Of Knights and Dogfights Read online

  “Yes, yes, he is!” A voice shouted somewhere from behind their backs, coming from the grand marble staircase. Johann was dying, with desire, to turn his head and take a look at the cadet who had just committed career suicide before that career even had a chance to begin. The flying school was nearly impossible to be accepted into and from which students were kicked out at the slightest of provocations. This rascal, meanwhile – Johann could only see him from the side of his eye as he refused to move a muscle as was prescribed – squeezed himself at the end of the line, threw a duffel bag in front of himself with a loud bang, blew long golden bangs from his eyes (how had they even allowed him on the premises with such long hair?) and finally deigned to imitate something close to standing at attention before announcing in a voice still short of breath, “Wilhelm von Sielaff, reporting for basic flying school, Mein Leutnant.”

  “Thank you for finally gracing us with your presence, Cadet von Sielaff,” the officer drawled sarcastically. “I expect there was some kind of emergency preventing you from making your appearance on time.”

  “I would not call it an ‘emergency’,” the new cadet replied with envious calmness, “but your Herr Hauptmann, who kindly invited us to his office, would not stop his chatting with my father and I felt it was rude to interrupt to remind him of my having to be present during the roll call. I do apologize, before you personally, for making you wait though.”

  That explains the long hair and insolence, Johann remarked to himself with a smirk. Some big-shot’s son.

  Much to his surprise, the big-shot’s son was the fourth one in their room. He sauntered in with the air of a Crown Prince about him, looked around critically, then suddenly broke into the most charming of smiles and offered his hand to his new roommates.

  “Willi,” he introduced himself and lit a cigarette with a golden lighter. “Are you, fellows locals or from Germany? Do you know any places around here that play some decent swing and serve some decent brandy?”

  That instant, Johann decided that he liked the fellow, against his better judgment.

  Two

  October 1938

  * * *

  October Viennese sky, leaden and tearstained, didn’t allow too much natural light into the classroom that morning. The lights went on, illuminating the students’ neatly brushed heads, diligently lowered over the blueprints and textbooks. Reichsmarschall Göring, the Chief of the Luftwaffe, looked on from the front wall of the classroom as Johann scribbled away ferociously in his notebook, deep lines of concentration creasing his forehead. Design and construction of aircraft and aircraft engines was his least favorite subject of all, yet he understood the importance of it and applied his all to memorize and learn every single detail of every single aircraft – unlike Willi. Willi was shamelessly napping right next to him. Johann noticed it with horror just now, after tearing his eyes away for only one short instant from the big double blackboard, to which an enormous blueprint of a Messerschmitt BF-109 was pinned.

  Johann shoved his roommate with his elbow just in time before their instructor, Leutnant Ostwald, could turn around and notice such an unseemly display of blatant disrespect. But that’s Willi for you, Johann shook his head with a huff.

  “Is the class over yet?” the former whispered sleepily, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with one hand.

  Where he had spent the previous night was anyone’s guess. Johann begged him not to sneak out through the window on the very first night; threatened with reporting him to the school administration on the second; realized the futility of it and completely gave up some two weeks later. Willi didn’t acknowledge any authority and positively refused to be intimidated by threats and therefore Johann could have been talking to a brick wall with the same success.

  While Johann and the others were busy cramming aircraft terminology, Willi would patiently wait for the lights-out, get up precisely thirty minutes later, slick back his hair with the help of a mirror and a flashlight which he wasn’t meant to have in the dorm room in the first place, all the while humming some popular – and very illegal – jazz tune under his breath. To Johann’s reproachful gaze and torrents of pleas and warnings he poured on him, Willi replied with a nonchalant wave of the hand, a mischievous smile and a solemn promise to be back for the roll call. How he made it safely down from the second floor and, what’s more interesting, how he managed to return unnoticed by the morning, was an utmost mystery to Johann. He only prayed that officers wouldn’t hear one of Willi’s, “what a party!” one morning during breakfast and wouldn’t smell the remnants of last night’s alcohol on his breath.

