Of Knights and Dogfights

by Ellie Midwood

“It also said in those orders that if we don’t have any more ammunition, we should ram the enemy aircraft with ours; are you planning on following those orders too?” Johann stood up, suddenly hot and trembling.

  The young fellow only blinked a few times. “I don’t plan on anything, Herr Hauptmann. I’m only a controller. I’m in charge of the log books and such.” He smiled again, gingerly this time.

  Johann turned on his heel abruptly and yanked the door open, rushing outside to stop the madness that was unraveling before his panicked eyes.

  “Stop it! Stop it this instant!” The fog was so dense, he could barely find his way to the commander’s post across the airstrip. “Order them back at once! They’ll all crash!”

  The commander jumped to his feet, pale and tragically indignant, holding his arm outstretched in front of himself as though fearing that Johann would physically attack him. Johann did get hold of his jacket, his fingers twisting it in silent agony as he watched the first pilot take off with great uncertainty in the milk of the airbase. He disappeared at once, dissolved in that grayish nothingness and only his voice, so boyish and innocent, much like Johann’s brother Harald’s, came through the radio that stood on the overturned crate.

  “Base, come in, please. Adler One airborne. Altitude one hundred feet… I think. I can’t see the horizon, Herr Leutnant…”

  “Don’t allow any more takeoffs, for God’s sake!” Johann shouted, yanking the base commander’s sleeve. The latter ignored him entirely.

  “Don’t worry yourself about it, Adler One,” the base commander spoke with a confidence that was absent from his pale, angular face. “Just watch your instrument panel as I taught you and you’ll be fine.”

  “Adler Two airborne,” the second voice joined the grim roll-call through the R/T. “Proceeding to the route.”

  Johann watched the spectacle unravel with helpless ire shining in his eyes. His hand was still holding the Lieutenant’s sleeve in its grip; strangely, the latter didn’t do a thing to try and release himself from it. Johann stopped screaming only when the last one took off.

  “What have you done?” Johann’s hand dropped by his side at last.

  The commander slumped into his chair as if that hand was the only thing that supported him this whole time. “I was following new standing orders,” he replied tiredly and without any emotion.

  “You have just sent eight boys to their certain deaths.” Johann stood over him like a supreme judge over the criminal.

  “The enemy was sighted to the west of our infantry positions some twenty kilometers—”

  “What enemy?! What infantry positions?!” Johann was screaming, getting ahold of the base commander again. “You can’t see a hand in front of your face out there! Do you expect those baby pilots to locate the threat and eliminate it?!”

  “You don’t understand!” The commander bared his teeth like a cornered animal. “I’m on their blacklist as well; I can’t slip up a second time,” his voice was a hoarse, desperate whisper now; begging, pleading. “My brother is already in the penal battalion! I can’t join him! I have a family!”

  “They have families too! Who would have reported you anyway? Your own people, you blockhead?!”

  “It’s easy for you to say; you’re a war hero, no less! You can do as you please on your base; I’m here on borrowed time! My brother returned from his leave and started saying all of those things about the bombing raids and heaps of corpses in the streets and telling anyone who’d agree to listen that our families are dying there while we’re here fighting for nothing!” He choked on his words, tears rolling down his face. “There are informers everywhere, Hauptmann Brandt. They’ll denounce me as they denounced him and that’ll be the end of me. They say the political office gives leaves and extra rations now, for denouncing. Better them than me,” he whispered, motioning his head towards the empty airstrip. “God forgive me, but better them than me, Herr Hauptmann. I have a pregnant wife at home.”

  “So do I.” Johann heaved a sigh and slumped on top of the ammunition crate next to the base commander, spent and indifferent once again.

  It was all the same everywhere, it seemed. It’s Großdeutsches Reich, soldier. When one has a family at home, it doesn’t leave him many chances for the revolt. Fear and animalistic sense of self-preservation ruled over everything and everyone. Why did he still bother trying to restore some sort of proper, universal order which had long been lost to a regime that only knew one loyalty; to its own sinister goals and to hell with morality and conscience, kindness and compassion, friendship and love. They had brass marches instead and fine uniforms to die in. Who cared about the rest?

