Maria, Pull the Trigger and Kill (a World War II adventure)

Ghost Hunt

On Monday, I had to get all the preparations for the first constitutional session of the Council going. Luckily, the German women working for Amanda knew a chef who could cook next Monday. Furthermore for some extra money, they agreed to decorate the entrance hall. Around noon, General Clay came into our office and informed me, that he had used radio equipment at the Army's Engineering Corps to contact the various Military Commanders of the 4 allied forces and they agreed to the founding of the Allied Control Council on Monday 30th of July 1945. The first session of the Council would be held here in our office before noon, then they would eat here and go to the conference in Potsdam afterwards. So things in that regards were set. It meant for me, that I had to get everything done this week, otherwise I'd be screwed. The 4 Military Commanders of the Allied forces would not tolerate any fuck up on my part. General Clay also informed me, that I had to craft rules for the Council and a few action items. Rules for the Council? What rules should such a council have? I did not know and General Clay told me he does not have time for such trivia. He said, I needed to work them out and then provide them to him so he could check them. Great! For the rest of Monday, I was breeding over these rules and gave the General a draft in the evening.

Tuesday morning a big German woman in her late fifties came together with the other German secretaries. Apparently, she was the chef. First, I was skeptical, but during the interview she informed me, that her family had been running a restaurant, which was now closed and she had been the cook there. Soon, I was not interviewing her anymore, but we did plan the menu for the upcoming event. There had to be some typical Russian, French, British and American food. Helga, which was her name, suggested Russian soljanka soup, English shepherd's pie and French crème brulee. She just did not have an idea for typical American food. I suggested steak and Mexican tortilla chips. Helga would bring in her kitchen aids, but then we came to the most important part of our culinary planning, where would we get the food? That moment, I wished to have a genie in a bottle, making food from thin air. Where in this hungry Berlin should we get food? Snow white and the seven ugly dwarfs, please tell me! Well, mind you, they did not even tell me where I could get apples. An idea crossed my mind --- the market at the church. Next Helga and I inspected the newly made cafeteria. It was a nice cafeteria with a professional American style kitchen, but no cooking utensils. So we had to bring in the cooking utensils from Helga's family restaurant. Not, that it was a big problem, but again something that needed to be taken care off. Next problem, there was no running water in the kitchen so a large enough number of bucket's of fresh water had to get hauled into the kitchen.

For the arrangement of food, Helga suggested to set up a buffet in the neighboring office of General Clay's instead of making the participants of the session come to the cafeteria. With an allowance letter from General Clay, Amanda, Helga and I drove out to the Army's Engineering Corps, to obtain 500 packets of Lucky Strike. Apparently, we had robbed the Army's Engineering Corps of their August cigarette supply. They were pissed and obviously wondering, how three women could possibly smoke 500 packets away. As it came in handy, we had lunch there, then borrowed a trailer from the Engineering Corps and drove over to Helga's closed restaurant and loaded all the cooking tools, she deemed necessary. It was evening, by the time we returned the trailer.

On Wednesday morning, Amanda gave me the set of rules back. General Clay had put his remarks on the papers and it was on me now to generate a new version of rules, which I gave to our typist, who in turn kept on hacking into her typewriter. The constant noise from the typewriter was actually like the life music we had in our office, just quite boring over time. At noon, Amanda, our three secretaries and I drove over to the Engineering Corps to have lunch. I secretively approached the head of the kitchen and asked, if he could put some snacks for two people into a parcel and bribed him with a bottle of Whisky from General Clay's supply. Obviously, Amanda was wondering what was in the parcel, but I just said more cigarettes. She did not buy it though and was suspicious. In the afternoon, we did the deco in the entrance hall.