Of Knights and Dogfights

by Ellie Midwood

  Harald’s instructor hesitated a split second but then pulled himself up, his face as unyielding as a wall. He only nodded and turned to Harald, who appeared as fearful and confused as him just a second ago. “Go help him. Make a sign.”

  Harald saluted and turned on his heel before he knew what he was doing. It was drilled into him to the point where thinking for himself was not an option any longer and he could only follow through blindly and only curse the instructor in his mind, who still had the power to make decisions and chose to make a wrong one. But maybe it was too late for him too? Perhaps the instructor also couldn’t make any choices?

  Harald stared idiotically at the piece of cardboard that his schoolmate, shorter and skinnier than him, thrust into his hands.

  “Make the usual sign.” A can of black paint suddenly found its way into Harald’s hands as well. “‘I am a treacherous swine who committed treason against the Führer and the State.’”

  Harald wrote it, in exemplary Gothic font, not comprehending what he was doing. How was the Luftwaffe fellow a treacherous swine? He was a war hero, like his brother… well, he did say something against the Führer, but so did Johann. And Willi. And his own father – only they did it quietly, away from everyone’s ears. But what if it was Harald, who would have lain there buried under that rubble together with his parents? What if Mina was there too? What if their new baby, his little nephew Gerd, was buried along with her? Wouldn’t Johann throw his Cross at the feet of the men, who guarded the regime that took it all away from him?

  He stared at the sign in his hands and was suddenly very afraid of the answer.

  “What are you doing there, screwing around with that sign?” The boy called out to him rudely. “It’s good enough to grace that swine’s neck.”

  Harald noticed that the boy still had the Cross and was just about to put it into his pocket.

  “What are you doing? It doesn’t belong to you!” He shouted, yanking on the ribbon.

  “He lost his right for it after he threw it on the ground. I can have it now.”

  Harald ignored his outstretched hand and marched back to the officer and his SS instructors. His teacher was busy yelling at the prisoners of war, as though the whole affair was their fault. He thrust the sign into the teacher’s hands avoiding looking at the pilot who was as blond and handsome as his brother. He’d calmed down, it appeared and was sitting, quiet and subdued, a bit aside from both the SS and the prisoners, not making any attempts to run, even when Harald’s classmate appeared before them with a rope in his hands. If anything, he seemed serene, relieved now.

  “It’s yours.” Harald dropped the Cross into his lap and quickly stepped away, as though expecting the man to hit him.

  The pilot looked at the award as if seeing it for the first time and handed it back to Harald. “You can have it. I won’t have any use for it soon.”

  “My brother is in the Luftwaffe,” Harald said and regretted it at once.

  “What’s your brother’s name?” The pilot tilted his head to one side, suddenly interested.

  “Johannes Brandt. Hauptmann Brandt.”

  A warm smile broke on the man’s face, transforming it from its grim mask into something beautiful, youthful.

  “I had the honor of flying as his wingman once.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Do you know why? It’s such an embarrassing story…”

  The SS man moved Harald out of the way and stood in front of the Luftwaffe fellow with a noose in his hands. “Walk over to that beam.”

  Harald suddenly couldn’t breathe, only trailed, stumbling like a drunk man, after a grim procession.

  “I served in JG-51; your brother – in JG-52,” the pilot continued meanwhile, looking over his shoulder and talking to Harald with a wonderful nonchalance about him, as though the two were on a stroll on a fine spring day and he had such an anecdote to tell him. “When he had just arrived, we didn’t think much of him. He spoke with that monotonous drawl, he looked like he was twelve, but already a Knight. I voiced my suspicions once to our Staffelkapitän, to the effect that Brandt’s victories weren’t genuine. That it was a trick of some sort; or that he was someone’s relative – I don’t know what else I said. We were drinking, you see… You say a lot of things when you drink.”

  Harald’s instructor threw a rope over the beam and went to fetch a crate which stood among the ruins nearby. The pilot followed his movements with the same calm smile on his face, his hands in his pockets.

