Stuka Pilot

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.