But that was not all that this soldier needed to know. “But why do they attack us? Especially the United States? Why should they care what goes on in another continent?”
Mueller took a swig. “You’ll have to ask the Amis that. Now,” he said, pointing to the air, “I’m no political scientist, mind you, but I suspect that the Führer declaring war on them may have something to do with it. He didn’t tell you why? I thought you were friends now.”
I finally let out my suppressed laugh. Once again, Mueller was able to snap me out of my moroseness. “And when this war is over and you return to thinking, what will you do, Josef? Go back to Dresden?”
Mueller grinned sheepishly. “I haven’t thought about it.”
I pressed him. “Come now. You’ve brightened my mood. You win. So allow me this. I want to know. Seriously.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Harmon. I’m a barrel maker by trade. As was my father and his father.”
In all the time we’d flown together, he’d never revealed much to me about his pre-war years. It’s a defense mechanism soldiers learn. Especially one like him. Too much intimacy with a comrade today means an extra hard death to bear in the morrow. Best to keep things superficial. So much for his being the son and heir to riches.
“You?” I said. “A cooper?”
He nodded. “Seems a bit dull now, I admit. After all this. I do love flying. Perhaps I’ll be a commercial pilot. Or maybe go to America and be a, how do they say, crop duster?”
I looked at him. “You don’t find irony to that?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a thought. And what about you? What does the great Harmon Becker do after the shooting stops?”
I knew the answer with absolute certainty. The war had diverted me away from my true passion. And yet, based on my killing prowess in the air, I may have been a better fighter pilot than pianist. I hated that thought. “I’ll return to Stauffenberg and enter the little conservatory there. I intend to be a concert pianist.”
“The next Paderewski, eh?”
“If I’m lucky. My old master, Leo Krupinski, called me his young Beethoven. He’d be pleased to see me blossom into a great musician.”
Mueller nodded. “Would it please you?”
I took a deep breath of frigid air. “More than you know.”
He slapped me on the thigh and raised the bottle to the heavens. “To a pleasing future then.”
I grabbed the bottle as well. “The future.”
34
The next day my war resumed. I sat in the cockpit awaiting takeoff, strapped into the harness and parachute, hunched against the icy winds. The temperature was thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit and the canopy was open, yet beads of sweat popped on my forehead. Seebeck wanted me to see him later about my visit to the Berghof—and no doubt my trip home—but his retribution would have to wait until I finished with the Americans.
I looked left and right to see a crooked line of FW-190 fighters, painted in colorful schemes on the cowlings, aimed at an angle to the sky, stretched across the snowy field. Way in the distance at the command hut, I could see the ungainly figure of Major Seebeck standing in his door well, leaning on his cane and smoking a cigarette as we prepared to take off.
The target today was a gaggle of heavy bombers, coming in fast and heading straight for a railroad junction on the Belgian border. Intercept would be quick. We noticed that the Allies had begun attacking tactical targets, like railway junctions, bridges, ammo dumps, and less strategic targets of the major inland cities. This new phase pulled us farther west towards the channel, and sometimes within the range of their escorts. Just when I thought my world was as dangerous as it could get, this cruel twist of fate made it even a little more so.
With my leather cap covering my ears, all was quiet. The usual thoughts filled my mind. Is this the last of earth for me? What will my family say when they receive the black note? At least my war will be over then. During training we lost one pilot when his fighter rolled on takeoff from the torque of the propeller and burst into flames as he hit the ground. He lived for two days in agony with horribly disfiguring burns over most of his body. That was what I feared most. Not dying, but surviving a grotesque wound only to live the rest of my life as a cripple or a deformed freak show exhibit. I looked up to the clear sky above me and whispered a soft prayer. “Please God, I ask that you let me live through this day. But if it is thy will that I should die, let it be swift.”
Another question: What is Amelia doing right now? I looked to her portrait on the instrument panel. I thought about Krup and his family, and my stomach churned and I felt lightheaded. The Amis weren’t all I had to fear now.