  “Naturally, someone told your brother about my words. He went to the Group Commander and told him about it. The Group Commander knew of him; he flew with him once and saw him in action, so he knew perfectly well that your brother’s victories were genuine. So, he asked your brother what he wanted him, the Group Commander, to do about it. Do you know what your brother said? He said nothing. I only want Leutnant Baumann to fly as my wingman once. If that can be arranged, that is.”

  Harald’s instructor settled the crate down and made sure it was steady. The pilot was still talking as the noose was being put around his neck. “Once I was in the air with him and once he got into it with the Ratas, I knew why they feared the Black Knight so. I’ve never seen a pilot of his talent! What ability, what strategy! I was thoroughly embarrassed once we landed. But he only shook my hand and smiled. A grand fellow, your brother is…”

  Harald held his hand to help the officer on top of the crate.

  “Give my Cross to him, if you see him again. As my apology…”

  Harald’s teacher kicked the crate from under his feet. The pilot’s hand grasped Harald’s by sheer instinct; Harald held it until it went lifeless and limp and only let it go when his classmate stepped closer to put the sign onto the dead man’s neck. It only took a split second, a surprised gasp, the blood flowing freely from the boy’s broken nose, and two pieces of torn cardboard thrown onto the ground for Harald to feel suddenly free and strong again – for the first time in years.

  Hungary, Eastern Front. Summer 1944

  * * *

  The Russian was young, of his own age perhaps, with a kind, open face. He stood next to his crashed fighter, shifting his weight from one foot to another, as the infantry unit was deciding what to do with him. The landser fellows seemed almost relieved when Johann appeared in his Kübelwagen with his crew chief Lutter in tow. Johann breathed out in relief at the sight of the Russian’s face that showed no signs of any recent mistreatment. Despite the savage fighting on the ground, they still spared pilots for some unknown reason, whatever their nationality may be.

  “Thank you for minding him for us,” Johann addressed his Wehrmacht comrades after saluting them. “We’ll take him to our airbase, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Fine with us.” The landser fellows shrugged. “We have nothing to feed him anyway.”

  They left in their army truck. Johann looked at the downed fighter’s fuselage and turned to the Russian.

  “You’re an ace.” It wasn’t a question. Multiple stars on the fuselage’s side and the Russian’s skills that he had demonstrated in the sky were more than obvious. The manner in which he sneaked up on Johann and his wingman was worth a medal. Johann, the ever-careful Johann, who never failed to spot an enemy, had only noticed the Russian’s fighter when it was ready to send his wingman down. Johann could swear that he had never shouted ‘Break right and down!’ so loudly in his life. “Why didn’t you watch your own tail while chasing my wingman?”

  The Russian looked at Lutter as the latter translated the words, turned back to Johann, grinned guiltily and shrugged.

  “Well, don’t worry about it now, my good fellow.” Johann took out a pack of smokes and offered him one. “The war is over for you now.”

  “It’ll be over for you too soon,” Lutter translated the Russian’s words. The pilot said it without malice, conversationally. “Soon, we’ll all go home.”

  He nodded and smiled in gratitude when Johann lit his cigarette.

&
nbsp; His name was Aleksandr Ignatyev. “Sasha,” he offered his hand. “They told us, you shoot all prisoners at once.”

  “They told us, so do you.”

  “Maybe we do.”

  “Maybe we do too. It depends on the person who captures you, I suppose.”

  Sasha agreed surprisingly easily. He still looked around apprehensively when the small Kübelwagen brought them back to the airbase and still thought it to be some sort of trickery as Johann invited him to share a lunch together with the rest of the Staffel. Only after the second glass of schnapps did he seem to relax a little and act more at ease with his captors.

