Of Knights and Dogfights

by Ellie Midwood

  “It’s not every day that I give away my daughter, so don’t worry about the money,” he only remarked in a mild voice to Johann’s suggestion to foot at least part of the bill. “You worry about the courthouse, your marriage license, and all the other necessary documentation. Let me worry about the reception.”

  In his usual, efficient manner, Johann secured all the necessary papers and signatures in a matter of days. The entire unit was given leave for such a joyous occasion and therefore they had some time to spare. His comrades mostly occupied that “spare time” with pretty girls, who appeared to be flocking towards them at the mere sight of their pilots’ uniforms, and with drinking, and therefore didn’t distract Johann from his organizational duties in the slightest. Willi, much to his surprise, followed him everywhere and offered his help even before Johann had a chance to ask for it.

  “Well, I’m your wingman, aren’t I?” He grinned to Johann’s suggestion that he too, should join the rest of the pilots in their festivities. “If not me, who else is going to watch your back?”

  On the morning of the fateful day, Johann awoke, feeling thoroughly nauseated. Painfully aware of his wildly beating heart, he lay in his bed with his arm across his chest, his eyes riveted to the shadows on the ceiling in that mother-of-pearl, pre-dawn hour. He discovered that he didn’t worry so much even during his very first dogfight. But this was not a question of surviving the fight, this was something much more grand and eternal, something that was bigger than life and death, something that would change the face of the world the way he knew it. Today, he would forever cease to be alone. Today, he would give his name to the girl whom he felt that he’d loved long before he met her; when she was nothing more than an abstract dream of a blissfully distant future and who was brought into his life by some twist of fate that suddenly decided to take pity on him and give him a wife to keep him alive. To be sure, he couldn’t die now, solely because from now on Mina would be looking at the sky with those wonderful, frank eyes of hers and pleading with it to keep him safe. The very idea of it nearly choked Johann with a sudden romantic joy.

  They both agreed on a simple civil ceremony, with a military Chaplain conducting it. With unfathomable delight he watched his bride, in her white dress, with an overflowing bouquet in her hands, being led to him by her father. General von Sielaff, too, also couldn’t contain his emotions and quickly brushed away a tear, very unseemly for a military man of his rank, before taking his place next to his estranged wife. Johann smiled at the two with profound gratitude for making this little sacrifice for their daughter’s sake. His own parents, beaming with joy, held hands in the front row on the bridegroom’s side. Even Harald was given a short leave for the occasion and presented Johann with a copy of “Mein Kampf” embossed in gold, the day before the wedding. “From the Napola and all the instructors, with their best wishes. They expressed the hope that this edition will inspire you even more to future victories in the name of the Fatherland.” To Johann’s utterly confused look and knitted brows, his brother only made an evasive motion with his hand. Don’t ask.

  Willi, his best man and a new proud brother-in-law, broke into the wildest applause as soon as the couple was pronounced man and wife, before pulling both into the tightest embrace. Soon, it was a sea of arms around them, with countless hugs, back pats, kisses, and handshakes. At the exit, a customary arch of dress daggers held by Johann’s grinning brothers-in-arms, more frantic cheers of the crowd that had gathered outside as though half of the city itself decided to celebrate along with them, and his wife’s hand in his – just where it belonged, till death do us part.

  “How much time do you have before you have to go back?” Mina asked him later, with a strained touch of pain at the inevitable separation in her voice, as they lay in bed in the finest suite that General von Sielaff could book.

  Countless bouquets of flowers covered the floor. Next to the bed, a silver bucket stood, a half-empty bottle of champagne swimming in the melted ice. Johann had not ceased looking at her, with endless adoration caressing the familiar features as though wishing to emblazon them into his heart forever.

  “Three more weeks. They gave me a whole month’s leave so we can have a proper honeymoon.”

  “What about your comrades?”

  “They have to go back next week, right after Christmas.”

  “And Willi?”

  “Willi was given a month as well. I don’t think our Staffelkapitän wants him back on the base without my supervision,” Johann admitted with a subtle smile.

