It wasn’t just his flying school; it used to be their flying school, of which both had dreamed ever since Johann’s father, a pilot who made a living by giving lessons to everyone who wished to obtain a pilot’s license, allowed them into the cockpit. Both grew obsessed with planes; only now, it appeared, for one of them the door was closed to the establishment. Like it was with everything in this new Germany, the Luftwaffe didn’t need any Jews in its midst.
That was three years ago. Alf didn’t graduate together with Johann; according to the new Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools, aimed solely at undesirables, Alf, together with the rest of the unfortunate pupils was dismissed from their school only two years after Hitler had been appointed as the Chancellor. As for their education, a rabbi should teach them just fine, one of the teachers remarked with a sneer. The case was closed; former Jewish classmates◦– soon forgotten, with the innocent callousness of youth.
Naturally, when the time came for Johann to board his train for Vienna, Alf wasn’t on it as they had dreamt of in some forgotten, past life of theirs. Alf dutifully saw him off and remained on the platform, a gangling fellow with beautiful doe’s eyes and a bright yellow star newly sewn over his heart. Over Johann’s, a small HJ pin with a swastika shamefully sat. They embraced and parted their ways. As the train started moving, Johann saw his father drape his arm around Alf’s shoulders in a fatherly, protective gesture despite the disapproving glances from the crowd. He’ll look after him, Johann reassured himself. He loves him as his own.
“Have you always wanted to be a pilot?” Rudolf’s voice pulled Johann out of his unhappy musings.
“Yes. My best friend and I—” Johann stopped mid-word, looking as though he let on more than he wished to and murmured a quiet, “yes. Yes, I have.”
“I see.”
Lost in his thoughts, Johann stood frozen in front of the closet and only realized that he’d been blocking Rudolf’s way to it after the pause grew so long that it eventually transcended into something almost audible. Yet, Rudi patiently waited with his shaving kit in his hands and head slightly cocked in a silent, polite question; may I?
“I’m sorry.” Johann motioned towards the closet and stepped away from it, allowing his new roommate to arrange his belongings on a shelf next to his. “I get distracted sometimes.”
“They say, all true pilots are dreamers,” Rudolf conceded brightly. “For me, it was either that or the Kriegsschule. I actually always wanted to be…” Another pause followed; more swallowed words and sentiments that weren’t meant to be heard in this new Germany. “Well, the Luftwaffe is better than the Wehrmacht, isn’t it?”
“It depends.”
Rudolf turned on his heels at once, blinking somewhat nervously, as though expecting to hear all of the reasons why he had made the wrong choice.
“It depends whether you’re afraid of heights,” Johann finished his joke quickly, grinning.
Rudolf gave a long laugh. “Good thing I’m not afraid of them then.”
Johann was the first one to notice another newcomer. Tall, collected, with wonderful hazel eyes and brown hair, he stood on the threshold, with a hint of a smile, as he observed the couple inside the room. Promptly noting the absence of a regular HJ uniform, Johann took him for some school official making his usual rounds.
“Heil Hitler!”
Rudi’s shout startled Johann out of his observation. He quickly saluted as well and froze at attention with his arms along his seams. The stranger’s grin grew wider.
“I apologize; are you Brandt and Wiedmeyer?”
“Jawohl,” Johann stumbled over the young man’s title due to the absence of the uniform and quickly decided on a safe, “Mein Herr.”
Much to his surprise, the young man in a civilian suit marched in with a toothy grin and an outstretched arm. “No need for such formalities. I’m only your new roommate. Walter Riedman; a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Walter Riedman?” Johann kept the young man’s hand in his, studying him closely. “Not the Walter Riedman, the prodigy pilot?”
After a moment’s hesitation and with a somewhat guilty grin, Walter mumbled something to the extent that he was no prodigy by any means; more someone who didn’t have anything better to do with his time but fly and that anyone who devoted as many hours to aerobatics as he did would have probably been much better than he anyway; blushed in the most endearing manner and quickly changed the subject to something entirely irrelevant.
Johann, however, was already pulling Rudolf’s sleeve in excitement. “Do you know who this is? This is the famous Walter Riedman; he performed his aerobatics on my father’s aerodrome to which Papa specifically invited him. He was incredible, I tell you! I wish I could do half of the things he performed!” He turned to Walter, who had reddened unmercifully due to all the compliments, once again. “What are you doing in a flying school anyway? What can they possibly teach you?”
“Gunnery and mechanics.” Walter shrugged, still looking embarrassed. “There are a lot of things to learn for me, as a pilot. Aerobatics is all I know, I’m afraid. My father was a Great War ace, but when the war ended and there was no work or food anywhere in the country, he started making a living by performing aerobatics all over Europe. Together with Reichsmarschall Göring,” he added in a quick and embarrassed manner of someone who doesn’t take pleasure in dropping names. “I think he began putting me into the cockpit before I learned how to talk properly. I started flying on my own when I was twelve. So, it’s been six years now that I’ve been doing this.”
“No wonder you’re so good!” Johann clapped his shoulder, beaming with joy at the prospect of studying with someone he’s always looked up to.
“Your father is a friend of the Reichsmarschall?” Rudi seemed to be waiting breathlessly for the answer.
“They were close only right after the war. My father did call on him to help get me into this school but that’s about it.”
A shadow of disappointment passed over Rudi’s face.
“Was that Göring who got you out of the Hitlerjugend as well?” Johann asked, in jest, as the trio was making their way downstairs for their first roll call.
“No. My mother got me out of the Hitlerjugend,” Walter replied cryptically and with that, the subject was dropped. Johann decided not to pry any further.
The cadets’ mess at the Schwechat Basic Flying School was a grand affair with brilliantly polished floors and red banners along the walls; grandiose and austere. An officer with a clipboard stood in a pool of light from the intricate bronze chandelier; perfectly frozen in his intentionally indifferent posture, one of the Gods of the Spanish campaign◦– Johann spotted the Iron Cross First Class at once◦– a fighter ace with the face of a Gothic angel. A bantering crowd separated around him and slowed down, tip-toed, hushed itself at once with reverence, all the while the Gothic Angel ignoring them entirely, with a wonderful arrogance about him.
They fell in and waited at attention for a few interminable minutes until the central clock struck twelve and the Gothic Angel, as though by magic, suddenly straightened out and stepped forward, heavily favoring his left leg. He wasn’t a deity any more, but a Leutnant Ostwald, their instructor as he had introduced himself; yet, despite the spell being broken, to Johann, he appeared now even more unfathomably God-like and heroic. Not in the Christian understanding but in a Norse one, where fallen heroes come alive with each new dawn to fight a new battle. Somehow, in Johann’s eyes, nearly dying in a fiery crash and losing his leg, elevated Leutnant Ostwald to the highest class of a Valhalla warrior.