  For Johann, it was nothing new. They all behaved in the same fashion at first, watchful and apprehensive. But as soon as they were left wandering practically unguarded all over the airbase, as soon as they realized that the Fritzes belonged to the same exact breed that they did – sky-lovers, not earth-bound fighters – they softened at once and even offered whatever small bits of comradery and friendship they could offer in return. One of them laughed at the Germans’ plight over the motor oil freezing in plunging temperatures and quickly taught them the trick that allowed their Soviet planes to start easily and fly like birds despite the minus-forty degrees outside. Bring gasoline here; pour it straight into the oil. Don’t fret; it won’t explode! It won’t, I tell you! That’s good; now start the motor. Well? Does it work or does it not? What did I tell you? The gasoline melts the oil and keeps it from freezing – now you fellows are all good to go!

  Another one grinned mischievously as one of the German aces complained about machine guns freezing and refusing to shoot. Ask your cook to boil the water in the biggest pot he has, will you? Now, disassemble the entire thing and dip it into the boiling water. Hold it there a bit. There; all of your fancy oil and lubricants – the very reason why those guns of yours kept jamming – has melted now. It’ll shoot like mad now, you’ll see!

  “Are you really the Black Knight?” The Russian asked Johann later, touching his Messerschmitt’s rudder with reverence.

  “I am.”

  “You’re very good.”

  “So are you.”

  “But I don’t have a ten thousand rubles prize on my head. You do.”

  Sasha suddenly turned to face him. Lutter scowled before translating but left it up to his boss to decide how to react. “You should give yourself up. It’s pointless to continue fighting. You will lose the war very soon. It’ll be a senseless death if you get killed right at the end of the war. You would be treated very well in the Soviet Union. Sit it out till they sort it all among themselves. And then they’ll let you go home. Do you have a wife at home?”

  “I do. A wife and a son. Two sons.”

  “See? More reason to survive, for them.”

  Johann stared at the rudder for a very long moment. “Do you have a family, Sasha?”

  “I do. My wife, Lida and a daughter, Nina.”

  “Would you give yourself up?”

  “I did.”

  “No. You were downed. Would you give yourself up if you were in your base and I was your prisoner and I would offer you the same deal?”

  Sasha smoked in silence, working things out in his mind. “No, I suppose not. I’d fly till the bitter end.”

  “So you have your answer.”

  It was a quiet day. Even American Mustangs that usually amused themselves with harassing them, flying from their bases in Italy, spared their little piece of the Front their attention that day. Sasha, Johann, and Lutter sat in the field, making planes out of their hands to demonstrate different maneuvers to each other. They drank Hungarian wine and smoked, smiling longingly as they showed each other photos of their wives.

  Sasha started saying something to Lutter again, to which the latter only shook his head vehemently. To Johann’s inquisitive look, his loyal crew chief only waved his hand but finally gave in. “He says, if I’m any sort of a friend to you, I should paint the markings on your fighter white and talk you into flying to the Soviet airbase. He says, he’ll even write a note for you and they will treat you like a dear guest there. He was a base commander, if he’s not lying.”

  Johann glimpsed his guest’s markings. A Captain, like he was. “I don’t think he’s lying.”

  “You aren’t actually considering it, are you?”

  “Of course not. Don’t worry.”

  “He says, it’ll be much worse after the capitulation. He says, after that, there won’t be anything he would be able to do for you. He says, we’ll all be treated like criminals after. He says something about the camps…”

  Johann rose to his feet and walked away to clear his head. It all made too much sense and was too truthful to dismiss as quickly as the leaflets that their Soviet counterparts were drowning them in. Now, he knew about the camps too. He flew over one, dangerously low and slow and returned home to his base, weighed down with what he had witnessed, the last of his illusions shattered. And now the Soviets saw them too, their common German shame, after liberating Majdanek and throwing a new rain of leaflets down on their shamefaced heads, to show them what exactly they were fighting for. This is your regime. This is what you’re protecting. You can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist anymore. Lay down your arms; if you don’t, you’re all complicit in this unthinkable atrocity. You’ll all be prosecuted and served what you deserve.

  It was all fine and well, Sasha’s desire to help and all but it just so happened that Johann had his comrades to consider and the unbroken baby pilots who wouldn’t survive without his guidance. He couldn’t quite up and send all of his Staffel to the Soviet side, could he now?

