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

by Adam Makos

  Hiya and Franz seldom discussed the war. Hiya discovered a story from Franz’s past one night, by accident. In the logging camp, the families often threw parties. After one party, Franz had too many drinks. As Hiya steered him on the path to their cabin, they came across a mother bear in the moonlight. She was leaning over a fence, grunting, calling her cub that was stuck on the other side. But in his drunken state, Franz forgot where he was. “It’s my bear!” he told Hiya. But she did not understand. “I have to say hi to him,” Franz pleaded. Hiya whispered that it was a bad idea. She held Franz back. But Franz insisted that it was his bear and struggled. Hiya knew he was going to get himself mauled. When Hiya could no longer hold Franz back she kneed him in the rear. As he was distracted by his hurting backside, Hiya pulled him home and put him to bed. The next morning, as Hiya served breakfast, Franz ate standing. He told her, “I must have hurt myself last night—I don’t know how, but I can’t sit.” From her seat at the table, Hiya explained why he was so sore. Franz slowly took a seat across from her, wincing. Then he told her the war story of a lovable bear.

  * * *

  * Franz would remember, “They were all old sergeants, mostly from the Air Force.”

  * In 1949, the Allies had given West Germany her sovereignty back. They needed an ally and knew that if the Cold War turned hot, Germany would be its battlefield. To block the “Red Tide” from invading Europe, the Americans were preparing to train German pilots to fly American jets to shoot down Soviet bombers before they dropped their nukes on Europe. With the Allies’ blessing, a group of German generals had quietly gathered in 1950 to plan the revival of the military that would be called the Federal Defense Force or Bundeswehr.

  25

  WAS IT WORTH IT?

  TWENTY-FOUR YEARS LATER, 1980, VANCOUVER

  THE ARRIVAL OF the eighties found Franz and Hiya happily enjoying their retirement years, exploring the mountains of Vancouver and fishing from its lakes. Time had shrunken Franz’s stature. Now sixty-five, he had grown shorter and thicker. His neck seemed to shrink into his shoulders, but his face remained strong. As his cheeks sagged, they gave a sterner impression when he was not smiling. He still dressed like every day was a day in the office, wearing dress slacks, a long-sleeved shirt, and a fleece vest over top, the look of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur well before its time. Hiya cut her hair short but retained her youthful charm, her sassy German spirit only growing.

  Together they had bought a ranch and raised a Shetland pony in a barn behind their home. Franz smoked like a chimney until one morning he felt winded after walking to feed the pony. That afternoon, he told Hiya, “I don’t smoke anymore.” “Since when?” she asked. “Since this morning,” he told her. In a moment, Franz kicked a nearly forty-year habit. For fun, Franz took to flying sport planes and even purchased a Messerschmitt 108, a four-seat personal transport plane with elegant lines just like his old 109’s. He even painted the 108 like his wartime 109 and flew it at air shows as “the bad guy” that P-51s would chase around the sky to the crowd’s delight.

  One day, Franz’s old commander, Galland, came to visit him. When Galland arrived at Franz’s doorstep, he was a smaller, gentler version of his larger-than life self in World War II. His trademark mustache was gray, and he still wore his hair slicked back, only now it was gray at the temples. Galland’s black eyes pierced from heavier eyelids. His smirk was unchanged. After the war, he had found work as a forestry agent, maintaining game lands, hunting, and reflecting on the war. Then German aircraft designer Kurt Tank invited Galland to join him in Argentina, where he was building a fighter jet for Juan Peron, the country’s dictator. Peron needed someone to train his pilots and build his Air Force, so Tank recruited Galland. After that stint, Galland had returned to Germany and flown an air race with Edu Neumann and in air shows. He had consulted on the movie Battle of Britain and ran the Association of German Fighter Pilots. He had married three times, raised a family, and often vacationed with his former British enemies, fighter pilots Robert Standford Tuck and Douglas Bader.