And then the green flare shot up from the operations building. Sergeant Ohler, who was sitting on the port wing lost in his own thoughts, got up and closed and locked the canopy over me.
“Good hunting, Herr Captain,” he shouted through the glass with an encouraging thumbs-up.
I slowly increased the throttle to taxi. Another crewman sat on the wing to guide me, as I couldn’t see in front of me over the steeply angled nose. He directed me to the takeoff point. When I hit the brakes he leapt to the ground. It was time to fly.
Takeoff was always exhilarating to me, and today it served to snap me from my anxieties. I throttled smoothly and the BMW radial engine roared. Then I slammed a bootful of hard right rudder to hold straight against the propeller’s torque. With a release of the breaks, I was pushed back into my seat as the plane bounced down the runway. Picking up speed I edged the stick forward to raise the tail—being careful not to flip myself over—and then after reaching enough airspeed I eased it back as the little fighter swooped into the sky, trailing white powder in its wake. Gear up, flaps up, and we were off to do battle.
I craned my neck left and right to see that my squadron was following me in good order. The FW-190 was a fast climber at over three thousand feet per minute. Tuning my radio, I awaited the ground controller’s instructions.
We soon leveled off at twenty thousand feet and followed a north-by-northwest heading, leaving the clear blue skies to the east behind us and straight into a storm front. The clouds were getting thick, so I commanded the squadron to form up into swarms and climb to twenty-five thousand feet to get above the layer.
“I can’t see anything in this soup,” observed Mueller, who’d pulled up to form our pack.
I called to the squadron: “Is everyone with us?”
Borner called back in consternation. “I’m having engine troubles. Damn this bird.”
“Can you make it back to base?” I asked.
“I’ll try.” I dipped my wing and glanced down to have a look at his airplane. It was sputtering smoke and losing altitude. “Good luck, fellows,” he said and then disappeared into the fog below.
Cursing silently to myself I called out: “Who’s his wingman?”
“Lieutenant Stahl,” came a jittery reply. At just nineteen, he’d been with the squadron for three months but hadn’t yet scored a victory.
“Very well, Stahl,” I said. “Form up with my pack. Mueller you’re in the lead with Stahl as your wing. I’ll fly solo on this one.”
“You sure that’s wise?” cautioned Mueller. “There could be Indians, sir.”
“I’ll be careful.” Actually I was quite uneasy about being caught in a dogfight with no wingman to cover me. I didn’t have time to think anyway.
“Attention, Nebel-One, this is Bodo.”
“Victor,” I said. “Go ahead, Bodo.”
“Heavy babies in sector Dora-Dora. Go to Hanni nine zero.”
“Victor, victor. Message understood.”
We climbed higher still and then leveled out. Way up here, above the clouds, the golden sunlight burst forth from the west and blinded us. This was late for a Yank attack. After twenty more minutes of mundane flying, with the ground controller call
ing in adjustments to the enemy position and guiding us ever closer towards them, I noticed my fuel nearing the halfway point. We were quite far from base to the southeast.
Then Mueller spotted them. At first I thought they were blotches on my windscreen, and the blazing sun only added to my confusion. But as they got closer I made out the
shapes of heavy, twin-tailed bombers. Below us and tightly boxed. They looked like American Liberators, and I figured there were at least two hundred of them.
“Do you see them, Nebel-One?” inquired the controller.
“Victor,” I called back. “Fat cars directly at our twelve o’clock low.” Then I called out my usual instructions to the squadron. “Attack en echelon. Mark your target. Get in quick bursts towards the cockpit. Use your machine guns to get the range and then open with cannon.”
“Jawohl,” chimed some of the younger men.
“Be careful flying solo,” warned Mueller. “You’ve got no cover.”
“I know,” I answered him with agitation. I knew better than to fly with no wingman, even if it was only against what I thought were unescorted bombers. Anything could happen.
