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

German Beer

Obviously, I also had to build up the, at the time of early August, non-existent organizational body of the Allied Control Council and therefore I requested personnel from the WAC. Unfortunately, the WAC had already stopped recruiting, so no new personnel was getting trained, thus no new personnel would be available, but there were requests for transfer. Amanda helped me to choose from a crude list, those who's CVs I wanted to get sent.

In the second week of August, the Engineering Corps had largely finished the restauration of the OMGUS building (formerly Luftgaukommando III) and we moved into our permanent office rooms.

It was now about time to bring the rest of our vehicles, which were still at the Engineering Corps into our underground garage. The problem was, that the Master Sergeant running the garage of the Engineering Corps, might still want to kill me, and would never let me pick up our vehicles. My idea was to make them a nice present to get on good terms with him and his coworkers again. Beer and cigarettes, might do the job I hoped. Now I could not get Lucky Strike quickly. They had to be ordered and would likely take 6 weeks. A beer brewery, which was still in full production was the Augustiner Bräu in Munich. Zigarettenfabrik W.F. Grathwohl also resided in Munich. Munich was a two days journey by car. It was clear, what I had to do --- I had to fly. So I took the Ju88 to Munich and it felt really good to be in the cockpit again. The humming of the engines, the clear blue sky and the vibration of the wings, I had missed all of it. The US Army Air Force had taken over the Neubiberg Airbase, which was in the south of Munich. The flight took a bit more than two hours. After my arrival in Neubiberg I had quite a bit of company. A young, female US Army Major flying a German bomber aircraft, was something rather rare, strange and interesting, foremost interesting. The advantage was, that I soon had a German truck driver, who volunteered to drive me to the W.F. Grathwohl factory. For $50, I bought 4.000 packets of cigarettes there. Each packet contained 50 cigarettes, summing up to 20.000 cigarettes. I thought, that this was crazy, we would never be able to use all those 4.000 packets, but stupid as I was, I had not taken small dollar bills with me and nobody in Germany, could give me change. Change in Reichsmark yes, but who wanted Reichsmark? The 4.000 packets came in 40 boxes containing 100 packets. The 40 boxes filled the aft bomb shaft. With the cigarettes having gotten taken care off, the truck driver drove me to the Augustiner Bräu, where I purchased two 200 liter barrels of beer for another $50. The guys at Augustiner also gave me a valve and a hammer to puncture the barrel and tap beer from it. They also gave me instructions on how to do it. They were actually quite picky about it. I on the other hand did not understand what was so difficult about holding the valve to the puncture hole and hit it with a hammer, until it was in. Should have been easy peasy.

In contrast, bringing the barrels into the two remaining bomb shafts of the Ju88 was difficult work. First the two barrels got unloaded from the truck with a crane and put on bomb carts. Afterwards, I pushed the bomb carts under the Ju88 and used the bomb hoist to bring them into the shafts. To secure them I needed tension belts, because they could not get hooked up by the bomb holders. Now I was good to go again. The truck driver got 10 packets of Lucky Strike from me and was happy. Good thing, that I always carried a decent supply of cigarettes with me. The cigarettes could pay for almost everything and thus there was no need to carry small bills anymore. On the flight back to Berlin I had time to think about my trip to Munich. That city had also gotten badly bombed. Not quite as much as Berlin, but bad enough. After arrival in Tempelhof, I offloaded 10 boxes of cigarettes into the Jeep and drove home to the women's quarters. It was 10:00 pm, 2200 alpha. I was tired, it was time to go to bed and I hoped Amanda would not interfere. That night, I was lucky.

Next day in the afternoon, I drove to the Engineering Corps with a heavy stone in my stomach. Would I get killed or would my sacrifice be accepted? When I arrived there, most of the mechanics including the Master Sergeant came towards me and every one of them held a spanner or a wrench in his hand.