“Leutnant Hertel reporting for duty, Herr Hauptmann.”
Johann shook his hand instead of replying and then froze in amazement as the second man stepped forward, grinning gingerly. “Riedman! You!”
They pulled each other into a tight embrace. It all came rushing back to Johann; the flying school and their room◦– the four musketeers as they were dubbed by their schoolmates; the Afrika Korps and the three of them sleeping in the tent that could only house two. But Willi was in Germany with jaundice when Riedman was transferred to their JG and positively refused to hear a word about Walt moving out as soon as he returned. And so, they became the three musketeers, until Willi died and Johann suddenly couldn’t stand Africa without his friend in the sky anymore.
“Where have you been this whole time, you old fox?” He held Riedman in his outstretched arms, still not believing that a piece of an old life was suddenly breaking through the bleakness of his present existence. How young they had been! How wonderfully careless and happy! How long ago was that? Ages, it seemed… No. Two years only.
“In Africa until we had to pull out completely and then in France. But, by the looks of it, we’ll pull out of there soon enough as well.” Riedman chuckled, but mirth was absent from his voice.
“Why haven’t you been writing?”
Riedman threw a quick glance at the Staffeladjutant from under his long, dark lashes. Johann understood at once, caught his elbow and led him into his living quarters.
“Take Leutnant Hertel to his new lodgings, will you?” He told his Staffeladjutant in passing.
The latter only gave him a knowing look before the usual salute. He knew when to disappear.
“Well?” Johann turned back to Riedman as soon as the two were left alone.
They sat as close to the stove as possible and Johann pushed what was left of his dinner to his old comrade.
“Dry meat and bread with marmalade. We’re feasting here, thanks to Göring’s airdrops.”
“Aren’t those for the landser?”
“There’s no more landser to which we were supposed to drop this.”
“How so?”
“The usual story: encircled, captured◦– Gulag. We don’t fly to Siberia as of now.”
Riedman laughed vacantly and started cutting a sausage into small, delicate pieces. Johann watched him with a dreamy half-smile, trying to rebuild some long-forgotten memory out of his image, also forgotten and almost intangible, so very different from the man that was sitting next to him now. He touched the Iron Cross First Class on his neck.
“How many have you downed so far?”
“One hundred and seventy-eight.”
“Where’s your Knight’s Cross then? And the Oaks Leaves? Your superiors should have long taken care of submitting your papers for that.”
Riedman only shrugged without much emotion. “Knight’s Crosses are for true Aryan German Knights. I’m not a Knight. Neither I am a true Aryan German. I’m a Jew, a parasite, and a drain on a nation.”
Johann paled, staring at him in disbelief. Riedman was a first-class mischlinge, which was never a secret, but never before had he heard Walt talk about himself in such resigned, derogatory terms.
“Who put all this in your head?”
Another shrug followed. The noncom in charge of his squadron. Young replacement pilots, fresh out of flying school, with Hitlerjugend pins on their chests. The doctor, who refused to use his blood for a transfusion when Walt offered it to him to save his comrade◦– the only one who still talked to him and stood up for him. But Walt didn’t say any of this to Johann. Why bother him with his misfortunes?
“I’m putting in a request for your immediate promotion and for the Knight’s Cross first thing tomorrow morning.”
Walt’s mouth twitched. “You haven’t changed a bit. The eternal protector of the innocent, who fights for what is right.”
“What else is left?”
Riedman only caught Johann’s fingers and gave them a warm pressure without looking at his comrade. He was afraid he’d break down if he did. Johann turned away to the opposite wall as well, quickly wiping his cheek on his shoulder. He didn’t pull his hand out of Walt’s either.
“Can I fly as your wingman?”
“You’re too good to be my wingman. I’ll give you a Schwarm.”
“They won’t listen to me as soon they learn—”
“My people, on my base, obey my rules!” Johann shouted angrily. “We don’t have Germans or Jews here; we don’t even have a ranking system! We have flight leaders with the highest victory scores and the ones who should learn from them, if they want to survive, that is. Only the mad would bother with anything else in our current state.” He lit a cigarette and raked his long hair to calm his agitated nerves. “You still didn’t give me any good excuse as to why you didn’t write.”
“I didn’t want to get you into any trouble for associating with me.”
“What nonsense is this now?”
“I know you,” Walt explained with a soft smile. “You’d just start your crusade against everything that is unjust in this world like you did that time when the SS came to get the Staffel’s Senegalese mechanic and me.”
“And the entire Staffel; Teufel, Rommel himself stood up for you.”
“Things have changed since then.” Walt lowered his eyes. “Whatever was left of our old Staffel was thrown into the new ones and… let’s just say, my new comrades weren’t as understanding as the old ones.”
They spoke long into the night and drank to celebrate the past and to drown the present. Eventually, Johann had learned that Riedman hadn’t been on leave since he had last seen him back in Africa◦– another form of silent taunting, which his new base commander, who unlike the old one, proudly wore the Party badge on his lapel, applied to him. Johann had solemnly sworn that they both were going to Germany; Johann was due for another award.
“I’ll tell them that I’ll refuse to accept it if they refuse to award you together with me,” he declared.
They flew to Germany as the frontline was rather close to it now. Ju-52 landed in a fortified military airbase not too far from Berlin and the two sat in silence in the back seat of an army transport that slowly navigated its way among the rubble, which was still being cleared after the last raid.
“Are there many raids here lately?” Johann asked the driver.
The driver glared at him through the mirror. “Didn’t they warn you there, on the front? You’re not allowed to ask anything about the raids and even more so you’re strictly forbidden from mentioning them when you return to your base. It’s punishable by court-martial.”
What is not punishable by court-martial in this new Reich, Johann smirked grimly to himself.
Instead of giving the driver his address, Johann asked him to leave them at Riedman’s house. To all Walt’s protests, he only replied calmly that Walt hadn’t seen his family for far longer than he, Johann, hadn’t seen his wife. It was only fair.
“Everything should be fair with you.”