Battle Climb

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  The oil pressure was very low but had steadied. He didn’t much fancy baling out: the damned parachute might not open, despite their reliability; and that blasted Tommy may have damaged it with his bullets. He wasn’t keen on setting down on water either, because the aeroplane was almost bound to tip onto its nose and thence its back, trapping him inside while it sank. How about a wheels-up landing on the beach? Too many obstacles and mines. Moreover, if he did make it back to base, it would demonstrate his determination and skill.

  He looked again at the pressure gauge and committed himself to pressing on.

  He hated this temporary airfield at the best of times. In the Fatherland he had always flown from permanent aerodromes with concrete runways. Here, they used a vast meadow and there was only grass.

  The house where the pilots lived came in sight. Beyond its garden lay the airfield.

  His engine died with a loud cough and flung a huge mess of oil over his windscreen. He swore aloud, quite filthily, and peered out of the side of his opened cockpit. Scores of his comrades had stopped work or risen from the grass or chairs where they were resting, to watch him crash.

  A farm labourer driving a horse and cart reined in and looked up at the Messerschmitt, gloating. Women gossiping on their doorsteps and children playing in the streets or gardens laughed and cheered. Old men taking the sun on benches or leaning against warm stone walls stood erect and waved their sticks in glee.

  Hercule Pelegrand, proprietor of the Bar des Sports in the small town of Aigres, who had gone to his open door for a glance up and down the main street to satisfy his insatiable curiosity about all that went on in the district, heard the engine cut out and raked the sky with his sharp, cunning eyes. His immense girth filled the doorway and when his barrage-balloon of a wife came bustling from behind the counter at his bellow of “Berthe! Come quickly... one of the swine is about to take a nose-dive to hell,” he had to move onto the pavement to make room for her.

  The population of Aigres watched the apparently doomed 109 and licked their lips in anticipation of a Boche military funeral.

  An open black Mercedes-Benz with thick chromium exhaust manifolds coiling from each side of its bonnet stood outside the large wooden hut which housed the offices of the Staffel to which Hintsch belonged. In the driving seat a pretty, fair girl in a Luftwaffe tunic and matching skirt, with a military cap on her head, watched the 109 coming in and- bit her lips; very full, red lips they were. Anxiety brought her out of her seat to stand beside the car. She was tall and her long and well-known legs had enhanced many advertisements for silk stockings.

  She did not show the same emotions as the other spectators. Neither the half-amused, half-morbid anticipation of the pilots and ground crews, who understood the technicalities of a dead-stick landing and waited with professional interest to see if Hintsch would get away with this one. Nor the bitterly spiteful hatred of the conquered civilians, who, some of them, were actually praying for the death of the young man in the Messerschmitt’s cockpit.

  Hiltrud Kirschstein held her breath and found herself praying for Werner Hintsch’s safety. She had recognised the identification letters and number on the Messerschmitt and knew who its pilot was.

  She saw the dapper figure of the Geschwader Kommo-dore, Oberstleutnant Otto von Brauneck, emerge from the H.Q. hut and stand with arms akimbo watching the 109 glide in.

  She owed her presence here to him. The Kommodore of a Geschwader, which comprised three Gruppen and if it was a fighter Geschwader 120 or more aircraft, was of any rank from Major upward. An Oberstleutnant was a lieutenant colonel, equivalent to an R. A.F. wing commander. Von Brauneck had been promoted to the rank for many reasons: he was a nobleman, a Nazi and a successful fighter pilot in the Spanish Civil War to which Hitler had sent a large air force, the Legion Kondor. He was also a favourite of Goring’s, the Luftwaffe Commander-in-Chief.

  Von Brauneck could have held a higher command, with his rank, but insisted on staying at a level at which he could continue to fly on operations.

  Although he had the manner of a man who might, at any moment, decide to speak to a Field Marshal, or Albert Einstein, to Hitler himself or even to God, with the complete assurance of perfect equality, von Brauneck was in fact conscious of his short stature and compensated for it with a touch of flamboyance.

