6. TRAINING AND PRACTICE
Before taking over the job of training new crews I get married. My father is still Rector of his church and performs the ceremony in our little country village to which I am attached by so many happy memories of my scape-grace boyhood.
Then off to Graz, this time not as a learner but as an instructor. Formation flying, diving, bombing, gunnery. I often sit in the aircraft eight hours in the day, as for the time being I have hardly any help. In bad weather or when technical duties are on the schedule there are military exercises or sport. Crews are sent to me for further training from the Stuka schools after which they proceed to the front. When they have passed on I shall meet some of them again in days to come; perhaps have them in my own unit. If for no other reason, it pays to spare no trouble with their training. In my leisure hours I keep in training by athletics; I play tennis, swim, or spend my time in the magnificent country round Graz. After two months I get an assistant. Pilot Officer Jackel of the 3rd Flight has just been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, and has at the same time been seconded for less exacting work. We carry out exercise operations against peaceful targets, as though at the front. I have two Messerschmitt aircraft on my flight strength so that we are also able to represent enemy interception. The training is stiff and arduous, but I believe the crews who stand up to it and do what is required of them are learning a lot.
Physical toughness and endurance is fostered by sport. Almost every Monday morning I take the flight for a six mile run; it does them all a world of good. In the afternoon we go to Andritz for a swim and tests of nerve. They all qualify as pole jumpers and there is keen competition for the swimming certificate.
Jackel is a few years younger than I and still quite a boy. One cannot be angry with him no matter how awkward a situation arises. He is gay and full of fun; he takes life in his stride. On Sunday afternoons I usually go off into the mountains. There is a bus stop in front of the guard room and I board it there on my way into the town. The shadow of the bus travels with us at the side of the road and I suddenly become aware of figures which form part of this shadow apparently perched on the roof of the bus. They are “cocking snooks” and in other ways playing the fool, especially when girls happen to be passing. I can guess who they are by their caps. They are soldiers belonging to our station, but they cannot be men of my unit because strict orders have repeatedly been issued forbidding all service men to climb on the top of the buses. Rather pointedly I remark to a lieutenant of a ground unit sitting next to me:
“Those chaps up there must be yours.”
With a faintly superior edge to his voice he retorts:
“You will laugh. They are yours!”
When the soldiers alight in Graz I order them to report to me at 11 A.M. on the Monday morning. When they troop in to receive what is coming to them I say:
“What the devil do you mean by it? You know you’ve been breaking an order. It’s unheard of.”
I can see by their faces that they want to say something and I ask if they have any excuse to offer.
“We only thought it was all right for us as Pilot Officer Jackel was up there with us too.”
I hastily dismissed them before I burst out laughing. Then I picture Jackel perched on the roof of the bus. When I tell him what he has let me in for he puts on his innocent expression, and then I can keep a straight face no longer.
In Graz a few days later we narrowly escape another off-duty accident. A Glider Club had begged me to tow their glider with an ancient Czech biplane because they had no one else to pilot it. I do this and, being a private flight, it is an opportunity for me to take with me my wife who is very keen to fly. After 21/2 hours I ask how much petrol we are likely to have left; the petrol gauge does not show this. They tell me the machine has enough for four hours; I can carry on flying without the least anxiety. I accept this assurance and fly back towards the aerodrome. As we are flying at low level above the middle of a potato field the engine conks out. I have only time to yell out: “Hold tight,” for I know that my wife is not strapped in, before I come down in the furrows. The aeroplane bounces over a ditch and then comes safely to a standstill in a cornfield. We fetch some petrol and then I take off again from a field path for the aerodrome two miles away.
How many of my colleagues, especially in the Luftwaffe, come through battles with the enemy unscathed only to crack up in some utterly stupid “civilian” accident This trivial incident once again confirms the necessity for the apparently silly rule by which we are obliged to be at least as careful when we have left the operational front as we are in the keenest attack. Similarly when in action with the enemy we are not allowed to accept unnecessary risks even if we are not inhibited or deterred by the thought of our lives during an operation.
When I land again on the aerodrome with the ancient biplane I learn that the reserve flight of another squadron has been transferred to Russia. In that case it should soon be our turn. For a long time it has been preying on my mind that I have been home now for several months, and all of a sudden I realize how I have been fidgeting to get to the front. I constantly fret at being kept out of it for so long, and I feel this restlessness particularly strongly when I sense that too long an absence from the front line might well be dangerous to me. For I am only human, and there are many instincts in me which would gleefully exchange the intimate fellowship of death for the more intimate fellowship of life. For I want to live, the desire is stronger every time—I feel it in the throbbing of my pulses whenever I escape death once again in an attack, but I am also conscious of it in the exhilaration of a head-long rush down a steep Alpine slope. I want to live. I love life. I feel it in every deep drawn breath, in every pore of my skin, in every fiber of my body. I am not afraid of death; I have often looked him in the eye for a matter of seconds and have never been the first to lower my gaze, but each time after such an encounter I have also rejoiced in my heart and sometimes cried out with a whoop of jubilation trying to overshout the roar of the engines.
All this I think of as I mechanically chew down my supper in the Mess. And then already my mind is firmly made up. I will doggedly pull every possible string until they take me out of this rut and send me back again to a fighting formation at the front.
I do not accomplish my real object, but it is not long before we are all ordered to the Crimea. Sarabus, close to Simferopol, is our new station and there, at any rate, we are closer to the front than we were before. We solved the transport problem by using our Ju. 87’s as tug aircraft for freight gliders. Over Kracow—Lemberg—Proskurow—Nicolajew we are soon at our destination. The aerodrome there is a very large one and suitable for training purposes. Our makeshift quarters are not very different from those of the front, but where there is a will there is a way. We resume our routine training as at Graz. We specially enjoy it when we practice landings on other airfields, for then sometimes we land in the morning in the west on the shore of the Black Sea, and perhaps in the afternoon in the northwest near the sea of Asow. We bathe for at least half an hour on the lovely beaches in the broiling sunshine. There are no hills except near Kertsch, and in the south where the Jaila range of about 5,000 feet runs along the south coast of the Crimea. All the rest of the country is flat; vast steppes, in the middle of them huge tomato plantations. A very narrow coastal strip stretches between the sea and the Jaila mountains: the Russian Riviera. We are often there and fetch kindling with lorries; there is no timber where we are stationed. The comparison with the Riviera turns out to be rather feeble. I see a few palm trees at Jalta—so far so good—but two or three of these trees are far from making a Riviera. From a distance the buildings gleam brightly in the sun, especially when one is flying at low level along the coast. It makes a surprisingly good impression; but if you walk through the streets of Jalta and get a close view of everything the general primitiveness and vulgarity of this Soviet watering place is a tremendous disillusion. It is no different in the neighboring towns of Aluschta and Alupka. My men are delighted by the many vineyards between these two places; the vintage season is just beginning. We sample the grapes on every hillside and often arrive home late with a prodigious bellyache.