A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (9 page)

BOOK: A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II
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Maak singled out one of his new pilots, an airman named Helmut Beckmann, and began to address him in a loud, sarcastic voice. “Did you manage to deliver your plane undamaged?”

“Yes sir,” Beckmann said.

“Did you land on your wheels or crash on your belly?”

“We did not encounter the enemy,” Beckmann said wisely. Franz found himself hoping Maak did not call on him.

“Are you politically inclined?”

“I was in the air force HJ [Hitler Youth], sir!” Beckmann said.

“I’m not interested in that,” Maak said. “I’m asking if you are a member of The Party?”

“No, sir!”

“Another big plus for you!” Maak smiled. “Keep it up and you’ll do just fine.”
1

“Stigler?” a first lieutenant said calmly, looking around. Shorter and slighter than Maak, the officer seemed serenely confident. He had thick black hair, slicked back, and a square, boyish face. His narrow eyes beamed a sensitive, concerned look. The Knight’s Cross dangled from his neck, over the open collar of his crumpled tan shirt. Franz took one look at the thick, black cross as it hung from a red-and-white ribbon and decided that he, too, would one day wear the Cross. Franz clicked his heels and began to salute but stopped when the lieutenant thrust forward an outstretched hand and said, “Welcome to Squadron 4. Follow me.”

Franz grinned. He shouldered his bag, relieved that he was not stuck with Maak. Leaning against the door frame, Schroer wished Franz luck.

Outside the shed, the officer flopped his faded white cap on his head. He introduced himself as Lieutenant Gustav Roedel. Franz would learn that Roedel was from Merseburg in Eastern Germany, near Poland. They were the same age. Franz joined Roedel in his
kubelwagen
for a tour of the base. An enlisted man drove while Roedel explained to Franz that three months earlier the airfield had been owned by the British, before the “Desert Fox” took it back for the Germans. Franz knew the “Desert Fox” was General Erwin Rommel, the commander of the Afrika Korps.

“Can I ask a strange question, Lieutenant?” Franz said.

Roedel nodded.

“What was Maak getting at by asking that pilot if he was a Party member?”

“Never heard someone in uniform speak so brazenly, huh?” Roedel said.

Franz nodded. Roedel explained the rumors that had floated since the Battle of Britain that The Party was going to send “political officers”
to infiltrate Air Force squadrons to look for dissention. “Maak hates the thought of that, as we all do,” Roedel said. “Let me ask you this—are you a Party member, Stigler?”

“No,” Franz said. “I don’t need a politician to make me go to war.”

Roedel smiled and nodded.

Roedel, Maak, and the others knew that any fighter pilot who was a Party member was a rarity and, most likely, a fanatic. To be a Nazi in the German Air Force, one needed to have joined The Party before enlisting or being drafted, usually at a very young age. Once a man joined the Air Force, the German Defense Law of 1938 forbid him from Party membership.
*
German civilians could join The Party at any time, as could the SS and the Gestapo. But in the German Air Force, a Nazi fighter pilot was a rarity. It was Roedel’s philosophy, like Maak’s, to spot such pilots right away, and to keep an eye on them.

When Roedel’s driver passed a group of 109s whose cowlings sported leopard heads and the faces of spooked natives surrounded by the outline of Africa, Roedel indicated to Franz that the planes belonged to Squadron 3, home to Germany’s most famous pilot of the time—Lieutenant Hans-Joachim Marseille, the twenty-two-year-old ace known as the “virtuoso of all fighter pilots.” He had already destroyed more than fifty enemy planes.

“You’ve heard stories of him?” Roedel said.

Franz nodded. He had read everything he could about “The Star of Africa,” as the newspapers called Marseille.

Roedel told Franz the whispers of Marseille’s free-spirited rebelliousness were true. Once, as a joke, Marseille ran over Schroer’s tent with his
kubelwagen
. Another time, when passed up for a promotion, he strafed the tent area of his squadron leader. And he had crashed more than one plane into the desert by flying on the edge.