  “You’re a good influence on him. He’s very different when he’s with you,” Mina remarked, nestling her golden head on her new husband’s chest.

  “Not really. He still sneaks out at night and does as he pleases.”

  “That may be so but I know my brother, he’s different with you. Don’t abandon him, please.”

  “Of course I would never abandon him!” Johann assured her and added, after a pause, quietly, “I have already lost one very good friend. I’m not going to lose another.”

  They spent two weeks of their honeymoon at an Austrian resort, skiing and drinking hot Glüwein by the fireplace in a small rented house. In a pastoral countryside, covered with virginal snow and undisturbed by the constant grumbling of the plane engines, it felt as though the war was not happening somewhere in the north, where their Stukas were bombing the enemy cities relentlessly and viciously and where their Messerschmitts were scoring more victories on their already painted tails.

  Those were blissful days, almost staged in their serenity but even here the war haunted him, tearing him out of his beloved’s embrace in the middle of the night at the sudden shout of his wingman’s voice, “Spitfires! Break left!” which sounded far too real for a soundless Austrian midnight. Johann always soothed Mina, with an invariably soft smile – nothing, nothing. Just a dream; go back to sleep, my love, – while the sweat poured down from him soaking the sheets and a blanket, in which he thoroughly hid his trembling hands. He slept much better at the field; exhaustion was a soldier’s faithful friend. Here, he lay upset and wide-eyed for hours when sleep wouldn’t come and listened to the treacherous silence outside with some animalistic quality about him as though willing the damned Spitfires to appear in the Austrian paradise and obliterate them all, just so he’d prove himself right that they weren’t a fruit of his imagination. They never materialized, of course. Only the pale-pink dawn did, seeping through the shutters and kissing the nightmares away from his fluttering eyelids with the tenderest affection. Only then he slept, till noon sometimes.

  “Do you know why I never lost a fighter?” Johann asked Mina one morning. Both were busy preparing a simple breakfast on the stove – he, brewing coffee and her, frying eggs for both of them. He suddenly felt the urgent need to tell her this, before he would forget, before he would leave for the front and never tell her his secret.

  “Because, unlike Willi, you’re a good pilot.” Mina thoroughly tried to hide a grin, which broke out on her face, at her brother’s expense.

  “No. Because your name is on it.”

  The words tumbled out of him so quickly and quietly that Mina regarded him for a moment, wondering if she had misheard him. “My name?”

  “Yes. You know how pilots paint their aircraft and write everything imaginable on them? Willi’s fighter, for instance, is painted with a deck of cards and the words, I Bet You’re Going Down, Tommy, above it. Rudi has his Stuka painted like a shark, with To London, With Love on it. And mine has a red heart and one word inside of it, Mina. See? I can’t let anything happen to it just because your name is on it.”

  Misty-eyed, Mina circled his neck with her arm and pressed into him in a surge of silent, endless adoration, which Johann was certain he didn’t deserve.

  A few days later, upon their return to Berlin, Johann puzzled over the papers which Willi put into his hands as soon as they stepped through the doors of the von Sielaff’s family home.

  “They’re sendin
g you away?”

  “Apparently, he’s had it with me, Johann. He even went through the pains of attaching a letter to the marching orders, explaining that it is his profound conviction that a lot of sand and the absence of women and wine will do wonders for my career as a pilot,” Willi replied with a derisive grin, meaning their Staffelkapitän of course. “It looks to me like we won’t be serving together any longer.”

  Before distraught Mina could interject something, Johann, who had already decided everything for himself, spoke in a calm and resolute voice, “I’m asking for transfer as well then.”

  “You don’t have to do that—”

  “No, I’m going with you. You said it yourself; you’re my wingman. Who else is going to watch my back, if not you?”

  For a moment, Willi stood in front of him motionless and unsure; only his whiskey eyes stared oddly bright as if in search of an affirmation. A mocking smirk fell apart, melted into a faint, grateful smile. Quickly hiding his brimming eyes, Willi clapped Johann awkwardly on the shoulder and started in the direction of the dining room switching to a subject wholly and utterly unrelated to their service. Johann followed him, smiling widely in spite of himself.

