She almost said it all but then gazed into her husband’s eyes, so haunted and tormented, and decided against it. He carried enough of his grief to add this new misery to it.
“A bombing raid,” she said instead. “She got caught in it while getting milk for Willi. She named the baby after Wilhelm.”
“What of her parents? Aren’t they considered the closest kin?”
Politically unreliable, because of their daughter’s crime. Perhaps arrested now as well.
“I don’t know where her parents are.” Another small smile; another white lie. “In the city hall where I inquired, they told me I was the next closest kin. They told me I could formally adopt him. They even gave me extra ration coupons for milk.”
Johann brought his finger to touch the child’s little hand. The boy caught it and pressed it tightly, staring at him with his big, serious eyes. Johann found that amazing, unbelievable even that in this war-ravaged world there was still life left, resilient and strong, with tiny fingers like blades of grass that finds its way to the sun even through the refuse and rubble and everything else they buried themselves in.
“Mina, I think I want to have a son too,” he said suddenly, looking up at her with an odd emotion creasing his forehead.
His wife’s face was even lovelier than he remembered. Her eyes shone like broken shards of glass in the blazing afternoon. “I’ve been asking you all along. It was you, who always said no. After the war—”
“After the war, there will be nothing left!” Johann gasped at that sudden revelation that broke from his lips of its own will. He stared at the child again. “I want something for you to have… if I don’t come back. Like Lotte, with Willi.”
“Lotte’s dead.”
“So we will all be someday.”
She nodded, calm and suddenly so much stronger than he was. “How much time do you have of your leave?”
“Four weeks.”
“Four weeks should be enough.”
They made love before they went out to eat that evening and later when they returned. It was always the men who started the war and it was always the women who nursed the world back to peace through their own blood and sweat and their sheer power of love and forgiveness.
Eastern Front, Fall 1943
* * *
Eyeing the left river bank with apprehension, Rudi grinned to himself when the Soviet flak didn’t open fire on his low-flying bomber, outfitted only with a small, one-hundred-pound bomb. Even Popovs know what’s good for them. He pressed the release button on his stick and waved his wings at the overjoyed infantry that rushed to the banks, at once, as the bomb had exploded, sending dead fish floating, big white bellies up. After he’d first seen his landser comrades try and catch their dinner with the help of their hand grenades thrown into the water, Rudi decided to aid them in that enterprise and received a full Kübelwagen of fish delivered to his airbase in gratitude – much to his fellow pilots’ delight. Even Ivans on the opposite bank, who benefited just the same from his Stuka’s unorthodox fishing techniques, knew better than to repay it with anti-aircraft fire. It was all understandable too; they were all hungry.
Just a month ago, he had returned to the base in such high spirits after being awarded, by the Führer himself – the Swords to his Knight’s Cross for his thousand missions and over a hundred destroyed tanks – with such certainty, instilled in him by their leader’s words. The recent Kursk operation went belly up, just like the fish below his aircraft now; yet the Führer reassured him so positively about testing the new weapons, about the newest elite divisions being trained to aid them to achieve final victory; about the superiority of their pilots and aircraft and the necessity to hold on just a bit more until the reinforcements reached them…
Johann was there too, deep in his brooding despite the coveted Diamonds – the highest Luftwaffe award – now sparkling on his chest. He hardly touched his tea, hardly listened to his Führer’s words, it seemed, and believed them even less. To Rudi’s bursting enthusiasm, he only scowled as though astonished by the very fact that Rudi could still be persuaded by the arguments after they both had just returned from the front and seen the devastating retreat that their army was beating, with their own eyes.
“He’s a deluded old man. That’s all there is to it.”
Rudi gasped at such blasphemy and nearly dropped his cigarette. Didn’t they just leave the Führer’s headquarters? Didn’t he, Johann, hear what the Führer had said?
