Of Knights and Dogfights

by Ellie Midwood

  “I’m sorry it turned out this way for you and Frau von Sielaff, Herr General. I’m in no way judging you but I’m merely saying that I would never do any of this sort to Mina.”

  General von Sielaff regarded him for some time. “Yes, perhaps you’re right. Well, you have my blessing. I hope you two will be happier than her mother and I.”

  He offered his hand to Johann and shook it firmly just as Willi appeared on the steps. “Did he say yes?”

  Johann’s beaming face was his reply.

  “No offense, Father, but he asked me first.”

  With the celebratory dinner out of the way, Johann sat through the familiar cabaret experience, politely declined General von Sielaff’s offer to go someplace else after that and with an immense relief crashed on top of his bed in the guest bedroom which Frau von Sielaff had kindly offered him, still wearing his overcoat. A soft, startled cry prompted him to jump off the bed. In the pearl-gray light from outside, he finally made out a familiar slender frame propped against the headrest of his bed.

  “Did he say yes?” Mina asked in an expectant whisper.

  “He did.” Johann was suddenly aware of his disheveled state and the room spinning with uncertainty under his unsteady feet. “What are you doing here?”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to know what he said.”

  Mina climbed off the bed and stood in front of him. “Let me help you with the coat.”

  “No, it’s quite all right. I’ll manage. Go to your room now before your mother notices that you’re gone. She’ll have my hide if she does.”

  Mina’s soft laughter caressed his cheek as she leaned in to kiss him. “She loves you like her own. She won’t say a thing. Besides, we’re now officially engaged.”

  Johann stiffened in her arms as she continued to remove his belt, jacket, tie. Suddenly aware of his wildly beating heart he barely heard her when she asked, “did you go to one of those places where Willi always goes? Where half-naked women dance?”

  “Yes.” He couldn’t lie to her even if he wanted. He was raised on the principles of truth and truth only and besides, what good would it do, starting an engagement with lies? Wasn’t that what destroyed her parents’ marriage? “I didn’t enjoy it though. I was thinking about you all the time.” That was the truth as well.

  “Willi loves them.”

  “Willi loves all women. I love only you.”

  “I get very jealous when I think about you looking at all those women.”

  “I won’t go there anymore if you don’t want me to. I only went because I didn’t want to offend Willi or your father. Besides, the only girl whom I want to see half-naked, is standing right in front of me.”

  Mina wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him on his open mouth. Before he knew what he was doing, he pulled the straps of her night slip down and touched the soft skin on top of her bare breast for the first time; heard the breath catch in her throat when his thumb passed over her hard nipple.

  “You really ought to go,” he muttered in a futile effort to summon the last sensible arguments in his intoxicated state when his fingers were already busy undoing the buttons on his uniform trousers. He suddenly recalled how Willi, already drunk and grinning, slid a few white squares into his pocket before General von Sielaff’s driver dropped him off in front of the house. Here, these may come in handy. Don’t make me an uncle yet.

  For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to even unwrap one of those things in front of Mina. She was his fiancée after all, not some whore whom he didn’t want to knock up. The spring mattress groaned under the weight of two bodies, and Johann heard Mina giggling at his startled expression.

  “Your mother is going to hear us.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  “Gott, she’ll murder me,” he whispered into her mouth before covering it with his.

  In the morning, when Johann was busy shaving in the bathroom situated on the second floor, Willi’s grinning face reflected in the mirror.

  “Had a nice night, you dog?”

  Johann’s hand with a razor hovered in the air as he pondered possible replies.

  “Oh, don’t make those innocent eyes at me.” Willi chuckled. “I heard you going at my poor baby sister from the first floor when I came home last night.”

  “I want to take her to my house for the whole of next week.” Johann beamed at him instead. “Do you think your father will be able to arrange something with her school? I want to announce our engagement to my parents but it would be nice if she were there with me while I’m doing it.”

  “I don’t think he’ll be able to get a release for her for the full week but a couple of days sounds more than possible. Say, Thursday and Friday, so that she spends Saturday and Sunday with you there as well?”

  “That would be grand!”

  Willi stood on the threshold for some time before he approached his friend and scooped him into a sudden embrace. “I’m thrilled you two are getting married. I really am.”

  Eight

  France, June 1940

  * * *

  Willi was officially titled by his superiors, Kronprinz von Pas-de-Calais. All the replacement pilots, sent straight from different flying schools, were quite amused when their commanding officers addressed the “veterans” by such fanciful titles – Graf von Lille, Herzog von Ostend, Freiherr von Antwerp – but soon learned the true meaning behind those mocking nicknames.

  “With the very first fighter that the pilot loses, he gets the lowest title: Freiherr – Baron,” Walter explained it to the new reinforcements during breakfast. “And according to the place where he loses his fighter, he gets the second part of his nom de guerre: von Lille, for instance. Our best fighter pilot, Oberfähnrich Brandt, at whose aircraft’s rudder with all those victory marks you were ogling outside, is not titled at all since he hadn’t lost any fighters so far.”

  A round of applause broke out, together with the cheers from the officers. Johann rose from his seat and bowed theatrically.

