A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (13 page)

When medics arrived, they calmed Roedel down, insisting he lie on a stretcher in the shade of their ambulance. Franz stood by as the medics loaded Roedel into the truck.

“Damn it, now I have to go home,” Roedel said with resignation before the medics slammed shut the doors. Franz knew Roedel did not want to go because he did not trust any other officer with the lives of his men.

Before Roedel departed, he appointed a temporary successor from his three squadron leaders based on the only standard he knew they would agree on. He picked the top ace, the man with the most victories. Voegl, with twenty victories, got the nod. Roedel’s gesture of impartiality would soon prove one of his biggest mistakes.

A
S THE BLISTERING
hot month of August arrived, life at Quotaifiya reached a low point. The men lived like animals. They no longer slept in tents or under the stars. To avoid British strafing, Franz and the others slept in “graves,” six- by six-foot holes hacked into the earth, with a sheet of canvas overhead. Here each man kept his cot, blanket, and belongings. The days of showering in freshwater were over. Everyone stank. When the men snuck away once a week to bathe in the ocean, they came back with their skin crusty with salt.

Franz existed with the salt and sand caking his face, lining his hair, and sticking to the dried sweat on his back. The heat at Quotaifiya was often 125 degrees Fahrenheit or hotter. Franz and his comrades developed chapped lips and sores that would not heal, sores the flies loved. Worse was whenever a flight taxied past and blew grains
of sand into the men’s bloodshot eyes and open cuts. On some days, sandstorms rolled in that settled over the airfield, choking Franz and his comrades with a white hazy cloud.

At night, Franz and the others drank to forget the day. They then stumbled carefully through the “graveyards,” careful not to step on the poisonous asps and cobras that came out in darkness. After checking his grave for snakes, Franz said his prayers with his knees in the sand. Then he slid under his blankets and pulled them over his head so spiders would not crawl across his face.

At Quotaifiya, Franz began dreaming of his mother’s cooking, of eating his favorite dish, leberkase, a pan-fried Bavarian meatloaf made from finely chopped corned beef, pork, bacon, and onions. He imagined bowls of fresh vegetables, a taste he had long forgotten. Red cabbage, spinach, potato salad, and potato pancakes appeared in his dreams. Then he would awake with his stomach cold and twisted, regretting that he had ever said, “I’ll pass on anything that flies or swims.”

Within JG-27 it was common knowledge that a man could only endure six months of desert torture before his health fell to pieces. Life at Quotaifiya accelerated that breaking point. Even the Desert Fox, Rommel, had to return to Germany after the desert knocked him out with a sinus infection. Franz knew Voegl and others had somehow withstood eight months of the desert’s torture, some 240 days’ worth. But he would soon discover that even the bravest of men could crack.

T
HERE WERE FEW
options to escape the desert’s misery, among them death, wounds, insanity, and the passing of time. But one man had revealed the only other avenue of escape: victories. Marseille’s high scoring saw him flying home to Germany every two months to receive new decorations added to his Knight’s Cross—first miniature oak leaves and then miniature swords, each signifying higher degrees of
the Cross. Franz, Voegl, and their comrades all watched Marseille leave and wanted to go with him. At a time when desert life was grinding JG-27 to a halt, the competition for victories intensified.

Due to wear and tear from the countless Stuka escorts, the squadrons that once had sixteen fighters each now had, on average, just four planes operational. There were no longer enough planes to go around. When a perfectly good 109 arrived from Germany, the mechanics converged on it like cannibals and stripped its parts to keep several other planes flying. A new question arose in each squadron: “Who gets to fly?”

