Stuka Pilot (38 page)

As the first to come down, I now lie flopped at the end of the runway; already a soldier is standing beside my cockpit pointing a revolver at me. I open the canopy and instantly his hand is outstretched to grab my golden oak-leaves. I shove him back and shut down the hood again. Presumably this first encounter would have ended badly had not a jeep driven up with some officers who dress this fellow down and send him about his business. They come closer and see that I have a blood-drenched bandage: the result of the skirmish above Saaz. They take me first to their dressing station where I am given a fresh bandage. Niermann does not let me out of his sight and follows me like a shadow. Then I am taken to a large partitioned-off room in an upstairs hall which has been fitted out as a kind of officers’ mess.

Here I meet the rest of my colleagues who have been brought straight there: they spring to attention and greet me with the salute prescribed by the Führer. On the far side of the room stands a small group of U.S.A. officers; this spontaneous salute displeases them and they mutter to themselves. They evidently belong to a mixed fighter wing which is stationed here with Thunderbolts and Mustangs. An interpreter comes up to me and asks if I speak English. He tells me that their commanding officer objects, above all things, to this salute.

“Even if I can speak English,” I reply, “we are in Germany here and speak only German. As far as the salute is concerned, we are ordered to salute in this way and being soldiers we carry out our orders. Besides, we do not care whether you object to it or not. Tell your C.O. that we are the ‘Immelmann’ Wing and as the war is now over and no one has defeated us in the air we do not consider ourselves prisoners. The German soldier,” I point out, “has not been beaten on his merits, but has simply been crushed by overwhelming masses of material. We have landed here because we did not wish to stay in the Soviet zone. We should also prefer not to discuss the matter any further, but would like to have a wash and brush up and then have something to eat.”

Some of the officers continue to scowl, but we are able to perform our ablutions in the mess room so copiously that we make something of a puddle. We make ourselves perfectly at home, why shouldn’t we? We are after all in Germany. We converse without embarrassment. Then we eat, and an interpreter comes and asks us in the name of his commanding officer whether we would like to have a talk with him and his officers when we have finished our meal. This invitation interests us as airmen and we oblige, especially as all mention of “the whys and wherefores of the winning and losing of the war” is taboo. From outside comes the noise of shots and rowdiness; the colored soldiers are celebrating victory under the influence of liquor. I should not care to go down into the ground floor hall; jubilation bullets whistle through the air on every side. It is very late before we get to sleep.

Almost everything except what we have on our persons is stolen during the night. The most valuable thing I miss is my flight log-book in which is recorded in detail every operational flight, from the first to the two thousand, five hundred and thirtieth. Also a replica of the “diamonds,” the citation for the diamond pilot medal, the high Hungarian decoration and a lot else are gone, not to mention watches and other things. Even my bespoke peg-leg is discovered by Niermann under some fellow’s bed; presumably he had meant to cut himself a souvenir out of it and sell it later as “a bit of a high-ranking Jerry officer.”

Early in the morning I receive a message that I am to come to the H.Q. of the 9th American Air Army at Erlangen. I refuse until all my pilfered belongings have been returned to me. After much persuasion in which I am told that the matter is very urgent and that I can rely on getting my things back as soon as the thief has been caught, I set off with Niermann. At Air Army H.Q. we are first interrogated by three General Staff officers. They begin by showing us some photographs which they claim to have been taken of atrocities in concentration camps. As we have been fighting for such abominations, they argue, we also share the guilt. They refuse to believe me when I tell them that I have never even seen a concentration camp. I add that if excesses have been committed they are regrettable and reprehensible, and the real culprits should be punished. I point out that such cruelties have been perpetrated not only by our people, but by all peoples in every age. I remind them of the Boer War. Therefore these excesses must be judged by the same criterion. I cannot imagine that the mounds of corpses depicted on the photographs were taken in concentration camps. I tell them that we have seen such sights, not on paper, but in fact, after the air attacks on Dresden and Hamburg and other cities when Allied four-engined bombers deluged them indiscriminately with phosphorus and high explosive bombs and countless women and children were massacred. And I assure these gentlemen that if they are especially interested in atrocities they will find abundant material—and “living” material at that—among their Eastern Allies.