  “Adler One to base, come in please!”

  “Base here, over to you.” The commander scrambled towards the R/T.

  “My compass is playing up! I can’t seem to find the right way… I think I’m flying sideways.”

  “Straighten the aircraft then!”

  “Herr Leutnant, allow me to land, please. I can’t see anything here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Look at your coordinates and the map!”

  “Somewhere over some field… I think… The compass doesn’t seem to work properly.”

  “Land then. But carefully.”

  “Jawohl. I’ll try to lower it slowly. I think I still have some two hundred yards left to the…”

  A short gasp and the radio suddenly died, despite all of the base commander’s desperate cries and attempts to smack it back into working.

  “It’s not on your side; it’s on his,” Johann commented with a cold accusation in his voice. “That’s your first one for today. You have seven more to lead to their deaths. Excuse me for not keeping you company. It’s entirely your cross to bear from now on. I hope it was worth it, your skin, that is.”

  Through the misty sea, he trudged back to the controller’s hut and found his way back to his old chair, where the cold coffee was waiting for him on the windowsill. The controller offered him to warm it up but receded and hid behind his log books at the mere sight of Johann’s face.

  “Would you kill eight men to save your life?” He asked the boy suddenly, taking a long bitter sip of the murky black liquid.

  The youth started, pulled the log books even closer to himself like an infantryman fortifying his foxhole against the enemy. “I’m just a controller, Herr Hauptmann…”

  “It’s a theoretical question.”

  “Well… It depends, I suppose. Are we talking about eight enemy soldiers?”

  “No. Your own people.”

  “Then no. Of course not.”

  “Are you married?”

  The controller lowered his eyes, blushing. “No.”

  “Do you have a girl you love waiting for you at home?”

  The young man shook his head negatively again.

  Johann rubbed his forehead, irritated for some reason. Why do they have to be so young? Why did they have to learn to hold a gun before the body of a beloved in their hands? Why did they have to marry the war just because there was nothing else around?

  “But, let’s imagine that you are married and your wife is waiting for you at home. Would you do it then?” he pressed, with some malicious coldness in his voice. He wanted to pry a positive answer out of him just to persuade himself once and for all that everything that was still good in this world was now good and lost and there was no hope for any of them anymore. They should all perish, the damned generation, so that the new one would grow not knowing its warrior fathers, so that it would learn to love instead of hate, for hate was all they knew and could offer them.

  “No.” For the first time, the young man shook his head with stubborn resolution and didn’t seem so frightened and unsure anymore.

  “Why not?”

  “Because some things are more important than one’s own desire to survive.”

  “But your wife? You’d leave her alone.”

  “She’d mourn me
like the good man that I was and would go on with her life. I wouldn’t be able to return to her and look her in the eyes anyway, had I committed such a crime. Even one man’s life in exchange for yours is too much…”

  Johann nodded; smiled for the first time, a strange and uncertain smile of a man who forgot how to do it properly. “Can I sleep in here tonight?”

  “I only have one cot… but you can have it,” the controller quickly offered, the bright disposition back on his face.

  “I’ll be fine on the floor. Can I borrow your typewriter for a few minutes, too? I want to write a letter to someone.”

  It started raining – or snowing – the dirty mass turning into sleet outside while Johann was typing, deep in concentration, the controller breathing in excitement behind his shoulder. I witnessed an unprecedented atrocity today…

  “You can’t write something of this sort to the Reichsmarschall himself, Herr Hauptmann!” he whispered at last. “They’ll court-martial you for treason…”

  “Let them.” Johann shrugged indifferently, slashing his signature under the text. “You said it yourself, some things are more important than one’s own desire to survive.”

  “But you’re not killing anyone!”

