Stuka Pilot (34 page)

“Pull!” yells Gadermann again—were those trees or telephone wires? I have lost all sensation in my mind and pull the stick only when Gadermann yells at me. If this searing pain in my leg would only stop… and this flying… if I could let myself sink at last into this queer, grey peace and remoteness which invites me…

“Pull!” Once again, I wrench automatically at the joy-stick, but now for an instant Gadermann has “shouted me awake.”

In a flash I realize that I must do something here.

“What’s the terrain like?” I ask into the microphone. “Bad—hummocky.”

But I have to come down, otherwise the dangerous apathy brought on from my wounded body will again steal over me. I kick the rudder-bar with my left foot and howl with agony. But surely it was my right leg that was hit? Pull to the right, I bring the nose of the aircraft up and slide her gently onto her belly, in this way perhaps the release gear of the undercarriage will not function and I can make it after all. If not we shall pancake. The aircraft is on fire… she bumps and skids for a second.

Now I can rest, now I can slip away into the grey distance… wonderful) Maddening pains jerk me back into consciousness. Is someone pulling me about?… Are we jolting over rough ground? Now it is over… At last I sink utterly into the arms of silence…

When I wake up, everything around me is white… intent faces… a pungent smell… I am lying on an operating table. A sudden, violent panic convulses me: where is my leg?

“Is it gone?”

The surgeon nods. Spinning downhill on brand new skis… diving… athletics… pole jumping… what do these things matter? How many comrades have been far more seriously wounded? Do you remember… that one in the hospital at Dnjepropetrovsk whose whole face and both hands had been torn off by a mine? The loss of a leg, an arm, a head are all of no importance if only the sacrifice could save the fatherland from its mortal peril… this is no catastrophe, the only catastrophe is that I cannot fly for weeks… and in the present crisis! These thoughts flash through my brain in a second, and now the surgeon says to me gently:

“I couldn’t do anything else. Except for a few scraps of flesh and some fibrous tissue there was nothing there, so I had to amputate.”

If there was nothing there, I think to myself with a wry humor, how could he amputate? Well, of course, it is all in the day’s work for him.

“But why is your other leg in plaster of Paris?” he asks in astonishment.

“Since last November—where am I here?”

“At the Waffen S.S. main. dressing station at Selow.”

“Oh, at Selow!” That is less than five miles behind the front. So I evidently flew north-north-west, not west.

“Waffen S.S. soldiers brought you in and one of our M.O.s performed the operation. You have another wounded man on your conscience,” he adds with a smile.

“Did I by any chance bite the surgeon?”

“You didn’t go as far as that,” he says shaking his head. “No, you didn’t bite him, but a Pilot Officer Koral tried to land with a Fieseler Storch on the spot where you crashed. But it must have been difficult, for he pancaked… and now he, too, has his head swathed in bandages!”

Good old Coral! It seems as if when I was flying sub consciously I had more than one guardian angel Meanwhile the Reichsmarschall has sent his personal doctor with instructions to bring me back at once to the bomb-proof hospital in the Zoo bunker, but the surgeon who operated will not hear of it because I have lost too much blood. It will be all right tomorrow.

The Reichsmarschall’s doctor tells me that Goering immediately reported the incident to the Führer. Hitler, he says, was very glad that I had got off so lightly.

“Of course, if the chickens want to be wiser than the hen,” he is reported to have said among other things. I am relieved that no mention has been made of his veto on my flying. I also believe that in view of the desperate struggle in which the whole situation has been involved in the last few weeks my continuance in action is accepted as a matter of course.

The next day I am moved into the Zoo bunker, sited below the heaviest A.A. guns aiding in the defense of the capital against the allied attacks on the civil population. On the second day there is a telephone on my bedside table; I must be able to communicate with my wing about operations, the situation, etc. I know that I shall not be on my back for long and I do not want to lose my command and therefore I am anxious to be kept informed of everything in detail and participate in my unit’s every activity even if I can only be kept informed and participate by telephone. The doctors and the nurses whose care of me is touching are, in this respect at least, not overpleased with their new patient. They keep on saying something about “rest.”