We see no more of these photographs. With a venomous glance at us, the officer making out his report of the interrogation comments when I have had my say: “Typical Nazi officer.” Why one is a typical Nazi officer when one is merely telling the truth is not quite clear to me. Are these gentlemen aware that we have never fought for a political party, but only for Germany? In this belief also millions of our comrades have died. My assertion that they will one day be sorry that in destroying us they have demolished the bastion against Bolshevism they interpret as propaganda and refuse to believe it. They say that with us the wish to divide the allies against each other is father to the thought. Some hours later we are taken to the General commanding this Air Army, Wyland. The general is said to be of German origin, from Bremen. He makes a good impression on me; in the course of our interview I tell him of the theft of the articles already mentioned, so precious to me, at Kit zingen. I ask him if this is usual. He raises Cain, not at my outspokenness, but at this shameful robbery. He orders his adjutant to instruct the C.O. of the unit concerned at Kitzingen to produce my property and threatens a court martial. He begs me to be his guest at Erlangen until everything has been restored to me.

After the interview Niermann and I are driven in a jeep to a suburb of the town where an uninhabited villa is placed at our disposal. A sentry at the gate shows us that we are not entirely free. A car comes out to fetch us to the officers’ mess for meals. The news of our arrival has soon got round among the people of Erlangen and the sentry has trouble in coping with our numerous visitors. When he is not afraid of being surprised by a superior he says to us: “Ich nix sehen.”

So we spent five days at Erlanger. Our colleagues who have remained behind at Kitzingen we do not see again; there are no complications to detain them.

On the 14th May Captain Ross, the I.O. of the Air Army, appears at the villa. He speaks good German and brings us a message from General Wyland regretting that so far no progress has been made towards the recovery of my belongings, but that orders have just come through that we are to proceed immediately to England for interrogation. With a short stopoff at Wiesbaden, we are delivered to an interrogation camp near London. Quarters and food are austere, our treatment by English officers is correct. The old captain to whose care we are “entrusted” is in civilian life a patent lawyer in London. He pays us a daily visit of inspection and one day sees my Golden Oak Leaves on the table. He looks at it thoughtfully, wags his head and mutters, almost with awe: “How many lives can that have cost!”

When I explain to him that I earned it in Russia he leaves us, considerably relieved.

In the course of the day I am often visited by English and also by American intelligence officers who are variously inquisitive. I soon perceive that we have contrary ideas. This is not surprising seeing that I have flown most of my operational flights with aircraft of very inferior speed and my experience is therefore different from that of the allies who are inclined to exaggerate the importance of every extra m.p.h., if only as a guarantee of safety. They can hardly believe my total of over 2,500 sorties with such a slow aircraft, nor are they at all interested to learn the lesson of my experience as they see no life insurance in it. They boast of their rockets which I already know about and which can be fired from the fastest aircraft; they do not like to be told that their accuracy is small in comparison with my cannon. I do not particularly mind these interrogations; my successes have not been gained by any technical secrets. So our talks are little more than a discussion of aviation and the war which has just ended. These island Britishers do not conceal their respect for the enemy’s achievement, their attitude is one of sportsmanlike fairness which we appreciate. We are out in the open air for three quarters of an hour every day and prowl up and down behind the barbed wire. For the rest of the time we read and forge post-war plans.

After about a fortnight we are sent north and in terned in a normal American P.O.W. camp. There are many thousand prisoners in this camp. The food is a bare minimum and some of our comrades who have been here for some time are weak from emaciation. My stump gives me trouble and has to be operated on; the camp M.O. refuses to perform the operation on the ground that I have flown with one leg and he is not interested in what happens to my stump. It is swollen and inflamed and I suffer acute pain. The camp authorities could not make a better propaganda among the thousands of German soldiers for their former officers. A good many of our guards know Germany; they are emigrants who left after 1933 and speak German like ourselves. The negroes are good-natured and obliging except when they have been drinking.

