War Brothers

by Patrick Slaney

  ‘Chris is dead Dad.’ I collapsed into his arms and started to weep like a baby. He held onto me and helped me into the small office.

  I hugged him, the last fifteen hours pouring out of me, and I felt like a small boy again.

  Eventually, I started to get control of myself. He pulled a bottle of whiskey and a glass out of a cupboard at the side of the room and poured me a measure.

  ‘Drink this lad and tell me all about it,’ he said, sitting down in the chair behind his desk.

  ‘Chris shot me down and then came to see if I had survived. He mustn’t have seen the electricity cables as he hit them with his undercarriage, his plane flipped, and he was thrown out and landed on a haystack. It was terrible Dad, and there was nothing that I could do to help him.’

  There were now tears in both our eyes.

  ‘OK Markus, just tell me nice and calmly what happened and how you ended coming through the door into my bakery.’

  I drew a deep breath and told him the full story. As the story flowed out of me, so I came to terms with what had happened and I started to relax.

  ‘The most crucial thing we have to decide Markus is what we are going to do with you now. You can obviously stay here with me, but long term the truth is going to come out. We also have to do something about Chris as they will find his body and his plane. They will also be looking for you as someone will have seen you parachute down. He will have to get a decent burial.’

  ‘I can’t go back to my squadron now after what happened to Chris. I have had enough of this killing and want out.’ I was sobbing again.

  ‘It’s Wednesday evening, so we’ll give it few days and take a decision on Saturday. In the meantime, you can help me in the shop. Chris always leaves some of his clothes here so you will be able to wear those around the bakery.’

  Over the next few days, I got to know what it was like being a fugitive. The two of us were on edge all the time, jumping at every knock on the door. With the Battle of Britain still very much in the news, questions were undoubtedly being asked as to why Chris was home on leave when they needed every available pilot to repel the German raiders.

  I read the newspaper every day and was amazed to see that the battle for the skies over Britain was still going on. On the German side, we had been told it would be over in a week. They gave casualty figures showing that the Luftwaffe was losing two planes for every one RAF aircraft lost. The number of brave pilots being killed on both sides was horrendous.

  ‘I am feeling terribly guilty about Chris,’ my Dad said on the Thursday afternoon as we finished work for the day.

  ‘I have also been thinking about it Dad,’ I replied. ‘I just left him there in the field in my tunic lying on that hay stack. I don’t know what they will do with him. My Squadron will report me as missing, presumed dead, and that is what they will tell my mother and grandad. It’s a gigantic mess.’

  ‘I don’t want you interred Markus. If we only could find some satisfactory way out of this situation, I would be a lot happier.’

  ‘Perhaps I should just go to the authorities and hand myself over. That would sort everything out.’

  ‘I said that I would decide on Saturday, so let’s just leave it till then.’

  In fact, the decision was taken for us. On Friday, just after lunch, four men dressed in uniform came in to the bakery.

  My father saw them enter and went to greet them.

  ‘Are you Mr Becker, the owner of this bakery?’ the senior officer asked.

  ‘That’s correct. How can I help you?’

  I was in the back of the bakery where the ovens were, but could see and hear what was happening in the shop. I had a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘Mr Becker, my name is Captain Adlington, and I would like to talk to your son please,’ the Captain asked my Dad.

  ‘What do you want him for?’

  ‘We just need to talk to him. He has been reported missing by his squadron, and the local police station has been notified that he has been seen at your bakery. Is he here?’ the Captain asked.

  Yes, he is over there,’ my Dad said pointing to where I was standing.

  ‘Can we use your office as it would be better talking to him in private?”

  ‘Better still, you can go through to the living quarters and talk to him in the sitting room,’ my Dad suggested.

  ‘That sounds perfect. Will you lead the way please?’ The Captain seemed to be relieved to get out of the shop where there were customers looking on.

  My father showed them the way, and they made sure that I stayed between them as we went into the house which was connected with the shop by a corridor.

  I felt that my world was crashing down around me. I was terrified. If this had happened in Germany, I would probably be shot as would my father and anybody else working in the bakery. So far it had been remarkably civilised.

  When we arrived in the living room, my father approached the Captain.

  ‘May I have a quick word with my son Captain Adlington,’ my father asked.

  ‘Anything you have to say to him must be in our hearing,’ he replied.

  ‘That’s fine. It’s nothing confidential.’

  My father turned to me. ‘Markus I think you should tell the Captain the whole truth, as Chris’s death has to be respected.’ He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze and left the room.

  Once the door was closed, the Captain asked me, ‘What was that all about and who are you? I thought that your name was Chris Becker.’

  ‘No, I am afraid that I am his twin brother. My name is Markus Bekker, and I am a member of the Luftwaffe.’

