“My God!” exclaimed Jake.
“What? What’s happened?” cried out Constanze. “Harmon, are you alright?”
Gritting my teeth, I tried to shake away the burning pain, but I felt my left arm losing strength. And yet I was more angered than anything. Angry that my friend would actually take a shot at me. As the French countryside passed below us in all its emerald glory, I screamed into the radio: “Dammit, Josef! There are children aboard!”
“Can’t you get away from him?” begged Jake.
“Quiet, boy!” yelled his father.
“In my pocket,” I said to Amelia weakly as I motioned to the zippered compartment of my flight suit pants. She unzipped it and reached inside the pocket to find the handkerchief she’d made for me those many years before, after Kristallnacht. Amelia looked at it with a faint smile. The “HBN” embroidery lovingly hand-stitched on it brought back the sweet memory of our first night together. It was now my field dressing. She pressed it up against my wound to stem the flow of blood seeping through the shoulder of my flight suit. “I keep ruining your handkerchiefs,” she said, trying to deflect my concern.
“This time it’s my blood,” I grunted.
“I’ll get you another when we get to England,” she said with that crooked smile. I nodded back to her.
“I said turn around and I meant it, Herr Captain,” commanded Mueller again.
“Listen to you. ‘Herr Captain’! You think you’ll still be a soldier if you shoot us down? You’ll be a murderer, Josef. A butcher of defenseless women and children.”
“I’ll be an executer of enemies of the Reich. A warrior.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “A warrior for what? A morally bankrupt cause. What good will that do you but offer you a collection of dusty medals and tattered ribbons! When your children ask of your wingman and friend, Harmon Becker, what will you tell them? ‘I shot him down because he saw the truth’? In the name of humanity get out of here, Josef!”
Then I heard him click off his radio, no longer willing to endure the emotional torment. But I knew he wouldn’t leave. It was just not in him to abandon his mission. So, I gave one last look at my helpless crew. I with my bleeding shoulder. Amelia with her kerchief trying desperately to stem the flow. The Krupinskis, all four of them now, huddling together again. This time in a narrow tube that was now to be their coffin, two miles above France, almost within sight of the English Channel and freedom.
Mueller adjusted his gunsight to rest on the intersection of the lumbering bomber’s broad oval wings and narrow fuselage. This time he switched to cannon. There would be no more warnings.
As he choked back a tear, he gathered all of his training to prepare himself to carry out this most difficult of orders. But carry it out he would. He was a soldier. And his oath to Hitler bound him to the will of the chain of command. This was what made him different from Harmon. He knew where his duty lay. Harmon had lost his way. And now he was an enemy.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” he muttered to himself as he flipped up the safety on his control stick with his thumb. He took a deep breath and prepared to fire. Then he squeezed the trigger.
59
In my mind’s eye, the last thing my friend Josef Mueller saw before his death was a bright sheet of orange filling his field of vision. There was a sudden loud rush of sound and searing heat, and then all went dark. I hope he never even felt his body plunge to the earth below with the other pieces of his disintegrating fighter plane.
“What was that?” I said as I listened to the swishing of cannon rounds streaking over our aircraft from out of the west, followed by the thud of an airplane exploding in mid-air behind us. Before anyone could answer, the humming of Allison in-line engines screamed all around us and a blur of twin-engine fighters blew past, coming from the opposite direction as if in a game of chicken. Through the conical windscreen I watched in marvel as a second wave of speeding aircraft appeared from seemingly out of nowhere before they too zoomed past us, two over us and two under.
I knew in an instant what had happened. And with that realization came the knowledge that the Krupinskis’ long nightmare was finally over. I almost wept with relief. But the throbbing in my bleeding arm reminded me that I still needed to focus on flying this plane and landing it before I passed out.
“I think we’re okay,” I assured everyone.
“What are they?” cried Jakob, who didn’t know whether to be scared or relieved. Amelia too gripped my good arm with fear.
The last time I’d seen American P-38 Lightnings, they were on my tail peeling apart my mount. Today, they were not my pursuers but my saviors. We used to call them “fork-tailed devils.” Not this day. For me, “angels” came to mind.