  Hiltrud Kirschstein was his beautiful cousin, fifteen years his junior and therefore treated by him more as a niece. She was a famous photographic model. He had insisted on her joining the women’s Service so that he could have the unique distinction of a beautiful and famous personal chauffeuse. It was outrageously ostentatious and suited them both very well.

  Hiltrud had met Leutnant Hintsch at a party in Paris in June to celebrate the British retreat from Dunkirk. She had been immediately attracted to his dark, rugged looks and his cheerful arrogance: he overtopped her by less than two inches but she didn’t like her men too tall for she resented domination.

  She knew something about flying and was aware that if Werner misjudged his approach he would stall the aircraft and it would drop like a lump of lead, probably killing him and at least maiming him so that he would be a cripple for life.

  At nineteen she was sophisticated enough to hide her emotions. There was no one near enough to see that she had been biting her lip, and when she stepped out of the car she did so unhurriedly, as though merely showing interest because she happened to be there and there was nothing else to draw her attention.

  She had begun photographic modelling as a child and over the years had become used to male adulation and knew how to repulse it when it was unwelcome; hence her cool manner. But her heart was thudding and while she leaned one arm nonchalantly on the car’s bonnet the other hand was tightly clenched and her long nails dug into the palm.

  The Me 109 touched down only a trifle more heavily than if it had had full power, lurched a little, bounced a few times and Hiltrud murmured “Thank God” under her breath; although she was not sure to what extent she believed in Him anymore. The Nazis did not encourage Christianity. Moreover, in her mind faith in an Almighty was involved with chastity and she had not been chaste since the age of sixteen: when she had, as a Hitler Madchen, discovered the joys of sexual freedom on camping and ski-ing expeditions and nude swimming with mixed parties of the Madchen and brawny Hitler Jugend.

  Von Brauneck turned and smiled, strolling towards her. “That was neat.”

  She nodded, smiling back. “Very delicate.”

  “He’s a good lad. I’m expecting great things from him. Let’s go over and hear how many he shot down this trip.”

  She drove the Oberstleutnant a few hundred yards across the grass to where the 109 had stopped.

  The Staffelkapitan, Hauptmann Erik Siegert, the equivalent of an R.A.F. squadron commander, had already reached the aircraft and was standing by its port side wing root, talking to its pilot.

  They heard him ask “How many, Werner?”

  Hintsch did not reply until he had climbed down from his cockpit, then he said “One Hurricane... and one damaged.”

  “You seem to have taken a bit of a pounding in return.”

  “That was a Spitfire that I ran into after I’d used all my ammunition: I had to dive like hell and dodge into cloud.” Hintsch walked along the 109’s fuselage looking at the bullet holes in it. “He gave me quite a scare.”

  The two men turned and acknowledged von Brauneck: Siegert with a salute, Hintsch, who had taken his helmet off, with a heel-click.

  The Geschwader Kommodore flicked a hand carelessly to the peak of his jauntily tilted cap and smiled. “Did I hear you say one Hurricane, Werner?” He knew the first name of every pilot under his command and it was part of the charm he practised to use it.

  “Yes, Oberstleutnant; and one damaged.”

  “Good lad.” Von Brauneck turned to his driver. “He makes it sound easy, doesn’t he?”

  Hiltrud asked, “How did you run out of fuel, Werner?”

  “I had
to fly a bit faster and a bit more roundabout than I intended.” He poked his finger into a bullet hole. “A Spitfire pilot who knew his business chased me when I had no ammo left. Just as well they aren’t armed with cannons.”

  His face was smudged with oil and drawn with fatigue. Hiltrud felt the urge to cradle his head on her bosom and whisper words of comfort to him.

  Von Brauneck said, deliberately, “By the way, Hiltrud, I won’t be needing you this evening: I’ve got Sepp von Handorf coming to dinner.”

  Hiltrud looked at Hintsch with a tentative smile. He said, “The boys have found a little place where they make the most stupendous coq au vin and pancakes: feel like trying it this evening?”

