A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (50 page)

Franz thought it might be more merciful to shoot his friend. Looking to his side for his pistol, he realized it was still hanging inside the shack. A calm voice shook his attention. It was Luetzow, who knelt next to Steinhoff. As buckets of water were dumped on his thrashing friend, Luetzow leaned close to Steinhoff’s face, where his ear had been. Luetzow whispered something to Steinhoff that no one else
could hear. Steinhoff grew still. Luetzow moved out of the way so the men could pour water, more gently now, on Steinhoff. Franz saw Luetzow turn away, hiding his face. He saw Luetzow, “the most stoic and disciplined man” he had ever known, start to cry, without sound, just tears. Franz began to cry. Everyone around him began to cry.
⁸

Wiping his eyes with his ash-covered hands, Franz ran to the phone and called the hospital again, pleading with them to hurry. The ambulance had already left. It would take an hour for the medics to arrive, their progress delayed by roadblocks and destruction in the streets. All the while, Luetzow huddled close to Steinhoff, his hand on Steinhoff’s shoulder, his face next to Steinhoff’s charred body that smelled horrid and burned. Luetzow kept talking to him, repeating the name “Ursula,” the name of Steinhoff’s wife. Luetzow whispered to Steinhoff even as Franz and the medics lifted Steinhoff onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. When the ambulance raced away, Luetzow broke down and wandered away.

Minutes later, Galland and the others landed. Franz met Galland by his plane and told him where the ambulance had taken Steinhoff. Galland jumped into his BMW and raced to the hospital, alone. Farther down the flight line, the Count, in tears, asked his mechanic where they had laid Steinhoff’s body. The mechanic said that Steinhoff was somehow still alive, which sent the Count into a frenzy. He sprinted for the alert shack, trembling at what he knew he needed to do. Franz had heard the story from Roedel, of the Count’s promise to Steinhoff, and intercepted him at the shack. The Count demanded to know where they had taken Steinhoff. Before Franz could stop the others from revealing where Steinhoff had been taken, someone told the Count. Before the Count left for the hospital, Franz told him, “Luetzow says he’s going to live.” The Count looked at Franz with surprise and took off running, his pistol belt bobbing.

At the hospital, the doctors would not let the Count near Steinhoff, no matter how hard he pleaded. The Count saw Steinhoff
through the glass of an operating room. He knew he could barge in and do what had to be done, but another thought fought within his mind, the notion that Steinhoff might yet live. The Count left the hospital, distraught, but with his holster sealed.

That night, Franz and his comrades gathered in the orphanage, their faces ashen. They toasted Steinhoff with cognac, bottled in the First World War. Then they drank another and another. Luetzow was absent, still missing. Franz and the others were certain Steinhoff would never survive. Barkhorn gathered Steinhoff’s effects and his medals so his wife, Ursula, could one day receive them.
⁹

Galland watched from the shadows. As the pilots departed, Galland called over Franz and Hohagen. Franz leaned drunkenly on Hohagen, who was sober, unwilling to drink after his head wound. Galland quietly reminded them that their work was not over until the war was over. Galland’s face twitched with grief, but he kept his emotions from welling over by focusing on his duty. He told Hohagen that he had promoted him to assume Steinhoff’s position as operations officer, effectively second in command, equal with Luetzow. Galland turned to Franz and said he was giving him Hohagen’s job as technical officer. Franz nodded and tried to straighten up.

When Franz stumbled into the silent streets and plodded toward his adopted home, he was no longer just a pilot in the Squadron of Experts. He had become the fourth in command of the world’s most elite flying squadron. At that moment, Franz would have been happy to have never worn an Air Force uniform if he could have avoided what he had seen that afternoon. Franz had heard that his brother had died without suffering. But if Steinhoff lived, Franz knew that the war had just turned the best man among them into a monster.
If he lives
, Franz thought,
Steinhoff will die over and over again, every day
. On the walk home, Franz stopped to vomit. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he hoped his host family would be asleep so they would not ask, “What’s wrong?”

