War Brothers

by Patrick Slaney

  In the morning, I never heard her leave the house, and I only woke up at 10:30 am. I dressed and went over to the bakery to get what I could for my breakfast. The familiar smells of the freshly baked bread warmed my heart.

  I saw for myself what my mother meant by saying that they didn’t have much flour. It was no longer possible to give each customer a loaf of bread and, in addition, the loaves were now much smaller. To make the bread go around she had to cut each loaf in half. They also were now only making two basic types of bread, all the fancy stuff was now a thing of the past. I thought to myself:

  This is the brave new Germany that Hitler has promised us; this is what we are fighting for. There wasn’t fuel for the planes at the front, and there wasn’t food for the citizens. How could Germany possibly win a war with such shortages?

  It was depressing watching my mother serve the customers and seeing the sadness in their faces. Her new helpmate Horst Bielenberg was also a sad sight as he struggled around the bakery on his crutches. He told me he had been injured in the Netherlands in the first few days of the war, and had been fortunate in only losing his leg. The rest of his tank crew had been killed in the same attack.

  I walked around my beautiful city of Lubeck and was relieved to see that the main part of the old town had not suffered bomb damage. Some isolated bombs had been dropped around the docks area, but the rest of the city had not been touched. As I walked, I looked at the faces of the people. There were remarkably few smiles, and there were no young people. The children were probably at school, and, anybody between the ages of eighteen and fifty years of age was off fighting on some remote battlefield. There was a look of despair on people’s faces.

  I would have to talk to my mother about Chris when she got home from work that evening which I certainly wasn’t looking forward to. I had decided that I wouldn’t tell her anything about my mission and just to give her the story of my escape and my new squadron. If anything went wrong and I was captured, they probably would come and check out my story with her. I didn’t like to lie, but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, and it was far too dangerous to give her any information.

  We spent that entire evening talking about the family and what I had been up to in England when I had been held as a prisoner. It was a very good test of my story as I reckoned if my mother didn’t suspect anything then my story was good and hopefully watertight.

  Wednesday came around far too quickly, and it was time to leave for Caen. I had received a message during my few days in Lubeck that I was to go to Warnemünde which was 100km up the coast from Lubeck and pick up a brand new Me Bf109 which had just come off the assembly line. I was to fly this aircraft to Caen. The big benefit of this arrangement was that it would save me a long train journey across Germany and France to Caen.

  I said good bye to my mother not knowing that this was the last time that I would see her alive.

  The journey by train to Warnemünde from Lubeck was painstakingly slow as I had to change trains at Bad Kleinen and Rostock and the connecting trains didn’t arrive when they were supposed to. It was an overcast day with heavy showers and was dark and dreary just like my mood. If this weather was the same in Warnemünde then I wouldn’t be able to fly, and I would need to stay overnight. It was, and I was delayed; however, it gave them time to adjust the seat for my height so as I could fit into the cockpit. While I waited, they showed me the assembly line where they were making the 109’s.

  When I woke up the following morning, I was extremely encouraged to see it was a beautiful sunny morning. I was airborne by 10:00 am heading for Cologne where I would refuel. I finally reached the airfield at Caen at 5:00 pm that evening. If I had gone by train I would only be arriving at the same time, so my extra night’s delay hadn’t been too inconvenient and I had enjoyed being back in the air rather than stuck in a railway carriage for over a day.

  Chapter 44

  For the remaining two weeks in Caen, I was kept fully occupied training the new pilots. Fuel was still extremely scarce, so flying time was kept to a minimum. I had to teach them in a class room environment which wasn’t ideal as there was no substitute for putting what I taught them into practice in the air. Luckily it was quiet, and there were no attacks planned in our theatre of the War. The enemy was quite content to focus on other areas and left our area of Normandy alone.

  On Friday 30th May I said goodbye to Major Bahm and left Caen to take up my new role as a test pilot at Leipheim. As the train chugged its way towards Paris, I had plenty of time to contemplate the next stage of my mission. My task was to find out all about the new Jet Engine that would power the Me262 and pass it on to my bosses back in Witley Park. As soon as I had done that I could leave Germany and head back to England via Sweden or Spain. The ideal would be steal a jet engined fighter and fly it back to England, but that probably would be a highly dangerous and unrealistic exercise.

  Before I left Witley Park, Major Richards had gone into considerable detail as to how I was to get the information back to him. There was an agent with a radio who lived near Leipheim, and he would be keeping an eye out for notes from me. I had been given precise details of a large flat stone in a park beside an old castle called Stadt Leipheim Gussenhalle. I was told to put two pebbles on top of the stone whenever I left a letter under it. The agent would walk by and periodically check on the stone and if he saw pebbles on the top he would pick up the note. He then would radio the information back to Witley Park. It shouldn’t be too difficult for me to arrange a reason to go into Leipheim, to make a drop. Unlike Caen, where there was danger in going into the town, Leipheim was in Germany, and I would be able to visit the bars and shops whenever we were off duty.

