A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II

by Adam Makos

  In the distance, the Sicilian coast came into view, a gray smudge above the blue-green sea. Franz’s eyes flared. He talked to the plane, urging her to keep going. His 109 bucked and groaned. Franz tapped the oil pressure gauge with his finger. Its quivering needle told him the plane was bleeding fluids and dying. Every minute she flew was three miles closer to land. Franz wanted to call Olympus, but .50-caliber bullets had punched holes in his radio. The holes matched those along his wings and through his tail and cowling.

  Franz and Willi had caught up with the rescue flight just in time to experience disaster. They had spotted the seaplane by the bright red crosses on its wings. Ahead of the seaplane they found their comrades with the three Italian Macchi 202 fighters nestled behind them. The formation flew at wave top level—without a fighting chance.

  Sixteen American P-40s were waiting, hoping someone would come looking for the Italians they had shot down earlier. The pilots of the 79th Fighter Group were said to have whooped, hollered, and rocked their wings when they saw the enemy formation. Then they flew with deadly seriousness. “What got the boys mad,” their PR men would write, “was the way the three Italian fighters were hugging the German formation—as though their own safety was assured by the presence of the twelve Me-109s around them. Something had to be done about that. Something was done.”7

  The Germans and Italians would call the next ten minutes a “slaughter.” The Americans would call the same event “one of the most spectacular air victories of the North African campaign.”8 The P-40s dove. Burning Italian fighters hit the water first. The 109s splashed into the sea, one by one. The seaplane joined them, hit by a trigger-happy P-40 driver. Franz’s fighting ability was useless. Bullet after bullet hit his plane. Only his flying skill kept him alive. He last saw Willi and two 109s running for Sicily with P-40s on their tails. He gave chase but was unable to keep up.

  Franz found himself flying alone. Glancing at the sea, he tugged his safety straps. He had decided he would ditch before he would jump again. Like every German pilot, Franz knew his parachute straps were made of hemp, which was known to often snap and drop a pilot to his death. The Air Force was said to be developing new nylon parachute harnesses.

  Three miles from Sicily’s shore, the engine of Franz’s fighter gagged without oil. With a jolt, the engine quit. Franz felt strangely relieved. The engine’s painful struggle had been fraying his nerves. He steered the dead, six-thousand-pound fighter down like a glider from his boyhood. The sea below resembled a grass pasture. As he neared the waves, he saw that the water was green and undulating.

  Franz lifted the plane’s nose to stall and hit the waves flat. The fighter slapped down. Instead of melting into the sea, the plane skipped from one wave to the next. As the plane lost speed, its nose grew heavy and it dove into the water. Franz’s body slammed forward before his straps pulled him back. The canopy glass held. From six feet under water, Franz looked up and saw the waves above him.

  The sea poured in through the hole by Franz’s knee. Streams of water spouted from the instrument panel and the holes in the canopy. The fighter sank, still flying into the depths. Seven feet deep. Eight feet deep. Nine feet deep. Franz’s ears popped. Water poured over his shoulders. Franz unhooked his seat belt and tossed off his parachute straps. He tugged a red knob on his left to release the canopy. Nothing happened. He tugged again without effect. Panicking, he stood and tried to push the canopy upward with his shoulder. The water pressure held it down. Franz had neglected to follow procedure and jettison the canopy before hitting the water.

  The plane flew deeper. Light faded. The water in the cockpit climbed to Franz’s chin. The window! The words screamed in Franz’s mind. Grabbing the side window pane, he pulled it back toward him and inhaled a lungful of the cockpit’s last oxygen. A deluge of water rushed in, equalizing the pressure. With one hand on his life raft and the other on the canopy’s metal frame, Franz kicked from his seat and flipped the canopy open. The dark sea squeezed him with a cold grip. Franz pulled a tab on his life preserver to release its compressed CO2. The vest inflated instantly, its buoyancy hauling him up. Franz clawed for the surface. He kicked furiously in his heavy boots. Desperate for oxygen, his lungs constricted. Just when he was about to gasp and inhale the sea, Franz popped out from a wave and splashed back down.

