Stuka Pilot

17. THE DEATH STRUGGLE OF THE LAST MONTHS

Early on the morning of the 9th February a telephone call from H.Q.: Frankfurt has just reported that last night the Russians bridged the Oder at Lebus, slightly north of Frankfurt and with some tanks have already gained a footing on the west bank. The situation is more than critical; at this point there is no opposition on the ground and there is no possibility of bringing up heavy artillery there in time to stop them. So there is nothing to prevent the Soviet tanks from rolling on towards the capital, or at least straddling the railway and the autobahn from Frankfurt to Berlin, both vital supply lines for the establishment of the Oder front.

We fly there to find out what truth there is in this report. From afar I can already make out the pontoon bridge, we encounter intense flak a long way before we reach it. The Russians certainly have a rod in pickle for us! One of my squadrons attacks the bridge across the ice. We have no great illusions about the results we shall achieve, knowing as we do that Ivan has such quantities of bridge-building material that he can repair the damage in less than no time. I myself fly lower with the anti-tank flight on the look-out for tanks on the west bank of the river. I can discern their tracks but not the monsters themselves. Or are these the tracks of A.A. tractors? I come down lower to make sure and see, well camouflaged in the folds of the river valley, some tanks on the northern edge of the village of Lebus.

There are perhaps a dozen or fifteen of them. Then something smacks against my wing, a hit by light flak. I keep low, guns are flashing all over the place, at a guess six or eight batteries are protecting the river crossing. The flak gunners appear to be old hands at the game with long Stuka experience behind them. They are not using tracers, one sees no string of beads snaking up at one, but one only realizes that they have opened up when the aircraft shudders harshly under the impact of a hit. They stop firing as soon as we climb and so our bombers cannot attack them. Only when one is flying very low above our objective can one see the spurt of flame from the muzzle of a gun like the flash of a pocket torch. I consider what to do; there is no chance of coming in cunningly behind cover as the flat river valley offers no opportunities for such tactics. There are no tall trees or buildings. Sober reflection tells me that experience and tactical skill go by the board if one breaks all the fundamental rules derived from them. The answer: a stubborn attack and trust to luck. If I had always been so foolhardy I should have been in my grave a dozen times. There are no troops here on the ground and we are fifty miles from the capital of the Reich, a perilously short distance when the enemy’s armor is already pushing towards it. There is no time for ripe consideration. This time you will have to trust to luck, I tell myself, and in I go. I tell the other pilots to stay up; there are several new crews among them and while they cannot be expected to do much damage with this defense we are likely to suffer heavier losses than the game is worth. When I come in low and as soon as they see the flash of the A.A. guns they are to concentrate their cannon fire on the flak. There is always the chance that this will get Ivan rattled and affect his accuracy. There are several Stalin tanks there, the rest are T 34s. After four have been set on fire and I have run out of ammunition we fly back. I report my observations and stress the fact that I have only attacked because we are fighting fifty miles from Berlin, otherwise it would be inexcusable. If we were holding a line further east I should have waited for a more favorable situation, or at least until the tanks had driven out of range of their flak screen round the bridge. I change aircraft after two sorties because they have been hit by flak. Back a fourth time and a total of twelve tanks are ablaze. I am buzzing a Stalin tank which is emitting smoke but refuses to catch fire.

Each time before coming in to the attack I climb to 2400 feet as the flak cannot follow me to this altitude. From 2400 feet I scream down in a steep dive, weaving violently. When I am close to the tank I straighten up for an instant to fire, and then streak away low above the tank with the same evasive tactics until I reach a point where I can begin to climb again—out of range of the flak. I really ought to come in slowly and with my aircraft better controlled, but this would be suicide. I am only able to straighten up for the fraction of a second and hit the tank accurately in its vulnerable parts thanks to my manifold experience and somnambulistic assurance. Such attacks are, of course, out of the question for my colleagues for the simple reason that they have not the experience.

The pulses throb in my temples. I know that I am playing cat and mouse with fate, but this Stalin tank has got to be set alight. Up to 2400 feet once more and on to the sixty ton leviathan. It still refuses to bum! Rage seizes me; it must and shall catch fire!

The red light indicator on my cannon winks. That too! On one side the breech has jammed, the other cannon has therefore only one round left. I climb again. Is it not madness to risk everything again for the sake of a single shot? Don’t argue; how often have you put paid to a tank with a single shot?

It takes a long time to gain 2400 feet with a Ju. 87; far too long, for now I begin to weigh the pros and cons. My one ego says: if the thirteenth tank has not yet caught fire you needn’t imagine you can do the trick with one more shot. Fly home and remunition, you will find it again all right. To this my other ego heatedly replies:

“Perhaps it requires just this one shot to stop the tank from rolling on through Germany.”

“Rolling on through Germany sounds much too melodramatic! A lot more Russian tanks are going to roll on through Germany if you bungle it now, and you will bungle it, you may depend upon that. It is madness to go down again to that level for the sake of a single shot. Sheer lunacy!”

“You will say neat that I shall bungle it because it is the thirteenth. Superstitious nonsense You have one round left, so stop shilly-shallying and get cracking!”

And already I zoom down from 2400 feet. Keep your mind on your flying, twist and turn; again a score of guns spit fire at me. Now I straighten up… fire… the tank bursts into a blaze! With jubilation in my heart, I streak away low above the burning tank. I go into a climbing spiral… a crack in the engine and something sears through my leg like a strip of red hot steel. Everything goes black before my eyes, I gasp for breath. But I must keep flying… flying… I must not pass out. Grit your teeth, you have to master your weakness. A spasm of pain shoots through my whole body.