“But despite all the trouble he creates for his commanders,” Roedel said, “he is simply too good to ground.”

The driver slowed the vehicle to a stop in front of a 109 marked like those around it, with a red and white crest on its cowling. Roedel told Franz that these were the planes of their unit, II Group. The crest on each plane was the logo of the city of Berlin, the unit’s home city. The crest was white with a red outline and in the center was a painted black bear, standing, with its tongue lapping. Roedel explained that there were three squadrons in II Group. There was his squadron—Squadron 4—as well as Squadron 5 and Squadron 6. Behind the planes, Franz saw their squadron’s headquarters—a wooden shack, several large tents, and a flagpole where a flag hung limply.

Roedel opened a small door and exited the car, indicating for Franz to remain seated. He told the driver to help Franz get situated in his new home. Roedel walked to his 109, a fighter with a yellow number 4 painted on its flanks. Franz noticed that Roedel’s fighter wore no victory marks on its tail. With Roedel strapping in and out of earshot, Franz asked the driver, incredulous, how Roedel could wear the Knight’s Cross but not be an ace. The driver grinned at the chance to put another rookie in his place. He told Franz that Roedel had thirty-seven victories, some gained in Spain during their civil war, some in Poland, some in Greece, some over the Soviet Union, and the rest in the desert, including one the day before.

“He’s one of our best,” the driver said. “He just chooses not to flaunt it.”

The driver clunked the
kubelwagen
into gear and pulled away. In the backseat, Franz suddenly felt very stupid.

TWO DAYS LATER, APRIL 9, 1942

 

The sand-caked tent rustled under a blast of frigid night air. Inside the tent, Franz lay on his cot, awakened by the flapping canvas. He fished
for his cigarette lighter, flicked it to life, and read his wristwatch by the dull glow of the flame. It was 4
A.M.
He huddled back under his blanket, shivering.

The desert was bitterly cold until the sun arose. Franz remembered that he was due on the flight line at 6
A.M.
for his first mission, having flown an orientation flight at the same time the day before. The aces of JG-27 liked to break in the rookies quickly, and Franz preferred this to sitting around.

Quickly he rose and donned his tan desert regulation shirt and black leather flying jacket. Showers were only permitted every few days, as water was precious, so Franz knew not to bother. He stepped into heavy, pale blue flying trousers with on each thigh a large map pocket that extended below his kneecap. He shook out his thick, black leather flying boots to check for scorpions, but only sand poured out. He zipped up his boots and grabbed his rosary from a wooden crate that served as his nightstand. His mother had given Franz the rosary after his confirmation. A silver crucifix dangled from the necklace of small, rectangular black beads. Franz slid his rosary into his jacket’s pocket, over his heart, and slipped out of his tent.

In the predawn darkness he wandered through the spartan tent city that was JG-27’s desert home. All the tents looked alike. Locating the mess tent at last, Franz ducked inside the flaps and felt the immediate warmth of oil stoves and lively conversation as a handful of pilots ate oatmeal and drank hot coffee. Roedel sipped his coffee in the tent corner while reviewing a battle map. Each squadron sat together like a team. At full strength, a squadron mustered sixteen pilots and planes, but quantities of each were always short due to losses. The pilots’ morale remained high, however—they thought they could still win the war.

After slopping his plate full of oatmeal and toast on the chow line, Franz sat down, his mess tin before him. After one bite he was taken aback. His oatmeal tasted like dirt. His coffee tasted like sulfur. The cooks had used the usual brown water to make both.

JG-27 had many Bavarians and Austrians among its pilots, so, like
citizens of the same state, Franz found he could make small talk with them. Many of them had been in Africa for a year already. One of the veterans told Franz the standing joke.

“A captured Tommy pilot asked his German captor, ‘What do you want with Africa, anyway?’ The German replied, ‘The same thing you do!’ Upon further thought, both men shrugged, not knowing what that was.”

The veterans roared in laughter. Franz faked a laugh. He did not understand where they were coming from, at least not yet.

