Stuka Pilot

Our airfield lies amid magnificent scenery between two spurs of the Sudeten mountains surrounded by forest with goodsized lakes near by and at Kummer itself a lovely forest-girt tarn. Pending the solution of the billeting problem we foregather of an evening in the room of an inn. Here in the Sudetenland everything still gives an impression of utter peace and tranquility. The enemy is behind the mountains and this front is defended by Field Marshal Schörner; consequently this unruffled calm is not unreasonable. Towards eleven o’clock we hear the treble voices of a children’s choir singing: “Gott grüsse dich.” The local school with its mistress is treating us to a serenade of welcome. This is something new to us hard-boiled soldiers, it touches us in a place which now in this phase of the war we would as soon forget. We listen meditatively, each of us sunk in his own thoughts; we feel that these children have faith in our power to ward off the impending danger with all its accompanying horrors. Here on the threshold of their home we shall not fail them for lack of determination. At the end of their song I thank them for their charming welcome and invite them to visit our airfield in the morning to have a peep at our “birds.” They are keen as mustard. They turn up next day and I start the proceedings by taking up my anti-tank aircraft and firing at a, three foot square target. The children stand round in a semi-circle and can now imagine an attack on an enemy tank; it is a good try-out for me to manage with one leg. On the other side of the Sudeten mountains it is still foggy and as we cannot go out on a sortie I have a little time to waste, so I take up a FW 190 D 9 and give an exhibition of low and high flying acrobatics. That genius, Flight Lt. Klatzschner, my engineer officer, has already readjusted the foot brakes, which are indispensable for this fast aircraft, so that they can be operated by hand.

As I come down to land all the men are gesticulating violently and pointing up into the sky. I look up and through the gaps in the ragged cloud cover I can see American fighters and Jabos, Mustangs and Thunderbolts circling above. They are flying at 4800 to 5400 feet above a layer of mist. They have not yet caught sight of me alone up there, otherwise I should have observed them while in the air. The Thunderbolts carry bombs and seem to be searching for a target, so our airfield is presumably their objective. Quickly, as far as one can use the word of a one-legged man in plaster, I hop over to where the others are standing by. They must all be got under cover. I hustle the children into the cellar where they will at least be safe from splinters but no more, for the house which we use as our operations room being the only one on the airfield is pretty certain to tempt one of those chaps up there. I enter last to pacify the children just as the first bombs drop, one of them close to the building; the blast smashes the window panes and sweeps away the roof. Our aircraft defense is too feeble to drive the bombers off, but enough to prevent low level attack. Fortunately we have no casualties among the children. I am sorry that their innocent, romantic ideas of aviation should have thus been brutally converted into grim reality. They soon quiet down again and the school-teacher marshals her little flock into a crocodile and shepherds them towards the village.

Flight Lt. Niermaun is radiant, he hopes he has got a film of the whole attack. Throughout the performance he has been standing in a foxhole, filming the falling bombs from the moment of their release to their impact with the ground and the fountains of earth they spout into the air. This is a tid-bit for the expert photographer from Spitzbergen, where he has also succeeded in taking some unique pictures.

^{P 47 Thunderbolt}

Fresh met. reports from the Görlitz—Bautzen area forecast a gradual clearing-up of the weather, so we take off. The Soviets have by-passed Görlitz and pushed on beyond Bautzen, which is encircled with its German garrison, in the hope of reaching Dresden by way of Bischofswerda. Continual counter-attacks are launched against these spearheads trying to effect the collapse of Field Marshal Schörner’s front, and with our support Bautzen is relieved and we destroy a large number of vehicles and tanks. This flying takes a lot out of me, I must have lost much blood and my apparently inexhaustible stamina has its limitations after all. Our successes are shared by battle and fighter formations placed under my command and stationed on our airfield and in the vicinity.