  “No, it’s not over!” Johann hissed back in irritation. “Pay attention!”

  “Why?” Willi stretched his arms over his head and yawned, making use of Leutnant Ostwald turning his back to the class once again. “Who needs to know how all of these screws and wires work anyway? I know how to fly the plane; I don’t need to know what’s inside of it.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Why? If I get hit and crash-land somewhere behind enemy lines, it’s a fat chance the said enemy would spare me some aircraft parts to repair it even if I know how to; don’t you think?”

  Johann only shook his head again in resignation and continued writing after the instructor. Arguing with Willi was a lost cause; he’d learned it a long time ago. The bohemian Berliner possessed some odd sort of extravagant and almost anarchistic logic that invariably went against everything he had been taught, yet surprisingly made a lot of sense even to the order-loving Johann.

  Leutnant Ostwald, bearing the Cross which he brought from the Spanish Civil War, on his left breast pocket, left the pointing rod near the blackboard and limped over to his desk to retrieve a new blueprint. It was a well-known story at school – that he was discharged with honors from the Luftwaffe after nearly dying in a bad crash and secretly Johann shared Willi’s sentiments on his account. “He’s a hero and all but his classes would be much more interesting if he actually spoke to us about his experiences in the war instead of drilling all of this useless terminology and construction details into our poor heads.”

  He, too, wished to hear of dogfights and narrow escapes, of glorious victories and near-death experiences, of something eternally elevated and romantic – something that hid in the eyes of all fighter aces, smiling mysteriously out of the Luftwaffe propaganda posters; not of engine parts and weapon calibers.

  Only the ever-practical Walt, the most level-headed of them all, didn’t seem to share their sentiments.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about the war,” he mused out loud with a pensive expression one evening. They lay around on their beds in their dorm room. It was that quiet hour just after dinner and before the lights-out during which the cadets were supposed to write to their families or read.

  “He’s a hero! Why wouldn’t he want to talk about it?” Willi sat up, cross-legged, on his bed. “I, for one, would be bragging about it right and left!”

  “Papa was an ace in the Great War too and he never talks about it,” Walter replied, with a shrug, as though stating the obvious, without tearing his eyes away from the textbook.

  Walt always studied, Johann noticed it during the few short weeks that they’d known each other. Not only did he dedicate all of his free time to memorizing nearly every textbook, line by line, but asked the instructors to provide him with additional material that he could also consume with a sort of obsessive greediness, not like Rudi who merely wished to get into the instructors’ good graces by asking for the same books as Walt, but to excel in every single task and test. Teacher’s pet, Willi teased him unmercifully but without malice. No; there was something of a frantic desire to prove himself in Walt’s reserved perfectionism, Johann noted to himself. He fought some invisible battle against some unknown force while Willi tested the patience of the authorities with every new stunt of his. Walt’s battle was a rebellion as well, only against what, that Johann was yet to understand. Asking him in a straightforward manner was
entirely out of the question. Johann had already realized that Walt was wary of people, much like a dog who’d been kicked far too many times. Why though? He was a grand fellow, likable and sharp as a whip…

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Willi agreed with surprising ease. “My father was in the infantry, but he doesn’t talk about it either.”

  “Must be nice to have a Wehrmacht General for a father!” Rudolf teased him in his usual half-serious manner.

  He always threw those remarks in an attempt at a kind-hearted jest, yet couldn’t quite conceal the undertone of jealousy in his voice. It was false and bitter and forgivable too because he came from a rather poor background and everyone around knew that he only had National Socialism and Der Führer to thank for such an opportunity – to be equal to the ones who he wouldn’t even dream of being equal to in the old, Weimar Germany. Pilots had always been the elite, the privileged class and he was a butcher’s son from a village near Kiel, whose only advantage was his quick adaptation skills; as the first nationalistic wave swept through German schools, he promptly put two and two together and was one of the first ones to enlist in the local Hitlerjugend and soon even his academic success wasn’t as important as his patriotic fervor and desire to serve the New Reich, as it was duly noted by his political leaders.

