Comrade Beb Takes a Trip

As the Asch Express pulled out of Prague's Woodrow Wilson Station at 9:55 one morning last week, Conductor August Beb. his paunch taut but official in his brass-buttoned uniform, walked slowly through the train to see that all was in order. His train was not a big one: a baggage car and three coaches with 100-odd passengers. And there were two baskets of fruit he was supposed to deliver at the Asch station. For a veteran Communist who had spent years studying Marxism, the run was not much to look forward to. Beb often complained to friends that nothing exciting ever happened in his life.

A Wife Snubbed. When the express stopped at Pilsen, Karel Truksa, a husky railroader, got on. Two years ago he had been stationmaster at Asch, a mile from the German border. The Communists had found two men hiding in his house "without documents," and Truksa spent five months in a concentration camp. Now he had only a small job at the station in Eger (Cheb).

As he sat down in his third-class compartment on the Asch Express. Truksa carefully patted his pocket to make sure his pistol was still there.

There were other passengers that Conductor Beb might have been interested in. At Eger, Truksa's wife got on. He pretended not to know her. At other stops along the line, more people boarded the train, including the wife and children of Engineer Jaroslav Konvalinka, up ahead in the cab. Some of the new passengers seemed nervous. Two or three sat down in Truksa's compartment, others near by. A few, as if by accident, sat down near the hand brakes.

At Franzensbad, Truksa got out to stretch his legs on the platform. At the same time Engineer Konvalinka got down from his cab and slipped between the tender and the baggage car, shutting off the airbrake line (this meant that no one would be able to stop the train by pulling the emergency brake). As Konvalinka got back into his cab and started the train, Truksa followed him into the cab. He whipped out his pistol and trained it on the fireman, a Communist, and ordered him to lie face down on the floor.

The train was approaching Asch, its last stop. But instead of slowing down, it picked up speed. On the Asch station platform, baggage men watched wide-eyed as the locomotive, a 3-ft.-high Red Star on the front of its boiler, roared toward them. "I pushed the throttle all the way forward," Konvalinka said later.

A Switch Thrown. In the train, those passengers who were not in on the plot became alarmed. Women tried to soothe screaming babies. A toothless old man jumped to his feet, staring wildly out the window. "You should have seen the coal smoke and soot from that locomotive," he said. "It came in the window two fingers thick."

The train lurched through the Asch station and raced on through the crowded freight yards. Comrade Conductor Beb rushed for the emergency brake and pulled it. Nothing happened: Engineer Konvalinka had done his job well. Beb ran to one of the hand brakes, but the tight-lipped men who had been watching the brakes elbowed him away.

The train swerved off the main line and sped down a seldom-used spur leading between low hills, straight to the German border. On D-day minus one, Truksa had motorcycled to Asch and thrown a switch.

The blockhouse marking the frontier came into sight. "There were no border roadblocks on the track," said Konvalinka thankfully. "On one side, pretty far away, were ten or twelve Red guards, but they were completely surprised. When we crossed the border, a stone fell from my heart."

At the tiny town of Wildenau, half a mile inside Germany, the train panted to a stop. Conductor Beb jumped out and ran toward the locomotive, screaming insults. Said Konvalinka evenly: "You've got nothing more to tell me." Down the spur track, across the low hills, they could still see the church spires and smokestacks of Asch, in Communist Czechoslovakia.

A Hint Given. U.S. constabulary troops promptly impounded the train and its passengers. A U.S. officer welcomed all who wanted liberty, passed out free cigarettes, and set up a chow line. Then Engineer Konvalinka explained the plot.

Other anti-Communist Czechs in recent weeks have fled to freedom on foot, in boats, in planes, in helicopters, but Konvalinka and his friend Truksa decided that the railroad was the thing. At first, Konvalinka was for taking one locomotive and only his family, but when he found that many of his friends wanted to get out, too, he decided to take a whole train. All he told them, with a wink, was to get aboard the Asch Express on Sept. 11. Word began to spread. An auto mechanic, who had twice before tried to cross the frontier through the Bohemian woods, related: "A friend advised us to climb on the train to Asch because we would 'reach safety sooner that way.' We couldn't believe him, but we got on anyhow."

A Bed Spurned. That night the passengers, bedded down in their compartments, listened to an embarrassed Czech broadcast claiming that the train had got out of control and had skidded across the border. Seventy-seven passengers decided to go back--most of them were afraid of what would happen to their kin if they did not. Thirty-one asked to stay in Germany. Next day the whole trainload was taken to a D.P. camp at Graffenwohr, where they ate well and slept between clean sheets--all except Comrade Beb, who slept grimly on the floor. A devout Communist, he would not permit himself the evil luxury of a capitalist bed.

Beb was also troubled by his responsibility for the fruit; he told U.S. officers excitedly that it would rot unless prompt action were taken. The officers simply distributed the fruit among the passengers. It was almost too much for Comrade Beb. "I have a weak heart," he wailed. "I have diabetes--and now I am kaput."

Next day the 77 passengers who had decided to return boarded buses and went back to Communist Czechoslovakia. With them, shaken and pale, was Conductor Beb, to whom nothing much ever seemed to happen.

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