  ‘Perhaps you had better take a seat and start at the beginning. I want you to tell me everything,’ the Captain said, sitting down opposite me. The others stood between me and the door

  I described in detail what had occurred in the field in Kent. How my brother had managed to shoot up my Messerschmitt and had then destroyed his own aircraft when he hit the electricity cables. I then described how I had switched tunics with him and travelled to my Dad in Harrogate. I filled him in on our background and how I was flying for the German air force while he was flying for the RAF.

  The Captain sat patiently while I related my story, and he didn’t even ask a question. The others also stood listening to what to them must have been an unbelievable story.

  “I am sorry, but even though your father is an English citizen, you are a pilot flying for a country that we are at war with. I will have to take you into custody,’ the Captain explained, almost apologetically.

  ‘I understand the situation,’ I muttered, feeling extremely relieved. ‘Can I just go and say goodbye to my father.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ll come with you just to make sure that you don’t run away; although you don’t look the sort to scarper.’

  My father, in fact, was waiting in the passage and hadn’t returned to the bakery.

  ‘Mr Becker, I am taking your son Markus with me. He will be held in a house just outside Harrogate where he will be interrogated. What happens to him after that depends on the information he gives us and whether the story he has told us is true.’

  ‘I am quite thankful that this whole thing has come out in the open. I can now get in touch with Chris’s squadron and sort out his burial. It is a tremendous weight off my mind,’ my father said.

  I gave my Dad a hug as I passed him. There were tears in his eyes. He had lost one son, and the other was being interred. War had a lot to answer for.

  He let us out the side door of the house which meant that we didn’t have to go back through the shop in front of all the customers.

  I turned around to wave to him, but he had closed the door.

  Chapter 20

  There was a small military Bedford truck parked in the
street in front of the bakery. I was put in the back with two of the men who had come to collect me while the Captain rode in the front with the driver. I was quite content to go along with them and had no intention of trying to escape. Once the officer had vanished out of sight sit in the cab, the two soldiers lit up and smoked a quiet cigarette.

  About half an hour later we slowed down and then entered through some large gates into what appeared from my rear view to a country estate.

  ‘Nearly there now,’ one of my guards said. ‘You’ll be alright here as there are not many other internees held in this house.’

  ‘Is this where I am going to be held then,’ I asked them.

  ‘They usually keep people here for about two weeks, and they are all officers. If you were an ordinary ‘Joe Soap’ like us, they would take you to the camp over near Catterick which is a lot more basic.’ The other soldier chipped in.

  ‘I am just grateful to have survived,’ I added.

  Shortly afterwards we went through another gate before pulling up in front of an enormous old mansion. When I descended from the back of the truck, I looked in awe at the magnificent building.

  ‘We requisitioned this house about three months ago as a temporary holding centre for captured officers,’ Captain Adlington said as I was looking at the building. ‘You will be held here for a while as we check out your story and interrogate you. After that, we will decide where to inter you on a long term basis.’

  As we went into the large entrance hall, I was taken off to the side to an office. There a sergeant entered my name in a register, plus some of my details and he then took all my personal possessions, filing them away in a box. I still had Chris’s wallet on me including his RAF papers. They studied these in some detail but didn’t place them in the box with the rest of my personal effects.

  ‘You will now be taken to a room where you will be locked in. Your meals will be brought to you and you will be taken to the toilet when you need to use it.’ The sergeant read out the list of rules to me. ‘There will be a ‘pee pot’ in the room which you can empty every morning. The interrogation sessions will commence tomorrow morning,’ he continued.

  I was taken up the stairs and down a passage which had rooms opening off it on either side. The guard stopped outside one of the rooms, opened the door and ushered me inside. The door closed behind me and I heard the key turn, locking me in.

  There were very few pieces of furniture in the room; a bed and one chair, but at least there was a carpet on the floor, so it was quite homely. I tested the bed and was agreeably surprised how comfy it was. I could survive this. I opened the wardrobe and was greeted by an overpowering smell of moth balls, but it was empty.

  The following morning, after my breakfast, I was taken by an armed guard to a room on the ground floor where two uniformed officers were waiting for me.

  ‘Good morning Oberleutnant Bekker, I am Major Martin, and this is Captain Dobbs. We will be interrogating you, and, amongst other things, trying to verify how you were staying in a house, in Harrogate. If you make our task as straightforward as possible, then your stay here is going to be comfortable if you don’t then we will have to take a different approach. Do you understand?’

  ‘I have no reason to hide anything from you and intend to answer as many of your questions as I can,’ I replied.

  ‘It sounds as if we aren’t going to have any problems Markus. Let’s get going,’ the Major said, relaxing and leaning back in his chair.

  Quite a few days of questioning then commenced and I was totally amazed at the level of detail that they wanted. The friendly atmosphere probably loosened my tongue, and I told them rather more than I originally intended, but then there was nothing that I knew that could be classified as ‘Top Secret’

  It was exceedingly strange and surprisingly civilised, being imprisoned by the British, and I was starting to see why my father had decided to stay in England when he was released in 1918. If I had been arrested in Germany by the Gestapo, I probably would have vanished without a trace by now. Sitting here in an English country mansion gave me a totally different view of the workings of the Third Reich. I was now looking in with a totally different perspective from the outside. The SS operated on the basis of fear while the British treated you with respect and got your trust. I knew which way I preferred.

