“How much time do you have before you have to go back?” Mina asked him later, with a strained touch of pain at the inevitable separation in her voice, as they lay in bed in the finest suite that General von Sielaff could book.
Countless bouquets of flowers covered the floor. Next to the bed, a silver bucket stood, a half-empty bottle of champagne swimming in the melted ice. Johann had not ceased looking at her, with endless adoration caressing the familiar features as though wishing to emblazon them into his heart forever.
“Three more weeks. They gave me a whole month’s leave so we can have a proper honeymoon.”
“What about your comrades?”
“They have to go back next week, right after Christmas.”
“And Willi?”
“Willi was given a month as well. I don’t think our Staffelkapitän wants him back on the base without my supervision,” Johann admitted with a subtle smile.
“You’re a good influence on him. He’s very different when he’s with you,” Mina remarked, nestling her golden head on her new husband’s chest.
“Not really. He still sneaks out at night and does as he pleases.”
“That may be so but I know my brother, he’s different with you. Don’t abandon him, please.”
“Of course I would never abandon him!” Johann assured her and added, after a pause, quietly, “I have already lost one very good friend. I’m not going to lose another.”
They spent two weeks of their honeymoon at an Austrian resort, skiing and drinking hot Glüwein by the fireplace in a small rented house. In a pastoral countryside, covered with virginal snow and undisturbed by the constant grumbling of the plane engines, it felt as though the war was not happening somewhere in the north, where their Stukas were bombing the enemy cities relentlessly and viciously and where their Messerschmitts were scoring more victories on their already painted tails.
Those were blissful days, almost staged in their serenity but even here the war haunted him, tearing him out of his beloved’s embrace in the middle of the night at the sudden shout of his wingman’s voice, “Spitfires! Break left!” which sounded far too real for a soundless Austrian midnight. Johann always soothed Mina, with an invariably soft smile◦– nothing, nothing. Just a dream; go back to sleep, my love,◦– while the sweat poured down from him soaking the sheets and a blanket, in which he thoroughly hid his trembling hands. He slept much better at the field; exhaustion was a soldier’s faithful friend. Here, he lay upset and wide-eyed for hours when sleep wouldn’t come and listened to the treacherous silence outside with some animalistic quality about him as though willing the damned Spitfires to appear in the Austrian paradise and obliterate them all, just so he’d prove himself right that they weren’t a fruit of his imagination. They never materialized, of course. Only the pale-pink dawn did, seeping through the shutters and kissing the nightmares away from his fluttering eyelids with the tenderest affection. Only then he slept, till noon sometimes.
“Do you know why I never lost a fighter?” Johann asked Mina one morning. Both were busy preparing a simple breakfast on the stove◦– he, brewing coffee and her, frying eggs for both of them. He suddenly felt the urgent need to tell her this, before he would forget, before he would leave for the front and never tell her his secret.
“Because, unlike Willi, you’re a good pilot.” Mina thoroughly tried to hide a grin, which broke out on her face, at her brother’s expense.
“No. Because your name is on it.”
The words tumbled out of him so quickly and quietly that Mina regarded him for a moment, wondering if she had misheard him. “My name?”
“Yes. You know how pilots paint their aircraft and write everything imaginable on them? Willi’s fighter, for instance, is painted with a deck of cards and the words, I Bet You’re Going Down, Tommy, above it. Rudi has his Stuka painted like a shark, with To London, With Love on it. And mine has a red heart and one word inside of it, Mina. See? I can’t let anything happen to it just because your name is on it.”
Misty-eyed, Mina circled his neck with her arm and pressed into him in a surge of silent, endless adoration, which Johann was certain he didn’t deserve.
A few days later, upon their return to Berlin, Johann puzzled over the papers which Willi put into his hands as soon as they stepped through the doors of the von Sielaff’s family home.
“They’re sending you away?”
“Apparently, he’s had it with me, Johann. He even went through the pains of attaching a letter to the marching orders, explaining that it is his profound conviction that a lot of sand and the absence of women and wine will do wonders for my career as a pilot,” Willi replied with a derisive grin, meaning their Staffelkapitän of course. “It looks to me like we won’t be serving together any longer.”
Before distraught Mina could interject something, Johann, who had already decided everything for himself, spoke in a calm and resolute voice, “I’m asking for transfer as well then.”
“You don’t have to do that—”
“No, I’m going with you. You said it yourself; you’re my wingman. Who else is going to watch my back, if not you?”
For a moment, Willi stood in front of him motionless and unsure; only his whiskey eyes stared oddly bright as if in search of an affirmation. A mocking smirk fell apart, melted into a faint, grateful smile. Quickly hiding his brimming eyes, Willi clapped Johann awkwardly on the shoulder and started in the direction of the dining room switching to a subject wholly and utterly unrelated to their service. Johann followed him, smiling widely in spite of himself.
North Africa, April 1941
“Fuck me, it’s hot!” Willi’s crude remark caught a knowing look from the driver who was kind enough to offer him a ride. As he followed Johann to their new destination, squinting against the sun that he swore had set its mind on blinding him permanently that morning, Willi’s fighter’s engine stalled and he had to make a hard landing on some dirt road in the middle of a desert some fifty kilometers from his assigned base. Fortunately, an Italian soldier with a supply truck picked him up before he boiled alive in his now useless fighter.
“Where have you been stationed before?” The driver, a chatty, black-eyed fellow with a Clark Gable mustache, inquired.
“They sent us to Bulgaria and then Greece prior to this stint.” Willi looked around skeptically, pulling at his sweat-soaked tunic to let at least some air circulate along his overheating body. “It sure was nicer in Greece.”
“Welcome to hell!” The driver let out a mirth-laced guffaw and stomped on the brakes. “I have to keep driving east to catch up with my unit. You go straight ahead for about five hundred yards and you’ll see your base.”
Willi had just opened his mouth to protest that he saw no base from here, that there were only sand dunes around and that he’d most certainly get lost and die of dehydration but the Italian fellow had already sped off, leaving a trail of dust in his wake.
After letting another string of elaborate curses escape his dust-covered lips, Wilhelm took a careful swig from his canteen, cringed◦– nasty warm water!◦– and began marching in the direction pointed out by the Italian. Much to his relief, after climbing over the third dune, he indeed saw a base, if one could call it that.
The base, which consisted of a few trucks and aircraft neatly lined up in the distance, represented quite a sorry picture. As Willi approached it, more and more beige-clad figures came into view, digging aimlessly into the sand with a lost look about them. The commanding officer, as Wilhelm had assumed anyway, scampered among them shouting orders which were only met with more questions and more uncomprehending stares.