“What elite divisions?” Johann exploded, at last, angered by his comrade’s naiveté. “Did you see whom they’re sending to us? Old men and children! I don’t have time to train them properly before they get shot down! My new wingman – a former Stuka pilot who’s been sent to me without any re-orientation to fly a fighter! He doesn’t even know how to turn it properly! What elite divisions can we be possibly talking about?!”
Rudi mumbled something about secret weapons as though in his own defense. Johann only waved him into silence and turned away to the window.
Heading back to the base, Rudi replayed the conversation in his mind once again, much like he did ever since he returned back to the front from his short leave and saw it with sober eyes once again – even in a worse state than before. What if Johann was right? What if there was no new, elite divisions in training? What if there were no secret weapons and what if the tide of the war wouldn’t turn as soon as they were thrown to the depleted armies’ aid? What if the fishing landser and their beat-up airbase were all that they had to offer to protect their Fatherland?
He landed and taxied until he put his bird where it had belonged, only hoping to find it the following morning in the same spot. The Soviets were having their night fun with them, bombing the bases just for the thrill of it, it appeared, not really bothering with hitting any aircraft and mostly annoying the pilots with constant raids so as to keep them on their toes and in their trenches every night and thus rendering them useless as an actual force to be reckoned with the following morning. Rudi grinned at the sad thought of how they’d grown used to it by now, to the point where they slept right through the raids without bothering to leave their simple dwellings. Some had become fatalists; some still had their stash of pills that helped them through the night. Rudi belonged to the latter category.
He still flew more sorties than anyone else in his squadron – up to seventeen a day, only returning to the base to get his aircraft refueled, rearmed, all the while he had a quick smoke nearby. Pervitin, “the Stuka pills” as they had been dubbed, certainly did the trick in keeping him alert and focused even when everyone else was fainting with exhaustion but they sucked the life out of him in return, turning him into a ghostly shell of himself, with hollow cheeks and black eyes, lusterless and forlorn, only trained on targets nowadays.
A column of vehicles was crawling across no-man’s-land as they flew a reconnaissance mission, just two of them – Rudi and his wingman, Haber. The petrol was strictly rationed, just like manpower – both Haber and Rudi left their rear-gunners at the base to catch up on their sleep. Rudi circled around the column, rubbing his eyes to clear his vision. Damned pills; turned everything into a blur after one relied on them for too long.
“König One to König Two. Are they ours or the Soviets?”
“I can’t make it out myself, König One,” Haber’s voice came through the R/T. “They look American-made.”
“Means Soviet,” Rudi quickly concluded and started banking for his first diving attack.
With no flak protecting its vulnerable comrades, the Stukas spared no one that graying, foggy morning. Satisfied with the sight of the burning vehicles, Rudi waved his wings to his wingman trailing groggily after him – the new replacement pilot hardly slept at night, not used to the usual Soviet bombers’ lullabies. It was only when a bright red spot had come into view amid the debris – a crimson banner stretched over the hood of the very first truck – did Rudi find himself suddenly alert and tense with apprehension.
�
��Is that a swastika?” The radio voiced his suspicion. So, Haber saw it too. He wasn’t hallucinating after all.
Instead of answering and – to hell with petrol – Rudi made another circle, lowering to an almost ground-bound altitude. So it was. And the uniforms were far too familiar too; gray-green and not khaki-brown, strewn next to their burning vehicles like tin soldiers, shaken out of the box and left to rot there.
“Why didn’t they warn us?” Haber was almost shouting now. “Surely they had Vayas; why didn’t they shoot us a warning signal that they were our troops? And what in the hell were they doing in the American vehicles?”
Rudi didn’t know; neither did he reply anything. They flew in silence back to the base, where Rudi calmly reported to the base commander that no enemy ground troops were spotted, only their Wehrmacht infantry column had been sighted, strafed by enemy aircraft by the looks of it. Haber stared at him, pale and trembling, his eyes wide in amazement. Rudi stared back, grim and collected. Do you want to get court-martialed?