  North Africa, April 1941

  * * *

  “Fuck me, it’s hot!” Willi’s crude remark caught a knowing look from the driver who was kind enough to offer him a ride. As he followed Johann to their new destination, squinting against the sun that he swore had set its mind on blinding him permanently that morning, Willi’s fighter’s engine stalled and he had to make a hard landing on some dirt road in the middle of a desert some fifty kilometers from his assigned base. Fortunately, an Italian soldier with a supply truck picked him up before he boiled alive in his now useless fighter.

  “Where have you been stationed before?” The driver, a chatty, black-eyed fellow with a Clark Gable mustache, inquired.

  “They sent us to Bulgaria and then Greece prior to this stint.” Willi looked around skeptically, pulling at his sweat-soaked tunic to let at least some air circulate along his overheating body. “It sure was nicer in Greece.”

  “Welcome to hell!” The driver let out a mirth-laced guffaw and stomped on the brakes. “I have to keep driving east to catch up with my unit. You go straight ahead for about five hundred yards and you’ll see your base.”

  Willi had just opened his mouth to protest that he saw no base from here, that there were only sand dunes around and that he’d most certainly get lost and die of dehydration but the Italian fellow had already sped off, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.

  After letting another string of elaborate curses escape his dust-covered lips, Wilhelm took a careful swig from his canteen, cringed – nasty warm water! – and began marching in the direction pointed out by the Italian. Much to his relief, after climbing over the third dune, he indeed saw a base, if one could call it that.

  The base, which consisted of a few trucks and aircraft neatly lined up in the distance, represented quite a sorry picture. As Willi approached it, more and more beige-clad figures came into view, digging aimlessly into the sand with a lost look about them. The commanding officer, as Wilhelm had assumed anyway, scampered among them shouting orders which were only met with more questions and more uncomprehending stares.

  “Herr Oberleutnant, the dugout is impossible to make in such conditions. The sand keeps going back into the hole as soon as the wind blows. As soon as we dig, it comes right back into it.”

  “Herr Oberleutnant, how should we camouflage the fighters? We don’t have anything to cover them with.”

  “Have the trucks with water arrived yet, Herr Oberleutnant?”

  “What should we do about the latrines, Herr Oberleutnant?”

  Herr Oberleutnant turned on his heel towards Willi and appeared for a second as though he wished to walk away from the whole enterprise and let them court-martial him for all he cared. As soon as he noticed the single figure, heading from the direction of the road, he rushed toward him, screaming with a frantic urgency which Willi would have ordinarily found comical, had it not been for the pitiful state of affairs on the base. “You! Are you with the supply unit?”

  “Who, me?” Willi even looked over his shoulder, wondering if his new CO addressed someone else behind his back. Surely, he noticed his pilot’s uniform – newly issued, Afrika Korps tan one. “No, I’m from your Staffel… I suppose. I’m Oberfähnrich Wilhelm von Sielaff, fighter ace.”

  “Fighter ace without a fighter?” Oberleutnant gave him a thorough, mistrustful once-over as though ensuring that he was indeed a pilot.

  “Engine problems. I had to leave it there, on the road.”

  “That’s not good. Our Staffel consists of battered fighters as it is and we can’t afford to lose—” Oberleutnant suddenly stopped mid-word. “Wait, what was your name again?”

  “Wilhelm von Sielaff, Mein Oberleutnant.”

  “Not Kronprinz von Pas-de-Calais von Sielaff?” This time the CO broke into a wide grin.

  Willi lowered his head against all military regulations, hoping to conceal his chuckling. “Jawohl, Herr Oberleutnant. That’s me, all right.”

  Instead of a torrent of reprimands and moaning as to what did he possibly do to his superiors to receive such a clown into his staff, his new CO shook his hand quite amicably and invited him into his “headquarters” – one of the trucks in urgent need of camouflage.