  Galland wanted to go hunting with Franz, so Franz borrowed a Beaver floatplane from a doctor friend. He flew Galland to a lodge on a river in northern Canada. When Franz taxied the floatplane to shore, he approached too fast and beached the craft on the sand. Galland gave him heck for the bad landing. Franz laughed him off, telling Galland, “You always have to be the general, eh?” Franz was not one for hunting but accompanied Galland, who shot a moose. They gave its meat to a local Native American tribe then hauled the moose’s head back to Vancouver, where Franz shipped the horns to Germany for Galland. In the days that followed, Franz and Galland talked once a week by phone.

  FIVE YEARS LATER, 1985

  Franz looked at the party invitation in his hands with disbelief. The Boeing Company had learned of Franz through his air show flying and invited him to attend their 50th Anniversary party for the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. Franz pondered the invitation, unsure if he should attend. He began thinking about the war again. A memory resurfaced, one long locked away. In his mind, he saw the battered bomber he had let escape. He told the story to Hiya for the first time. The question began troubling him again, like an unhealed wound: “Did the B-17 make it home to England?” He knew the only people he could ask would be the plane’s crew. But the odds were slim that they had made it across the sea, let alone survived the war. Of the twelve thousand B-17s built, five thousand had been destroyed in combat. Even slimmer was the prospect that if the crew had survived, they would still be alive forty-one years later, or even possible to locate. Franz had no names to reference. No tail number, just a memory. But Franz knew he had taken a great risk in helping the bomber escape, and he longed to know: Was it worth it?

  “You should go to the party and ask around,” Hiya advised Franz. “It may be your last chance.”

  Despite his hesitation, Franz traveled to the Museum of Flight at Paine Field to attend Boeing’s party. Once again, Franz found himself a lone German traveling through a swarm of Americans. Some five thousand former B-17 pilots and crewmen had attended. Franz nervously wandered around the three B-17s that had been flown in for the veterans to tour. He expected his old enemies to hate him. Instead, the old B-17 veterans—who now wore thick glasses with big frames—crowded around him and bombarded him with questions. “How did you have time to aim when attacking us?” one asked. “You only had a fraction of time then you had to go right through,” Franz explained. “Yes, you used to go right through us!” another B-17 vet chimed in, to which Franz laughed, “Ja, more or less.” Franz asked every veteran he met if the man knew of a bomber that had been escorted to safety by a German fighter. None had heard of such a thing. Colonel Robert Morgan, the former captain of the famed B-17 Memphis Belle, was there and Franz asked him. Morgan had heard of no such thing, but the notion gave him a chuckle.

  A camera crew from the local King 5 TV station was filming the party and interviewing veterans for a TV special. They filmed Franz, who described the B-17 he was looking for, the most badly damaged B-17 he had witnessed. “I’ve seen a B-17 flying without the rudder,” Franz said in their TV program. “I saw him flying with half the tail shot off and still flying.” Franz did not know the name Ye Olde Pub, or the name of its pilot, Charlie Brown. And he had long forgotten the date, December 20, 1943—but he knew what he had seen. “We knew we had a job to do—defend our country,” Franz said in the program, “and we knew the boys in those airplanes had a job to do, too, because they had orders to get the war finished and it was just such fierce combat.” Franz left Boeing’s party with new friends among former adversaries and an invitation from the American Fighter Aces veteran’s association to attend future reunions as their guest. Franz returned to Vancouver certain that he would never know the B-17 crew’s fate.

  AT THE OPPOSITE corner of the continent, in Miami, Florida, Charlie Brown was pondering his half of the December 20 encounter. Charlie’s life after WWII had been idyllic. During college in West Virg
inia he had met a girl named Jackie, a petite brunette who always wore her hair in a neat bun. She was from a small West Virginia town like Charlie’s and captivated him with her colorful dresses and classiness. Jackie understood what Charlie had endured during the war. She was a young war widow whose first husband had been a fighter pilot killed over Europe. Charlie and Jackie hit it off and married in 1949. That same year Charlie returned to the Air Force and made a career in military intelligence and even served in London as an attaché to the RAF. During this time, he and Jackie had two children, daughters Carol and Kimberly. In 1965, Charlie retired early, as a lieutenant colonel, to work for the State Department in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. There, for six years, he supervised the flow of food and aid to America’s regional allies.