Soon the fighters banked around—I counted eight—to form up on either side of our plane. To my relief they held their fire. Apparently, they’d heard my distress calls. They were sleek, futuristic machines. Their curious lines were made all the more intriguing by their shiny silver color scheme and black and white “invasion stripes” painted on the twin booms for their engines and their knife-like wings. In the center, between the booms, sat the pilots in their cockpit nacelles. The one nearest to us looked us over with curiosity and, I assumed, suspicion.
I waved at him, and he waved back. Then a young, robust voice crackled in my ears. In English he spoke with what I would later come to recognize as a Texas drawl: “Attention, Heinkel He 111. State your intentions. Over.”
“My English is not so good,” I said. Struggling to remember the proper words, I continued: “I am Captain Harmon Becker of Jagdgeschwader Thirty-Two. I have onboard five, eh, stowaways? Refugees! Yes, refugees. Including two children.”
Jakob, the relief washing over him, even managed some bravado. “Children,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I just flew a plane, didn’t I?”
“Shush!” said his beaming mother.
“I request an escort to England as your prisoner,” I continued. “We have a wounded man onboard.”
“Roger that.”
“Do you see any more Luftwaffe fighters?” I asked.
“That’s a negative,” responded the American pilot with the confidence that only air supremacy can muster. “Follow us in. If you deviate from our course, you will be shot down. Is that clear? Over.”
“Victor,” I said. “I mean, yes, I understand.”
I fought off a wave of dizziness and then shook my head and focused hard on keeping the Heinkel level.
Amelia studied my color with growing concern. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I’ll get us in. Don’t worry.” And then I saw a brilliant gleam of orange and gold, like a sheet of lustrous metal, spreading out before us. It was a body of water, glistening in the morning sunlight. I pointed for everyone to see. “The English Channel.”
But water was not all I saw. I considered the entire scene around me. Escorting Vs of P-38 Lightnings flanked us, bringing us in like sheepdogs would a lost lamb. Below me, an endless collection of black shapes in the water. We marveled in awe at the Allied invasion fleet stretching out as far as the eye could see, almost all the way back to England. From smaller transports to LSTs to great warships cruising back and forth, lobbing their massive projectiles as far as twenty miles inland for support. The sky was filled with aircraft coming to and fro. All sporting either the American star or RAF roundels, on their way to or returning from their missions. All of this power was concentrated for one purpose: to pound my country to dust. To hurl us out of the lands we’d taken by force, and if it meant killing every German there was, then so be it.
Ever since I’d seen that map in the Berghof, I’d had a general, nebulous notion that the war was lost. It was a vague concept that drifted listlessly in the back of my mind. But now the full reality of our doom was laid out before me. To this day I cannot describe the sinking feeling I felt when I saw the power
arrayed against my people. All I could do was sum it up to Amelia in three words:
“It’s all over.”
And so it was for all of us. Krup would live; I would live; Amelia would live.
And the Third Reich would die, taking the megalomaniacal dream of Hitler and his nation of acolytes with it.
60
I feared I might pass out before we reached my escorts’ base in England, but soon the jagged edges of the British coastline appeared below us. The Lightnings formed a virtual net around us as we began a gradual descent towards a sprawling airfield that was barely inland from the rocky cliffs overlooking the channel.
The closer I got to it, the more this expansive complex of runways, hangars, barracks, towers, canteens, mess halls, anti-aircraft batteries, and a swarm of aircraft lined wingtip to wingtip out in the wide-open space with no fear of Jabos pouncing on them impressed me; especially in contrast to my base, which was reduced to a dozen planes crouching to stay out of sight in the woods. How could we have ever thought to overcome such might? Now I felt not just ashamed of my country, but stupid to have been duped for so long by the fantasy proclamations of the high command.
“Heinkel 111, this is the nearest aerodrome. Since you have wounded onboard, you’re cleared to land here,” said the Southerner again over my headset. “Make your approach from the northeast. I remind you that you’ll be shot down if you deviate. Other than that, welcome to England, Captain. Your war’s over.”