  “I heard a lot about you, Oberfähnrich von Sielaff! Come, you’ll tell me all about your exploits over the Channel. Is it true that you once engaged eight enemy fighters at the same time?”

  “True, Herr Oberleutnant. But I hit only three of them before my unit caught up with me and did away with the rest.”

  “You crazy daredevil!” The young Oberleutnant, who was barely thirty, judging by his youthful face and a much more liberal bearing than all the previous flight commanders that Willi had encountered, clapped him on his shoulder once again. “I’m really looking forward to flying with you! I just have to see you in the sky after everything I heard. Will you fly as my wingman on the next sortie?”

  Willi hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know if you read my service record yet, Herr Oberleutnant, but my previous commanding officer stated in it – and quite truthfully – that I make a lousy wingman.”

  “Let me see that.” He outstretched his hand for the service record. Willi pulled it out from his backpack, cringing at the size of it. It was surely thick enough with violations for an entire Geschwader.

  Oberleutnant leafed through the file, his grin growing wider and wider. Finally, he outright burst out laughing.

  “Restricted from flying for today’s mission. Reason: too hungover to fly. Is this even a real entry?”

  “Very much so, I’m afraid, Herr Oberleutnant. Yes.”

  “I think we’ll work just fine together, Oberfähnrich von Sielaff. Welcome to JG-27, 1 Staffel.”

  “You just look at him! Look what he’s doing, the crazy son of a bitch!” Oberleutnant Degenhardt added a few elaborate curses which, in his understanding, signified the highest of praises.

  Willi, encouraged by his new commander’s “show ‘em what you got” spoken right after the pre-flight briefing, didn’t think twice before breaking formation at the first sight of the enemy and throwing himself into the fight, heavily outnumbered ten to one. He flew as a Rottenführer for the first time; yet, he appeared to completely forget about such thing as a wingman who sheepishly clung to the Schwarm, most likely thinking it to be suicidal to follow his leader into a veritable death trap – a formation called Lufbery, a large circle of enemy planes that used each other for protection.

  Johann increased his throttle at once to catch up with Willi, who had already lowered his airspeed, lowered his flaps to almost stalling speed, and slipped into the enemy formation.

  “Got one.” The radio crackled with the sound of Willi’s calm, collected voice.

  Indeed, one of the Hurricanes began trailing smoke and rapidly losing
altitude. Wilhelm, meanwhile, slipped out of the line of fire just as British bullets struck one of the Hurricanes that happened to be where Willi’s fighter should have been. A mask of horror and guilt, etched on the Brit’s features as he realized that he had shot down one of his own instead of the insolent Hun, flashed before Willi’s eyes as he watched the Hurricane slipping down, smoking, tumbling to its death. But it was no time for regrets; only time to increase throttle, line up the third kill and take it down before the rest of his Schwarm formation caught up with him, at last, to do away with the rest of the Lufbery.

  “Watching you is like watching ballet!” Oberleutnant Degenhardt offered Willi his hand as soon as the Schwarm landed back onto the field. “I’ve seen talented pilots in my life but you… How do you manage not to lose your altitude during your stall maneuvers?”

  “Oh, it’s easy. You just have to chop the throttle, kick the rudder, roll the stick and you’ll keep your altitude.” Willi shrugged as though it was as natural as teaching a friend how to ride a bicycle. There’s nothing to it, Hans; just keep it straight and pedal.

  Oberleutnant Degenhardt tried all of those pointers later, just for practice; finally landed his fighter, wiped the sweat off his brow and, to his pilots’ questions only scratched his forehead in a puzzled way. “I lost half my altitude just recovering from the stall. How the hell he does it is beyond my understanding.”

  Wilhelm von Sielaff had been officially allowed to fly solo from that day on. He appeared in the dugout where Johann was scribbling a letter home and without any preamble started saying, in a rushed manner, that he would ask Herr Oberleutnant to reappoint him as Johann’s wingman if Johann wanted; that he would never abandon him and that he would fly with him for the rest of his life as number two if needed, until Johann broke into a fit of chuckles and interrupted him with a raised hand.