no food, shelter, or supplies, the POWs were an army of dying men. As the Red Army advanced across Poland, the Nazi … Poland, the Nazi prison camps were liberated. In defiance of humanity, the freed Allied prisoners were discarded without aid. The Soviets viewed POWs as cowards, and regarded all refugees as potential spies or partisans.
The United States repeatedly offered to help, but were refused. With relations between the Allies strained, a plan was conceived for an undercover rescue mission. In total secrecy, the OSS chose an obscure American air force detachment stationed at a Ukrainian airfield. The man they picked to undertake it was veteran 8th Air Force bomber pilot Captain Robert Trimble.
With little covert training, Trimble took the mission. He would survive by wit, courage, and determination. This is the compelling, true story of an American hero who risked everything to bring his fellow soldiers home to safety and freedom.
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Lee Trimble recounts the fascinating story of his father’s service with the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Soviet Union during the final months of the Second World War. Few people know about the American attempts to establish an air base in the Ukraine to enable bomber pilots operating from far away England and Italy to target vital Nazi industries in Eastern Europe. Although the shuttle bombing campaign never really got off the ground (due to Soviet intransigence), the American air base at Poltava was able to receive and service U.S. bombers that had been badly shot up and could not make the return trip to Western Europe. Even fewer people know that U.S. POWs in Nazi camps in Poland and eastern Germany were left to fend for themselves once they had been ‘liberated’ by Red Army forces moving westward into Germany. Trimble’s father Capt. Robert Trimble, a decorated B-17 pilot with 35 combat missions under his belt, was transferred to the U.S. base at Poltava to ostensibly help repatriate downed pilots. But in fact, he was also tasked by the OSS to locate freed U.S. POWs and to effect their transfer to Odessa on the Black Sea and then onwards by ship to the U.K. Robert’s job was daunting in face of the sheer callousness, indifference, and sometimes outright murderous actions of America’s Soviet ‘Allies.’ Trimble eventually took it upon himself to help rescue other foreign nationals such as British POWs and French laborers, who had been forced to work in war factories in Germany. Robert’s generous and brave personality eventually got him into hot water with the Soviets and even his own leadership. Trimble witnessed the worst atrocities carried out by both our German foes and our Soviet allies. What he saw scarred him for the rest of his days. Only in his final months of life was he able to communicate to his children all that he saw. We are all the richer for his having done so. This story opens an amazing chapter of the history of the war that very few people have been privy to know of.
This is Lee Trimble’s story of his father’s unusual assignment in WWII and sheds light on the fragile and deceptive interaction between the USA and its “Ally” Russia. It recounts his father’s surprising assignment to rescue US POWs behind Russian lines while the war was still in progress. Robert Trimble had completed his allotted missions as a B-24 pilot in the European theatre but was warned that while he could take a few months leave, he would be called back to combat missions thereafter and again face the odds of being shot down. He was offered a task that would not put him in harms way as a bomber pilot, but would help other downed allied fliers in the Russian field of battle and influence, to get home. He was not told the true nature of his mission, which was run by the CIA and which put him in jeopardy with Russian operatives. A story of courage, surprise and the successful rescue of people Robert had no idea would be saved by him when he agreed to the assignment.
A tragic story about “our allies” and what they did to the weakest survivors of the Nazis and communists. The communists were worse. I had never heard of this phase of WWII before. It should be in our schools…teaching the truth about the beginnings of the cold war.