By Don Murtha
Mount Angel resident Lillian Marshall, 91, understands how war can leave a country in ruins and the efforts it takes to rebuild it.
Marshall served as a secretary in the U.S. Army after World War II in Berlin, Germany.
“I was so appalled by the ruins throughout the city that all I wanted to do was turn around and go back home,” she said, adding she wrote a book called Memories of Berlin.
Raised in Illinois, she graduated from high school in 1939. She worked for a telephone company in Chicago but became homesick and yearned to return home, where she found an unsatisfactory job with an utility company. Then her brother told her the Army was looking for people to fill jobs in Europe.
She investigated the Army prospects and went to Army headquarters in Chicago. Two hours after an interview with Army personnel, she had signed a contract that had her leaving in three weeks for Germany. She took a train to New York and boarded a ship with women headed to Europe to work for the Army. Out at sea she found the ocean could make life unpleasant.
“I was so sick I felt like throwing myself overboard,” she said.
The ship docked in Bremerhaven, Germany and the women took a train to Frankfurt.
“As we got near Frankfurt I began to see signs of war. There were wrecked railcars and locomotives pushed off to the side as the tracks were being rebuilt,” she said.
“At the Frankfurt railroad station, a man on the platform was calling out names. I heard my name called and he gathered a group of us and told us we were going to Berlin. There were protests and some tears,” she said.
At the close of World War II, Berlin was divided into four sectors – American, British, French and Russian.
In Berlin, she and the other women went on a tour of the remains of Berlin.
“I had been appalled by what I saw in Frankfurt, but Berlin was a hundred times worse,” she said.
They drove for blocks weaving around heaps of rubble that filled many streets and passing the remains of hundreds of buildings reduced to enormous piles of stones and concrete.
“The strangest part of the tour was the absence of any sign of life on the streets,” she said. “It was almost impossible to believe that anyone could be living among the awful ruins.”
“Eventually we saw some women working clearing rubble and sorting usable bricks and stones and stacking them in neat piles. Chunks of concrete and other debris were hauled away outside the city where a huge pile of rubble later became a ski jump,” she said.
There were few German men seen on the streets. Most of the German men seen were unloading planes at the airport, Marshall said.
Marshall’s first job was in the mailroom of the headquarters office. She lived in a house with eight women.
The Russians were continuously obstructing proposals for cooperation among the four powers and by June 1948 all semblance of accord had collapsed, she said.
The Russians claimed Berlin was a part of the Soviet Union and began acting accordingly. Electric power sources were in the Russian zone of the city and the Russians shut off the power. Tensions rose even higher. Next the Russians established the blockade. No trucks or trains could enter or leave Berlin. The Western Powers checked their supplies and found they had enough food for one month and coal for 10 days.
Gen. Lucius Clay, commanding general and Military Governor for the United States in Berlin at the time, started the Berlin Airlift with American, British and French cargo planes flying in food, coal and other essentials to keep the city of 2 million residents from falling into the hands of the Russians.
“Planes were lined up nose to tail and as soon as one plane was emptied, it taxied out and took off and another plane took its place,” she said.
Marshall was promoted and became a secretary in 1948 to Gen. Charles Gailey, who had a reputation for being a challenge to work for.
One evening, Marshall and her eight roommates attended a party at the home of an Army doctor where Lillian met Jim Marshall, provost marshal at the hospital. During the evening’s conversation, the talk turned to the threat of the Russians seizing Tempelhof airport.
“For the first time I realized how vulnerable the Americans were in Berlin,” she said.
She and Jim Marshall began dating. At first he would visit her at her residence and all of the other women became fond of him. He became their handyman.
Gen. Gaily never missed a day of work – not even for holidays. Marshall had worked out an arrangement with her fellow secretary to share times off. On Christmas Day, 1948 she was at her desk when the door opened and in walked Bob Hope, who was to give a show for the troops in Berlin. She was able to get away to see the show later that day.
“Before the evening was over we all sang God Bless America and I doubt it was ever more heart-felt than on that night and tears flowed,” she said.
In April 1949 the airlift had its biggest day. More than 12,940 tons of goods were flown into the city.
On May 12, 1949 the Russians lifted the blockade and the railroads and the autobahn to Berlin were open again.
With the autobahn open, Lillian, Jim and another person began taking vacations to the Alps and into Italy, where Jim had been in combat during the war.
“He came into Anzio on the Italian boot and ended up in Genoa, but along the way he was shot and spent some time in a hospital,” she said. “He showed us all the places he had been.”
Gen. Clay was replaced by Gen. Maxwell Taylor as head of the military in Berlin.
The Russians continued to be troublesome. If Americans wandered into the Russian zone, they were often arrested and charged with spying. On one occasion two American college students wandered into the Russian zone and were arrested.
“They seemed to think that being arrested by the Russians was a lark,” she said. “They were held for two months until the American officials could negotiate their release.”
There were frequent visits from members of Congress and other dignitaries from the U.S. On one occasion a Senator from Louisiana was with the Senate Armed Services Committee visiting Berlin. The Senator asked how much it cost the United States to keep the British and French in Berlin. “The question was so stupid that Gen. Taylor was livid. He did not suffer fools,” she said.
Her romance with Jim blossomed and on her birthday in 1949 he gave her a ring. They were married on Jan. 20, 1951. It was the custom for the commanding general of a unit to give away the bride, but Gen. Taylor was occupied with conferences with Gen. Eisenhower. Later Gen. Taylor greeted Marshall at an event and said, “Lillian, no one but Gen. Eisenhower could have kept me from your wedding.”
In 1951, Marshall finished her assignment in Germany and Jim was transferred to the United States. He retired from the Army in 1962. They moved to Oregon and started a real estate business in Monitor, where Jim died in 1991. Lillian now lives in Mount Angel Towers.
With memories and adventures to fill a book.