Almost every day I am visited by colleagues from the unit or by other friends, some of them people who call themselves my friends in order to force a way into my sickroom. When those who “crash” my sickroom are pretty girls they open their eyes wide and raise their eyebrows interrogatively when they see my wife sitting at my bedside. “Did you ever?” as the Berliner would say.

I have already had a professional discussion about an artificial limb; if only I had made that much recovery. I am impatient and fidgeting to get up. A little later I wangle a visit from a maker of artificial limbs. I ask him to make me a provisional artificial leg with which I can fly even if the stump is not yet healed. Several first class firms refuse on the grounds that it is too soon.

One accepts the order if only as an experiment. At all events he sets about it so energetically that he almost makes me dizzy. He sets the whole of my thigh up to the groin in plaster of Paris without first greasing it or fitting a protective cap. After letting it dry he remarks laconically:

“Think of something nice!”

At the same moment he wrenches with all his strength at the hard plaster of Paris cap in which the hairs of my body are embedded and tears it off. I think the world is falling in. The fellow has missed his vocation, he would have made an excellent blacksmith.

My 3rd Squadron and the Wing staff have meanwhile moved to Görlitz where I went to school. My parents’ home is just nearby. The Russians are at this moment fighting their way into the village; Soviet tanks are driving across the playgrounds of my youth. I could go mad to think of it. My family, like many millions, must long since have become refugees, able to save nothing but their bare lives. I lie condemned to inactivity. What have I done to deserve this? I must not think of it.

Flowers and presents of every kind are proof of the people’s affection for their soldiers; every day they are delivered to my room. Besides the Reichsmarschall, Minister Göbbels whom I did not before know visits me twice. A conversation with him is very interesting. He asks my opinion of the purely strategic situation in the east.

“The Oder front,” I tell him, “is our last chance of holding the Soviets; beyond that I see none, for with it the capital falls too.”

But he compares Berlin with Leningrad. He points out that it did not fall because all its citizens made every house a fortress. And what Leningrad could do the population of Berlin could surely help him to do. His idea is to achieve the highest degree of organization for a house to house defense by installing wireless sets in every building. He is convinced that “his Berliners” would prefer death to falling victims to the Red hordes.

How seriously he meant this his end was afterwards to prove.

“From a military point of view I see it differently,” I reply. “Once the battle for Berlin is joined after the Oder front is broken I think it is absolutely impossible that Berlin can be held. I would remind you that the comparison between the two cities is not admissible. Leningrad has the advantage of being protected on the west by the Gulf of Finland and on the east by Lake Ladoga. There was only a weak and narrow Finnish front to the north of it. The only real chance of capturing it was from the south, but on that side Leningrad was strongly fortified and could make use of an excellent system of prepared positions; also it was never entirely cut off from its supply line. Lighters could cross Lake Ladoga in the summer and in winter they laid railway lines over the ice and so were able to feed the city from the north.” My arguments fail to convince him.

In a fortnight I am up for a short while for the first time and am able to enjoy a little fresh air. During the allied air attacks

I am up on the platform with the A.A. guns and see from below what is probably very unpleasant up above. I am never bored; Fridolin brings me papers which require my signature or other additional problems, sometimes accompanied by one or other of my colleagues. Field Marshal Greim, Skorzeny or Hanna Reitsch look in for an hour’s chat; something is always doing, only my inner restlessness at acing out of it torments me. When I came into the Zoo bunker I “solemnly” declared that I would walk again in six week’s time, and fly. The doctors know that their veto is anyhow useless and would only anger me. At the beginning of March I go out for a walk in the fresh air for the first time—on crutches.

During my convalescence I am invited by one of my nurses to her home, and so am the guest of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. A real soldier is seldom likely to make a good diplomat, and this meeting with von Ribbentrop is rather intriguing. It is an opportunity for conversations which shed light on the other side of the war which is being conducted without weapons. He is greatly interested in my opinion of the strength of the east front and our military potential at this particular moment. I make it clear to him that we at the front hope he is doing something through diplomatic channels to loosen the stranglehold in which we are caught on every side.

