Adolf Gallands Fighter Wing JG-26 (Me109s) taking off to do
combat with R.A.F. Spitfires and Hurricanes. If ever a fighter commander led
the front, Adolf Galland did. He flew throughout the war, achieving over 100
air victories all on the Western Front against the top aces of the RAF and the
USAAF, and when the end came he was still flying and fighting, leading a wing
of Me262 jets. Perhaps the most memorable period of the war for Adolf Galland
came after he took command of the III/JG-26 fighter wing in June 1940. In true
fashion he scored two aerial victories on his first day and in no time
transformed JG-26 Schlageter into an elite formation that became known as the
Abbeville Boys. Robert Taylor has recreated a scene from those heady days in
1941, when the Abbeville boys were at the height of their reputation, doing
daily combat with the Spitfires and Hurricanes of the RAF. Adolf Galland leads
his pilots in a typical loose formation take-off, the Messerschmitt Bf109F
fighters roaring across the runway for yet another clash with the foe. The
Abbeville boys are on the Warpath!
GUNTHER BLOEMERTZ
Bloemertz was one of the famed “Abbeville Boys”, flying Me
109s out of Abbeville in Northern France during the German Occupation.
What was it father said long ago – “You want to be an
airman? Now think, my boy. Downstairs there’s a family like ours: father,
mother and child, saying grace before supper – and you want to go and drop a
bomb into all this peacefulness!”
“No,” I replied, “no, father, I want to be a fighter pilot,
one of the ones who shoots bombers down.”
Then I was stretching both hands out of the window of the
railway carriage, with mother quietly crying and father saying in a low voice,
“Come back safely, my . . .” The first flight over the fields and the wide
forest, above the red tiled roofs of the town . . . the heavy suitcases when I
arrived at the front. Oh – they were heavy! I had put them down and entered the
dusty, dry barracks. That was in Abbeville . . . Abbeville – the front.
The spare man in the plain linen flying-suit standing before
me was the Kommandeur of the Abbeville Boys. A bright yellow life jacket hung
loosely across his shoulder and chest, and a black, white and red ribbon stood
out from under his collar.
“How old?”
“Nineteen, Herr Major.”
His lower lip came forward and he stared at me for a moment.
“Have you any request to make?”
It sounded like an execution. But I did actually have a
request – to get near two of my friends. Werner and Ulrich were a reminder of
home . . .
The sun-warmed air was shimmering above the long concrete
runways and wide stretches of grass. I had to walk on for quite half an hour
with my heavy cases to the other side of the airfield. Close above the horizon,
far beyond the shimmering layer, something sparkled for a second. A dozen fine
streaks lay mutely across the sky: twelve fighters were either flying away from
me or would be over my head in a few seconds. The streaks grew larger. Soon
cockpits, wings and armament could be made out – the aircraft were already
flying so low over the grass that in the hot eddying air they seemed to fuse
with the ground, and still I could hear no engine noise. I saw the heads behind
the goggles, the blunt noses of the motors hurtling towards me. A thin singing
hum grew momentarily louder, then they were roaring over my head in lightning
and thunder – and away.
I turned my head. The twelve trails with their dots in front
were once again high in the sky. So those were they: the Tommies called them
the “Abbeville Boys”, and feared and respected them.
“Line-shooters!” I said to myself.
The line-shooters returned. Banking steeply, they circled
the airfield and then swept in to land, whistling and bellowing, sharp
explosions punctuating the flat accompaniment of idly-turning propellers. For a
fraction of a second they displayed their flat, silver-blue bellies, drew down
ever more closely towards their shadows on the grass, and alighted carefully
with legs spread wide. Perhaps that’s my squadron, I thought, perhaps Werner
and Ulrich are with them. Or had they already been killed? I hauled my
suitcases on a bit further, spurred by the joyful anticipation of seeing two
old friends again.
At that very moment, from the squadron dispersal area, a
“bird” rose in a leisurely, awkward fashion into the air. Its engine roaring,
it vibrated slowly along towards me, splaying out its thin stork-like legs as
though about to land again any moment. In fact the “Storch” landed scarcely
thirty paces away on the greensward. The pilot jumped out, clowning in dumb
show.
“Hallo, old boy! What a sight for my poor old eyes. You,
too, taking your bones to market?”
