Stuka Pilot (19 page)

“Dive in at once. Better to be drowned than captured by the Russians.”

I advise common sense. We are aglow from running. A short breather and then strip off as many garments as we can. The Ivans have meanwhile arrived panting at the top. They cannot see us because we are in a blind angle of their field of vision. They rush up and down unable to imagine where we have disappeared to. It is a cinch they think it impossible that we have leapt over the precipice. The Dniester is in flood; the snows are thawing out, and here and there a lump of ice drifts past. We calculate the breadth of the river as six hundred yards, the temperature as 3-4 degrees above freezing. The three others are already getting into the water; I am just divesting myself of my fur boots and fur jacket. Now I follow them, clad only in shirt and trousers; under my shirt my map, in my trousers pockets my medals and my compass. As I touch the water, I say to myself: “You are never going in here”—then I think of the alternative and am already striking out.

In a very short while the cold is paralyzing. I gasp for breath, I no longer feel that I am swimming. Concentrate hard, think of the swimming strokes and carry out the motions! Only imperceptibly the far bank draws nearer. The others are ahead of me. I think of Henschel. He passed his swimming test with me when we were with the reserve flight at Graz, but if he goes all out today under more difficult conditions he will be able to repeat that record time, or perhaps get very near it. In mid-stream I am level with him, a few yards behind the gunner of the other aircraft; the corporal is a good distance in front, he seems to be an excellent swimmer.

Gradually one becomes dead to all sensation save the instinct of self-preservation which gives one strength; it is bend or break. I am amazed at the others’ stamina, for I as a former athlete am used to overexertion. My mind travels back. I always used to finish with the 1500 metres, often glowing with heat after trying to put up the best possible performance in nine other disciplinary exercises. This hard training pays me now. In sporting terms, my actual exertion does not exceed ninety per cent of my capability. The corporal climbs out of the water and throws himself down on the bank. Somewhat later I reach the safety of the shore with the L.A.C. close after me. Henschel has still another 150 yards to go. The other two he rigid, frozen to the bone, the gunner rambling deliriously. Poor chap! I sit down and watch Henschel struggling on.

Another 80 yards. Suddenly he throws up his arms and yells: “I can’t go on, I can’t go on any more!” and sinks. He comes up once, but not a second time. I jump back into the water, now drawing on the last ten per cent of energy which I hope is left me. I reach the spot where I just saw Henschel go down. I cannot dive, for to dive I need to fill my lungs but with the cold I cannot get sufficient air. After several fruitless attempts I just manage to get back to the bank. If I had succeeded in catching hold of Henschel I should have remained with him in the Dniester. He was very heavy and the strain would have been too much for almost any one. Now I lie sprawled on the bank… limp… exhausted… and somewhere a deepseated misery for my friend Henschel. A moment later we say a Paternoster for our comrade.

The map is sodden with water, but I have everything in my head. Only—the devil only knows how far we are behind the Russian lines. Or is there still a chance that we may bump into the Rumanians sooner or later? I check up on our arms; I have a 6.35 mm. revolver with six rounds, the corporal a 7.65 with a full magazine, the L.A.C. has lost his revolver whilst in the water and has only Henschel’s broken knife. We start walking southward with these weapons in our hands. The gently rolling country is familiar from flying over it. Contour differences of perhaps six hundred feet, few villages, 30 miles to the south a railway running E. to W. I know two points on it: Balti and Floresti. Even if the Russians have made a deep penetration we can count on this line still being free of the enemy.

The time is about 3 p.m., the sun is high in the S.W. It shines obliquely in our faces on our right. First we go into a little valley with moderately high hills on either side. We are still benumbed, the corporal still delirious. I advise caution. We must try to skirt any inhabited places. Each of us is allotted a definite sector to keep under observation.

I am famished. It suddenly strikes me that I have not had a bit to eat all day. This was the eighth time we had been out, and there had not been time for a meal between sorties. A report had to be written out and dispatched to the group on our return from every mission, and instructions for the next one taken down over the telephone. Meanwhile our aircraft were refueled and rearmed, bombs loaded and off again. The crews were able to rest between whiles and even snatch a meal, but in this respect I did not count as one of them.

