Stuka Pilot

In low level attacks on a road along which the Russians are advancing, damage by enemy flak compels one of our aircraft to make a forced landing. Our comrade’s aircraft comes down in a little clearing surrounded on three sides by scrub and Russians. The crew take cover behind their machine. I can see the Russian M.G. bursts spattering up the sand. Unless my colleagues are picked up they are lost. But the Reds are right among them. What the heck! I must bring it off. I lower my landing flaps and already I am gliding down to land. I can spot the Ivans’ light grey uniforms among the bushes. Whang! A burst of M.G. fire hits my engine. There seems no sense in landing with a crippled aircraft; if I do we shall not be able to take off again. My comrades are done for. Their waving hands are the last I see of them. The engine conks like mad, but picks up and is running just sufficiently for me to pull out on the other side over a copse. The oil has plastered the window of my cockpit and I expect a piston seizure at any moment. If that happens my engine will stop for good. The Reds are below me; they throw themselves on the ground in front of my kite while some of them shoot at it. The flight has climbed to nearly a thousand feet and is out of range of the tornado of small arms fire. My engine just holds out till I reach our front line; there I land. Then I hurry back to base in an army lorry. Here Officer Cadet Bauer has just arrived. I know him from my time with the reserve flight at Graz. He later distinguishes himself and is to be one of the few of us who survive this campaign. But this day on which he joins us is an unlucky one. I damage the right wing plane of my aircraft because when taxiing in I am blinded by the thick swirl of dust and collide with another aircraft. That means I must change my wing plane, but there is not one on the airfield. They tell me that a damaged aircraft is still standing on our last runway at Ulla, but it still has a sound right wing plane.

Steen is furious with me. “You may fly when your aircraft is serviceable again and not before.” To be grounded is the severest punishment. Anyhow we have flown the last sortie for today, and I fly back at once to Ulla. Two mechanics from another flight have been left behind there; they help me. During the night we take off the wing planes with the assistance of a couple of comrades from the infantry. We are through by three in the morning. All one needs is a break. I report my return with a whole aircraft in time for the first sortie at half past four. My skipper grins and shakes his A few days later I am transferred to the 3rd squadron as engineer officer and have therefore to bid the first flight good-bye. Steen cannot pull any strings to stop my transfer and so I am now engineer officer of the 3rd squadron. I have barely arrived when the squadron commander leaves the unit and a new one takes his place. Who is he? FIt/Lt. Steen! All one needs is a break.

“Your transfer was only half as bad as you thought, you see that now. Yes, it is a mistake to be too eager to play providence!” says Steen as he greets me. When he joins us in the squadron mess tent for the first time at Janowici there is the dickens of a racket going on. An ancient L.A.C. had been trying to fill his lighter from a large petrol tin. He does it by tilting the tin with the result that the petrol spills over the lighter whereupon he keeps flicking it to see if it is already working. There is a terrific bang; the tin explodes in his face and the L.A.C. pulls a face as if the explosion were a breach of military regulations. A sad waste of good petrol; for many old women are only too glad to swap eggs for a little petrol. This is of course forbidden because petrol is meant for other uses than the concoction of spirituous liquor by old women Even one drop of the stuff they manufacture bums our skin. Everything is a question of habit. The chancel of the village church has been converted into a cinema, the nave into a stables. “Different people, different customs,” says Flt./Lt. Steen with a chuckle.

“The great motor road from Smolensk to Moscow is the objective of many of our sorties; it is crowded with immense quantities of Russian material. Lorries and tanks are parked there beside one another at the closest intervals, often in three parallel columns. If this mass of material had poured over us…” I cannot help thinking as I attack this sitting target. Now in a few days’ tine it will all be a vast sea of wreckage. The advance of the army goes forward irresistibly. Soon we are taking off from Duchowtchma, not far from the railway station of Jarzewo the possession of which is later hotly contested.