  “Other people are killing other people. Standing aside and pretending that I’m not seeing it doesn’t sit well with me, just like actual murder wouldn’t sit with you. And I do have a wife at home and I want to return a good man to her, just like you said. And I want to be able to look her in the eyes and know that my conscience is clean.”

  They shook hands the following morning, bright blue and cold.

  “I joined the Luftwaffe because of you,” the controller suddenly said. “You, and Hauptmann von Sielaff. You spoke together at my school in Berlin. I instantly knew that I wanted to be just like you.”

  With a sudden surge of emotion, Johann pulled him into an embrace, clapping his back while he choked back tears. “You are just like us, my good fellow. You are just like us.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Ukraine, Winter 1944

  * * *

  “Replacement pilots are here, Herr Hauptmann!”

  The Staffeladjutant’s voice pulled Johann out of his slumber. He slept fully-clothed, with his legs, in pilot’s fur boots, drawn close to his chest to keep warm. The small stove didn’t do much for the warmth and he had already sent two people home with frostbite to their toes and fingers, not two weeks ago. They returned a day ago, with a stamp on their papers, “fit for active duty” and only shrugged at Johann’s rhetorical question, if all those numbskulls in Germany had lost their reason.

  “We didn’t even reach Germany, Herr Hauptmann. The doctor at the transit station operated on us and told us to go back. He said Sajer can walk just fine without toes. And I,” the man presented his bandaged hands, with stumps instead of several fingers, “can still hold things. He said, as long as I have hands, I don’t get to go home.”

  Johann didn’t even find himself surprised anymore. It appeared, his homeland had gone mad while he was away but he still fought for it because he didn’t know anything else in his life besides fighting.

  He stepped outside, turned from side to side to awaken his body from its half-frozen state, hearing his bones crack as he did so.

  “How many?” He asked his Staffeladjutant.

  “Only two, Herr Hauptmann.”

  Instead of the four that he had lost. That wasn’t surprising either; a standard ratio by now.

  He watched the two figures approach, navigating their way in between the snowdrifts that had already accumulated in a three-hour period. Their faces were wrapped in scarves up to their eyes, but as soon as the first figure pulled the cloth down and saluted him half-heartedly, Johann only sighed. Another “vintage Hitlerjugend.”

  “Leutnant Hertel,” the man introduced himself with a certain air of authority about him. “I’m here to report to your base commander.”

  “I am the base commander. Hauptmann Brandt,” Johann replied with a morose grin.

  The man, who was of his father’s age, pulled back it seemed, taking in the small frame drowning in the jacket that looked as if it had come off someone else’s shoulder; a mop of blond hair that was long overdue for a date with a barber’s scissors; pale, boyish face. But it was the eyes, the eyes that were so infinitely hollow and forlorn, like those of an old man, tired of life and expecting death with calm abandon; the eyes made Hertel nod slowly, with a measure of respect – so, you are; I see it now – and straightened, to salute him properly.

  “Leutnant Hertel reporting for duty, Herr Hauptmann.”

  Johann shook his hand instead of replying and then froze in amazement as the second man stepped forward, grinning gingerly. “Riedman! You!”

  They pulled each other into a tight embrace. It all came rushing back to Johann; the flying school and their room – the four musketeers as they were dubbed by their schoolmates; the Afrika Korps and the three of them sleeping in the tent that could only house two. But Willi was in Germany with jaundice when Riedman was transferred to their JG and positively refused to hear a word about Walt moving out as soon as he returned. And so, they became the three musketeers, until Willi died and Johann suddenly couldn’t stand Africa without his friend in the sky anymore.

  “Where have you been this whole time, you old fox?” He held Riedman in his outstretched arms, still not believing that a piece of an old life was suddenly breaking through the bleakness of his present existence. How young they had been! How wonderfully careless and happy! How long ago was that? Ages, it seemed… No. Two years only.

  “In Africa until we had to pull out completely and then in France. But, by the looks of it, we’ll pull out of there soon enough as well.” Riedman chuckled, but mirth was absent from his voice.

  “Why haven’t you been writing?”