Ulrich was standing before me: Ulrich, the dark-eyed,
spare-framed reservist with the long, almost black hair – Ulrich, my pal of
recruit days, who had worn his service nightshirt with such lazy distinction
and had climbed every night into the topmost bunk of the row.
“Ulrich, old fellow, how did you know I was here?” I
mumbled.
“Slow as ever in the uptake! How did I know you were here?
Caught sight of you during the approach, recognised your old moon face quite
plainly. Hawk’s eyes, old boy – hawk’s eyes! Cigarette?”
Ulrich’s lapels smelt as they always had done of Soir de
Paris.
“Incidentally, you look a regular porter,” he went on
unkindly. “There wasn’t a car handy at the squadron but a Storch is just as
good. Simple, isn’t it? Coming?”
We went laughing to the aircraft. Ulrich’s walk was as it
used to be, leaning forward so you expected him to fall on his nose any moment.
Around his mouth and at the corners of the eyes there had appeared finely drawn
wrinkles.
“Yes, the Abbeville Boys have had a good deal of scrapping,”
he grinned. “And this evening we’re going to drown it all.”
“Where’s Werner?” I asked, hesitating.
“Baled out an hour ago over St Orner. Got a bit above
himself. The little Spitfires gave him a bellyful. Poor chap rang up just now.
He’s flying back with a replacement in the morning. Chuck your cigarette away!”
We climbed in to the cockpit of the Storch, and the shortest
air journey of my career began. A few seconds later we climbed out between two
dispersal hangars.
“The one in front is the Kapitan,” Ulrich muttered under his
breath. The Kapitan might well have been a cadet, for his fresh, brown face
made him look just like an eighteen-year-old. The pilots were lying back in
their easy chairs between the aircraft and waiting for the next sortie. The
Kapitän led me round from one to the other, and Ulrich drew me finally to a
chair next to his own.
The pair to my right were called Vogel and Meyer II, a
strange couple who seemed only to exist for each other.
“The best of the whole squadron,” whispered Ulrich,
indicating them with his eyes.
The pilots’ attention was jerked to the loudspeaker. Ulrich
listened tautly with his lips pressed together. Only a hum could be heard at
first – the current as it was switched on – and then came the announcement.
“Achtung! achtung! Enemy aircraft forming up in strength
over London, probably four-engined bombers.”
Ulrich swallowed a curse. “Off we go again.”
Drawing nervously at his cigarette he turned abruptly away,
making for his machine. The other pilots were already clambering into their
cockpits.
“Immediate readiness!” came through the loudspeaker, and the
latecomers sprang into their aircraft. I stood on the wing beside Ulrich, who
was crouched in the narrow cockpit, fastening his harness.
“Do your stuff!”
Laughing, he punched me in the chest.
“Can do,” he nodded, and then, softly and nervously, “can
do-can do. . . .”
His fists were clenched and I could see he had become
suddenly serious. His eyes, lost in an unearthly distance, reflected something
strange and rare, not fear – but perhaps a certain figure with a scythe coming
towards him across the wide field. Since I had got to know Ulrich it was this
curious expression in the eyes which had led me to the fancy that he might be a
visitor from another planet wishing to study affairs on earth, moving among
human beings to experience their habits, joys and sorrows, so he, too, could
love, fight and die like any of them.
“Achtung! Achtung! Squadron take off at once! Enemy
formation airborne over Thames Estuary. Course Flushing.”
The two-thousand-h.p. engines sprang into deafening life,
their slip-stream forcing me backwards, as if eighty thousand horses were
thundering all around. Forty small, compact single-seaters roared across the
airfield, rose laboriously from the ground and drove with gathering speed
towards the enemy.
That very day one of the pilots in our squadron had won his
twenty-fifth victory in the air. In the evening a crowd of fellows came into
our mess to celebrate in the company of their successful comrade. The
Kommandeur with his staff, the Kapitäns of the neighbouring units and the
pilots of our own squadron were all there. The men of the morning had changed
very much in appearance, for instead of oily flying-suits they were wearing
smart white or dark-blue uniforms, white shirts and – in accordance with a
special squadron custom – loosely fitting white socks. Even in the Palace of
Versailles you would not have found greater correctness in social conduct than
here; but in spite of this, the conversation was pretty easy.