  When Charlie retired for good in the early seventies, he moved to Florida, bought a house, and drove a big Cadillac with Air Force wings on its license plate. Charlie seemed to grow taller and lankier with age, and lost only a few inches of his hairline. He wore yellow-tinted glasses, high-waisted pants, and long shirts with their sleeves always rolled up. He was never without a bolo tie. He drank a martini each night and always carried a “first aid kit” of gin, vermouth, two glasses, and a shaker in the trunk of his car. As a hobby, Charlie pursued his passion for science and invention and worked with other inventors to develop environmentally friendly diesel engines long before such research was popular. He spent hours on the golf course, volunteered at his church, and doted on Jackie, who still wore her colorful dresses and makeup every day. She was calm, dignified, and a great cook. Charlie’s daughters lived nearby and often came for dinner. He knew he had a wonderful life.

  In these, his golden years, Charlie’s war memories resurfaced. He had attended a bomb group reunion in 1957 but nothing more. Back then, the memories were too fresh and painful. Now he began having nightmares again. He would dream about December 20, and the dream always ended with The Pub spinning to earth in a death dive from which he could not recover. Charlie always awoke just before he crashed in the dream. Standing in his bathroom looking in the mirror, Charlie tried to tell himself that December 20 was long over. But something deep within him was eating at his subconscious, and he knew it was not just the spin. He needed closure.

  Charlie joined the 379th Bomb Group Association, as well as the association for his pilot class, to reconnect with his old buddies. At the 1985 Las Vegas reunion of his pilot class, Charlie and his classmates sat in a circle in the hotel’s hospitality suite, swapping war stories. One of the men in the circle was Charlie’s former classmate, Colonel Joe Jackson. Jackson had a round, friendly face and still wore his hair in a military crew cut. He told his war stories with an upbeat Georgian accent. Jackson had been a bomber pilot in WWII and a fighter pilot in Korea. In Vietnam, he had flown transport planes, and his actions had earned him the Medal of Honor. Jackson did not tell that story, but Charlie and the others had heard what he had done. Jackson had landed a transport on an airfield that was being overrun by the enemy. Miraculously, he had rescued three Air Force combat controllers, picking them up and whisking them away. His plane came back with countless holes and even an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade in the nose.

  Charlie stunned his Scotch-sipping buddies when he casually remarked, “You’ll never believe this, but one time I was saluted by a German pilot.” Jackson and the others were so intrigued that they prompted Charlie to reveal the full story. Charlie told them of the German pilot who had spared him and his crew.

  “You should look for him,” Jackson urged Charlie. “He might still be out there.” Charlie knew the odds were slim. The German fighter pilots had been all but wiped out. How could he find an unknown enemy pilot he had flown with for ten minutes, neither having exchanged a single word? It was forty-two years later, but still he wondered, Who was he and why did he let us go?

  Charlie began his search for the German pilot. In his free time during the next four years, Charlie used his Air Force connections to cull the archives in America and England and discovered his crew’s after-action report from December 20. It had been stamped CLASSIFIED but contained nothing sensitive. Charlie recalled the man who had written the report—Seething’s lanky intelligence officer, Lieutenant Robert Harper. So Charlie contacted the 448th Bomb Group Association and discovered that Harper resided in New England. Charlie called Harper, who remembered him instantly. Harper told Charlie that he had stayed on for another tour in England then become an architect after the war. Having retired, Harper told Charlie his new hobby was painting. That gave Charlie an idea.

  “Do you think you could paint a portrait of our plane?” Charlie asked him. Harper remembered The Pub and agreed. “This time is it safe to include the German?” Charlie joked. Harper laughed and agreed to paint the 109 flying alongside The Pub, his way of making amends for having quashed the story during the war. Harper painted the scene in watercolors then hit a roadblock. He called Charlie. He did not know what markings to paint on the German plane. Charlie had no idea either. “Let’s leave that part blank,” Charlie told Harper. “Just in case I find him.”