  “As for our second best fighter pilot, Fähnrich von Sielaff, he has just been titled as Crown Prince himself.”

  “I will lie if I say that I’m not just a bit proud of it,” Willi inserted, sporting a paper crown, painted yellow, on top of his head. The Staffelkapitän himself placed it there, right after Willi crash-landed his eighth fighter near Pas-de-Calais a day ago. The fighter was cannibalized for spare parts as the damage was so extensive that no repairs, no prayers would ever make that aircraft fly again, according to the same Staffelkapitän.

  “Just bear in mind that despite the title sounding terribly fine you don’t want to be like Crown Prince von Sielaff,” Walter concluded. “You want to be like an ordinary Oberfähnrich Brandt.”

  Willi only laughed kind-heartedly and never took offense despite the growing resentment between him and the rest of the pilots, stationed on the same base. With Johann and Walter being more or less used to his antics from the flying school, the seasoned pilots, who had been serving in Spain when the trio was still attending their regular school, grumbled their discontent more and more often on Willi’s account, sometimes outright refusing to fly with him in the same unit. Rotte leaders began expressing more and more reluctance to go on missions with Willi as their wingman; everyone lost count of all the times he broke formation and started pursuing his goal without any regard to the safety of his Rottenführer. He was reprimanded; he was threatened with court-martial. He was restricted to quarters and made to pull duty for countless nights in a row until 2100 hours after operations, yet nothing seemed to work.

  “Why can’t you just stay where you are and mind your duties as a wingman?” Johann tried talking some sense into his best friend and future brother-in-law on countless occasions. “When I fly as a wingman, I don’t even think about anything else besides minding my Rottenführer’s tail. Why can’t you do the same?”

  A shrug and a guilty smile invariably followed, in tow with wonderfully expressive eyes. “I don�
��t intend to do any of this sort of thing when we take off. It just happens.”

  Once again, Fähnrich von Sielaff broke a formation in his unit, endangering his flight leader and himself with his reckless action, a new reprimand would grace his service record. And right below it, scored his twentieth victory. Recommended for an Iron Cross. Then, a new entry, cancel the promotion for Oberfähnrich. Broke the formation, failed to radio his intentions, failed to see that his enemy had a wingman. Lost his ninth fighter after he got jumped by three enemy aircraft. Crash-landed on the beach, nearly smashing into a populated area.

  “I will not fly with him as my wingman.” The Rottenführer’s face was unmoving despite all the Staffelkapitän’s pleas and threats. “I don’t feel safe flying with someone with such an independent nature. Fähnrich von Sielaff is unreliable and reckless and I refuse to put my life at risk solely because you have no one else to pair with him. You have every right to punish me for disobeying your orders and I will gladly be restricted to the base but at least I’ll be alive, Herr Staffelkapitän.”

  “Assign him to me, Herr Oberleutnant,” Johann asked later that morning. Willi was God knows where and Johann could only sigh at the thought of yet another record appearing in his friend’s file, this time for being late for a pre-flight briefing. “You told me yourself that it was high time for me to start flying as flight leader, so why not pair us together?”

  The Staffelkapitän was already shaking his head in a most categorical manner. “No. Forget even thinking about it. You’re one of my best pilots; I won’t have you flying out there without any cover.”

  “What do you mean, without cover?” Johann countered grinning. “Willi, I mean Fähnrich von Sielaff will be my cover. He’ll mind my tail just fine.”

  A couple of mocking snorts from the pilots, who’d had “luck” flying with such a wingman as Willi, came in response to their comrade’s naiveté.

  “He’ll disappear in the middle of the fight and will leave you alone,” the Staffelkapitän declared without a shade of doubt in his voice. “And he’ll remember about you only when he’s done with all of his victories. There’s every chance that by the time he decides to radio in and return to his position, you’ll be shot down and quite possibly dead.”

  “I trust him,” Johann countered calmly. “Besides, you don’t really have a choice, Herr Oberleutnant. You have no one to pair with him anyway.”

  Willi ran up to the group, out of breath and smiling brightly and in his usual innocent way asked if he’d missed anything.

  “Only the pre-flight briefing and your new assignment.” The Staffelkapitän turned his back on him and ordered everyone to their respective aircraft.

  “Flying out to London; escorting Stukas; you’re my wingman,” Johann filled in his friend with three laconic sentences.

  “Really?” Willi had obviously taken his new assignment with great enthusiasm. “That’s great! I always wanted for us to fly together.”

  Johann only slapped him on his shoulder and trotted towards his BF-109 fighter, where his crew-chief was already waiting for him with the flight gear. He zipped his warm pilot’s jacket, pulled on the gloves and helped the crew-chief put a parachute on his back. After the usual exchange between the two, good luck; be careful – I will, he slid the canopy of his plane closed and checked his instrument panel.

  Rudi flew with them again, but unlike in the fall of the previous year, Johann embarked on the escort mission with a much lighter heart. After their leave, Rudi returned to the base much calmer and acted much more indifferent to his missions, which now were far worse than his very first one, which had traumatized him so. He didn’t bomb airbases where he thought he saw a few people running; he bombed cities where those people most definitely were running and not soldiers but civilians at that; yet, Rudi appeared to be much less concerned with their fate than he used to be. Got used to it, perhaps, Johann thought to himself broodingly.