The Welfare Officer of our squadron was there too, a reserve
major who always wore uniforms of English cut. Known as “Papi”, he could easily
have been the father of any one of us. He got now to telling a story about the
evening a strange guest had been entertained in a small château not far from St
Omer: a legendary Englishman who had already lost both his legs and who had now
been shot down in combat. The brave Englishman had landed safely, but his
artificial limbs had been smashed. So there was the captured enemy airman, the
renowned Wing-Commander Bader from the other side, sitting in the middle of a
group of German pilots – the Fighter General himself had invited him to an
evening party.
The two of them, both experts at their craft, had sat in
deep armchairs by the fireplace, their gaze fixed on the crackling embers. The
atmosphere was rather oppressive, everyone appreciating the feelings of their
guest, the airmen’s immobile expressions flung into relief by the light of the
flaming logs. No one spoke a word. Every now and again they sipped their drinks
quietly and with reserve, never forgetting the little formalities which went
with it. Germans are incapable of behaving in any other way – they honoured
their guest as the man who had forgotten both his legs were missing to go out
and fight for his country.
The strangeness of the occasion and reflections about their
shot-down opponent led every man’s thoughts the same way, suddenly to
anathematise the war and that fate which throws a man into one particular
society at his birth, and makes it his duty to conform to it. Why hadn’t each
of them been born in England? That would have given England one more pilot. Why
was the Englishman sitting by the fireplace not a German? He might perhaps have
been a kommodore of our own. Hadn’t we often enough in peacetime sat down at
table with those whom today it seemed our highest duty to kill? It was suddenly
impossible to understand how men of the same sort, with the same feelings,
desires, and needs could come to mangle one another to death.
The Englishman might well have been thinking somewhat
similar thoughts, but he too had found himself unable to solve this problem and
so perhaps had let it rest. At that, as he looked up, they raised their glasses
to him. And subsequently there slowly developed between him and the German
General an intimate discussion about fights experienced in common, told after
the usual manner of fighter pilots – the sort of conversation only good friends
can have.
That same evening the guest had asked if his reserve legs
could be sent across from England, and a few hours afterwards a British radio
operator was holding the message in his hands – the Germans had offered an
escort at a pre-arranged time, at a specified point where the legs could be
dropped by parachute. But over there they didn’t seem to trust “the Jerries”
very much, for next day the Germans received a message to the effect that the
legs had been dropped at a different time and in another area.
Our close attention had rewarded the Major for his
narrative. I had quite recently heard more about the remarkable R.A.F. officer
who continuously encouraged his companions in the prisoner-of-war camps to
escape. He had finally got away himself, and it was even suggested our General
had given him encouragement in doing so: at any rate the former had sworn
heartily when he heard the British party had been recaptured.
As the last words of the narrator died away a disconcerted
silence settled over the company. Few of my fellow pilots had known that
memorable fireside circle at the Château of St Omer: the others were no longer
living. It was not surprising we were silent.
The Kommandeur rose to his feet.
“Kameraden! The Abbeville boys come, do their duty and go.
They follow the example of their fallen friends with all that they have in
them. These friends have bequeathed to us their knightly spirit. May every one
of us carry this spirit in him, and hand it on even when the enemy wins a
victory. To the health of all true knights!”
Subdued strains of jazz could be heard from the next room, I
thought to myself – in every age there’ll always be knights.
Late that evening, with glasses of brandy in our hands,
Ulrich and I received orders to take off at first light from a small airfield
north of Abbeville. This field lay at the edge of the Forest of Crécy, and was
one of those which the English had used during the First World War. From it we
were to intercept two Spitfires which used to fly over from Biggin Hill each
morning at the same time and patrol along the coast. A reconnaisance at
daylight from the English point of view was a small risk, comparable to that
which defence against such early risers presented to us. But the Tommies didn’t
believe we ever sat ready in our aircraft at this hour, and we counted on this.
For this reason both we and the English used to let a learner go out on these
operations, a “guinea-pig” so to speak, this being the quickest way of giving
him his baptism of fire.
And now I was the guinea-pig. It was striking six when I put
my right leg out of bed. In an hour’s time someone would be shooting at me and
I would perhaps be training my guns for the first time on a human being.