  Johann had already grown used to Rudi’s strange fascination with anything remotely connected with power and discounted it as harmless; Willi outright resented it. “It’s all right, I suppose,” he replied somewhat coldly and reached under his mattress in search of his cigarettes.

  Johann leaned over the edge of his bed and snatched both the pack and the golden lighter out of Willi’s hands before he had a chance to light one. “How many times did I warn you about smoking here before the lights-out, Du verdammter Idiot? You know perfectly well that a Fahnenjunker on duty makes his rounds; do you want him to report you to the Hauptmann or to Ostwald?”

  With a dramatic groan, Willi fell back onto his bunk. “I wouldn’t mind a negative entry in my file in exchange for a smoke, if I’m entirely honest.” He didn’t attempt to retrieve his possessions from Johann’s hands much to the latter’s surprise as though succumbing to common sense, for the first time.

  “Did your father give it to you?” Johann softened his tone, noticing the initials W.v.S. engraved in the lighter’s golden surface.

  “Mhm. For my sixteenth birthday, when he finally remembered that he had a son.” Willi’s voice suddenly took on a very cruel and mocking tone.

  When he had just met Willi, Johann mistakenly decided that there was nothing else to the bratty Berliner than that disdainful and sardonic aloofness which he carried around himself with a wonderful arrogance of someone with the upper hand. But then one night Johann spent a few hours, under the blanket and with a flashlight in his mouth, writing an essay for his ever-absent roommate just so he wouldn’t fail the course and saw such unfathomable gratitude in that roommate’s eyes the following morning that he started doubting that very first assumption of his. Willi didn’t take it for granted as he had expected; on the contrary, he nearly choked with emotion demanding in a soft, embarrassed voice why would he, Johann, do such a thing... he shouldn’t have, it was really all right; they wouldn’t fail him anyway but... He’d pay him back, of course; Johann should just tell him how much. And then, another startled gasp followed as Johann stalked away from him, offended. “I didn’t do it to earn money, you Dummkopf!”

  “No, no, no; I didn’t mean it! I’m so sorry! Please, forgive me!” And then Willi caught his hand in a silent plea, nearly brimming his wonderful golden eyes with tears and Johann watched in amazement as the last pieces of that grand, aloof facade fall apart before his eyes.

  “Did your father put you into this school?” he asked Willi, still trying to look stern.

  “No. I wanted to become a pilot myself.”

  “Why are you working so hard at sabotaging your prospective career then, Wilhelm? You’re such a gifted student and you have all the prerequisites to become a fabulous pilot. If it wasn’t against your wish to study here, what are you rebelling against? I don’t understand you.”

  Willi looked at him, at a loss, as though he himself couldn’t find an answer to this question. Only his hand pressed Johann’s wrist. “I’ll do my homework from now on, I promise.”

  He stayed true to his word, much to Johann’s amazement. The mocking tone and jests were back in place before the others but now Johann saw beyond them. Willi submitted all of his assignments on time and invariably with a short, subtle glance in Johann’s direction.

  Only one subject was still off limits, even to Johann and even more so in front of Rudi and Walt; Willi’s father. “He left my mother when I was three. Hadn’t seen him for about twelve years. On my fifteenth birthday, he decided it was a good time to come back. Arschloch,” he grumbled the last word – asshole – under his breath, with unconcealed hatred.

  “Maybe, he feels guilty,” Johann offered quietly.

  “I don’t care what he feels,” Willi countered with a cold smirk. “He gives me money and gets me out of trouble and that’s all I need to know.”

  Johann felt a surge of sympathy for the boy that very instant. How much pain he was hiding behind that devil-may-care façade; how wretched and lonely he must have felt all those years… Johann grinned, thinking of his own father, kind, round-faced and invariably smiling, who adored spending every free moment with his two sons. Willi didn’t have a brother; he’d told him. How lonely he must have been growing up!

