A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (52 page)

A mechanic raced toward Galland in a
kettenkrad
. Without stopping, the mechanic reached an arm out to Galland, who grabbed the mechanic’s forearm and swung aboard the vehicle. The mechanic steered for the alert shack while Galland hung on. The P-47s’ bullets tossed the dirt around the
kettenkrad
but missed both the mechanic and Galland, who both dove for cover when they reached the shack.
Franz saw
White 3
sitting alone on the field as the fighters ripped overhead shooting everything but her. Over the noise of gunfire and explosions, Franz shouted to Galland that he would never lend him a plane again.

“You don’t play well with borrowed toys!” Franz joked. Galland looked back sheepishly.

A DAY LATER, APRIL 27, 1945

When Franz entered the hangar to check on
White 3
, the mechanics quickly turned down the radio. Franz knew they were listening to the enemy’s broadcasts. Franz told the men not to worry and to turn the radio back up. He wanted to hear the truth just as they did. He wanted to know when to go home or attempt to surrender. They raised the volume. A German translation of a broadcast from London could be heard. “The forces of liberation have joined hand,” the broadcaster asserted. The Americans and the Soviets had met at the Elbe River two days earlier, splitting Germany in half.

A mechanic brought Franz papers to sign. The mechanics had fixed
White 3
overnight after Galland had brought her back with a Thunderbolt’s bullets in her right engine and bullet fragments in the cockpit, the same that had struck Galland’s kneecap. Franz scribbled his signature. With Steinhoff and Luetzow gone and Galland’s leg in a plaster cast, Franz had told Hohagen he was willing to lead what flights remained.

Franz turned to find Pirchan waiting for him. The youngster was dressed in his daily uniform, not his flying suit. He said he had come to say good-bye. He was leaving the unit and planned to surrender near his home at Graz. Franz said he knew Graz. He expected Pirchan to pester him, having seen
White 3
emerge fresh from repair. Instead, Pirchan turned to leave. “What will you do after the war?” Franz asked.

“Study engineering, I hope,” Pirchan said.

Franz had considered doing the same thing, wanting to resume his studies. He wished Pirchan luck.

When Pirchan began to walk away, Franz realized he had truly come just to say good-bye.

“One flight,” Franz shouted at Pirchan’s back.

“Really?” Pirchan asked.

Franz nodded.
^*

Franz told Pirchan he could take
White 3
up for one combat mission with JV-44. But Franz had one condition. “You go up, circle a few times, and land,” he told Pirchan. “I’ll sign your logbook so it will count as a combat mission.” The young Austrian could not stop nodding. Franz knew that the skies were safer than usual. The American heavies had stopped bombing Germany two days prior.

Pirchan suited up and sat in the cockpit. Franz reviewed the instruments to ensure Pirchan knew what he was doing. He seemed proficient. Franz watched him light up the engines and taxi from the hangar. Franz lit a cigarette at the edge of the Lufthansa terminal he had known in 1937. Inside the lounge where the laughter of travelers once echoed, Franz could only hear dripping water. Where radial engines had once rumbled, announcing arriving flights from exotic cities, he now heard the whine of
White 3
’s engines as Pirchan launched to the east.

Franz stood up quickly. He thought he saw the jet’s engines flare, as if Pirchan had panicked and given her too much power too quickly. But when
White 3
’s landing gear sucked up into her belly, Franz sat down.

Pirchan banked the jet left toward the north and began to orbit the field. The young pilot had barely started turning when Franz
heard
White 3
’s engines suddenly cut to silence. Franz watched the jet dip beneath the roof of the terminal. He tracked it between the roof beams and through the terminal’s collapsed walls until
White 3
dove behind the rooftops and steeples of a village. A metallic crack echoed. Black smoke billowed. Franz stood, staring, his mouth agape. His cigarette smoldered all the way up to his fingers. When the cigarette burned him, he flicked it away and knew he was not dreaming.

A mechanic started a truck and Franz hopped in. They raced to the village of Oberweissenfeld, north of the airfield. Pirchan had crashed between two houses. The people had him out already, lying there on a mattress, right beside the airplane. Pirchan’s head had slammed into the fighter’s gun sight, and his brain was exposed. Franz held him as he thrashed with pain. Pirchan asked Franz to tell his mother and sister good-bye for him. Franz promised he would. He gave the young fighter pilot a shot of pain reliever and the boy died in his arms.