I took things as they came, as millions had done before me,
trying to banish all such thoughts from my mind. I looked at my “new” aircraft:
perhaps I should soon be lying in the ground in company with it. But really it
was so old one could almost attribute to it a consciousness and experience of
its own; some people even maintained it could fly without a pilot and shoot
down an enemy aircraft of its own accord. I put on my dressing-gown.
That moment there came the order: “Tommies close off the
mouth of the Somme. Take off at once!”
The Englishmen would certainly not have spent last night
drinking brandy! I ran to my machine. Ulrich, too, with puffy eyes and in
pyjamas was hurrying to his aircraft. As the engine revved up someone threw a
life-jacket round me and someone else fastened my parachute harness and belt.
Full throttle! As I left the ground and swept low over the
tree tops of the Forest of Crécy beside Ulrich, I put on my helmet and goggles
with my left hand, adjusted the R/T pads around my neck, retracted the
under-carriage, raised the flaps, set the trimmer and made the innumerable
small manual adjustments which were required.
We were already over the sea, with a visibility of barely a
thousand metres. Then, through the grey, damp morning mist, the two Spitfires
were all at once rushing towards us. To wrench the stick round, sight, turn,
aim and fire was a matter of seconds in which body and brain acted with
automatic precision – a mechanical reaction for which I had prepared myself for
two years, against a target which I now hit quite without conscious volition or
regard to the consequences. The enemy crumpled under my fire.
Victory! A transport of happiness and pride possessed me,
from which it took me a moment to recover. Finally I turned my aircraft and
looked round with anxious eyes for Ulrich. Far astern, guns were sparkling in
the clear sky over the mainland: the adversaries pursuing one another in a
series of steep, tight turns. Before I could help, a small white mushroom
unfolded, and slowly sank towards the earth. Ulrich’s aircraft spun into a
wood, and the Tommy flew on his way.
I circled low over my friend, whose pyjamas were flapping in
the breeze. Ulrich waved to me, seemingly unhurt. He had scarcely landed in a
small meadow when from all directions gallant infantrymen with rifles at the
ready came hurrying to take him prisoner. They had obviously mistaken him for
the defeated enemy and me for the victorious German. For the first time since
the fight I actually began to laugh – Ulrich, the “captured Tommy” was standing
down there in his pyjamas with his hands above his head!
I had too much to attend to in my machine to watch this
spectacle for long, but I saw them taking Ulrich away, and I had already flown
a good part of the journey home when I looked round again. To my horror I saw
another aircraft on my quarter, apparently almost within touching distance. Just
as well it wasn’t a Tommy. The unknown pilot put his hand to his helmet, and I
returned his salute. The other was smiling all over his face.
“Good morning, old man,” came through my earphones. I looked
again, more closely.
“Werner, hallo Werner!”
I had to look ahead again, but now I understood. Werner had
baled out yesterday near St Omer and was now flying a new machine back to
Abbeville. I looked across at him again – he was staring before him and spoke
without turning his head.
“Are you landing at Abbeville?”
“Can’t very well. Look at this!” I lifted the skirt of my
dressing-gown to the window of the cockpit. It was a little while before Werner
understood.
“Good show,” he laughed. I didn’t know whether he meant my
dressing-gown, Ulrich’s pyjamas or this strange reunion. And when, a few
minutes later, I dropped away over Crécy and we waved to each other again it
was as though a few days only had passed, instead of five long years, since we
had last seen one another.
That welcome night brought to an end what had been a
difficult day. I lay awake and thought of the daylight hours just passed. They
had been commonplace for many, decisive for some. Today, as for many years
past, death and mourning, victory and ecstasy had been arbitrarily apportioned
among us. Friend and foe alike had been under the same illusion as they said
their prayers, of supplication or gratitude, hurriedly, humbly or proudly, each
one wishing only to love the good and to hate evil. And we too belonged to that
company.