As the leader of both II Group and Squadron 4, Voegl made that call. Because Roedel had crashed his fighter before Voegl could inherit it, Voegl had taken one of Squadron 4’s planes for himself. That left three planes for him to pass around among the squadron’s sixteen pilots. He assigned another to his wingman and longtime sidekick, Sergeant Karl-Heinz Bendert. Bendert was a veteran, too, and was known as the squadron’s most ambitious pilot. He had a baby face with tiny, pouty lips and was quick to snicker. Voegl gave Franz a plane because he considered him a friend. As if to spite the others, Voegl gave the squadron’s fourth and last plane to a replacement pilot, the squadron’s new arrival, Sergeant Erwin Swallisch. Swallisch was an “old hare,” seasoned in age and experience, with eighteen victories to his name, most from the Eastern Front. Voegl took Bendert as his wingman and assigned Franz to Swallisch but warned Franz, “Swallisch is an expert but watch out, he is ill in the head.” Voegl said this because Swallisch had rotated home for instructor duty as a reward but instead requested duty where the fighting was roughest—the desert. Without any say in the matter, Franz had become a member of Voegl’s inner circle, a group his peers would call the “Voegl Flight.”

Franz met Swallisch when the “ill” pilot introduced himself at Franz’s grave. Swallisch had a strong face, a bulbous nose, thick cheeks, and a toothy smile. In talking, Franz discovered that Swallisch was
“straight,” or “honest and professional.” Swallisch, too, had flown in the Spanish Civil War, but as a fighter pilot, and had scored three victories. The two bonded over memories of wine, tapas, and senoritas.

SEVERAL DAYS LATER, AUGUST 4, 1942

At night, Swallisch entered Franz’s grave, obviously disturbed. In a hushed tone, Swallisch said he had to tell Franz something, in secret. Franz had not flown that day, due to maintenance on his fighter, but Swallisch told him what he had missed.

Swallisch had flown twice that day, first at dawn when Bendert had summoned him to escort a reconnaissance plane with him. Together, they had attacked a dozen P-40s and Swallisch had knocked one from the sky. But on the way home, Bendert said he got one, too, and told Swallisch to confirm his victory, one Swallisch never saw happen. That afternoon Swallisch flew with Bendert again. This time, Swallisch shot down a Spitfire, and again Bendert claimed he had downed a Spitfire, too, one that Swallisch had not witnessed.

Swallisch was disturbed and asked Franz if “loose scoring” was the way of the desert. Franz said it happened. He had been there when everyone questioned Voegl’s three claims in one mission, the victories that only Bendert would confirm. Franz and Swallisch agreed they had no choice but to give Bendert the benefit of the doubt.

In the week that followed, the Voegl Flight flew and fought the group’s only battles because Voegl ensured that they had the best missions and the planes to fly them. A pattern developed. Whenever the men landed and claimed victories, Bendert always claimed something, and if others claimed a victory, Bendert claimed the same or more. Then came August 10, the day that broke the camel’s back. That morning Franz and Swallisch scrambled to intercept British fighters that had been sighted over El Alamein. There, among the thick clouds that bordered the sea, Franz and Swallisch attacked a pack of P-40s
and Hurricanes. On their first dive, each claimed a P-40. On the second dive, Franz claimed a Hurricane. But as Franz pulled up to climb and repeat, he saw a terrifying sight behind his tail. Instead of the P-40s breaking into a defensive circle like they always had, they were chasing him! With Swallisch flying ahead of him and unaware of the danger, Franz radioed him with alarm and told him to run—they were being chased. Swallisch radioed back, “Nonsense.”

Franz saw the thick clouds along the sea and ran for them. But instead of fleeing with Franz, Swallisch doubled back and flew toward him, flying over Franz’s head. Seeing this Franz thought,
Voegl was right—he is ill in the head!

Franz steered for the safety of the clouds, but kept checking his tail. There, he saw an incredible sight—in a tan streak he watched Swallisch fly head-on into the formation of P-40s, his guns firing. The P-40s peeled in all directions. Swallisch plowed through the melee and somehow emerged on the other side. Franz saw black smoke and knew that someone had been hit. He cursed Swallisch for not escaping with him.

