Of Knights and Dogfights Read online

  “I finally got rid of your unreliable persona and you want to invite yourself back into my company? I think not.”

  Willi was beaming, his face with a tropical tan nearly radiating with happiness. “You’re not mad, are you?”

  “Of course not. I’m happy for you. They should have long ago allowed you to fly on your own, not as someone’s wingman. You’re too talented for that.”

  “You still have more bars on your rudder.”

  “I said you were too talented to fly as a wingman; I never said you were more talented than me.”

  Willi leaped on top of his friend and wrestled him to the ground, tousling his hair in the process until both broke into a laughing fit.

  “Hey, have you gotten any letters from Rudi lately?” Johann asked out of blue, smoothing out his letter to Mina that he was working on and which received a few wrinkles as a result of their horseplay.

  “No. You?”

  Johann shook his head pensively. “He promised that he would write as we were saying our goodbyes.”

  “Oh well. Brigitte said she would write too.”

  “I still wonder how he’s faring there, on the Channel Coast.”

  “Probably faring there with my Brigitte.”

  Johann play-punched Willi on his arm, grateful for the timely jest. They hadn’t heard from Rudi for a few months; Johann only hoped that their friend was still alive.

  Eleven

  Eastern Front, June 1941

  * * *

  Rudi shut his eyes in silent fury, forlorn and powerless, defeated by the roar of engines that had filled the air around him. He wished he didn’t hear it; he wished to stuff his ears with wax just to shut the familiar music of the Stuka dive bombers from penetrating his restless mind. They were off to battle, to make history. He was confined to his tent and rightfully so.

  It was bound to happen, he tried to convince himself on multiple occasions when tearless sobs began to choke him at the sight of his squadron disappearing into a wind-washed sky, radiant after the recent storm. His deception would have been revealed eventually and there would be hell to pay. Squeezing his eyes with one hand, Rudolf cursed the day when he allowed a sympathetic pilot to offer him an open palm with a few white pills in it. For your nerves. It’ll help; you’ll see.

  Why did he listen to him? Because the pilot had survived the Spanish campaign without a single injury. Because the pilot had nerves made of steel and marksmanship skills matched barely by few. Because he had a view straight into Rudi’s heart it seemed and accepted that heart’s weakness with an intimate understanding of a patient, who had been suffering from the same shameful disease. Because he had remarked in passing, with the wink of a conspirator, that his brother was some big shot in the SS and the pills came “straight from the facility.” Experimental stuff but so what? It works just fine; I tell you. There were so many similar “becauses” at which Rudi so hopelessly clawed and all in the fear of admitting the painful truth to himself. He always wished to be a pilot, yes, but he was never made to be a combat pilot. He was just not the right type. Too weak-minded. Too cowardly. Too everything that a Stuka dive bomber flier couldn’t possibly be.

  After his first encounter with the enemy flak, he began dropping his load from a ridiculous height, not finding in himself the courage to plummet down to the necessary five hundred feet. He made an enemy of not just one gunner, at whom he bellowed over the R/T to shoot – Du verdammte Idiot! – and to hell with the Messerschmitt that the gunner feared to hit along with the Hurricane on his tail. He started acting out in front of the commanders just to be restricted from flying and be confined to quarters. He began catching unfinished sentences and mistrustful looks exchanged behind his back. He was heading straight into the infantry at this rate; yet, a simple infantryman’s fate suddenly didn’t appear to be such an unfortunate affair. Anything, but that deadly flak hitting precisely at the underbelly, igniting that coffin with wings at once – a ghastly scene which still played in front of his eyes, repeated daily from a safe distance – Rudi knew better than to come closer. He was heading straight to a penal battalion, perhaps, but anything was better at this point than the overwhelming fear of being burned alive, which had seeped into his very bones and spread out its gangrenous poison all over.