  “I’ll expect you any time after you’re stood down,” she said.

  ***

  The Luftwaffe was not organised in separate functional Commands as the R.A.F. was, but into air fleets which comprised both fighter and bomber squadrons. It was even possible for a pilot to be transferred from one type of aeroplane to another; which virtually never happened to British pilots.

  In the summer of 1940, Luftflotten (Air Fleets) Numbers Two and Three shared the French coast of the English Channel.

  Von Brauneck’s fighter Geschwader was in Number Two, and so was the bomber Geschwader commanded by his great crony, Major Sepp von Höhndorf. There were three Gruppen, as in a fighter Geschwader, each with three Staffeln, and the total aircraft strength was ninety.

  These two Geschwader Kommodoren were of the same age and, much more important, disposition. They both liked to show off, they both had large private means and they both had a sense of fun that was rare among their compatriots.

  They had campaigned together in Poland and France and were now both engaged in trying to batter Britain into submission.

  They flew each other’s aircraft: on the pretext of learning to understand the other fellow’s problems and thus eliminating the traditional rivalry and feuds between fighter pilots and bomber crews. This reason was genuine enough but there was also another: both men craved excitement and variety. Von Brauneck got a great kick out of diving a Ju 87 Stuka and seeing its bombs blow buildings, bridges, vehicles or people to pieces with much dust, smoke, flames and debris. Von Hohndorf derived an equal thrill from aerobating a Me 109 and from hitting enemy aircraft with its cannons and machine guns.

  Whereas von Brauneck was short, slim, dapper and pink-faced, with fair hair and thin features, his bosom friend von Hohndorf was brown-haired, round-faced and stocky. Their families came from the same area of Saxony and they had been schoolfellows. Both of them had sabre scars on their cheeks.

  Von Handorf also had a powerful patron: the great Ernst Udet, a close friend of Goring’s, who was von Brauneck’s good fairy. Udet’s score of victories in 19141918 was second only to von Richthofen’s. He was a jovial, popular, chivalrous hero and before the war had been first Inspector of Fighters and Dive Bombers and then Director of the Technical Department of the Luftwaffe, a post which, with the rank of General, he held when war broke out.

  The two Geschwader commanders met frequently, both at operational conferences or briefings and socially. In deference to von Brauneck’s seniority by one rank, it was usually von Handorf who visited him.

  This evening they were dining in the chateau near the small airfield on which the fighter Geschwaderstab (Geschwader Staff) and its Gefechtsstand (Battle Headquarters) were based. They sat at a huge refectory table accompanied by von Brauneck’s Adjutant and Assistant Adjutant, Staff Major, Operations and Intelligence officers, and the Technical, Armament and Administrative officers. The food was excellent, the wine superb and the company exuberant. The end of the war was in sight. The Luftwaffe was pounding Britain day and night and the Tommies surely must cave in very soon. For one thing, they hadn’t enough aircraft in production to replace the ones which were destroyed and damaged every day. For another, they hadn’t enough fighter pilots to replace those who were daily killed and wounded. The Third Reich, on the other hand, had ample supplies of both air crews and aeroplanes.

  After dinner von Brauneck and his guest withdrew to the former’s private drawing room to drink cognac, smoke cigars and enjoy each other’s company; and to hatch their plots for making the war the most possible fun and the most rewarding pursuit, while it lasted: before Great Britain surrendered.

  They had both flown over England that day: but, because of their wider responsibilities, each had made only one sortie.

  Drawing comfortably on his Lordura Fragrante, von Brauneck asked “So how did it really go today, Sepp ?”

  His friend also inhaled deeply before replying. “Well... Otto... what we had to do we did pretty well... but I think a lot of the effort was wasted.”

  Von Brauneck nodded, took a sip of cognac and said, “How I feel, also. Going for the fighter airfields is obvious common sense: Manston... Kenley... Biggin Hill... and it makes sense to hit their early warning stations, too... all along their south coast. But those radio direction-finding (as radar was then called) aerial towers are too narrow to hit easily, aren’t they? Don’t your chaps find that?”