Franz blew out a heavy sigh as the cloud’s floating tentacles wrapped around his canopy, enshrouding him in mist, turning the daylight into dimness. Banking westward, he wove through the heavenly white river, following his compass until he popped into the blue, alone, above his desert home. After landing, Franz found Swallisch circling his parked fighter, checking it for damage. Relieved, Franz shouted, “You never go tooth to tooth with a Curtiss!”

“In the east we don’t run from Ivan,” Swallisch chuckled, “Why start now?”

Franz realized the “ill” pilot’s antics were actually his odd brand of bravery. Franz reached out his hand and Swallisch shook it, flashing a big, toothy grin.

Around noon that same day, Voegl and Bendert returned from their flight and found Franz and Swallisch in the mess tent. Franz told Voegl that he and Swallisch had each bagged two planes. Voegl and
Bendert said that they, too, had each knocked down two planes.
^*
Franz and Swallisch gritted their teeth. When Voegl and Bendert had departed, Swallisch and Franz agreed that their group leader and his wingman were up to no good.

In the evening of August 14, Voegl delivered a message from JG-27’s commander, Neumann, to Franz and Swallisch. Neumann had ordered the Voegl Flight to assemble on the flight line the next morning. Franz immediately thought that someone was in trouble. When Franz and Swallisch plodded to the flight line the next day, as ordered, Swallisch was sullen. He was certain that Voegl and Bendert were going to drag him and Franz down with them.

But when they reached the flight line, they found Neumann and his staff waiting with photographers. Neumann congratulated the men and said he wanted to celebrate their recent successes. In the weeks prior, the Voegl Flight had kept Neumann’s orderly busily painting palm fronds on their girls. In fifteen days they had scored a squadron’s worth of victories. Franz had chalked up nine victories, upping his total to fourteen. Swallisch had added fifteen victories, doubling his score to thirty. Voegl posted six victories and now had twenty-six overall. Bendert added sixteen, bringing his total to thirty-four, elevating him among the ranks of Marseille and Roedel as one of JG-27’s top ten scorers. With Marseille on leave, the Voegl Flight had become the new “Stars of Africa.”

Voegl arrived wearing a white officer’s hat like Roedel’s and black sun goggles atop its brim. Despite the heat, Bendert wore a fancy green jacket. Franz and Swallisch just wore their everyday attire. The photographers steered the group to Swallisch’s plane because Swallisch had unique victory marks—his rudder bore thirty hash marks and the black silhouettes of two ships that he had sunk on the Eastern Front.
Voegl joked to Franz that no one would want to be seen by his naked rudder and ordered Franz to paint it up. Franz nodded with reluctance while wondering what Roedel would think.

The photographers arranged the men in a lineup along the plane’s rear fuselage. But Swallisch let his arms hang, looking dejected. “Laugh!” a photographer urged. “Tell a joke!” the other said. Franz said something to Swallisch to make him laugh as the shutter snapped.

When Neumann shook each pilot’s hand, Franz and Swallisch knew this was their chance to reveal their suspicions of Voegl and Bendert. But they said nothing. They knew it was too late and they were already guilty by association. As other pilots walked past the photo shoot, their glares did all the talking.

That night, while Neumann’s orderly painted palm fronds, in the squadron bars around the airfield, the unit’s pilots debated the Voegl Flight’s meteoric rise. Among the squadrons of I Group, Marseille’s group, some pilots gave the “Voegl Flight” a mocking new name: “the Expert Flight.” They, too, knew that victories were the key to the Knight’s Cross, fan mail, and a ticket home. At the time, Germany had no bigger heroes than her fighter pilots, and even the heroes had a hierarchy according to their scores. The I Group pilots saw the Voegl Flight’s soaring claims as Voegl’s underhanded attempt for his group to compete against theirs. Had Marseille been there, he might have told his comrades otherwise, for he was the master at scoring multiple victories, day after day. But he was on leave in Germany. In his absence, a few I Group pilots decided: “the Expert Flight” was cheating and had to be stopped.