  And then, “that mad fellow Helmut,” as he was affectionately called in the unit, invariably with a measure of awe and respect in one’s voice, appeared out of thin air one ghostly afternoon after a mission, steadied Rudi’s trembling hands in his, helped him light his cigarette and offered a solution, which soon became a habit. But where “experimental stuff” and invariably reliable Pervitin, used in its absence, became a salvation in combat, it didn’t do much for the nightmares to follow and Helmut, with the same languid grace in his voice, offered Rudi yellow pills from some other stash of his – again, “straight from the facility.” First-grade morphine. You’ll sleep like a baby.

  Rudi indeed slept just fine. And now, he flew with ease rivaling that of the best of aces, completing his dives at such angles and low altitudes that his comrades clapped in awe as he climbed out of his cockpit after the mission. Even the dreadful flak had lost its power over him, it seemed. The spell was broken. Drugs simply numbed his emotions to the point where he moved like an automaton, following the instructions from his Stuka manual in such a manner that it would make the people who wrote it, proud.

  Elevator at cruise position. Rudder trip at cruise position. Contact altimeter on. Contact altimeter set to release altitude. Supercharger set at automatic. Throttle fully closed. Cooler flaps closed. Dive brakes open. Stuka’s nose turns down, diving; the bomb is released; recovery – another bar on his rudder. With the bitter power of Pervitin on his tongue, he felt good, strong, God-like. Its powdery poison, surging through his veins, transformed him into a fearless warrior with mocking disregard for everyone’s life, including his own. He had stopped mourning his fallen comrades openly, with tears and instead began preaching about fatalism and ultimate sacrifice before the Fatherland with owl-like wisdom about him. He ceased to care for people in tanks or airfields on which his bombs rained with envious precision. He started seeing them as targets, as new bars on his rudder and it suited him just fine. But then, due to a cruel twist of fate, during one of the sorties, his vision went completely black and he would have most definitely crashed if it wasn’t for his unit leader who led him to safety through the radio, while Rudi balanced precariously on the verge of losing consciousness.

  The Staffel physician, a tired looking man in his forties, took his vitals, scrutinized his eyes long and hard before asking in a straightforward manner, “what are you taking, young fellow?”

  “Nothing, Herr Doktor.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you know how many men, just in this JG, we’ve lost to this ‘nothing’ of yours? Four. Two crashed, losing consciousness from the sharp change of altitudes – much like you almost did; one died of a heart attack and the third one fell asleep and never woke up. Do you want to join the statistics?”

  “No, Herr Doktor.”

  “No? Then do yourself a favor and clear your head before you kill yourself. I’m giving you one more chance and if this situation repeats itself, be sure, I’ll report you to the Staffelkapitän so fast that you won’t know what hit you.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Doktor. Thank you, Herr Doktor.”

  He did try to clear his head; he honestly set out on a sortie without the aid of the small round circle that conjured a fearless superhuman out of a trembling nobody. In a sweat-soaked spasm of terror, he found it to be even worse than in the very beginning. It seemed to him as though the enemy knew him to be a mere sham, an imposter, flying without protection and were shooting at him from every possible angle, riddling his aircraft with bullets while he struggled to release even one bomb in their general direction. Dripping with sweat, he landed heavily onto the airfield, mumbled something incoherent to his unit leader and rushed t
o Helmut’s side while their bombers were being rearmed for the next sortie.

  “Do you have it with you?” He asked desperately and out of breath.

  Helmut grinned deviously, delightedly, not bothering to ask for a clarification. Rudi’s mad, glistening brown eyes of a terrified hare pleaded their case better than any words would. Regarding Rudi with a certain measure of amusement through grayish ringlets of cigarette smoke, Helmut discreetly maneuvered a pill into his hand and Rudi felt God-like again. Fearless and calm, just like Helmut, with nerves of steel and the marksmanship of a devil.

