Beyond the Call; The True Story of One World War II Pilot's Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front

It seems I was destined to read Lee Trimble and Jeremy Dronfield's non-fiction work Beyond the Call (#862).  Although this book was published in 2015, it somehow got mis-shelved with the NEW non-fiction books at my library.  It was quite the read.

Robert Trimble never talked much about his experiences during the War.  But after a bad fall at home, his son Lee Trimble realized that if he was ever going to preserve his father's memories for the children and grandchildren, he has better start recording those recollections soon.  When his father mentioned time spent in Russia, and a French Croix de Guerre was found in his dad's souvenir box, Lee learned that there was a lot more to his father's war time service than he had ever been told.  Beyond the Call tells of the clandestine services Captain Robert Trimble performed in Poland after completing his required thirty-five bombing missions successfully.  Rather than going home to be with his wife and baby daughter whom he had not yet met, Trimble was persuaded by his commanding officer to "re-up" for a post salvaging and ferrying damaged American airplanes to an outpost in Russia, where they could be repaired and sent on.  No heavy lifting required, and it would keep him out of combat for the duration of the war, then winding to a close.

The reality turned out to be far, far different and put him squarely in harm's way in Red-occupied territory newly liberated from the Germans.  His real mission was to find American and British POWs who had either been shot down or liberated from Prison Camps by the Russians who either ignored them or re-jailed them along with captured German soldiers.  As bad as the Nazis had been, the Poles in the surrounding countryside feared the Russians more, with good reason as Robert Trimble found for himself.  How he was able to smuggle desperate POWs out of Russia right under their noses, and with every conceivable obstacle placed in his path makes for riveting reading.

It wasn't a pretty war from any perspective, but this little-known episode at the tail end of the war is worth knowing about.