LATER THAT DAY

Franz entered Galland’s lodge and found the general reclining in a chair, his whole right leg in plaster. Galland told Franz he had just missed it—the SS had just departed after coming to arrest him. The SS had said that a Catholic revolt had begun in Munich. The revolutionaries were broadcasting over the radio that their fellow Catholic, General Galland, was with them. Galland told Franz he was flattered but had been unaware of the uprising. The SS only left him alone, Galland explained, when they saw he was crippled. Galland planned to head south to a hospital at Lake Tegernsee where Steinhoff had been taken.

Franz reported Pirchan’s death and told Galland he saw no further need to fly or fight now that the Americans had stopped their bombing
campaign. “I’d like permission to leave the unit,” Franz said. Galland told Franz he could leave but asked him to stay, one more day. Galland revealed that orders had come from Berlin even as the Soviets were fighting through the city’s limits. Goering’s successor wanted him to fly JV-44 to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to continue fighting. Galland said he would ignore the order.

The general lowered his voice to a whisper. He told Franz he was planning to deliver JV-44 to the Americans before the war ended. Franz knew this meant a defection and not just of one man, but of the whole unit. Galland was certain the Americans would soon be fighting the Soviets and would want the 262s to study the jets or use them in combat. Galland planned to surrender JV-44’s aircraft, pilots, and operational knowledge to the Americans. He suggested that JV-44 could even fly for them.

Franz admired Galland’s optimism but could not act enthusiastic. He had never wanted to fight for Germany, let alone another nation.

Galland saw Franz’s disappointment and asked him to fly one more mission for him, as a comrade. Galland needed time to send a message to the Americans, but he worried that the jets would be destroyed on the ground before he could arrange the defection. He had decided to ask his pilots to ferry every flyable plane to Salzburg, Austria, the next morning, where they would be safer. Franz knew that if the SS caught wind of Galland’s plan, they would execute every man in the unit as a collaborator.

“I’ll go as far as Salzburg,” Franz told Galland.

Galland smiled. “Then where will you go?”

Franz said he had no idea. Galland assured Franz that the Americans would be looking for him. Franz did not understand why they would want him. Galland reminded him, “They’ll want you for what you have up here,” he said, pointing to his head.

Galland saluted up at Franz and Franz saluted down at the seated general, much like their first meeting in Sicily. They both knew that JV-44 had succeeded if they had stopped bombs from destroying one
more house or maiming one more child or killing one more mother in a factory. The unit had not failed. It had simply arrived too late.

“I put you in for the Knight’s Cross weeks ago,” Galland told Franz before he left. “If you stick around it may come through.” The general laughed. He knew it was wishful thinking that a medal would come from Berlin. He also knew Franz’s mind was made up. Franz smiled and walked away.

THE NEXT MORNING, APRIL 28, 1945, AUSTRIA

The instant Franz’s boots landed on the tarmac at Salzburg Airport, he began to plot his escape. He opened a hatch in the jet’s fuselage and shouldered a backpack filled with canned food. He brought no clothes other than the ones he flew in. He looked east, where the sun shined on the white hilltop castle Hohensalzburg. He knew that far beyond that were the Soviets.

Looking west, he saw tall gray mountains with snowy peaks that loomed over the airfield. Franz knew the mountain passes wound south toward Berchtesgaden, where Hitler and Goering once lived. That’s where the Americans were headed. He decided he would rather be a prisoner of the Americans than the Soviets.

At the tower, Franz found Hohagen, the Count, and their comrades. Some of them planned to retreat to the mountains but most planned to stay. Before Franz left Munich, Galland had issued him his discharge papers and a pass authorizing him safe passage through checkpoints. Hohagen asked Franz where he planned to go. Franz said he had decided to walk into the mountains, find a cabin, and wait for the war to end. Hohagen warned Franz that SS soldiers were blocking roads and bridges.

“They’re hanging deserters and anyone they think should be fighting,” Hohagen said. He warned Franz that his papers might not protect him. “Stay with us and wait,” Hohagen said. Franz knew Hohagen
meant “wait for the unit’s defection” but was hesitant to utter the words.
^*
Franz told Hohagen that with Galland laid up the unit could yet be ordered to fly to Czechoslovakia. He was leaving.