  For five consecutive days, I was interrogated for three hours in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon. I was mentally exhausted as it was a long time since I had to use my brain for so long. It was a totally different type of exhaustion than I had experienced from non-stop flying.

  Without any notice, they didn’t come for me on the sixth day. The food still kept coming, but the guard, who usually took me downstairs, didn’t.

  ‘Are they not sending for me today?’ I asked the guard when he brought my food.

  ‘They don’t tell me things like that Sir. You’ll find out soon enough,’ he replied.

  Three weeks passed, and I was getting quite bored just lying in my room all day with no entertainment other than my meals. They had provided me with a few English novels which I was struggling to read

  Finally, in the fourth week, the guard came to my room during the afternoon to conduct me downstairs again.

  As I entered the interview room, I noticed that Major Martin and Captain Dobbs had been replaced by an officer who I hadn’t seen before. He was sitting there puffing on a pipe, and the room was filled with smoke and the aroma of tobacco.

  I sat down opposite him in my usual chair.

  ‘Oberleutnant Bekker, I have read your file and appreciate that you have talked to us very frankly during your sessions with Major Martin and Captain Dobbs. My name is Major Richards, and I come from a totally different part of the British Army. I am based in Surrey, in the South of England.’ He stopped talking to take a puff on his pipe.

  ‘What do you want from me Sir?’ I asked him, not too sure where this was going.

  ‘I have a proposition for you Markus, which, if you agree to it, will give you your freedom.’

  ‘What is a proposition; it is a very big word, and I don’t like the sound of it?’ I said, not expecting the meeting to begin that way. Major Richards seemed unusually relaxed and friendly.

  ‘Well a proposition is actually just a question, and I want to ask you to help us.’

  ‘I will listen to what you have to say to me, but I am not promising you anything,’ I was highly suspicious of the direction things were going. I sat forward in my chair so as I could hear him better.

  ‘We know that the Luftwaffe is developing a plane with jet engines and we are extremely worried about the damage it will do to our bombers and our fighter planes. We, unfortunately, don’t know how successful they have been in the development, or when the jet engined fighters are likely to be ready to enter active service. I am asking you to honour your brother’s death and work for us in finding out the details of when it will be ready.’

  ‘But I know nothing about the jet fighter Sir, and how would I find out,’ I interjected.

  ‘We would need to find a way of returning you to Europe and you would then need to transfer into the squadron that would be flying the jet fighters,’ he replied.

  ‘But they are aware that I was shot down and that I landed in England and have been captured,’ I reasoned.

  ‘We would find a way to get you back to France so as you could say that you escaped from custody here and crossed the Channel to return to your unit. Let’s not go into the detail now as that will require a lot of work, I just need an answer from you as to whether you will consider my proposition.’

  ‘When do you need my response Major Richards?’

  ‘I would like to get your answer as soon as possible, so as we can proceed with the arrangements. One thing you should know Oberleutnant is that while you have been in custody
the RAF have won the Battle of Britain and Hitler has transferred his planes to take part in the invasion of Russia. Your squadron is now active on the Eastern front with all that entails. Hitler has made an enormous mistake, and it is likely that you will now lose the war. I am offering you a chance to help in beating him,’ Major Richards said this last bit in a serious tone tapping the stem of his pipe on the table between us..

  This last news had hit me hard and made me feel tremendously sad. All that I had grown up with and the pride that I had in the Third Reich and Hitler was now starting to crumble.

  ‘Can you get my father to come and see me so I can get his advice?’ I asked him.

  ‘I will go out and phone him now and see if he can come in today or tomorrow.’

  ‘What is the alternative if I say No?’

  ‘You will be transferred to a Prisoner of War camp in Canada where you will stay until the end of the war. This transfer will entail you having to travel across the Atlantic, and you will have the added risk of getting sunk by a German U Boat.’

  ‘I’ll give you your answer tomorrow when I have seen my father.’

  ‘I understand; I’ll have you taken back to your room now and go and phone your father.’

  The meeting terminated, and I was able to escape the smoke and return to my bedroom.

  They came to get me the following morning, and I thought that it was to talk to my father, but, in fact, they allowed me to walk around outside in the grounds of the estate that surrounded the house. It was a pleasant surprise even though I felt that it was a softening up process. It was so good to feel the breeze on my face and hear the sounds of the countryside.

  In the afternoon, they came for me again and brought me to the interview room, where my father was sitting waiting for me. He got up as I entered and gave me a fatherly hug. There were tears in his eyes as he embraced me.

  ‘How are you Markus? Are they looking after you alright?’ he asked me once we were sitting opposite each other.

  ‘Yes it is not too bad. I am a bit lonely as I am on my own, but they have treated me well, certainly a lot better than I would have expected.’