I guess we must now have been going for an hour; the sun is beginning to lose its strength and our clothes are starting to freeze. Do I really see something ahead of us or am I mistaken? No, it is real enough. Advancing in our direction out of the glare of the sun—it is hard to see clearly—are three figures three hundred yards away. They have certainly seen us.

Perhaps they were lying on their stomachs behind this ridge of hills. They are big chaps, doubtless Rumanians. Now I can see them better. The two on the outside of the trio have rifles slung over their shoulders, the one in the middle carries a Tommy-gun. He is a young man, the other two are about forty, probably reservists. They approach us in no unfriendly manner in their brown-green uniforms. It suddenly occurs to me that we are no longer wearing uniforms and that consequently our nationality is not immediately evident. I hastily advise the corporal to hide his revolver while I do likewise in case the Rumanians become jittery and open fire on us. The trio now halts a yard in front of us and looks us over curiously. I start explaining to our allies that we are Germans who have made a forced landing and beg them to help us with clothing and food, telling them that we want to get back to our unit as quickly as possible.

I say: “We are German airmen who have made a forced landing,” whereupon their faces darken and at the same moment I have the three muzzles of their weapons pointing at my chest. The young one instantly grabs my holster and pulls out my 6.35. They have been standing with their backs to the sun. I have had it in my eyes. Now I take a good look at them. Hammer and sickle—ergo Russians. I do not contemplate for a second being taken prisoner, I think only of escape. There is a hundred to one chance of pulling it off. There is probably a good price on my head in Russia, my capture is likely to be even better rewarded. To blow my brains out is not a practical consideration. I am disarmed. Slowly I turn my head round to see if the coast is clear. They guess my intention and one of them shouts “Stoi!” (Halt!) I duck as I make a double turn and run for it, crouching low and swerving to right and left. Three shots crack out; they are followed by an uninterrupted rattle of quick fire. A stinging pain in my shoulder. The chap with the Tommy-gun has hit me at close range through the shoulder, the other two have missed me.

I sprint like a hare, zig-zagging up the slope, bullets whistling above and below me, to right and to left. The Ivans run after me, halt, fire, run, fire, run, fire, run. Only a short while ago I believed I could hardly put one leg in front of the other, so stiff was I with cold, but now I am doing the sprint of my life. I have never done the 400 yards in faster time. Blood spurts from my shoulder and it is an effort to fight off the blackness before my eyes. I have gained fifty or sixty yards on my pursuers; the bullets whistle incessantly. My only thought: “Only he is lost who gives himself up for lost.” The hill seems interminable. My main direction is still into the sun in order to make it more difficult for the Ivans to hit me. I am dazzled by the glare of the sun and it is easy to miscalculate. I have just had a lesson of that. Now I reach a kind of crest, but my strength is giving out and in order to stretch it still further I decide to keep to the top of the ridge; I shall never manage any more up and down hill. So away at the double southward along the ridge.

I cannot believe my eyes: on the hill top twenty Ivans are running towards me. Apparently they have seen everything and now mean to round up their exhausted and wounded quarry. My faith in God wavers. Why did He first allow me to believe in the possible success of my escape? For I did get out of the first absolutely hopeless comer with my life. And will He now turn me over unarmed, deprived of my last weapon, my physical strength? My determination to escape and live suddenly revives. I dash straight downhill, that is, down the opposite slope to that by which I came up. Behind me, two or three hundred yards away, my original pursuers, the fresh pack to one side of me. The first trio has been reduced to two; at the moment they cannot see me, for I am on the far side of the hill. One of them has stayed behind to bring in my two comrades who stood still when I took to my heels. The hounds on my left are now keeping a parallel course, also running down hill, to cut me off. Now comes a ploughed field; I stumble and for an instant have to take my eyes off the Ivans. I am dead tired, I trip over a clod of earth and lie where I have fallen. The end cannot be far off. I mutter one more curse that I have no revolver and therefore not even the chance to rob the Ivans of their triumph in taking me prisoner. My eyes are turned towards the Reds. They are now running over the same ploughland and have to watch their step. They run on for another fifteen yards before they look up and glance to the right where I am lying. They are now level with me, then diagonally in front, as they move forward on a line 250 yards away. They stop and look about them, unable to make out where I can have got to. I lie flat on the slightly frozen earth and scratch myself with my fingers into the soil. It is a tough proposition; everything is so hard. The miserable bits of earth I manage to scrape loose I throw on top of me, building up a fox-hole. My wound is bleeding, I have nothing to bandage it with; I lie prone on the ice cold earth in my soaking wet clothes; inside me I am hot with excitement at the prospect of being caught at any moment. Again the odds are a hundred to one on my being discovered and captured in less than no time. But is that a reason to give up hope in the almost impossible, when only by believing that the almost impossible is possible can it become so?