  He floated in the gentle swells, panting. Franz could see the shore and a beam from the lighthouse at Cape Granitola on the island’s southwestern tip. He inflated his raft and slid inside.* Clinging to the raft, he remembered—My rosary! Franz patted his chest and found his pocket still buttoned. Opening the pocket, Franz pulled forth the black beads and silver cross. Clutching his rosary, he rolled onto his back.

  The gently rocking raft drifted toward land. Franz looked up at the inky sky. He thought about Willi and his friends. He knew many of them were now blue and lifeless because he had seen so many 109s crash. Who had died he did not yet know. Seabirds flew for the island, slowing just to glance on him with pity.

  BAREFOOT AND SOAKED, Franz dragged his raft onto Sicily’s rough shoreline under the day’s last light. A flight of 109s flew overhead toward Trapani. Franz knew they had been searching the seas for his comrades, a search that had to end with darkness. Franz wandered the shore until he discovered an old fisherman tying up his boats. He startled the old man but slowly convinced him to give him a ride back to his base. Franz rode to Trapani, sprawled on sacks of grain in the truck’s bed. Two hours later, when the truck pulled up to the airfield, the gate guards were shocked when their flashlights shined on Franz. He looked more dead than alive.

  At the operations shack, as his comrades helped him down from the truck’s lift gate, Franz asked if Willi had made it. “Willi’s okay,” they said. He had crash-landed on the field and was in the infirmary.

  Franz asked who else had made it back.

  “So far, just you,” someone said. Franz’s comrades gave the fisherman cans of food in thanks.

  The next morning dawned on the airfield revealing twelve empty pens where 109s once sat. No joking or laughter echoed from the squadron shacks. A truck delivered the body of Lieutenant Hans Lewes, who had washed up at Marsala. The men lowered him in a cloth bag into the Sicilian dirt. On Pantelleria, another pilot’s corpse rolled onto the island that day, but the Italians would not report this for several days. They were busy laying out white sheets across the island to surrender to the Allied bombers above.

  A WEEK LATER

  Franz was reporting to the squadron shack after a flight when Willi approached him, grabbed his arm, and pulled him out of sight. Pushing Franz up against the shack’s side wall, he told him in a hushed voice that the “Black Coats” were waiting inside. “They want words with you,” Willi said. The Black Coats were the Gestapo.

  Franz thought it was a joke until he saw Willi’s eyes. They were genuine with fear. Everyone from a private to a general knew The Party’s secret police force operated with unchecked authority and brutality. The Gestapo had initially come to the airfield looking for Franz’s superiors, unaware that Roedel and Schroer worked from Olympus. Impatient, the Gestapo asked around and someone had pointed them to Willi.

  “What did you get yourself into?” Willi asked. Franz said he had done nothing wrong. He thought back and admitted he had snuck into the Colosseum on a leave in Rome but nothing worse. Franz told Willi he would confront them. Even if he thought The Party was bullshit, he never said it in the wrong company.

  Franz entered the shack with Willi behind him. Two Gestapo agents were waiting for him. They wore shoulder holsters although they dressed like accountants, in white shirts and ties. One was the rank equivalent of a captain (Kriminalinspektor) and the other was an enlisted man. The Gestapo captain ordered Willi to leave. Franz found himself alone with them. The captain said they were from a regional Gestapo office.

  The door to the shack swung open. Steinhoff, the commander of JG-77, entered. The Gestapo captain asked him to leave, but Steinhoff asked for th
e captain’s rank. “The last time I checked, a major outranks a captain,” Steinhoff said.10 Folding his arms, Steinhoff leaned against a wall behind Franz, his presence and dangling Knight’s Cross adding weight to Franz’s defense. Steinhoff and JG-77 had returned to Trapani a few days prior, on June 13, to relieve JG-27 so the unit could begin to rotate home. Willi had found Steinhoff and summoned him to Franz’s aid.