  “That’s right. Damned difficult targets.”

  “And the buildings on those early warnings site are so small... even for Stukas. Am I right?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Right, then, we agree. And what happens when we... or, rather, you chaps, bomb the airfields? Most of the aircraft are off the ground and those that aren’t are dispersed all around the place. It’s no use making damned great craters on the aerodrome, because it doesn’t take five minutes to fill them in again. It’s pointless to bomb the hangars and barracks and offices, because that doesn’t stop the fighters from taking off.”

  “Right again. But what else can we do?”

  “What else we can do, Sepp, is bomb the damned fighter pilots: they’re the real target.”

  Von Brauneck grinned his hard, self-congratulatory grin that held something of depravity as well as viciousness in it. Although von Handorf had known that grin most of his life he still had a tendency to turn his head away; as though he were witness to some private blemish that also demeaned him by contact. Yet there was something contagious about von Brauneck’s eagerness and he shifted his eyes back to him. “Yes, they are the real target, after all. And we have been bombing them; or, rather, their aerodromes.”

  “Not the same thing at all. What we ought to do... must do... is bomb them themselves.”

  “The officers’ mess, when most of them are there in the evening? The sergeants’ mess also?”

  “And run the gauntlet of their anti-aircraft guns and barrage balloons? Why take that risk?”

  “What do you suggest, then?”

  “Find out where they congregate in their off-duty time, then make a pin-point attack; at a time of day when no one expects it.”

  ***

  The little place the boys had discovered where the coq au vin and crepes were stupendous was a small farmhouse that had been converted to a restaurant many years before the war. Its oak-beamed rooms and deep fireplaces were a romantic setting for lovers and the astute couple who owned it served their enemies with the same obsequiousness as they had shown to their friends. It was an inn, and in the old days many trysts had been kept there between travelling businessmen and their mistresses, and between errant wives with absent husbands and their visiting lovers. Nowadays it was not unknown for a German officer to rent a room in which to spend an hour or a night with a complaisant French girl. Nor was it unusual, before they evacuated France, for the British Expeditionary Force to use it for similar escapades; with French girl friends or their own military nursing sisters.

  Hintsch and Hiltrud had dined well and drunk a bottle of Beaune. They sat in a corner holding hands across the table, she with a glass of grand marnier and he with cognac, talking in low voices.

  They were still at the stage of an affair when there is much to learn about one another; when both parties are in a hurry, even if unsure
of their destination. They had been telling each other about themselves and now a momentary silence had fallen.

  Gently, reaching out with her free hand to caress his hair, Hiltrud asked, “Was it very bad today? Are you very tired?”

  He took her hand and kissed the palm, then released her and tasted his cognac before answering.

  “If one had a particular interest in studying the effects of extreme mental, moral and physical burdens on the human mind and body, this would be the best possible place to be.” He smiled wearily.

  “And have You such an interest?”

  “All I want is to get this finished and done with. That’s my special interest.”

  “You had a bad time today.”

  “I lost two friends: one, I saw bale out over England; so at least he’s safe. The other wasn’t so lucky.”

  “You must hate them.”

  “Who? The Tommies? Not particularly; I’m glad to say: at least, I think I am. What would be the point of hating them?”

  “Isn’t it natural to hate one’s enemies?”

  “My hatred... our hatred... everyone’s on the Staffel, the Gruppe... the whole Geschwader... is for their damned machines, not for the chaps inside them.”

  “The machines don’t fire their guns automatically: there’s a man’s finger on the trigger.”

  “Or his thumb on the button, to be precise. Yes, but we don’t think like that. When I shoot I don’t think to myself ‘There’s another Englishman dead.’ I think ‘That’s one more enemy aircraft.’ If the fellow gets out, good luck to him.”

  “But he’ll live to fight the next day.”

  “That’s his good luck: if we get shot down over there, we aren’t so lucky; we go into the bag.”