  I envisaged that I only would need to carry out my role as a test pilot for about two months, at the maximum, and it might even be less if I got the information that I needed.

  That evening we were called together by the head of the Me262 project and told what our programme would be for the next few months.

  ‘Welcome to Leipheim,’ he said. ‘We are at the start of something tremendously exciting and the Luftwaffe is about to be the first air force in the world to fly jet engined fighters.’

  He then went on to tell us about the enormous advantage that the new engine would give the Luftwaffe, in the battle against Germany’s various enemies.

  ‘You four gentlemen will be remembered for your outstanding achievement in being the first pilots to fly a jet propelled aircraft. Congratulations on being selected for this exciting challenge.’

  ‘When will we get a chance to fly the plane?’ one of my colleagues asked.

  ‘There is a slight problem in the development of the engine, and they don’t have a working model ready yet; however, the air frame is ready and has been fitted with a conventional engine and propeller in the nose. You will be able take the new plane into the air and become familiar with it. We need to check the air frame out before the new engines are fitted. Next month, the jet engines are expected to arrive.’

  ‘Have the new engines been tested in the air?’ I asked.

  ‘No, you will be the first ones to test the engines in flight mode, but I do have a good piece of news for you. The first planes will also be fitted with a conventional engine as a back-up. If both the jet engines pack up for any reason, you will simply start your old engine and use it to land.’

  ‘How many planes will there be at the start?’ one of the others asked.

  ‘There will be one to start off with and then, when more engines are available, we will have one for each of you. After your tests, which qualified you for your new job as a test pilot, you have been ranked 1 to 4 depending on your competency. The person at number 1 will do the first jet engined flight and at the moment that is Oberleutnant Fritz Wendel. We will continually review the list based on your day to day flying.’

  The following morning we were introduced to
the Me262. Sitting on the airstrip outside the hanger it looked a beautiful looking beast. Painted the dark Luftwaffe grey it was extremely streamlined and sleek. It was a really well designed aircraft even if it did look slightly odd with a conventional propeller engine fitted in the nose and blanks where the jet engines should have been. I was very impressed with the new plane. This was the only jet engined aircraft that the people looking at the fighter had seen so they couldn’t make any comparisons. I was in the privileged position of having seen the Gloster Meteor, the British equivalent. The Me262 definitely looked the better plane, but it obviously would depend on the efficiency of the engine, the speed it could go at and its manoeuvrability.

  In the ranking of pilots I was number three, so would be third to fly the new plane. In fact, they moved me down to number four as I had the usual seat problems and they had to adjust the seat before I took my turn. The following day they let me fly first which saved them having to adjust the seat again, and that was the pattern for the following days.

  Finally, the noise of jet engines assaulted my ears. A Me 262, fitted with jet engines, had arrived, and I was able to write my first note to be placed under the stone at the castle in Leipheim. I used the code that I had been trained in, so, to an untrained eye, it looked gibberish

  Me262, twin engined fighter, first aircraft delivered, 2 jet engines and one conventional engine per plane, No specs yet.

  I took a trip into the town in the evening and placed the note under the stone, leaving two pebbles on the top as arranged. It was easy, and there was nobody else around.

  When I went back two days later the pebbles had gone from the top of the stone, and the note was gone. The system was working.

  I was watching when Fritz Wendel, still ranked top pilot in our small group, attempted to take off for the first time on the 18th July. In fact, when the plane was roaring down the runway, he had to pile on all his brakes and come to a screaming halt as there was no lift. The air from the engines was blasting over the aileron on the tail which in turn forced the plane back onto the ground. After a discussion with the designers, he tried again. This time he touched the brakes at take-off speed, and this overcame the problem. He took off with a roar into the skies over Leipheim. I was witnessing a whole new era in flying.

  Shortly afterwards he landed safely, and we all ran over to where he had parked the aircraft to congratulate him. There was a sudden deathly stillness when the engines were switched off, giving our ears a rest.

  I wrote in code: First test flight of Me262 with jet engine today; Successful; More test planes arriving in next few weeks; Impressed with the design.

  I went down the town that evening and dropped the note off in my ‘letter-box’.

  It was all going too well. Near the end of August, a serious incident occurred that caused a significant upset to my plans.

  The third test plane arrived and was allocated to me to test. The first two Me262’s had been giving a lot of problems and both the pilots had needed the propeller engine to get them home on a few occasions. The jet engines were simply not reliable enough and kept cutting out. One engine failing was not a serious problem as the plane could land on just the one, but if two cut out then the pilot had to start the conventional engine, and this took a little while as the plane descended towards the ground.

  As luck would have it, on my first trip, both engines failed. I had taken off without any problems, and, as it was my first flight, I had decided only to make one circuit of the airfield before landing. It was totally different to any other flying that I had done as everything happened so much faster.

