“Willi loves them.”
“Willi loves all women. I love only you.”
“I get very jealous when I think about you looking at all those women.”
“I won’t go there anymore if you don’t want me to. I only went because I didn’t want to offend Willi or your father. Besides, the only girl whom I want to see half-naked, is standing right in front of me.”
Mina wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him on his open mouth. Before he knew what he was doing, he pulled the straps of her night slip down and touched the soft skin on top of her bare breast for the first time; heard the breath catch in her throat when his thumb passed over her hard nipple.
“You really ought to go,” he muttered in a futile effort to summon the last sensible arguments in his intoxicated state when his fingers were already busy undoing the buttons on his uniform trousers. He suddenly recalled how Willi, already drunk and grinning, slid a few white squares into his pocket before General von Sielaff’s driver dropped him off in front of the house. Here, these may come in handy. Don’t make me an uncle yet.
For some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to even unwrap one of those things in front of Mina. She was his fiancée after all, not some whore whom he didn’t want to knock up. The spring mattress groaned under the weight of two bodies, and Johann heard Mina giggling at his startled expression.
“Your mother is going to hear us.”
“No, she won’t.”
“Gott, she’ll murder me,” he whispered into her mouth before covering it with his.
In the morning, when Johann was busy shaving in the bathroom situated on the second floor, Willi’s grinning face reflected in the mirror.
“Had a nice night, you dog?”
Johann’s hand with a razor hovered in the air as he pondered possible replies.
“Oh, don’t make those innocent eyes at me.” Willi chuckled. “I heard you going at my poor baby sister from the first floor when I came home last night.”
“I want to take her to my house for the whole of next week.” Johann beamed at him instead. “Do you think your father will be able to arrange something with her school? I want to announce our engagement to my parents but it would be nice if she were there with me while I’m doing it.”
“I don’t think he’ll be able to get a release for her for the full week but a couple of days sounds more than possible. Say, Thursday and Friday, so that she spends Saturday and Sunday with you there as well?”
“That would be grand!”
Willi stood on the threshold for some time before he approached his friend and scooped him into a sudden embrace. “I’m thrilled you two are getting married. I really am.”
EIGHT
France, June 1940
Willi was officially titled by his superiors, Kronprinz von Pas-de-Calais. All the replacement pilots, sent straight from different flying schools, were quite amused when their commanding officers addressed the “veterans” by such fanciful titles◦– Graf von Lille, Herzog von Ostend, Freiherr von Antwerp◦– but soon learned the true meaning behind those mocking nicknames.
“With the very first fighter that the pilot loses, he gets the lowest title: Freiherr◦– Baron,” Walter explained it to the new reinforcements during breakfast. “And according to the place where he loses his fighter, he gets the second part of his nom de guerre: von Lille, for instance. Our best fighter pilot, Oberfähnrich Brandt, at whose aircraft’s rudder with all those victory marks you were ogling outside, is not titled at all since he hadn’t lost any fighters so far.”
A round of applause broke out, together with the cheers from the officers. Johann rose from his seat and bowed theatrically.
“As for our second best fighter pilot, Fähnrich von Sielaff, he has just been titled as Crown Prince himself.”
“I will lie if I say that I’m not just a bit proud of it,” Willi inserted, sporting a paper crown, painted yellow, on top of his head. The Staffelkapitän himself placed it there, right after Willi crash-landed his eighth fighter near Pas-de-Calais a day ago. The fighter was cannibalized for spare parts as the damage was so extensive that no repairs, no prayers would ever make that aircraft fly again, according to the same Staffelkapitän.
“Just bear in mind that despite the title sounding terribly fine you don’t want to be like Crown Prince von Sielaff,” Walter concluded. “You want to be like an ordinary Oberfähnrich Brandt.”
Willi only laughed kind-heartedly and never took offense despite the growing resentment between him and the rest of the pilots, stationed on the same base. With Johann and Walter being more or less used to his antics from the flying school, the seasoned pilots, who had been serving in Spain when the trio was still attending their regular school, grumbled their discontent more and more often on Willi’s account, sometimes outright refusing to fly with him in the same unit. Rotte leaders began expressing more and more reluctance to go on missions with Willi as their wingman; everyone lost count of all the times he broke formation and started pursuing his goal without any regard to the safety of his Rottenführer. He was reprimanded; he was threatened with court-martial. He was restricted to quarters and made to pull duty for countless nights in a row until 2100 hours after operations, yet nothing seemed to work.
“Why can’t you just stay where you are and mind your duties as a wingman?” Johann tried talking some sense into his best friend and future brother-in-law on countless occasions. “When I fly as a wingman, I don’t even think about anything else besides minding my Rottenführer’s tail. Why can’t you do the same?”
A shrug and a guilty smile invariably followed, in tow with wonderfully expressive eyes. “I don’t intend to do any of this sort of thing when we take off. It just happens.”
Once again, Fähnrich von Sielaff broke a formation in his unit, endangering his flight leader and himself with his reckless action, a new reprimand would grace his service record. And right below it, scored his twentieth victory. Recommended for an Iron Cross. Then, a new entry, cancel the promotion for Oberfähnrich. Broke the formation, failed to radio his intentions, failed to see that his enemy had a wingman. Lost his ninth fighter after he got jumped by three enemy aircraft. Crash-landed on the beach, nearly smashing into a populated area.
“I will not fly with him as my wingman.” The Rottenführer’s face was unmoving despite all the Staffelkapitän’s pleas and threats. “I don’t feel safe flying with someone with such an independent nature. Fähnrich von Sielaff is unreliable and reckless and I refuse to put my life at risk solely because you have no one else to pair with him. You have every right to punish me for disobeying your orders and I will gladly be restricted to the base but at least I’ll be alive, Herr Staffelkapitän.”
“Assign him to me, Herr Oberleutnant,” Johann asked later that morning. Willi was God knows where and Johann could only sigh at the thought of yet another record appearing in his friend’s file, this time for being late for a pre-flight briefing. “You told me yourself that it was high time for me to start flying as flight leader, so why not pair us together?”
The Staffelkapitän was already shaking his head in a most categorical manner. “No. Forget even thinking about it. You’re one of my best pilots; I won’t have you flying out there without any cover.”