From time to time we openly recognised the meaninglessness
of this existence. More often we simply sensed it. But, at moments like these,
what could our disgust alone do against the links of this fateful chain made up
of our own bodies and souls, dragging us all along? Good motives there were –
here as well as “over there” – our own country, our own wives and children at
home must be protected as stoutly as those on the other side. We young men were
incapable of comprehending the meaning of it all. Fate plunged onwards down its
ordained path, and however we might try to protect ourselves it struck us
exactly as it pleased. I couldn’t block its way; and you – you who had wanted
to kill me early in the morning – you couldn’t do so either. Tommy, if you
still live, are you perhaps drinking at this moment in some bar in the West
End? Or perhaps you’re in some quiet corner, grieving over one of your own
friends or squadron mates who died in the early morning; perhaps you’re writing
at this moment to his parents or his fiancée, who, still cheerful, have as yet
no idea what has happened? Tommy, I know you would do that, just as I should.
How joyfully I grasped my comrades’ hands! I jumped beaming
from the cockpit, while a soul went up from the still warm body of a man I had
killed. How proud I had still been in the time before the bell tolled for him
whom I had shot.
The day passed in jollity, dancing and girls’ laughter. I wanted
to forget the morning, to wipe the vision of blood and shining roundels from
before my eyes. Now the silent night lay over all. I was very tired, but I
couldn’t sleep. Agonising thoughts still passed through my head. Did every
soldier experience this feeling when he had killed a man for the first time?
I listened to Ulrich’s quiet breathing. Perhaps he would
laugh if I asked him about it.
“You could have saved yourself the last burst!” he had said
smilingly, not ironically or frivolously, and certainly not sadly. I could see
it still, the Tommy in his Spitfire hovering in the air close in front of me. I
have no idea whether I have hit him. But I fire – for whole seconds in my
excitement. Then we go into turns, the tightest possible turns. It seems any
moment I must go into a spin. The rough sea spray is scarcely a hundred metres
below me, and we are far out from the shore. I am still lying not quite right
astern of the enemy, and the correct deflection for hitting him has not yet
been reached. Nerves are stretched to the uttermost. My quarry hauls his
machine all of a sudden right round in front of me, so that heavy vapour-trails
appear in the sky. I react instantaneously and take a chance between crashing
the aircraft and getting the final ounce out of it. Heaving the stick towards
me with both hands, for the fraction of a second I achieved the correct
firing-angle. My index-finger shifts by a millimetre on the triggers of my
guns, and the burst flashes into the enemy’s fuselage.
He plunges almost vertically, but regains control just above
the surface with desperate strength, and climbs steeply – mortally hit. I see
him struggling to get out – he wants to jump, He’s like a hunted quarry during
any such chase and I feel with him – pray feverishly for him.
There she goes! The damaged aircraft’s climbing vertically
in front of me in its last convulsion, the great roundels on the wings standing
out bright and hostile – filling me only with horror. In the seconds which
decide a man’s life my finger again crooks automatically one millimetre – and
the burst streaks redly out! – I shudder. It shouldn’t have happened, it wasn’t
necessary. But I can’t bring those deadly jewels back; it’s done now.
“Jump! man, jump!” I shouted aloud in despair. Instead I see
him bathed in the red of his own blood; his body strains half over the side to
hang there, mutilated. Then the waves close over him. . . .
Perhaps it was only the trembling of my finger that brought
death to that man? I didn’t know. But again it came to me – how fate goes its
own way and strikes us down as it pleases. I couldn’t stop it, and nor could
you – whoever you may have been.
I turned over on my pillow and reached for the reading-lamp
and the cigarettes. For a long while I gazed meditatively at the pictures of my
parents. Perhaps tomorrow they would be weeping for me.
“Still awake?” Ulrich asked softly, although he knew well I
wasn’t sleeping. He too was staring at the ceiling. “What are you thinking
about?”
“What am I thinking about. . . .” I repeated, rather at a
loss. It was a difficult question; as a soldier I had had to forget how to talk
from the heart. But it was easier to talk lying there gazing upwards – you can
speak so much more easily and naturally to the ceiling.
“What am I thinking about, Ulrich? The Tommy of this
morning,” I confessed. “It simply wasn’t necessary. Why didn’t the man jump
before he did?”
“You must forget it,” Ulrich replied. “One gets used to
anything, including shooting people down . . . but even so, war’s a pretty
bloody business.” We were silent. “But, you know,” he began again after a
pause, “it’s a great deal bloodier for someone like me who does it all without
any real conviction.”
Nothing more was said. I don’t know how long we lay there
with our eyes open, and the light was still burning when the dawn woke us.
No comments:
Post a Comment