As Leutnant Ostwald began calling out their names one by one, Johann shouted his “Jawohl” in response to the officer’s loud “Brandt” and soon fell back into his day-dreaming; melancholy taking over him once again as the name Baumann wasn’t called before his as they always dreamt it would. How was Alf doing, he wondered. No university accepted his application and hardly anyone would risk hiring a Jew nowadays… Perhaps Papa would organize something for him at the aerodrome? Alf was great with mechanics, much better than he, Johann, was; surely, he could be of great help…
“Von Sielaff! Is von Sielaff present?”
Leutnant Ostwald sounded a bit irritated now that he’d repeated the name a few times, a scowl replacing his previously indifferent expression.
“Yes, yes, he is!” A voice shouted somewhere from behind their backs, coming from the grand marble staircase. Johann was dying, with desire, to turn his head and take a look at the cadet who had just committed career suicide before that career even had a chance to begin. The flying school was nearly impossible to be accepted into and from which students were kicked out at the slightest of provocations. This rascal, meanwhile◦– Johann could only see him from the side of his eye as he refused to move a muscle as was prescribed◦– squeezed himself at the end of the line, threw a duffel bag in front of himself with a loud bang, blew long golden bangs from his eyes (how had they even allowed him on the premises with such long hair?) and finally deigned to imitate something close to standing at attention before announcing in a voice still short of breath, “Wilhelm von Sielaff, reporting for basic flying school, Mein Leutnant.”
“Thank you for finally gracing us with your presence, Cadet von Sielaff,” the officer drawled sarcastically. “I expect there was some kind of emergency preventing you from making your appearance on time.”
“I would not call it an ‘emergency’,” the new cadet replied with envious calmness, “but your Herr Hauptmann, who kindly invited us to his office, would not stop his chatting with my father and I felt it was rude to interrupt to remind him of my having to be present during the roll call. I do apologize, before you personally, for making you wait though.”
That explains the long hair and insolence, Johann remarked to himself with a smirk. Some big-shot’s son.
Much to his surprise, the big-shot’s son was the fourth one in their room. He sauntered in with the air of a Crown Prince about him, looked around critically, then suddenly broke into the most charming of smiles and offered his hand to his new roommates.
“Willi,” he introduced himself and lit a cigarette with a golden lighter. “Are you, fellows locals or from Germany? Do you know any places around here that play some decent swing and serve some decent brandy?”
That instant, Johann decided that he liked the fellow, against his better judgment.
TWO
October 1938
October Viennese sky, leaden and tearstained, didn’t allow too much natural light into the classroom that morning. The lights went on, illuminating the students’ neatly brushed heads, diligently lowered over the blueprints and textbooks. Reichsmarschall Göring, the Chief of the Luftwaffe, looked on from the front wall of the classroom as Johann scribbled away ferociously in his notebook, deep lines of concentration creasing his forehead. Design and construction of aircraft and aircraft engines was his least favorite subject of all, yet he understood the importance of it and applied his all to memorize and learn every single detail of every single aircraft◦– unlike Willi. Willi was shamelessly napping right next to him. Johann noticed it with horror just now, after tearing his eyes away for only one short instant from the big double blackboard, to which an enormous blueprint of a Messerschmitt BF-109 was pinned.
Johann shoved his roommate with his elbow just in time before their instructor, Leutnant Ostwald, could turn around and notice such an unseemly display of blatant disrespect. But that’s Willi for you, Johann shook his head with a huff.
“Is the class over yet?” the former whispered sleepily, rubbing his bloodshot eyes with one hand.
Where he had spent the previous night was anyone’s guess. Johann begged him not to sneak out through the window on the very first night; threatened with reporting him to the school administration on the second; realized the futility of it and completely gave up some two weeks later. Willi didn’t acknowledge any authority and positively refused to be intimidated by threats and therefore Johann could have been talking to a brick wall with the same success.
While Johann and the others were busy cramming aircraft terminology, Willi would patiently wait for the lights-out, get up precisely thirty minutes later, slick back his hair with the help of a mirror and a flashlight which he wasn’t meant to have in the dorm room in the first place, all the while humming some popular◦– and very illegal◦– jazz tune under his breath. To Johann’s reproachful gaze and torrents of pleas and warnings he poured on him, Willi replied with a nonchalant wave of the hand, a mischievous smile and a solemn promise to be back for the roll call. How he made it safely down from the second floor and, what’s more interesting, how he managed to return unnoticed by the morning, was an utmost mystery to Johann. He only prayed that officers wouldn’t hear one of Willi’s, “what a party!” one morning during breakfast and wouldn’t smell the remnants of last night’s alcohol on his breath.
“No, it’s not over!” Johann hissed back in irritation. “Pay attention!”
“Why?” Willi stretched his arms over his head and yawned, making use of Leutnant Ostwald turning his back to the class once again. “Who needs to know how all of these screws and wires work anyway? I know how to fly the plane; I don’t need to know what’s inside of it.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Why? If I get hit and crash-land somewhere behind enemy lines, it’s a fat chance the said enemy would spare me some aircraft parts to repair it even if I know how to; don’t you think?”
Johann only shook his head again in resignation and continued writing after the instructor. Arguing with Willi was a lost cause; he’d learned it a long time ago. The bohemian Berliner possessed some odd sort of extravagant and almost anarchistic logic that invariably went against everything he had been taught, yet surprisingly made a lot of sense even to the order-loving Johann.
Leutnant Ostwald, bearing the Cross which he brought from the Spanish Civil War, on his left breast pocket, left the pointing rod near the blackboard and limped over to his desk to retrieve a new blueprint. It was a well-known story at school◦– that he was discharged with honors from the Luftwaffe after nearly dying in a bad crash and secretly Johann shared Willi’s sentiments on his account. “He’s a hero and all but his classes would be much more interesting if he actually spoke to us about his experiences in the war instead of drilling all of this useless terminology and construction details into our poor heads.”
He, too, wished to hear of dogfights and narrow escapes, of glorious victories and near-death experiences, of something eternally elevated and romantic◦– something that hid in the eyes of all fighter aces, smiling mysteriously out of the Luftwaffe propaganda posters; not of engine parts and weapon calibers.