  Charlie had read in an aviation magazine that Germany’s most famous pilot, General Adolf Galland, had recently made an amazing reunion of his own. Galland had reunited with his wartime crew chief, Gerhard Meyer, by placing an ad in a newsletter called Jagerblatt. Jagerblatt (“Fighter Journal”) was the official publication of the Association of German Fighter Pilots, the reunion group for past and current pilots. So Charlie wrote to the editor of Jagerblatt and asked if the editor would publish his short letter describing the December 20 incident and the German pilot he was trying to find. But the editor was not eager to help a former bomber pilot. He declined Charlie’s request. So Charlie tried another route and wrote to Galland to ask for his help. Galland replied by letter that he had never heard of a 109 sparing a B-17, but he would order Jagerblatt’s editor to publish Charlie’s note. Galland could do this because he had once served as the organization’s president. He told Charlie to resubmit his letter, and Charlie eagerly complied.

  In his letter, Charlie outlined the time, place, and general details of the encounter, in which “a single Bf-109 made a non-firing gun camera run on the B-17 and ended up flying formation on the right wing.” Charlie listed his address in Florida where he could be reached. But Charlie did not mention that his bomber’s left horizontal stabilizer had been blown away or that his rudder was nearly gone or that his tail gunner had been killed. His years in military intelligence had bred a sense of skepticism. He saved those details and one last fact as a secret test in the event that a German pilot actually came forward.

  SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, JANUARY 1990, VANCOUVER

  At his mailbox, Franz saw that his Jagerblatt had finally come from Germany. He plodded slowly along his driveway. Inside his house with its walls filled with woodcarvings, cuckoo clocks, and paintings of mountains, Franz dropped into his easy chair. He perused his Jagerblatt expecting to discover who had died since the previous issue. Then he saw it.

  “Hiya!” Franz shouted.

  Hiya came running. She assumed something bad had happened—maybe Galland had died.

  “Here, look, this was him!” Franz shouted. Hiya looked confused. “The one I didn’t shoot down!” Franz clarified.

  Over Franz’s shoulder, Hiya read the newsletter, amazed. As Galland had promised, Jagerblatt had published Charlie’s “looking for” letter. Like a small ad it occupied a quarter of a black-and-white page. Franz stood up and shuffled to his den, with its wallpaper that resembled old newspaper print. He opened the cover on his typewriter, slipped a piece of paper within the rollers, and quickly pounded out a letter that read:

  Jan. 18, 1990

  Dear Charles,

  All these years I wondered what happened to the B-17, did she make it or not? As I am a guest of the American Fighter Aces, I inquired time und again, but without any results. I have been a guest at the 50th Anniversary of the B-17, and I could s
till [not] find any answers, whether it was worth to risk a court marshal. I am happy now that you made it, and that it was worth it.

  I will be in Florida sometime in June, as guest of the American Fighter Aces and it sure would be nice to talk about our encounter. By the way, after I landed at Bremen Airport, I borrowed the Fieseler Storch from the airport commander to fly out to a B-17 which I shot down. The field I landed in just was not cooperating, and I stood on my head or prop. I just wanted to be sure that the crew was treated correctly. My landing was not appreciated, I told in the officer’s mess, as I was forced to stay overnight to have one of my radiators changed, which had a 50 caliber bullet stuck in it.

  For now, Horrido

  Yours,

  [Signed] Franz

  Franz Stigler

  Five days later in Miami, Jackie brought Charlie his mail as he sat at his desk, listening to the radio. He sliced the letter with an opener. “My God,” Charlie muttered as he read the letter in disbelief. He called his wife. “Could it be him?” Jackie asked. Thinking like an intelligence officer, Charlie pointed out that Franz had asked for nothing. He had not listed his phone number or said they needed to write a book together and tell the world of their encounter. He simply had suggested that maybe they could meet someday and that he was happy Charlie had made it. “I’ve got a good feeling this is the guy,” Charlie told his wife. “But I’m not getting my hopes up, yet.” Charlie sat down to type a letter back to Franz. Midway through the process he became impatient and stopped. “The heck with it,” he said. Picking up the phone, Charlie dialed information. He asked for the Vancouver phone directory and if there was a Franz Stigler listed. The operator told him there was and gave him Franz’s number. Charlie called and Franz picked up.