FOUR DAYS LATER, APRIL 22, 1945

Alone, Galland walked on a path to Goering’s chalet on the snowy, muddy mountainside called the Obersalzburg. To his left, Galland saw the village of Berchtesgaden in the valley to the north. To the south loomed massive Kehlstein Mountain, where Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest retreat perched above the clouds like a small castle on the mountain’s peak. Air Force soldiers with rifles emerged from Goering’s home and hurried past Galland carrying large wooden boxes. Other soldiers, empty-handed, passed Galland and entered the chalet, avoiding eye contact.

Galland had expected the worst when he heard that Goering had summoned him. Two days prior, on Hitler’s birthday, the dictator had all but announced his intention to die in Berlin. With Soviet armies fewer than ten miles from his bunker, Hitler had placed Goering in charge of Southern Germany and the armies of any southern territories still standing. Galland believed that Goering, who now wielded absolute power over him, had summoned him to have him killed. A bullet would do what JV-44 had failed to accomplish.

Inside Goering’s home, where the
Reichsmarschall
had once smoked his tall pipe and paraded in togas and a hunter’s lederhosen, Goering supervised the removal of his art collection. His men were whisking priceless paintings out the door and ushering them to a bunker in the forest. Galland had expected Goering to be foaming or sinister. Instead, the
Reichsmarschall
struck him as “deeply depressed.” Goering received Galland with civility. He asked with genuine interest about JV-44’s progress. Galland told Goering that two days prior the unit had launched its most jets—fifteen—on one mission. They had scored their most victories that day, shooting down three B-26 medium bombers and damaging seven others. Galland reluctantly told Goering about Steinhoff’s crash.

Goering showed traces of sympathy. He told Galland why he had summoned him. He wished to acknowledge that he had been wrong.
He admitted that Galland had been right about the 262 when he said it belonged with the fighter pilots, not the bomber pilots. Then Galland’s greatest enemy said, “I envy you, Galland, for going into action. I wish I were a few years younger and less bulky. If I were, I would gladly put myself under your command.”
¹⁰

Galland departed Goering’s chalet smirking, eager to tell Luetzow that even though the war was lost, the Man of Ice and the Mutineers had won a battle.

TWO DAYS LATER, APRIL 24, 1945, EARLY AFTERNOON

The airfield had never been so busy. Jet after jet was landing on Munich’s grass as planes and pilots poured in to join JV-44. Units were folding, and the Americans were closing in on Lechfeld, causing the jet pilots who remained to come running to the last intact squadron.

Franz walked the flight line with a clipboard. As technical officer his job was to review the battle-worthiness of each new batch of aircraft, to know how many hours their engines had logged and what quirks each possessed. Thirteen jets had arrived from Bomber Squadron KG-51. Sixteen flew in from the jet school at Lechfeld. Franz chuckled when the instructors and commander he had known reported to him, saluting, to brief him on the condition of their aircraft.

With forty jets now entrusted to him, Franz had his hands full. He was so busy that he had allowed another pilot to fly
White 3
on a mission that morning. Franz had downed as many as four bombers in
White 3
during the weeks prior, a B-17 or two and several B-26s. He no longer watched them crash to claim them as victories. In fact, Franz had not claimed a victory since the prior August. To him, his score no longer mattered. He wanted only to do his job.

A headache followed Franz around the field as he tried to work. The headache was a young, blond-haired lieutenant with a meek face. The boy had said his last name was Pirchan. He was an Austrian who
had just come from jet school but brought no plane of his own. Hohagen had steered Pirchan to Franz. The youngster pestered Franz. He begged Franz to let him take a jet up just for one flight, so he could say he flew combat with JV-44 before the war ended.

“No chance,” Franz said. “There’s no time for glory flying. Besides, you don’t want to go up there anyway.” Pirchan dropped his arms. “It’s for your own good,” Franz added, dismissing Pirchan with a wave.

Around 2:00
P.M.
, the phone rang at the alert shack. The orphanage was calling with a mission—American medium bombers had been spotted approaching Munich. Eager to escape the headaches of his new job, Franz convinced Hohagen to put him on the roster.

Franz reported to Luetzow’s jet, where he found Luetzow, the Count, Barkhorn, and two others. Luetzow was to lead the mission in Galland’s absence. Luetzow reviewed the flight plan with his pilots. Franz saw that the Man of Ice was in high spirits—not to the point of smiling, but at least he wasn’t frowning. Fresh in Luetzow’s mind was the news of the day. Galland had received a call from Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. Hitler’s minister of armaments, Albert Speer, wanted JV-44 to arrest Goering. More importantly, Speer’s orders to Galland stipulated, “I ask you and your comrades to do everything as discussed to prevent Goering from flying anywhere.” Deep within his bunker, Hitler and Speer had suspected Goering would try to represent Germany and negotiate the country’s surrender to the Americans.

