“Of course not. I’m happy for you. They should have long ago allowed you to fly on your own, not as someone’s wingman. You’re too talented for that.”
“You still have more bars on your rudder.”
“I said you were too talented to fly as a wingman; I never said you were more talented than me.”
Willi leaped on top of his friend and wrestled him to the ground, tousling his hair in the process until both broke into a laughing fit.
“Hey, have you gotten any letters from Rudi lately?” Johann asked out of blue, smoothing out his letter to Mina that he was working on and which received a few wrinkles as a result of their horseplay.
“No. You?”
Johann shook his head pensively. “He promised that he would write as we were saying our goodbyes.”
“Oh well. Brigitte said she would write too.”
“I still wonder how he’s faring there, on the Channel Coast.”
“Probably faring there with my Brigitte.”
Johann play-punched Willi on his arm, grateful for the timely jest. They hadn’t heard from Rudi for a few months; Johann only hoped that their friend was still alive.
ELEVEN
Eastern Front, June 1941
Rudi shut his eyes in silent fury, forlorn and powerless, defeated by the roar of engines that had filled the air around him. He wished he didn’t hear it; he wished to stuff his ears with wax just to shut the familiar music of the Stuka dive bombers from penetrating his restless mind. They were off to battle, to make history. He was confined to his tent and rightfully so.
It was bound to happen, he tried to convince himself on multiple occasions when tearless sobs began to choke him at the sight of his squadron disappearing into a wind-washed sky, radiant after the recent storm. His deception would have been revealed eventually and there would be hell to pay. Squeezing his eyes with one hand, Rudolf cursed the day when he allowed a sympathetic pilot to offer him an open palm with a few white pills in it. For your nerves. It’ll help; you’ll see.
Why did he listen to him? Because the pilot had survived the Spanish campaign without a single injury. Because the pilot had nerves made of steel and marksmanship skills matched barely by few. Because he had a view straight into Rudi’s heart it seemed and accepted that heart’s weakness with an intimate understanding of a patient, who had been suffering from the same shameful disease. Because he had remarked in passing, with the wink of a conspirator, that his brother was some big shot in the SS and the pills came “straight from the facility.” Experimental stuff but so what? It works just fine; I tell you. There were so many similar “becauses” at which Rudi so hopelessly clawed and all in the fear of admitting the painful truth to himself. He always wished to be a pilot, yes, but he was never made to be a combat pilot. He was just not the right type. Too weak-minded. Too cowardly. Too everything that a Stuka dive bomber flier couldn’t possibly be.
After his first encounter with the enemy flak, he began dropping his load from a ridiculous height, not finding in himself the courage to plummet down to the necessary five hundred feet. He made an enemy of not just one gunner, at whom he bellowed over the R/T to shoot◦– Du verdammte Idiot!◦– and to hell with the Messerschmitt that the gunner feared to hit along with the Hurricane on his tail. He started acting out in front of the commanders just to be restricted from flying and be confined to quarters. He began catching unfinished sentences and mistrustful looks exchanged behind his back. He was heading straight into the infantry at this rate; yet, a simple infantryman’s fate suddenly didn’t appear to be such an unfortunate affair. Anything, but that deadly flak hitting precisely at the underbelly, igniting that coffin with wings at once◦– a ghastly scene which still played in front of his eyes, repeated daily from a safe distance◦– Rudi knew better than to come closer. He was heading straight to a penal battalion, perhaps, but anything was better at this point than the overwhelming fear of being burned alive, which had seeped into his very bones and spread out its gangrenous poison all over.
And then, “that mad fellow Helmut,” as he was affectionately called in the unit, invariably with a measure of awe and respect in one’s voice, appeared out of thin air one ghostly afternoon after a mission, steadied Rudi’s trembling hands in his, helped him light his cigarette and offered a solution, which soon became a habit. But where “experimental stuff” and invariably reliable Pervitin, used in its absence, became a salvation in combat, it didn’t do much for the nightmares to follow and Helmut, with the same languid grace in his voice, offered Rudi yellow pills from some other stash of his◦– again, “straight from the facility.” First-grade morphine. You’ll sleep like a baby.
Rudi indeed slept just fine. And now, he flew with ease rivaling that of the best of aces, completing his dives at such angles and low altitudes that his comrades clapped in awe as he climbed out of his cockpit after the mission. Even the dreadful flak had lost its power over him, it seemed. The spell was broken. Drugs simply numbed his emotions to the point where he moved like an automaton, following the instructions from his Stuka manual in such a manner that it would make the people who wrote it, proud.
Elevator at cruise position. Rudder trip at cruise position. Contact altimeter on. Contact altimeter set to release altitude. Supercharger set at automatic. Throttle fully closed. Cooler flaps closed. Dive brakes open. Stuka’s nose turns down, diving; the bomb is released; recovery◦– another bar on his rudder. With the bitter power of Pervitin on his tongue, he felt good, strong, God-like. Its powdery poison, surging through his veins, transformed him into a fearless warrior with mocking disregard for everyone’s life, including his own. He had stopped mourning his fallen comrades openly, with tears and instead began preaching about fatalism and ultimate sacrifice before the Fatherland with owl-like wisdom about him. He ceased to care for people in tanks or airfields on which his bombs rained with envious precision. He started seeing them as targets, as new bars on his rudder and it suited him just fine. But then, due to a cruel twist of fate, during one of the sorties, his vision went completely black and he would have most definitely crashed if it wasn’t for his unit leader who led him to safety through the radio, while Rudi balanced precariously on the verge of losing consciousness.
The Staffel physician, a tired looking man in his forties, took his vitals, scrutinized his eyes long and hard before asking in a straightforward manner, “what are you taking, young fellow?”
“Nothing, Herr Doktor.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you know how many men, just in this JG, we’ve lost to this ‘nothing’ of yours? Four. Two crashed, losing consciousness from the sharp change of altitudes◦– much like you almost did; one died of a heart attack and the third one fell asleep and never woke up. Do you want to join the statistics?”
“No, Herr Doktor.”
“No? Then do yourself a favor and clear your head before you kill yourself. I’m giving you one more chance and if this situation repeats itself, be sure, I’ll report you to the Staffelkapitän so fast that you won’t know what hit you.”
“Jawohl, Herr Doktor. Thank you, Herr Doktor.”
He did try to clear his head; he honestly set out on a sortie without the aid of the small round circle that conjured a fearless superhuman out of a trembling nobody. In a sweat-soaked spasm of terror, he found it to be even worse than in the very beginning. It seemed to him as though the enemy knew him to be a mere sham, an imposter, flying without protection and were shooting at him from every possible angle, riddling his aircraft with bullets while he struggled to release even one bomb in their general direction. Dripping with sweat, he landed heavily onto the airfield, mumbled something incoherent to his unit leader and rushed to Helmut’s side while their bombers were being rearmed for the next sortie.