There now, the Russians are coming in my direction, continually lessening the distance between us, each of them searching the field on his own, but not yet methodically. Some of them are looking in quite the wrong direction; they do not bother me. But there is one coming straight towards me. The suspense is terrible. Twenty paces from me he stops. Is he looking at me? Is he? He is unmistakably staring in my direction. Is he not coming on? What is he waiting for? He hesitates for several minutes; it seems an eternity to me. From time to time he turns his head a wee bit to the right, a wee bit to the left; actually he is looking well beyond me. I gain a momentary confidence, but then I perceive the danger once more looming large in front of me, and my hopes deflate. Meanwhile the silhouettes of my first pursuers appear on the ridge, apparently, now that so many hounds are on the scent, they have ceased to take their task seriously.

Suddenly at an angle behind me I hear the roar of an aeroplane and look up over my shoulder. My Stuka squadron is flying over the Dniester with a strong fighter escort and two Fieseler Storches. That means that Flt./Off. Fischer has given the alarm and they are searching for me to get me out of this mess. Up there they have no suspicion that they are searching in quite the wrong direction, that I have long since been six miles further south on this side of the river. At this distance I cannot even attract their attention; I dare not so much as lift my little finger. They make one circuit after another at different levels. Then they disappear heading east, and many of them will be thinking: “This time even he has had it.”

They fly away—home. Longingly I follow them with my eyes. You at least know that tonight you will sleep under shelter and will still be alive whereas I cannot guess how many minutes more of life will be granted me. So I lie there shivering. The sun slowly sets. Why have I not yet been discovered?

Over the brow of the hill comes a column of Ivans, in Indian file, with horses and dogs. Once again I doubt God’s justice, for now the gathering darkness should have given me protection. I can feel the earth tremble under their feet. My nerves are at snapping point. I squint behind me. At a distance of a hundred yards the men and animals file past me. Why does no dog pick up my scent? Why does no one find me? Shortly after passing me they deploy at two yards’ intervals. If they had done this fifty yards sooner they would have trodden on me. They vanish in the slowly falling dusk.

The last glow of evening yields to blue, feebly twin kling stars appear. My compass has no phosphorescent dial, but there is still light enough to read it. My general direction must remain the south. I see in that quarter of the sky a conspicuous and easily recognizable star, with a little neighbor. I decide to adopt it as my lodestar. What constellation in the Russian firmament can it be? It is growing dark and I can no longer see anybody. I stand up, stiff, aching, hungry, thirsty. I remember my chocolate—but I left it in my fur jacket on the bank of the Dniester. Avoiding all roads, footpaths, villages, as Ivan is sure to have sentries posted there, I simply follow my star across country, up hill and down dale, over streams, bogs, marshes and stubbly harvested maize fields. My bare feet are cut to ribbons. Again and again in the open fields I stub my toes against big stones. Gradually I lose all feeling in my feet. The will to live, to keep my freedom, urges me on; they are indivisible; life without freedom is a hollow fruit. How deep is Ivan’s penetration of our front? How far have I still to travel? Wherever I hear a dog bark I make a detour, for the hamlets hereabouts are certainly not inhabited by friends. Every now and again I can see gun-flashes on the distant horizon and hear a dull rumble; evidently our boys have started an artillery bombardment. But that means the Russian break-through has gone far. In the gullies which cut through the occasionally rising ground I often lose my footing in the darkness and slump into a ditch where the gluey mud stands knee-deep. It sucks me in so tightly that I have no longer the strength to pull myself out, and flop with the upper part of my body sprawled on the bank of the ditch—my legs deep in slime. Thus I be exhausted, feeling like a battery gone dead.