  “I did nothing wrong,” he said calmly and clearly the day when a truck came to pick Sasha up and transfer him, together with the rest of the POWs, to a Stalag. He was holding the Russian’s hand in his and smiling openly and without any regret. “I will stay and fight till the end. And when the end comes, I’ll face it like a soldier, not a cowardly deserter. And if they do find me guilty of any crimes, so be it. I’ll accept the responsibility. I’m not afraid.”

  Sasha shook his hand firmly and smiled. He understood.

  Twenty-Nine

  Berlin, May 1945

  * * *

  The truck rolled along the rubble filled streets and came to an abrupt stop next to a hastily erected barricade. It was a burned-out tram trolley, with We Won’t Surrender written on it. The slogan looked more like a mocking now, instead of its intended purpose to instill fighting spirit into Berliners. Harald had just about had it with that fighting spirit.

  Their commanding officer herded them outside with his loud Los, los, los! Harald took his position at the beginning of the line; it should have been the tallest cadet’s place but the tallest one – Heini – was lying somewhere in Wannsee missing his head, just like the other next few “tallest ones” in line. Harald’s turn had come to be the adult – everyone else next to him was hardly thirteen.

  After a short roll-call, ensuring that no weasels had leaped off the truck along the way, the commander instructed two youngsters to open the crates with ammunition. Harald was already leading his small squad to a position behind the tram, a heavy anti-tank Panzerfaust resting on his shoulder. With a grim smirk, he wondered, how many tanks he’d be able to take out before one of them took his head off, much like they did with Heini. They were rumbling somewhere in the distance. He could hear them already.

  The shootout lasted well until the evening. As soon as the Soviets started pressing, the commander suddenly straightened full length in his foxhole, pulled at his disheveled tunic and, after a snappy salute to no one in particular and a loud Heil Hitler, shot himself in the head. Harald stared at his body for a few moments, then threw the Panzerfaust down and began fashioning a small white flag out of some metal rod that lay nearby and his grubby handkerchief.

  The kindergarten, which the commander had left in his charge, stared at him with uncertainty on their young faces. Far too many corpses they saw hanging from lampposts –
the traitors of the Reich, who wanted to surrender as well. But who would hang Harald now? The only adult that was there, now lay dead on the ground, with a bullet hole in his temple. They started dropping their rifles as well.

  The Soviets poured through the barricade as soon as Harald climbed on top of it, waving his makeshift flag. They looked at the children in disbelief for a few moments, kicked Harald in the backside and with that, the defense of Berlin was dismissed. Harald was only too pleased with such a turn of events.

  Not knowing where to go, he wandered around the ruins, ignored entirely by the Soviet troops, then remembered his brother’s letter that he still carried on his person. “I think it’ll be over soon, Harald. We’re stationed in Austria now; if you’re somewhere near her, please, try to find Mina and make sure nothing happens to her. Frau von Sielaff is in the country with both children, but Mina stayed in Berlin as far as I know and perhaps she won’t have time to leave before they surrender the city entirely…”

  It was dated a month earlier. Harald wondered how it made its way to him without being censored. But then again, if children were the ones left to fend for their Fatherland, most likely all the censors were put to use as well, wielding a rifle instead of their black ink pen. Harald found his way into a building that still stood among the rubble and made his way to the second floor, feeling with his hands in the darkness. There was a body on the stairs; he stumbled upon it and carefully moved it out of his way. In one of the apartments, where he was fortunate to find a decent bed, a boy of his age – Hitlerjugend – was half-lying on the windowsill, where a sniper’s bullet had gotten him. Harald pulled him down carefully, studied a surprised look on the boy’s baby-face, soaked with moonlight. Clean shot, straight into the forehead. He didn’t even understand what hit him. Harald considered something for a moment and started undressing the corpse. The uniform was good, clean, no bloodstains whatsoever. Just what he needed. He wrapped the boy in a tablecloth and left him near the window, which he left open for the night, with the same white handkerchief hanging off of it. This way, no one would bother him till tomorrow.