“You’re just going to walk?” Hohagen asked. Franz nodded. His plan was to head south a bit then cut west into the mountains. Then something caught Franz’s eye. A
kettenkrad
clinked past while towing one of JV-44’s twenty remaining jets into the woods along the airfield. Franz knew a
kettenkrad
, with its tank tracks, could go anywhere. Hohagen saw Franz eyeing the
kettenkrad
.

“Help yourself when they’re not looking,” Hohagen suggested. “I’ll take the blame. If they give me hell, I can just point to my head.” He and Franz chuckled.

Early the next morning, Franz and Hohagen snuck across the deserted, frost-covered field. Inside a hangar they found a
kettenkrad
, fully fueled. Franz started the vehicle. Over the rattling engine, he reached out his hand. Hohagen shook it with vigor. Franz clunked the vehicle into gear and drove away.

SIX DAYS LATER, MAY 4, 1945

Franz felt uncomfortably alone as he drove the
kettenkrad
west along the narrow, winding road deep within the Alps. The road flowed through a mountain pass, alongside a stream of icy, pale blue water. Clumps of snow clung to the road’s fringes, where pine trees stood creaking in the wind. Every now and then, an abandoned car or truck
lay in a roadside ditch, the victim of winter driving. Franz stopped to siphon gas from the wrecks’ fuel tanks.

Franz had entered the Alps near Hallein, Austria, several days earlier and driven until he found a lodge where other wayward soldiers had congregated. Franz had joined them and lived off his canned food while waiting. On May 1, he and the others crowded around a radio that announced the news they had long expected: Hitler was dead. He had shot himself in his bunker. A day later, Germany’s forces began surrendering, first in Berlin then in Italy, and finally, on May 4, in Bavaria. Having decided it was safe to surrender, Franz had left the lodge and steered his
kettenkrad
back onto the deserted road that led west to Berchtesgaden, where the Americans were rumored to be.

The
kettenkrad
sputtered. Its six tracked wheels ground slowly to a halt. Franz turned to the side of the road and stepped out. A glimpse of the gas gauge confirmed he was out of fuel. He lit a cigarette and grabbed his backpack. He pulled his black logbook from the pack and dropped it into the deep thigh pocket of his leather flying pants. The book was a prized possession of his that documented his 487 combat flights. He removed his holstered pistol from his belt and tossed it into the back of the
kettenkrad
. It could only get him in trouble. Leaving the pistol and empty backpack behind, Franz began walking west in his heavy boots.

Franz looked for road signs to Berchtesgaden, but someone had torn them down. He chain-smoked. Whenever the pines creaked, he stopped, looked, then resumed his trek. The Party’s propaganda had told him the Americans would be vengeful, and after they had worked a prisoner over they would hand him to the French or Soviets for further punishment. Franz hoped this was not true. After his experience in the desert he would have preferred to be a prisoner of the British. Franz passed through a tiny hamlet of a half dozen homes on either side of the swift-flowing stream. There, along the side of the road, he stopped and looked up. Hanging from a telephone pole was a dead German soldier in a gray Army uniform. Franz looked back the way
he had come and thought,
Maybe this was not so smart
. He shook the idea from his mind. The Americans had not done this. They wanted the Germans to surrender, not to run away and keep fighting.

Franz continued. A half a mile later, he came to a split in the road. To his right, the concrete road continued through the mountain pass. To his left, a small wooden bridge led across the stream to a dirt logging road. The logging road hugged the mountainside and was dark with shadows. Franz decided to take the logging road because it was more likely to be deserted.

Franz set out again, his boots now crunching the dirt. Through gaps in the pine trees, he kept his eyes on the bright, flowing stream and the main road beyond the stream, where he expected to see American tanks. Turning a bend, Franz stopped in his tracks. In the path ahead of him stood twenty or more SS soldiers. He instantly recognized them by their camouflage smocks with light green and brown spots. Some were digging in. Others were setting up machine guns over fallen trees and aiming their rifles across the stream toward the main road. A few sat on rocks along the mountainside, smoking and cradling machine pistols. Franz realized they had hung the soldier he had found earlier. It was a message to other Germans to stay away. They had most likely mined the main road and were waiting for the same American tanks Franz had expected to see.