Haber confirmed Rudi’s words to the commander but spent all night sobbing softly in the cot that stood next to his and the following day crashed his Stuka into a Soviet tank instead of bombing it. Rudi yelled “How is that going to help anything?!” at the burning wreckage below and kept wiping his wet face with his gloved hand, angry at the boy but even more so at himself. It was his mistake; not Haber’s. He was the flight leader. He should have spotted the banner, which had been left there precisely for that purpose, so that their own Luftwaffe wouldn’t lay flat the landser that was fortunate to commandeer at least something that still had petrol and moved, from their Soviet counterparts. But Rudi couldn’t see clearly due to the drugs and now Haber was dead because of him. Just like tens of other Habers last morning, gunned down by his very own hand.
Mad with grief and regret, the very next morning he directed his ire at the Soviet Iron Gustavs below. They said it was next to impossible to penetrate their thick steel armor with any sort of bullets. Rudi wanted to put that theory to the test.
He gradually lowered his Stuka to level its speed with the Soviet bomber and released a bomb right on top of its canopy. The explosion came out splendid, blinding yellow and instant, blossoming into a fiery flower right beneath Rudi’s Ju-87. Only, before he had realized his mistake, the steel splinters riddled his faithful bird crippling it instantly. The engine coughed and conked; the propeller came to an abrupt stop, and the sharp smell of coolant started filling the cockpit.
“Sorry, Rossmann, my good fellow,” Rudi hoped that the radio still worked and he could still apologize to his rear-gunner before both of them would belly-land amid the Soviet troops. The damned luck had it, they were right in the middle of the battlefield. “Looks like we’re for it.”
The radio remained silent while Rudi was trying his best to steer the Stuka away from the enemy tanks. Should have directed it at one and went with honors, just like Haber had done before him, but he was heading for a clear piece of land in spite of himself, away from certain death.
“Rossmann?” Rudi shouted, ripping off his restraining belt to help his rear-gunner out. The Soviets were already running in the direction of the downed aircraft and he simply couldn’t bring himself to face them alone.
But Rossmann was dead, riddled with the same splinters that somehow spared Rudi’s life. Why that should be, he couldn’t possibly comprehend.
He sank to the ground, all the while staring at Rossmann’s bloodied face, so peaceful and almost angelic and waiting for his fate to catch up with him. In place of the running enemy, the lifeless faces of his comrades stood, with eyes gouged out, with bodies mutilated so severely that it was impossible to recognize them sometimes. His service gun still in his hand, he shriveled, shrunk as they approached him, pulling his head into his shoulders in a vain attempt to protect himself from imminent death.
The first Soviet infantryman kicked the gun out of his hand, which he couldn’t bring himself to use either on them or on himself, and dealt him a right blow on his nose. Rudi rolled himself into a ball and covered his head with his hands, releasing such a terrified, animalistic scream that his captors stopped their assault at once, seemingly stunned by it.
They spoke to each other in what seemed like amused voices, chuckling. A much lighter kick followed to his side, prompting him to get up.
“Hey, Fritz! Alles gut. Hitler kaput. Hande hoch.” Hey, Fritz! Everything’s all right. Hitler is dead. Hands up. He knew their simple vocabulary by heart now but still eyed them fearfully from under crisscrossed hands offering virtually no protection to his head.
Their leader watched him with a grin; motioned him to get up once again. Ashamed of his previous outburst, Rudi reluctantly rose to his feet, his entire body still trembling violently. They searched him and studied his papers, their voices getting more animated. One of them pointed at the Stuka’s rudder and hooked his finger through the ribbon of Rudi’s Knight’s Cross, pulling him forward like a dog by its collar to demonstrate it to the officer in charge. An unwelcome spark of hope ignited in Rudi’s chest that was still heaving wildly as the Ivans conferred among themselves. Perhaps, capturing a German ace alive was better than bringing his dead corpse to the headquarters? He wiped the blood from his lips and chin and stared at the leader tragically, a tall Russian who could have easily passed for a German with his fair looks and stature, imploring him, with his eyes, to spare his life.