Franz had barely begun to eat when Roedel stood and announced a phrase Franz would learn to dread: “Fire Free.” It meant the men could smoke now and that the mealtime was over. Everybody left the mess hall at once. Franz was the last to pick up his dishes. He went to the buffet, where a cook was cleaning up. “Listen,” he said. “Save something for me. Otherwise I’ll starve to death here!”

Roedel waited outside for Franz. “What are you doing suited up? You don’t fly until afternoon.”

Franz groaned. Nervousness had made him forget that the night before Roedel had pulled him from a dawn flight and assigned him to a 2
P.M.
mission. Afternoon missions were quieter and safer because it was the hottest part of the day, when few wanted to fly.

Franz paced around the base for several hours. By mid-morning it was already a hundred degrees, but he couldn’t handle the thought of going back to his tent and simply sitting around. He kept pacing, pausing only to put a T-shirt over his face to ward off swarms of black flies. After lunch he reported to Roedel at the squadron shack and found him suited up to fly. Roedel said he would personally be taking Franz on his first mission, a “free hunt,” where the two of them would fly into enemy territory and look for trouble. Together they walked toward the flight line. In the west, the Green Mountains looked yellow under the blazing sun. Upon reaching his fighter, Franz saw that a white number 12 had been painted on its flank. Suddenly “his girl” had a name—
White 12
.

Roedel sat on the tire of Franz’s plane, just in front of the wing, and told Franz to take a seat. Roedel looked at Franz as a father might look at a son. “Every single time you go up, you’ll be outnumbered,” he said.

Franz nodded, wishing Roedel was exaggerating but knowing better.

“Those odds may make a man want to fight dirty to survive,” Roedel said, squeezing the bunched-up leather gloves in his hands. “But let what I’m about to say to you act as a warning. Honor is everything here.”

Franz shrugged, unsure where Roedel was going with the talk. “What will you do, Stigler, for instance, if you find your enemy floating in a parachute?”

“I guess I’ve never thought that far ahead yet,” Franz said.

“If I ever see or hear of you shooting at a man in a parachute,” Roedel said, “I will shoot you down myself.”

The words stung.
*

“You follow the rules of war for
you
, not for your enemy,” Roedel said. “
You fight by rules to keep your humanity.
” Roedel slapped a glove against his palm. “Stick close and we’ll come home together.” He hopped from the tire. The lesson was over.

A ground crewman helped Franz strap into his parachute that sat on his seat in the cockpit. Shutting the square, glass canopy hood, Franz felt a new sense of dread, as if he had shut his own coffin. Franz pushed the throttle forward and fired a thumbs-up to two ground crewmen, who spun the engine crank. The engine sputtered. The plane belched a snort of white smoke. The propeller began spinning.

 

H
EIGHT MEANT EVERYTHING
to a fighter pilot in the desert. There were few clouds to block the sun, so anytime his opponent looked up, he was blinded. Franz wore sunglasses but still held a hand over his eyes, against his flight helmet, as he flew off Roedel’s left wing.

Roedel’s plane bumped in turbulence. The Berlin Bear on its nose seeming to dance. Franz looked out over the desert beneath his wings. The ground alternated in shades of brown and tan that indicated gullies and rocky promontories. To the north lay the scrubby green coastal hills and beyond that the pale blue Mediterranean Sea.

The Desert Air Force’s American-built Curtiss P-40 fighters usually motored along at eighteen thousand feet, so Roedel led Franz higher, to twenty-five thousand feet, meandering between favorite hunting spots. Franz followed Roedel. Both pilots scanned the brown earth for the enemy aircraft’s reddish-tan wings. They flew over the main battlefront, marked only by smoke wisps from exploding artillery shells. The line ran southward from the ocean into the desert.

As they motored east, Roedel’s voice crackled over the radio. He pointed out the British port of Tobruk to the north. Franz saw the flat, white city nestled around the ocean in the hazy distance. Tobruk was the strategic prize of North Africa, a door from which supplies and fuel could flow from the sea to the front lines.

BOOK: A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II
4.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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