“What are you going to do?” Luetzow had asked Galland, nearly smiling.

“Ignore the order and stay with the unit,” Galland laughed. Hearing this, Luetzow’s frown had lifted.

As Luetzow briefed Franz and the others, hope flickered in his brown eyes. He knew the war was just days from its end. News had escaped Berlin that Hitler was staying in the doomed city to die as eight Soviet Armies tightened their noose of encirclement. The SS had arrested Goering because Galland had declined to do so. With his
enemy Goering under arrest and Hitler surrounded by Soviet Red Stars, Luetzow felt a surge of optimism. All he wanted was to outlive the war, his honor intact. To him, this meant serving until the arrival of peace.

When Franz and the others followed Luetzow into the air, they flew over the charred wreckage of Steinhoff’s jet, which had been dragged to the side of the field. Luetzow had been right about Steinhoff. Nearly a week after his crash Steinhoff was still alive. JV-44’s ground officer, Major Roell, who had saved the American bomber crewman in Munich, had visited Steinhoff in the basement of a hospital. There beneath dangling lightbulbs, Steinhoff lay, bandaged head to toe with only holes for his eyes and mouth. But he was alert and his mind was functioning.

“How are you doing?” Roell had asked Steinhoff, in the hospital room.

“Fine,” Steinhoff had replied. Roell knew this was Steinhoff’s way of saying: “Miserable!”
¹¹
Roell told Franz and the others that Steinhoff’s eyelids were gone. He could not blink or shut his eyes.

The flight was just northwest of Munich at twenty thousand feet when one of the pilots radioed Luetzow to say he was turning back with mechanical troubles. Franz watched the man peel off, reducing the flight to five jets. A short while later, Franz saw a bank of
White 3
’s gauges flickering. Looking to the right of his stick, he squinted at the two vertical columns of round, red-ringed gauges. The left column reflected the left engine’s vitals and the right column the right engine’s. All at once the gauges in the right column surged in unison and did not retreat. Certain that he was on the verge of catastrophic engine failure, Franz nursed the throttle back on the right engine.

“Sir, I think I’m losing an engine,” Franz told Luetzow. Luetzow cautioned Franz not to take any chances and to return to base. Franz reluctantly peeled off and steered for Munich. With the flight reduced to four jets, Luetzow continued with the mission.

On the ride home, Franz heard Luetzow’s flight call to the orphanage
over the radio. The flight reported contact with enemy bombers some fifty miles northwest of Munich. The bombers were on course to strike one of the last remaining fuel depots in the woods near the town of Schrobenhausen.

Luetzow announced he was beginning his attack. He called out enemy fighters and told the others to “look up,” because P-47s were diving on them. Franz had heard that the Man of Ice flew without emotion, and now believed it. Luetzow’s tone never changed. Luetzow ordered the formation to split up. Someone shouted that he was being fired upon.

Franz found himself leaning forward and checking his tail even though he was far from the fight.

Franz heard someone say he was trying for another firing run. Someone said he was running for the clouds. Franz wanted to turn around to help his comrades. He tapped his gauges, but the surging needles did not subside.

Luetzow’s voice cut across the radio. He was taking hits. Someone shouted for Luetzow to take evasive maneuvers.

Seconds of silence followed. The voice of the Count crackled and said they were turning for home. Franz leaned back with relief. If they had lost someone, Franz knew they would have been shouting to one another to look for a parachute. Seconds more passed. The Count called Luetzow. Luetzow did not reply. Franz heard the pilots talking among themselves. He knew Luetzow was with them. The others were able to see him on the far right edge of the formation, to the south.

“Sir, want to form up?” someone asked. Luetzow did not reply.

“Is there a problem, sir?” The Count asked. Still no reply came from Luetzow.

“Colonel Luetzow, want to form up?” someone asked again. No answer.

“Sir, if there is a problem with your radio, rock your wings,” someone offered.