“Cannot the Western Powers be made to see that Bolshevism is their greatest enemy and that after an eventual victory over Germany it will be the same menace to them as to us, and that alone they will no longer be able to get rid of it?”

He takes my remarks as a gentle personal reproof; no doubt I am only playing over a record he has had to listen to many times. He at once explains to me that he has already made a number of attempts which have failed, because every time the necessity for a fresh military retirement on one or other sector of the front shortly after he had opened negotiations has encouraged the enemy to continue the war in any case and to leave the conference table. He cites instances and says somewhat reproachfully that the treaties which he had brought off before the war, among other things those with England and Russia, were surely no mean achievement if not a triumph. But nobody mentions them any longer; today people see only the negative aspects, the responsibility for which is not his. Naturally even now negotiations were still going on, but whether with the general situation such as it was the success he wished for would still be possible was problematical. This peep behind the scenes of diplomacy sates my curiosity and I am not anxious to learn more.

In the middle of March I take my first walk in the spring sunshine with a nurse in the Zoo and on my very first excursion I have a slight accident. We, like so many, are fascinated by the monkey cage. I am attracted by a particularly big ape sitting quite unconcernedly and lazily on a bough with his long tail hanging down. Of course I cannot resist doing just what one should not do and I push both my crutches through the bars with the intention of tickling his tail. I have hardly touched it when he suddenly grabs hold of my crutches and tries with all his monkey strength to pull me into the cage. I stumble on my one leg as far as the bars; of course the beast will not get me through them. Sister Edelgarde hangs on to me and we both pull on our end of the crutches in a tug of war with the monkey. Man versus Ape! His paws have begun to slip a little along his end, and meet the rubber caps at the bottom which are supposed to prevent the crutches from sinking into the ground or skidding when one is walking. The rubber caps excite his curiosity, he sniffs at them, tears them off and swallows them with a broad grin. At the same moment I am able to pull the bare sticks out of the cage and so have at least wrested part of his victory from the ape. A few seconds later the wailing of sirens gives warning of an air raid. The exertion of walking over the sandy paths of the Zoo makes me sweat because the crutches sink deep into the ground and meet with hardly any resistance. Everyone round about me is hurrying and scurrying and so I can hardly use them to support me and hobble on clumsily. It is slow work. We just reach the bunker in time as the first bombs come down.

Gradually Easter approaches. I want to be back with my colleagues on Easter Sunday. My Wing is now stationed in the Grossenhain area in Saxony, my First Squadron has again moved from Hungary into the Vienna area and still remains on the Southeastern front. Gadermann is in Brunswick, for as long as I am away, so that during this time he can exercise his profession as a doctor. I ring him up to tell him that I have ordered a Ju. 87 to fetch me at Tempelhof at the end of the week and intend to fly to the unit. As shortly before he has spoken to the professor in charge of my case he does not really believe it. Besides he is feeling ill himself. I shall not see him again in this war, for the last operations now has come.

His place as my gunner is taken by Flight Lt. Niermann who has no lack of operational experience and wears the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.

After first obeying the order to report to the Führer before I leave I say goodbye to the bunker. He reiterates his pleasure that everything has gone relatively smoothly. He makes no allusion to my flying, for presumably the idea of my doing so does not enter his head. I am sitting in my aircraft again for the first time in six weeks, my course is set for my comrades. It is Easter Eve and I am happy. Shortly before I take off Fridolin rings up and tells me to fly straight to the Sudetenland; he is just on the point of moving the unit to Kummeram-See near Niemes. In the aircraft at first I feel very strange, but I am soon back in my element. Steering is complicated by the fact that I can use only one foot on the rudder-bar. I can exert no pressure on the right because I have not yet got an artificial limb, and have to use my left foot to lift the left rubber-bar, thus depressing the right one which gives the desired result. My stump is wadded into a plaster of Paris sheath and projects under the instrument panel without knocking against anything. So an hour and a half later I land on my new airfield at Kummer. The Wing flying personnel have arrived here an hour before me.