  Riedman threw a quick glance at the Staffeladjutant from under his long, dark lashes. Johann understood at once, caught his elbow and led him into his living quarters.

  “Take Leutnant Hertel to his new lodgings, will you?” He told his Staffeladjutant in passing.

  The latter only gave him a knowing look before the usual salute. He knew when to disappear.

  “Well?” Johann turned back to Riedman as soon as the two were left alone.

  They sat as close to the stove as possible and Johann pushed what was left of his dinner to his old comrade.

  “Dry meat and bread with marmalade. We’re feasting here, thanks to Göring’s airdrops.”

  “Aren’t those for the landser?”

  “There’s no more landser to which we were supposed to drop this.”

  “How so?”

  “The usual story: encircled, captured – Gulag. We don’t fly to Siberia as of now.”

  Riedman laughed vacantly and started cutting a sausage into small, delicate pieces. Johann watched him with a dreamy half-smile, trying to rebuild some long-forgotten memory out of his image, also forgotten and almost intangible, so very different from the man that was sitting next to him now. He touched the Iron Cross First Class on his neck.

  “How many have you downed so far?”

  “One hundred and seventy-eight.”

  “Where’s your Knight’s Cross then? And the Oaks Leaves? Your superiors should have long taken care of submitting your papers for that.”

  Riedman only shrugged without much emotion. “Knight’s Crosses are for true Aryan German Knights. I’m not a Knight. Neither I am a true Aryan German. I’m a Jew, a parasite, and a drain on a nation.”

  Johann paled, staring at him in disbelief. Riedman was a first-class mischlinge, which was never a secret, but never before had he heard Walt talk about himself in such resigned, derogatory terms.

  “Who put all this in your head?”

  Another shrug followed. The noncom in charge of his squadron. Young replacement pilots, fresh out of flying school, with Hitlerjugend pins on their chests. The doctor, who refused to use his blood for a transfusion
when Walt offered it to him to save his comrade – the only one who still talked to him and stood up for him. But Walt didn’t say any of this to Johann. Why bother him with his misfortunes?

  “I’m putting in a request for your immediate promotion and for the Knight's Cross first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Walt’s mouth twitched. “You haven't changed a bit. The eternal protector of the innocent, who fights for what is right.”

  “What else is left?”

  Riedman only caught Johann’s fingers and gave them a warm pressure without looking at his comrade. He was afraid he’d break down if he did. Johann turned away to the opposite wall as well, quickly wiping his cheek on his shoulder. He didn’t pull his hand out of Walt’s either.

  “Can I fly as your wingman?”

  “You’re too good to be my wingman. I’ll give you a Schwarm.”

  “They won’t listen to me as soon they learn—”

  “My people, on my base, obey my rules!” Johann shouted angrily. “We don’t have Germans or Jews here; we don’t even have a ranking system! We have flight leaders with the highest victory scores and the ones who should learn from them, if they want to survive, that is. Only the mad would bother with anything else in our current state.” He lit a cigarette and raked his long hair to calm his agitated nerves. “You still didn’t give me any good excuse as to why you didn’t write.”

  “I didn’t want to get you into any trouble for associating with me.”

  “What nonsense is this now?”

  “I know you,” Walt explained with a soft smile. “You’d just start your crusade against everything that is unjust in this world like you did that time when the SS came to get the Staffel’s Senegalese mechanic and me.”

  “And the entire Staffel; Teufel, Rommel himself stood up for you.”

  “Things have changed since then.” Walt lowered his eyes. “Whatever was left of our old Staffel was thrown into the new ones and… let’s just say, my new comrades weren’t as understanding as the old ones.”

  They spoke long into the night and drank to celebrate the past and to drown the present. Eventually, Johann had learned that Riedman hadn’t been on leave since he had last seen him back in Africa – another form of silent taunting, which his new base commander, who unlike the old one, proudly wore the Party badge on his lapel, applied to him. Johann had solemnly sworn that they both were going to Germany; Johann was due for another award.