The pilot in the plane to my right who’d stayed at my side throughout the trip across France and over the channel waved. I waved back weakly. Then he rolled ninety degrees and gently arced towards his squadron to oversee our touchdown before heading off to his own base farther west.
My head was swimming, as the loss of blood saturating Amelia’s kerchief was affecting me. “Come on, Harmon,” I said to myself. “Just one last push.”
I shook my head spastically to clear away the fog as one might do when nodding off at the wheel of a car. Then I gently banked the Heinkel around until the landing strip appeared as a flat trapezoid in my windscreen. I extended the landing gear, making sure I had green lights all around, and then eased on the throttle, tapped the flaps until fully extended, and pulled back slightly on the yoke to slow us to a safe landing speed. “Hold on, everybody,” I called out to my weary passengers. I let the bomber gradually descend until the runway rushed up to fill my windshield. A pair of Lightnings stayed with us like chase planes, then peeled away before stalling.
The greatest feeling I have ever known, besides the first time I kissed Amelia and the birth of my baby, Dora, was that initial bump of the landing gear skidding along the concrete surface of the American airstrip. A few more bounces and jolts and then solid terra firma beneath us as the floating sensation died and our full body weights returned. The aircraft slowed to taxi speed as it rolled down the long runway.
My field of vision was closing in around me as the continued blood loss was reeling me into a dream state. Even though it was June, I suddenly felt so cold. Amelia noticed the alarming change in my complexion from flesh tone to gray and realized I was slipping into shock. “Hang on, Harmon,” she said coolly. “You did it. Don’t you go soft on me now.” There was no longer fear of the unknown in her voice. Although we were in the heart of enemy country, we were the safest we’d been in years. And the four good people we had spirited here need no longer dread the knock at the door. It was an incredible sense of accomplishment. One that Amelia and I shared together.
In my reduced vision I watched through the windscreen as a little jeep, painted olive drab with a white star on the hood, drove out to meet us. In the back sat two helmeted MPs carrying carbines, one of whom waved for us to follow them and pointed to an empty space at the end of the field where I could park the wounded bomber. I lowered the throttle so that we were now slowly taxiing over the web of runways and approach lanes behind this little vehicle. As we moved, an ambulance truck pulled up to follow alongside, its canvas covering painted with a soothing red cross. Other jeeps, also loaded with MPs, followed in a crude procession.
I had to muster all of my remaining strength to stay conscious and get this plane the last fifty yards. Waves of lightheadedness washed over me and then receded. Vision blurred, cleared, blurred, went dark, and came back again. The Krupinskis were speaking in excited tones, with Jakob pointing out to Elsa the different types of cars and aircraft that were parked in this enormous aerodrome. All around us were row upon row of those massive Thunderbolt fighters, painted in olive and sky-blue camouflage, their cowlings coated in bright scarlet.
Just under the cockpits of so many of these heavy fighters were those little crosses or swastikas painted in neat rows along the fuselage, each representing a German kill. I couldn’t bear the sight of so many of these decorations. Each marking was a record of the final moments of men like Borner, Gaetjens, Mueller, and Paul, who had died for a cause whose ugly face was now fully visible to me. And there were bases like these spread along the length and breadth of Great Britain.
Finally I brought the bomber to a halt in the designated area at the end of the runway and cut the throttle. My head slumped forward as I felt a gentle sleep overwhelm me. As if I were underwater, the last thing I heard was Krup asking: “Harmon. Are you okay?” I just needed to rest a bit was all. I felt myself fall sideways into the arms of my old master as I drifted away.
When I opened my eyes again, I wasn’t in the plane but staring up at a huddle of faces looking down on me with the clear sky behind them. I was lying on a stretcher with a blanket up to my chest and staring up from the tarmac, contemplating everyone around me. Some of the faces I knew. Amelia, Jakob, Krup. Others were strange men in olive uniforms. They were US soldiers and Army Air Corps personnel. Wary MPs with their hands resting conspicuously on their sidearms stood guard over me. But I was in no threat to anyone. Kneeling to my left was a medic holding up a glass IV bottle with a drip that went into my exposed forearm. Another was applying a heavy bandage to my wounded shoulder. Someone had cut away my grimy flight suit. “You’ll be alright there, Cap’n,” another medic was saying in a reassuring tone. “Just try to lie still.”