The leader still seemed to be pondering something.
“Hitler – gut?” He finally addressed his prisoner directly.
Rudi knew that his fate depended on his answer. He shook his head slowly, spelling it out in simple terms the Soviet soldiers would understand. “Nein. Hitler ist nicht gut.”
“Stalin gut,” the leader spoke with conviction.
“Ja. Stalin ist gut.” Rudi nodded. “Sovietische Soldaten – gut Kameraden. Communism ist gut.”
“Communist?” The leader’s finger jabbed into his chest.
Rudi was nodding vigorously, despite tears staining his eyes. “Communist.”
He’ll be a communist; he’ll be anything they wanted him to be. He’ll agree to anything and do whatever they tell him to, just to keep his eyes and body intact even if his soul was the price to pay.
Satisfied with such arrangements, his new masters led him towards their lines, not even bothering to tie his hands.
Twenty-Six
Eastern Front, Fall 1943 – Winter 1944
* * *
The sky was torn, shredded gray. The clouds hung low and heavy, contaminated with the smell of war and death in them. His face partially hidden in the thick fur collar, Johann sat, rigid and half-frozen it seemed, staring at the commotion of the transit base from behind the controller’s hut’s window. It still held by some miracle; wasn’t shattered to pieces during one of the raids and therefore the room itself could preserve some warmth, stingily offered by a small Wehrmacht-issued heating lamp that stood in the middle.
The controller walked in; after him, a chilling gust of November air. Johann wiggled his toes in his fur pilot’s boots as though to ensure that he hadn’t lost them to frostbite yet.
“Good news, Herr Hauptmann.” The controller beamed a youthful smile at him. “We had all the spare parts for your aircraft. The mechanics have already started working on it. As soon as they’re done, you’ll be good to go.”
Johann muttered his quiet thanks. When twelve Soviet Sturmoviks attacked him at once, firmly set on ending his glorious existence to commemorate their November Day, Johann had only managed to escape by pulling the stick up and taking cover in the thick, mist-filled clouds. Some cover, too; anyone who had remotely any flying experience knew that hiding from the enemy in the clouds was a Russian roulette of its own. With visibility virtually zero, one could easily fly right into an enemy fighter or worse – into his own formation. Even after climbing down from that cotton kingdom above, Johann had lost his way and had to rely solely on his instrument panel and c
ompass. In the quickly thickening fog, he couldn’t even make out the horizon. By some miracle only, he made his landing on a highway and had to drive next to a German column all the way to their base, for flying was out of the question in such weather. Only after landing had he noticed that a big part of his wing was missing and one of the propeller blades was badly bent, after being struck by shrapnel.
“Herr Hauptmann?”
Johann tore his gaze from the window and looked at the controller, who was grinning the same young, bright smile at him.
“I was just asking if you would like some coffee?”
“Coffee? Yes. That would be grand. Thank you,” he replied absentmindedly, turned back to the window and tapped the glass with his fingertips. “What’s with all that commotion outside?”
“The squadron is heading out for their mission,” the controller replied as though surprised by the question. Surely Herr Hauptmann knew what the taxiing was all about.
“In this weather?” Johann stared at him in disbelief.
The controller stopped his fussing with the coffee and straightened out. “We have new standing orders, Herr Hauptmann. Reichsmarschall Göring says the weather is always bad in Russia. So, we are not to wait for it to clear anymore. We are to fly in any sort of conditions. If it’s suitable for the Russians, it’s suitable for us, he says.”
Johann did read the latest standing orders but, having more sense than the local base commander, he had put those orders to much better use than implementing them; he lit the small iron stove with them.
Of Knights and Dogfights Page 25