We dipped our noses and started to make our run towards the bomber formation. As they grew in size at an exponential rate, I breathed deep and zeroed in on the lead plane. I switched on my gunsight and lined him up for a head-on attack.
It was always intimidating to new blood how quickly these encounters happened. At such high speeds it took less than fifteen seconds to close from two miles out. One minute you’re flying towards what looks like nothing more than a dot on your windshield. Then you make out the thin shape. Then the shape grows to a fuselage and wings. Then a plane. Then a four-engine monster bearing down on you with hundreds more behind it! Your heart hammers and suddenly you’re firing your weapons. The guns in its turrets blinking like Christmas lights firing back at you. A POP! if you’re hit. Then your own thump! thump! thump! of cannons. Your plane shuddering. The white flashes as your rounds strike home near the cockpit. The screech of engines in your ear. Slam the stick forward. More rattling of machine guns and wailing of engines. More shapes flitting past you. Glowing tracer rounds crisscrossing as you slice through the bomber formation. That last buffet as you punch though the prop wash. And then you’re below the stream of aircraft and behind it. And now all is eerily quiet again but for the humming of your engine and the chatter on the radio. It all takes but a few seconds. You pull up abruptly and perform a chandelle—a sudden, steep climbing turn—to get a look at what destruction you’ve just visited upon your target.
I leveled off at a ninety-degree angle to the bomber stream and scanned across the open sky to see several trails of smoke spewing from a few Liberators in the pack. One I saw spinning out of control to the ground. My gut told me that one was mine, although I’d have to wait to see what verdict my gun cameras returned.
And this is where I got sloppy.
I was too busy watching the air combat one mile below to scan the sky around me. If I had I might have noticed high, thin contrails above me, moving wickedly fast across the sky. The white streaks weren’t Liberators, as they showed only two engines per plane. And they were swooping around to enter the fray—right above my head.
Once again it was Mueller calling from somewhere nearby to warn me. “Indians! Watch out behind you, Becker!”
“What?” I shouted.
I instinctively snap-rolled hard to the right, and just in time. Tracers zipped under my fuselage and would have ripped my little fighter to pieces had I been in their path.
I heard the distinct wasp-like hum of inline engines zoom past, and got my first glimpse of a strange-looking machine. A futuristic fighter plane, sleek lines, with two engines, each in a thin boom with the twin tails and the pilot and clustered guns housed in a center nacelle between them. The Yank had brought an escort of P-38 Lightnings. As I’d feared, we were in escort range. And now I was caught up in a melee with high-performance fighters and no wingman.
“Get out of here, Captain!” called out Gaetjens. I still had no idea where half the squadron was. We’d been caught by surprise. Now it was every man for himself and “see you back at base.”
A Focke-Wulf zoomed in front of me from out of nowhere with two Lightnings right behind him. It was Stahl.
“Stahl!” I commanded. “Don’t dive. You can out-turn them. I’ll come in behind them.”
“Jawohl,” he replied with surprising poise. You may survive yet, I thought.
“I’m on them too!” called out Mueller.
I managed to pull the little Focke-Wulf in behind one of the twin-tailed machines whose pilot was too fixated on his own prey to watch his back. “No, no my friend,” I uttered as I squeezed the trigger.
My tracers sliced through the Lightning’s right boom, and the whole section sheared off. The plane broke in two and fell tumbling towards the gray layer of clouds below. The other P-38 immediately dove for the clouds and cover, all thoughts of dispatching young Stahl forgotten.
“Abschuss!” shouted Mueller. “The captain just saved your ass, Stahl!”
“Thank you, sir,” he said with relief.
But there was still a swarm of Lightnings out there. The fact was brought home to me by the desperate calls of my surprised squadron on the radio. “I’m in trouble here!” A terrified voice: “I can’t shake them!” Another called: “Blast! Where’d they come from?” Resignation from this one: “Bailing out! See you home, boys.” Frustration: “Get out of there, Von Mauer!”