Krup managed to wedge himself into the scrum enough to kneel by my right side, clasping my hand in both of his. Amelia hovered above and behind him, smiling down at me. When I saw her expression of relief, I knew I’d survive. Then Leo spoke to me. “Harmon,” he said with a husky voice ready to go to pieces. “You’ve saddled me with a debt I can never repay.” I tried to say something, but I was too weak. “Save your strength,” he said.
I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did next. Maybe it was an act of contrition on my part. Maybe it was a repudiation of all I’d fought and killed for during this damned war. Or maybe it was a final token of affection for my old Musikmeister who’d saved me as much as I him. Whatever the reason, I raised my free hand to my neck, unclipped my Ritterkreuz, and offered it up to Krup.
He stared at it and then at me. “No, my boy,” he protested. “I cannot take this from you.”
I took his hand that was holding mine and opened his palm, wherein I placed my Knight’s Cross and closed his fingers around it. I pushed his hand away and dropped my arm to my side. Then I closed my eyes again. Sleep once more was invading my world.
I heard strange voices in foreign tongues. Enemy soldiers all around penetrated my darkness. “And up!” said one of the medics, and I felt myself lifted into the air and carried as if in a dream.
“Bitte,” said Amelia in a confused tone. “Lassen Sie mich mit ihm bleiben.”
An MP held her at bay. “Sorry, lady, I don’t follow. You and your friends go with the chaplain. This man needs medical attention.”
Still moving along with my eyes shut, I could hear other voices drifting in waves in the darkness. Some men were none too happy to see the enemy in their midst. “Hey, Joey, get a load of thi
s. That a friggin’ Heinkel?”
“Yeah, just landed. The Kraut officer’s some hotshot ace.”
Another insisted: “Someone oughtta shoot the Nazi sombitch.”
Still another said: “Easy, Sergeant York. The guy called ‘uncle’ fair and square.”
Then I could feel myself being slid into the back of a truck and the engine rev as we sped away. The medics never left my side. “It’s okay, Cap’n,” the one kept saying. “You’re gonna make it.”
The other simply added: “Now this ain’t somethin’ you see every day.”
And then the most relaxing sleep I’ve ever known washed over me.
I awoke with a start to find myself in a military hospital among a row of beds. I don’t know what time it was other than it was the middle of the night. I seemed to be alone but for an armed MP who sat motionless on a stool by the door. Careful not to dislodge the intravenous line running into my forearm, I rolled over to face my guard and an electric pain pierced my bandaged shoulder. I moaned and the MP sat up in his chair. He may have been dozing.
I was at least comforted by the fact that, though the pain was throbbing through my shoulder, my arm wasn’t in a sling, indicating nothing was broken. But it hurt like the devil.
Still, my curiosity overcame my discomfort, and I sat up on the edge of the bed to take in my foreign accommodations. I noticed at once how much more advanced and well-stocked this hospital was than our own. Supply and logistics were not an issue here. Rows of empty IV bottles lined the wall waiting for patients. Each bed had fresh linen. Medicine cabinets on either end of the room practically burst with supplies of morphine, aspirin, iodine, penicillin, bandages, and anything else a sick or wounded man needed.
I wondered if my father had felt this sense of helpless resignation when he was captured by the Allies in the Great War. That thought brought the memories of my dear parents and brother in front of me for a moment, and I had to remind myself they no longer existed. That I was alone. Oh how I ached for them! There would be plenty of sobbing in the weeks to come over the deep cavern in my heart. A cavity that would be filled in time with the love of Amelia—who at that same moment was somewhere else on this enormous airbase, confused, alone, and suffering her own anguish over the loss of that incredible woman, Hanna.
Of Another Time and Place Page 35