  As I was on my way in to land, both engines failed. I was in the final stages of my approach, and there was no time to start the conventional engine. The plane lost speed rapidly and started to nose dive into the ground. I used all my strength and height to pull the nose up, and the plane belly flopped into the ground. That is all I remember until I came around in an ambulance heading for the hospital.

  I looked up and saw an orderly looking down at me. I tried to move.

  ‘Don’t try to move Sir. You’ve had an accident and have a broken ankle and goodness knows what other damage.’

  I tried to talk, but I was still too dazed and couldn’t form my words. I lay back in considerable pain feeling the blood congealing on my face.

  At the hospital, I was brought directly into the operating theatre where I was greeted by an elderly surgeon.

  ‘We are going to knock you out and re-set that ankle of yours and we will also check whether anything else is broken or out of place,’ he said, poking at my right leg at the same time.

  The next thing that I remember is waking up in a hospital bed with my right leg up in the air. As usual when bad things happened to me the smell of disinfectant assaulted my nostrils. As I regained consciousness I started to feel pain in other areas of my body, but I was alive.

  They gave me pain killers to try and neutralize the pain, but as well as getting rid of the pain they made me sleep. That evening I was agreeably surprised when the other three test pilots came into my ward and approached the bed.

  ‘Hi Markus, how are you?’ one of them asked me.

  ‘Not too good I am afraid, but I am glad to be alive. When the engines failed on my approach, I thought that I was a goner.’

  ‘We were all watching, and we also thought it was the end of you. Those bloody engines will be the death of all of us, they are so unreliable.’ Fritz Wendel added.

  ‘The boss has grounded the other three aircraft until they can sort out the stalling problem,’ one of the others said.

  They stayed with me for a few more minutes, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I started to drop off to sleep again. Seeing that I was exhausted they left. They came to see me in relays after that and I enjoyed their company.

  Three weeks later I was released and spent the next month hopping around the airfield on crutches. I obviously wasn’t able to travel into the town, to put any more notes under the stone, during that time. I was given the task of writing up all the reports that had to be compiled after each test flight and of reporting back to the designers. I was based in an office, and the pilots used to have to come and see me after each flight and give me a full report. From an information gathering point of view it couldn’t have been better as I was getting all the data I needed to report back to Major Richards, the only problem was that I couldn’t get into town to the drop-off point.

  Finally, I did make a report.

  I wrote in the code: Sorry crashed and was in hospital; New engine very unreliable; Major engineering problems; Uses a lot of fuel; Top speed 500 km; Not very manoeuvrable; Climbs well; Engines overheating; Major re-development required; Long delays; Shortage of spare parts.

  I got one of the support staff to drive me into the town around 5:00 pm and hobbled from the centre to the drop-off point. Bending down to place the note under the stone was a considerable problem. Having fallen over once I finally managed to do the job, I then went back to the centre of the town to get my lift back to the airfield.

  Chapter 45

  By the middle of October, my ankle had improved to the stage where I was able to hobble around without the use of crutches. I still was not fully mobile, and certainly wasn’t strong enough to make a long trek to either Sweden or Spain. Because of my bad ankle I was starting to formulate a plan as to how I might be able to ‘borrow’ a plane and fly to freedom. I reckoned that I could take off without arousing suspicion, but obviously landing would be a problem.

  From an information gathering point of view, I had more than enough at this stage. My role as the report writer for all the test pilots had given me a massive database of information on the performance of the jet engine and the Me262, and this was now stored inside my head.

  After an additional three weeks of rehabilitation, during which time I received
physiotherapy and did extensive strengthening exercises, I was now fit enough to undertake the walking required. I would make one final drop at my ‘letter-box’ and would start on my escape route one week later. Just in case I disappeared on my back to England, I would make my last report as detailed as possible. I wanted to make sure that all the essential information would get back to Major Richards in England.

  I selected my escape route having decided that the safest option would be to fly to the unoccupied part of France and then walk over the Pyrenees into Spain. I had been given the name and address of a contact that lived in Lourdes, and he would organize for me to be taken across the mountains on a secure track.

  I spent a considerable amount of time compiling and coding my last note, and I made my way in to Leipheim to drop it off at the ‘letter-box’. As normal, I picked up two pebbles to place on top of the stone, to indicate that a new envelope was under the stone, and I approached the location. I noticed a man and a woman sitting on a bench about twenty meters beyond the stone. They had arms around each other, and I discounted them as a threat as they looked like two locals having a quiet cuddle. I thought about aborting my task, but, on reflection, didn’t see any need to change my plans.

  I had another good look around as I usually did, and then, seeing nothing untoward, I approached the stone, leant down and placed the note in the hiding place. Finally, I put the two pebbles on the top. I glanced at the couple sitting on the bench, they hadn’t moved, so I walked back towards the entrance and the road back into the centre of Leipheim. As I turned the corner onto the main road, two men jumped out and grabbed my arms. They were two members of the SS.

  I tried to fight them off.

  ‘If you escape from us we will shoot you,’ one of the men barked at me.

  ‘We have been waiting for you,’ the other said in a menacing voice.