  He, for one, still didn’t. Neither did Willi, who sat without moving for hours, with a tragic face, after each new white little bar was painted on the rudder of his bird. I killed someone’s son, Johann. Someone’s husband, perhaps… Johann always stopped him abruptly. He shared the same exact sentiments but what good was it mulling over the inevitable? They were in the middle of a war after all and if they didn’t kill, they would have been killed. Johann preferred not to think about his twenty-eight confirmed victims and preferred to forget all the unconfirmed ones.

  “I’m ready when you are.” He grinned at the sound of Willi’s voice over the radio. “Lead the way, flight leader! Over.”

  Johann began his take-off roll. “Less talk more following my movements. Over.”

  “I’m not Mina. Over.”

  “I’ll let you have it for that one when we land. Over.”

  “Keep all the conversations relevant to the mission! Over.” The Oberleutnant’s voice broke through the radio waves.

  “Jawohl, Herr Oberleutnant,” in unison and chuckling. “Over.”

  It was a fine day, as fine as they can be in June in France. In the middle of this endless azure sky, Johann experienced the same ecstatic feeling of freedom, intoxicating, powerful, similar to what birds must experience when they spread their wings and become one with the wind. They flew the usual Schwarm formation, or “finger four” as their British counterparts called it. Over his shoulder, just a bit behind his fighter Johann saw his smiling friend waving at him. He waved back and relaxed his stiff back a bit. Willi would watch him. Willi wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

  “The enemy formation spotted about six hundred meters,” the Oberleutnant informed his unit over the radio.

  Johann’s fingers squeezed the stick tightly as adrenaline shot up straight into his bloodstream. That was his second favorite feeling in the world.

  “Yellow Four, are you ready? Over,” he called to Willi.

  “Always ready, Yellow Five. Show them! Over.”

  In less than a few seconds a peaceful sky turned into a veritable battlefield, with projectiles from the guns flying and whizzing in every possible direction. A formation of Hawker Hurricanes attacked them with brutal force, taking advantage of their outnumbering the Messerschmitts. Johann spotted his target, who was tailing the Stuka’s formation and already shooting at them – without any success, much to Johann’s relief. He saw the pilot’s mistake from his position at once; despite pulling at the furthest Stuka’s blind spot, he was much too far for his bullets to reach their aim due to the general law of gravity. Everything shot at a greater distance than 450 meters would fall to the ground; the Hurricane was at least six hundred meters behind.

  “See him, Yellow Four?” Johann motioned to his wingman at the lone Hurricane. Willi nodded, concentration creasing his brow. “I’m getting him. Over.”

  “Go ahead, Yellow Five. I got you. Over.”

  Johann pulled his stick forward and dived after his opponent, coming dangerously close before opening fire – one of his favorite maneuvers. The Hurricane didn’t stand a chance, Johann knew it instantly as the RAF aircraft started trailing smoke.

  Shall I finish him? Johann tried to assess the damage he had inflicted in the few seconds that he had in his possession. The plume of smoke thickened and the plane started losing altitude. Johann disengaged with a sigh of relief when he noticed the top of the Hurricane open and a small figure dive down to the safety of the water.

  “Good job, flight leader!”

  “Yellow Five, did you get him?” The Oberleutnant’s voice.

  “I did, White One. Over.”

  “Two Hurricanes on our tails, Yellow Five. Over.” Willi’s voice again.

  “Got you, Yellow Four. Over.”

  Throwing his throttle fully open, Johann pulled his stick with force. He started gathering altitude with the purpose of diving down on his opponent as soon as he was in the periphery of his vision. He felt guilty for throwing glances over his shoulder just to see if the bright yellow nose of Willi’s f
ighter was still following him and felt even guiltier when each time it was invariably there, faithful and alert, sticking to his side like glue, mirroring all of his maneuvers with brilliant precision. With a smile, he started closing in on his intended target. The fight this time lasted a long four minutes. Sweat dripping off his forehead, Johann cursed at the obviously experienced pilots while marveling at their skill at the same time. Yes, the skill they certainly had but what they didn’t have was Johann’s seemingly suicidal technique of coming at his opponent and shooting at such close proximity that he quite often saw their faces, pale, wide-eyed and positively terrified at the thought that a crazy Hun would ram them instead of shooting them. The first Hurricane finally fell to Johann’s guns; the second was shot down almost right after by Willi.

  “Two-one, Herr Flight Leader! Over.”

  “I love you, Yellow Four. Over.”

  “Again, you’re confusing me with my sister, Yellow Five. Over.”

  “Thank you for clearing my tail, Smart Mouth. Over.”

  “No problem, Schatz. Over.”

  Johann was nearly bursting with pride as he stood in front of the Staffelkapitän’s office after the mission was successfully finished.

  “I told you that Fähnrich von Sielaff can be a great wingman. He just needed a good flight leader to follow.”