  Steinhoff had always hated The Party and had dealt with the Gestapo before. In Russia they brought their inquisition to his unit, then Fighter Wing 52 (JG-52), to investigate the supposed Jewish backgrounds of a few of his pilots. Steinhoff had declined to assist them and had said to the Gestapo leader, “You’ll be lucky if you leave Russia alive.” The man asked if the skies were that unsafe. Steinhoff said, “No, it’s because you just made enemies of forty fighter pilots who have never added a Ju-52 to their victory list, and I think that’s yours sitting on my runway.”

  The Gestapo captain told Franz what he already knew from the newspapers. Three months prior they had captured the White Rose group, an anti-Party cell of students in Munich. The White Rose men and women were young intellectuals who had spread leaflets spurring opposition to The Party. The arrest and execution of the White Rose group had sparked a Gestapo witch hunt for anyone who had spoken out against The Party in any manner at any time.

  With Steinhoff present, the Gestapo men behaved in an unusually restrained manner. The captain asked Franz if he knew any of the White Rose members and read the names of the young people involved. Franz told them he had never heard of such people, because he truthfully had not. The captain asked if Franz had followed the church sermons of Cardinal von Faulhaber or Bishop von Galen or any of the clergy who had spoken out against The Party. Von Faulhaber and von Galen were leading anti-Party voices in Germany. Franz said everyone had read the writings of von Faulhaber and von Galen. This reply made the Gestapo agents glare. Von Faulhaber had authored “With Burning Concern” in 1937, and in 1941, von Galen had spoken out so vehemently against The Party and the Gestapo that the British had copied his sermons and dropped them from planes across Europe.* German soldiers, civilians, and occupied peoples read them, including the future Pope John Paul II, who found a flyer in Krakow, Poland.

  The Gestapo captain reminded Franz to watch his words. Under The Party’s 1938 “Subversion of the War Effort” law, any words or actions that the Gestapo deemed as “undermining military morale” could be punished by death. This included speaking out against The Party or even saying that Germany was losing the war. The Gestapo had convicted the White Rose members under this “Subversion Law” and killed them by guillotine.

  The Gestapo assured Franz they had evidence that his brother was connected to known traitors and they had reason to suspect Franz was, too. A flurry of memories rushed through Franz’s mind. He remembered the “With Burning Concern” letters he had found in August’s room and his suspicions of August’s wife, the cardinal’s niece. Franz knew why the Gestapo agents were questioning him. Worse, they probably had good reason to connect him with people identified as traitors. Thinking quickly, Franz told the agents that his brother was long dead and he, personally, had nothing to do with the clergy or the Catholic Church itself. “I was excommunicated long ago,” he told them. Franz knew this was only partially true. He still had his faith; he just had been banned from participation in his church.

  Under Steinhoff’s stare, the Gestapo agents accepted Franz’s explanation.* After they had departed, Franz thanked Steinhoff, who nodded and departed as quietly as he had arrived. Franz knew Steinhoff had taken a great risk in siding with him—the man had never even asked if Franz was innocent or guilty, he had just waded into the fire. Franz vowed he would figure out exactly why the Gestapo had come looking for him, although he knew the answer lay close to home.

  ONE MONTH LATER, JULY 30, 1943, SOUTHERN ITALY

  The sun rose across the Adriatic Sea as Franz, Willi, and their comrades gathered with their bags over their shoulders along the small Italian airfield of San Vito. They watched their mechanics walk the flight line. The mechanics carried gray cloth tarps. The group had fewer than half of its fighters remaining, just seventeen. At each fighter, two mechanics stopped and draped a tarp over the plane’s canopy.

  The day before, with the swipe of his pen, newly promoted Major Roedel had relinquished the planes to the Ace of Spades Wing, JG-53. Franz and his comrades had tried to defend Sicily when the Allied invasion came two weeks prior, on July 9, but had been driven away by endless waves of Allied fighters. Franz had been shot down for the first time by Spitfires, but not before bagging one as a victory. He had bailed out and landed behind friendly lines, but had lost his fourth fighter of the war.

  Before Franz and his comrades boarded the trucks that would take them to their train for home, some JG-53 pilots showed them a memo that their commander had issued them. It was from Reichsmarschall Goering, a teletype sent from Berlin. It was addressed to all fighter pilots of the Mediterranean and read:

  Together with the fighter pilots in France, Norway, and Russia, I can only regard you with contempt. I want an immediate improvement in fighting spirit. If this improvement is not forthcoming, flying personnel from the commander down must expect to be remanded to the ranks and transferred to the eastern front to serve on the ground.