Three weeks later I am entrained for Southampton with Niermann and the majority of the more seriously wounded cases. We are crowded onto the deck of a Kaiser freighter. When twenty four hours pass without our being given any food and we suspect that this will go on till we reach Cherbourg, because the American crew intend to sell our rations to the French black market, a party of Russian front veterans force an entry into the store-room and take the distribution into their own hands. The ship’s crew pull very long faces when they discover the raid much later.

The drive through Cherbourg to our new camp near Carentan is anything but pleasant as the French civilian population greet even seriously wounded soldiers by pelting them with stones. We cannot help remembering the really comfortable life the French civilians of ten led in Germany. Many of them were sensible enough to appreciate that while they were living in comfort we were holding back the Soviets in the East. There will be an awakening, too, for those who today throw stones.

The conditions in the new camp are very much the same as in England. Here also an operation is at first refused me. I cannot look forward to being released, if only because of my rank. One day I am taken to the aerodrome at Cherbourg, and at first I believe I am to be handed over to Ivan. That would be something for the Soviets, to have Field Marshal Schörner and myself as prizes from the war on the ground and in the air! The compass points to 300 degrees, so our course is set for England. Why? We land some twenty miles inland on the aerodrome at Tangmere, the R.A.F. formation leaders’ school. Here I learn that Group Captain Bader
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has effected my removal. Bader is the most popular airman in the R.A.F. He was shot down during the war and flew with two artificial legs. He had learnt that I was interned in the camp at Carentan. He had himself been a prisoner of war in Germany and had made several attempts to escape. He can tell a different story from the inveterate agitators who seek by every means to brand us Germans as barbarians.

This time in England is a rest cure for me after the P.O.W. camps. Here I discover again for the first time that there is still a respect for the enemy’s achievement, a chivalry which should come naturally to every officer in the service of every country in the world.

Bader sends to London for the man who made his artificial limbs with an order to make one for me. I decline this generous offer because I cannot pay for it. I lost all I had in the East and I do not yet know what may happen in the future. At any rate it will not be possible to pay him back in sterling. Group Captain Bader is almost offended when I refuse to accept his kindness and am worried about payment. He brings the man down with him, and he makes a plaster of Paris cast. The man returns a few days later and tells me the stump must be swollen internally as it is thicker at the bottom than at the top; therefore an operation is necessary before he can complete the artificial leg.

Some days after this an enquiry comes from the Americans, saying that I have “only been lent” and must now be returned. My rest cure is nearly over.

On one of my last days at Tangmere I have an illuminating discussion with the R.A.F. boys attending a course at the school. One of them—not an Englishman—hoping no doubt to anger or intimidate me, asks me what I suppose the Russians would do with me if I had now to return to my home in Silesia where I belong.

“I think the Russians are clever enough,” I reply, “to make use of my experience. In the field of combating tanks alone, which must play a part in any future war, my instruction may prove disadvantageous for the enemy. I am credited with over five hundred tanks destroyed, and assuming that in the next few years I were to train five or six hundred pilots each of whom destroyed at least a hundred tanks, you can reckon out for yourself how many tanks the enemy’s armament industry would have to replace on my account.”

This answer provokes a general murmur of consternation and I am asked excitedly how I reconcile it with my former attitude towards Bolshevism. Hitherto I have not been allowed to say anything disparaging about Russia—their ally. But now I am told of the mass deportations to the East and tales of rape and atrocities, of the bloody terrorism with which the hordes from the steppes of Asia are martyring their subject peoples… This is something new to me, for previously they have been most careful to avoid these subjects; but now their views are an exact reflection of our own often enough proclaimed theses, and expressed in language which is frequently copied from us. Formation leaders of the R.A.F. who have flown Hurricanes on the Russian side at Murmansk tell their impressions; they are shattering. Of our crews which were shot down there hardly one was left alive.