POP! POP! POP! What the hell? BANG!
Behind me. Two more Lightnings with guns blazing! Their concentrated fire from four fifty-caliber machine guns and one 20-millimeter cannon all bunched together in the cockpit nacelle had the effect of a massive shotgun blast. They punched a great hole in my left wing, and then I saw flames start to belch from the engine at my feet.
Oh, Becker. This is not good, I thought.
POP! POP! POP! Again. Unrelenting, they sent more hot metal and explosive charges into my plane, and now I felt a hammer blow followed by a searing pain spread over my shoulder. “Mueller!” I called out. “Those bastards just shot me!”
“Hang on,” he said frantically. “I’m on them.”
But it was already too late. I could feel the engine seizing. Thick black smoke was filling the cockpit, and my legs were starting to cook as the fire spread. Then suddenly the world started to flash faster and faster before my eyes, and I realized I was in a spin. My control surfaces were useless. I couldn’t move the stick. Spinning, falling. My stomach whipping all around. I floated in my chair as my plane tumbled end over end through the air.
Suddenly all was light gray out my canopy. I was in the clouds. Still spinning. Altimeter bleeding. Oh hell, I’m falling out of the damned sky!
“Becker, what are you waiting for?” Mueller was shouting. “Get out of that plane, do you hear me?”
“I’m trying, dammit!” But I was having a hard time blowing the cockpit open.
Oh Christ! I darted my eyes to the left wing and saw that it was gone. I MUST GET OUT OF THIS FALLING COFFIN! Still falling. My legs starting to burn.
Now it was no longer gray. I could see white and drab browns spinning past me. The ground! Do something now, Becker, or you’ve had it! I frantically unbuckled my straps and then I leaned back in the cockpit, fighting the centripetal forces suddenly whipping me this way and that. With both feet I tucked my knees up to my chest to escape the rising heat and then kicked up at the glass as hard as I could. Whooosh! The canopy flew off and the whipping of the wind blasted my face. I was too scared to notice the cold—or my injured shoulder. My legs cooled, thank God.
I struggled to hoist myself out of the spinning, flaming airplane. Then as the fighter somersaulted end over end, I was literally tossed out into the air and sent tumbling with my legs flailing as if on a bicycle. Sudde
nly I felt a blinding pain slice through the back of my head, and I immediately saw white spots. A dreamy sensation came upon me, as if I were outside myself. It was so peaceful and falling was such a pleasant sensation that I figured I could sleep the rest of the way to the ground.
I was so tired. Just close your eyes and it will be over. My hand dreamily reached down and tugged on what I thought was the rip cord of my parachute. But I didn’t really care. I was fading. Not even my head hurt anymore. I smiled as I drifted off to sleep. Dying’s not so bad.
And then all went black.
35
It wasn’t light but sound that pulled me out of my sleep. “Captain?” said a voice in the distance. “Can you hear me?”
I swam up out of sleep and managed to force my eyes open. I found myself looking up at the colorless sky, outlined by a border of snow-covered evergreens fingering into the air. I was lying on my back, half swaddled in the silk of my parachute, which lay spread out on the snow next to me like a bridal train. My eyes struggled to focus, and through the haze I caught the silhouette of a German helmet. It grew larger in my field of vision until I saw the young soldier’s face with his inquisitive eyes gazing down at me.
I must have groaned something incoherent, because he backed off and turned to call for someone.
“He’s alive!”
Another voice, this one deeper, shouted back. “He’s a damned lucky bugger to miss those trees.” Then a larger man, who owned the voice, appeared and stood over me as well. He displayed the twin diamonds and double-lightning insignia of an SS Untersharführer. “He’s moving. His back must be good. Nasty cut on his forehead.” He knelt down close and began prodding me for broken bones.
Of Another Time and Place Page 17