  —Goering, Reichsmarschall13

  When Roedel came to say his good-byes, he told Franz and his comrades that he was not going home with them. Instead, he was heading to Greece to oversee the formation of JG-27 with its new IV Group. Roedel must have thrown Goering’s angry memo in the trash, because he never issued it to his men. Roedel knew Goering, the leader who wore a red toga at his home in the Alps and smoked from a huge porcelain pipe that touched the ground. Goering, the violent morphine addict who painted his fingernails. Goering, who recorded his rants against his pilots on records that he shipped to his men on the front lines so they could hear his rage. In Roedel’s eyes, the Allies weren’t “the enemy.” They were merely “the opponent.” On that day, Roedel knew who “the enemy” was. He resided in Berlin and something had to be done about him.

  AS FRANZ AND his comrades rode the rails north, their spirits improved with each passing mile. From a knee, Willi led the others in singing songs to Italian girls in the cars around them. He had scored twenty-four victories in the campaign, the most of the group’s three squadrons. Willi was certain his hometown would throw a party for him, his own Oktoberfest. Franz promised he would attend.

  Franz was in a mellow frame of mind. He had registered just two victories during the Sicilian campaign, bringing his total to nineteen, although he had downed other planes without witnesses. Leaving the Mediterranean alive after two bail-outs and a crash into the sea was good enough for him. All he wanted was a sound night’s sleep in Germany.

  At a train stop, Franz picked up a German Army newspaper from an Italian paperboy. The headlines made his eyes open wide. Willi picked up a paper and became mesmerized. Another pilot grabbed a paper, then another did, until the whole platform was filled with pilots with their noses in papers. In northern Germany, British bombers were systematically incinerating the city of Hamburg with firebombs, night after night, while the Americans dropped iron bombs on the city’s factories by day. The paper tried to put a heroic spin on the tragic news, calling a one-sided catastrophe “the Battle of Hamburg.” They refused to mention that the bombs had produced a thousand-foot-high tornado of fire that had swirled and swallowed eight square miles of the city. They neglected to describe that the tornado had melted the city’s streets and sucked the air from bomb shelters, killing, in one week, forty-two thousand men, women, and children.* Franz and Willi looked up from their papers and at each other with dismay. In Africa and Sicily they had fought for nothing, for meaningless sand and sea. Now with the front lines over their own soil, it suddenly struck them. They were going home to fight for everything.

  * * *

  * One of the transports that
managed to escape Tunisia carried a pilot Franz knew well: his old squadron leader, Voegl. But Voegl did not leave Africa on his feet. On April 19, in Tunisia, his fighter had collided with another on takeoff. Badly burned, Voegl was sent home. He would recover slowly and later lead a pilot training school for the remainder of the war.

  * The stiff armed “Nazi salute” would not be mandated until summer 1944. Instead, the Air Force men saluted like any other nation’s pilots but with a heel click.

  * Galland would remember, “It was as if he [Luetzow] never exhibited any emotion except anger, and ironically, this was usually directed at Goering, and never the enemy.”1

  * Steinhoff would write of the route to Sicily, “Columns of smoke from shot down aircraft marked our course.”5

  * “Getting into the life raft was the hardest part. I inflated it, tried to climb into it and found I couldn’t. I kept trying but every time the blasted thing would slip out from under me. Finally, when I was almost exhausted I had sense enough to partially deflate it. After that I climbed in easily and pumped it up again,” Franz would remember.9

  * On July 13, 1941, from the pulpit of St. Lambert’s Church in Münster, von Galen had said: “None of us is safe—and may he know that he [who] is the most loyal and conscientious of citizens… cannot be sure that he will not some day be deported from his home, deprived of his freedom and locked up in the cellars and concentration camps of the Gestapo.”11

  * “They were finally convinced that I did not know anything, and they left. I never heard anything else about it,” Franz would remember.12