  “I know that it’s two months away but do you want to come by my house for our leave on Christmas?” Johann offered before he even had a chance to think his proposition through. “We’ll have such a grand time! We always have all the relatives coming and there’s a huge slope near my house from which we can go down on the sled! And maybe, if the weather is fine, Papa will give us the plane to fly. What do you say? You can risk a few days, can’t you? If you don’t have any other plans, of course…”

  Willi looked up at his friend, who was hanging off his bed, grinning and received the warmest reciprocal smile in return. “I’d love to. I’ll spend the Christmas Eve with my mother but right after I’ll take a train and come down to see you. I don’t care for you personally but how can I say no to a plane ride?”

  Johann play-swatted him, recognizing the unspoken gratitude in the warm, golden eyes.

  “Is it a one-person invitation or are others invited as well? You know, I happen to love planes too,” Rudolf chimed in, forgetting the book that he was reading, at once.

  “Everyone is invited!” Johann cried out in a sudden surge of generosity, sending the boys in the room clapping and cheering.

  The door to their room flew open, revealing an enraged Fahnenjunker, who was on duty that evening. “What in the hell is going on here?! And why did I hear your shouts from the other end of the corridor when it’s supposed to be your ‘quiet time,’ you damned crap-heads?”

  Johann and Rudolf jumped down from their top bunks and dutifully froze at attention, hands at the seams, eyes looking straight ahead, toes four inches apart. After a short wrestle with the bed covers, Walter scrambled to attention as well. Willi was the last one to rise from his bed, with visible annoyance.

  “Isn’t it called ‘free time,’ and not ‘quiet time’?” he inquired, with a sardonically arched brow, much to Johann’s horror.

  The cadet, who showed Johann his room on his very first day at school, warned him about Fahnenjunker Meinzer, who was a bit on a head-trip due to his father being someone high-ranking from the local Austrian SS. Tough luck to all Luftwaffe cadets, Meinzer Junior didn’t get accepted to the said SS solely because of his height – a shameful five inches missing from the coveted six-feet – the elite standard of the Great German Reich; a failure, for which he had apparently decided to make the future pilots’ lives a living hell. Rumor had it that Meinzer had a short fuse as it was, but Willi’s mocking remark infuriated him even more so
. His eyes shining with ire, he burst into the room and stopped within inches of Willi’s face.

  “Did I just hear you talk back to me?”

  “I merely asked,” followed his most unfazed response, in tandem with a dismissive shoulder shrug.

  Meinzer pulled his fist back, ready to strike. Johann held his breath next to Willi, who stood and patiently waited for the blow to follow, the same crooked grin sitting on his face as he stared the Fahnenjunker down. His face was suddenly pale and noble; only the eyes stared daringly, two pools full of liquid gold and contempt. Well? Go ahead. Hit me.

  Meinzer weighed his options, it seemed. No one in the room dared to breathe. One of the cadets had been sent home packing just a few days ago for having dirty fingernails; openly ridiculing someone of a superior rank would surely earn anyone a one-way ticket home. Unless that “anyone” was a Wehrmacht General’s son.

  “I’m warning you, von Sielaff.” Meinzer finally lowered his fist and pointed his index finger at Willi’s face instead. “You’re on thin ice here. Your father won’t always be able to help you.”

  “I’m very well aware of that but thank you for your concern nevertheless.”

  Johann bit his tongue inside his mouth. He’d smack Willi himself if he could. Why was he making it all worse for himself?

  As if sensing his thoughts, Meinzer suddenly turned to him. “Who’s on duty in this room this week?”

  “I am, Herr Fahnenjunker.”

  “Name?”

  “Cadet Johannes Brandt, Herr Fahnenjunker.”

  Meinzer smirked, stepping away. “Very well, Cadet Brandt. Let’s see how well you mind your duty.”

  He yanked the door to the closet open and inspected the contents of all four shelves. Neatly folded undershirts, textbooks, sports suits, and shaving sets went flying after he pulled every single item out of its place.