  Take off. Gain altitude. Run in on target. Maneuver to correct. Line up with the target. Dive. Release a bomb. Recover. Repeat. All with a serene smile on his face. He was in his element, wonderfully precise and ready to receive his wreath for his twentieth confirmed kill as soon as he landed. How many tanks does it make? How many enemy aircraft? How many people were in the tanks and aircraft? Who cares… Johann says there’s no point in brooding over it now. War is war… Johann is a good comrade and Willi too. Too bad Willi had been transferred to a different squadron after the Staffelkapitän had had it with him and even worse that Johann followed him there, being the good friend that he is. Rudi would have followed too, would have asked for a transfer to an African Stuka division, but Helmut expressed a definite desire to stay in France and Rudi’s life was now somehow connected to Helmut’s with a far stronger cord than to all the Willi’s and Johann’s put together.

  Rudi had nearly crashed again just days after receiving his coveted wreath and promotion and was promptly reported to the Staffelkapitän by the doctor who, for some inexplicable reason, didn’t want him to die. Just as promptly, Rudi was demoted and restricted from flying and then as the war with the Soviets began – transferred away from the squadron for good as a punishment, or as a means of separating him from whoever supplied him with “that crap” – again, most likely due to the kind Herr Doktor’s advice as Rudi had assumed. The reason for the transfer was stated loud and clear on his transfer orders and the new Staffelkapitän on the Soviet base didn’t bother reading anything else from his personal file after he had read that last shameful entry, just pursed his lips in a disgusted manner and waved Rudi off.

  “Grounded for an indefinite period of time. And don’t you dare even go near aircraft in my charge!”

  Rudi nodded stiffly, tears already clouding his vision, clicked his heels and swore to himself that he would reinstate his good name at the very first chance if they would see fit to offer it to him at all.

  A few letters from his former comrades Johann and Willi were forwarded to him from his old base but he couldn’t bring himself to reply to a single one. What was he supposed to tell the two fighter aces whose names were already spoken with hushed reverence here? Nothing. Nothing at all. And so, Rudi sat in his tent and listened to the Stuka engines starting in the distance, alone and forgotten in his misery.

  Eastern Front, July 1941

  * * *

  Rudi ran out of the tent to the sounds of the general commotion outside. It wasn’t the usual returning crews’ excited banter but frantic shouts more like it and therefore a good reason to abandon his desk duty which he’d been pulling for his entire life now, so it seemed to him. He shielded his eyes from the blazing sunshine in his effort to locate at least his Staffelkapitän. The latter found him first, grim as ever.

  “Fucking Popovs just took down two of our aircraft with their machine-gun fire.” He irritably waved off the medic who was trying to tend to his bleeding shoulder. “Let it be! I’m fine. Wiedmeyer, can I trust you with flying with Bidermann, as his wingman? He has just lost his and we’re short of pilots for the next sortie.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!” Rudi straightened out at once and clicked his heels, expressing his utmost gratitude with the sharpest of salutes.

  “Leave the formalities for later. Go watch your crew chief and armorer as he reloads ammunition to your new aircraft and make sure he gets everything right.” The Staffelkapitän had finally turned to the medic, who was hovering over him and nearly begging him to allow him to at least dress the wound before Herr Hauptmann took off once again, then gave Rudi one last skeptical once-over. “You aren’t taking that stuff anymore, are you?”

  “No, Herr Hauptmann. I’m in full possession of my faculties and I’m ready for the mission.”

  The call came as soon as the last Ju-87 was reloaded and Rudi jumped into the cockpit of his new Stuka, comforting and familiar despite its somewhat battered state. He gently caressed the stick and swore to himself there and then that he would never compromise his position in the Luftwaffe in the same manner; never fall for an easy way out when the rest of his comrades had to face the harsh realities of war without having to numb themselves into oblivion.

  Following the take-off route of his new flight leader, Rudi glued himself to Bidermann’s tail and positively refused to keep less than a few yards between the two aircraft. For the first time since he was transferred here, Rudi was taking in the local terrain, alien and therefore vaguely treacherous; endless fields in which it was easy to get lost without properly working navigation and where the smoldering ruins of villages were their only marks. The land lay prostrate underneath, vast and hostile in its endlessness, a soon-to-be common grave of them all, of which Rudi was still blissfully unaware.

  Their main objectives were the few tanks and infantry fortifications miraculously left intact after the previous sortie.

  “Watch for that machine gun position.” The radio crackled to life with Bidermann’s voice. “They’re using it as anti-aircraft and the son-of-a-bitch who operates it knows what he’s doing. It’s somewhere in that trench over which we’ll be diving now. Get ready.”

  Rudi clasped his stick as though his life depended on it and activated his dive brakes. Without breaking the few yards’ distance between his leader and himself, he effortlessly dived after Bidermann and both bombers began their rapid descent. Rudi began laughing, in spite of himself, as the familiar terrifying scream of his Stuka’s sirens reverberated through his aircraft. The “Jericho Trumpet,” the Allies dubbed it and they couldn’t be more accurate in their description.

  Bidermann turned out to be an excellent marksman and destroyed the enemy tank with his first attempt. Rudi released his bomb into the trench behind it, from where bursts of machine-gun fire were coming and toggled a knob on the control column that triggered an automatic pull-out, grateful for its existence. If it weren’t for the handy feature, the last time he blacked out due to the G-force combined with Pervitin’s influence, he would have long been dead.

  “Good job, Kaiser Two!” Rudi could swear his flight leader, Kaiser One, was smiling. “I think you got him!”

  As the others dived following their route, Rudi was gaining altitude still sticking to Bidermann like a shadow.

  “Round two, Kaiser Two?”

  “I’m ready, Kaiser One!”

  Line up with the target. Dive. Release a bomb. Recover…

  But Kaiser One in front of him wasn’t gaining altitude as he should have; he only corrected his aircraft and continued his course almost parallel to the ground.

  “What happened, Kaiser One?”

  “He got me. Fucking Ivan got my bird. Scheiße!”

  Rudi quickly lowered his landing flaps and glided down to catch up with him. Bidermann had already landed heavily on the ground, as Rudi circled over his downed aircraft, far behind enemy lines.

  “Just give me a moment, Kaiser One! I’ll come down and get you!”

  “Hurry up!”

  Even though Bidermann didn’t add anything else, Rudi himself could already detect a few khaki-brown uniforms running towards the downed Stuka. They’re far; he still had time.

  Rudi made a circle at the lowest possible altitude and began his descent, thanking the providence for Bidermann landing his Stuka in an open field. Now, just to pick him up and quickly take off…

  An unmistakable burst of machine-g
un fire tore through the cockpit of Rudi’s aircraft as well, splattering his window with oil.

  Not the engine! A cold sweat broke out on Rudi’s temples at once, as he desperately clutched his stick, awaiting a piston seizure any moment now. Well, he still could land; now, taking off would be an entirely different matter. Rudi bit into his lip as Bidermann was waving his hands at him from the ground maniacally.

  “Kaiser Two!” The Staffelkapitän’s voice shouted in his ears through the radio. “Don’t you dare land that aircraft; you hear me? Leave Kaiser One alone; he’s done for.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want to die?!”

  That’s all that Staffelkapitän had to shout for Rudi to level his aircraft and turn his gaze away from Bidermann, who had slowly dropped his arms by his sides as he watched his only hope, in the face of his wingman, disappear into the sky. Rudi didn’t hear the manic conking of the engine as tearless sobs racked his body. For one instant, he wished that it was him who got hit by the Russians instead of Bidermann.

  Twelve

  Berlin, August 1941

  * * *

  While Willi was running up the stairs in a very unseemly for a newly promoted Leutnant’s manner, Johann paused in front of yet another new government building (they seemed to grow like mushrooms after the rain!), taking in the details. Berlin had changed since his last visit there, with the modern architectural style prevailing everywhere. Grand tall entry doors; an imposing bronze eagle crowning the façade; crimson banners cascading down in-between the columns.

  “Are you here to receive your commendations or to sightsee?” Willi cried from the top of the stairs, instantly catching a glare of disdain from the passing officer. Ignoring the look with admirable insolence, Willi not only didn’t bother to apologize and salute but started to obnoxiously tap his wristwatch, making desperate gestures to his friend standing below. “Hurry up, will you? Reichsmarschall Göring doesn’t have all day!”