“Ernst, my right leg is gone.”

“No, your leg won’t be gone. If it were you wouldn’t be able to speak. But the left wing is on fire. You’ll have to come down, we’ve been hit twice by 4 cm. flak.”

An appalling darkness veils my eyes, I can no longer make out anything.

“Tell me where I can crash-land. Then get me out quickly so that I am not burnt alive.”

I cannot see a thing any more, I pilot by instinct. I remember vaguely that I came in to each attack from south to north and banked left as I flew out. I must therefore be headed west and in the right direction for home. So I fly on for several minutes. Why the wing is not already gone I do not know. Actually I am moving north north west almost parallel to the Russian front. “Pull!” shouts Gadermann through the intercom, and now I feel that I am slowly dozing off into a kind of fog… a pleasant coma.

“Pull!” yells Gadermann again—were those trees or telephone wires? I have lost all sensation in my mind and pull the stick only when Gadermann yells at me. If this searing pain in my leg would only stop… and this flying… if I could let myself sink at last into this queer, grey peace and remoteness which invites me…

“Pull!” Once again, I wrench automatically at the joy-stick, but now for an instant Gadermann has “shouted me awake.”

In a flash I realize that I must do something here.

“What’s the terrain like?” I ask into the microphone. “Bad—hummocky.”

But I have to come down, otherwise the dangerous apathy brought on from my wounded body will again steal over me. I kick the rudder-bar with my left foot and howl with agony. But surely it was my right leg that was hit? Pull to the right, I bring the nose of the aircraft up and slide her gently onto her belly, in this way perhaps the release gear of the undercarriage will not function and I can make it after all. If not we shall pancake. The aircraft is on fire… she bumps and skids for a second.

Now I can rest, now I can slip away into the grey distance… wonderful) Maddening pains jerk me back into consciousness. Is someone pulling me about?… Are we jolting over rough ground? Now it is over… At last I sink utterly into the arms of silence…

When I wake up, everything around me is white… intent faces… a pungent smell… I am lying on an operating table. A sudden, violent panic convulses me: where is my leg?

“Is it gone?”

The surgeon nods. Spinning downhill on brand new skis… diving… athletics… pole jumping… what do these things matter? How many comrades have been far more seriously wounded? Do you remember… that one in the hospital at Dnjepropetrovsk whose whole face and both hands had been torn off by a mine? The loss of a leg, an arm, a head are all of no importance if only the sacrifice could save the fatherland from its mortal peril… this is no catastrophe, the only catastrophe is that I cannot fly for weeks… and in the present crisis! These thoughts flash through my brain in a second, and now the surgeon says to me gently:

“I couldn’t do anything else. Except for a few scraps of flesh and some fibrous tissue there was nothing there, so I had to amputate.”

If there was nothing there, I think to myself with a wry humor, how could he amputate? Well, of course, it is all in the day’s work for him.

“But why is your other leg in plaster of Paris?” he asks in astonishment.

“Since last November—where am I here?”

“At the Waffen S.S. main. dressing station at Selow.”

“Oh, at Selow!” That is less than five miles behind the front. So I evidently flew north-north-west, not west.

“Waffen S.S. soldiers brought you in and one of our M.O.s performed the operation. You have another wounded man on your conscience,” he adds with a smile.

“Did I by any chance bite the surgeon?”

“You didn’t go as far as that,” he says shaking his head. “No, you didn’t bite him, but a Pilot Officer Koral tried to land with a Fieseler Storch on the spot where you crashed. But it must have been difficult, for he pancaked… and now he, too, has his head swathed in bandages!”

Good old Coral! It seems as if when I was flying sub consciously I had more than one guardian angel Meanwhile the Reichsmarschall has sent his personal doctor with instructions to bring me back at once to the bomb-proof hospital in the Zoo bunker, but the surgeon who operated will not hear of it because I have lost too much blood. It will be all right tomorrow.

The Reichsmarschall’s doctor tells me that Goering immediately reported the incident to the Führer. Hitler, he says, was very glad that I had got off so lightly.

“Of course, if the chickens want to be wiser than the hen,” he is reported to have said among other things. I am relieved that no mention has been made of his veto on my flying. I also believe that in view of the desperate struggle in which the whole situation has been involved in the last few weeks my continuance in action is accepted as a matter of course.

The next day I am moved into the Zoo bunker, sited below the heaviest A.A. guns aiding in the defense of the capital against the allied attacks on the civil population. On the second day there is a telephone on my bedside table; I must be able to communicate with my wing about operations, the situation, etc. I know that I shall not be on my back for long and I do not want to lose my command and therefore I am anxious to be kept informed of everything in detail and participate in my unit’s every activity even if I can only be kept informed and participate by telephone. The doctors and the nurses whose care of me is touching are, in this respect at least, not overpleased with their new patient. They keep on saying something about “rest.”

Almost every day I am visited by colleagues from the unit or by other friends, some of them people who call themselves my friends in order to force a way into my sickroom. When those who “crash” my sickroom are pretty girls they open their eyes wide and raise their eyebrows interrogatively when they see my wife sitting at my bedside. “Did you ever?” as the Berliner would say.

I have already had a professional discussion about an artificial limb; if only I had made that much recovery. I am impatient and fidgeting to get up. A little later I wangle a visit from a maker of artificial limbs. I ask him to make me a provisional artificial leg with which I can fly even if the stump is not yet healed. Several first class firms refuse on the grounds that it is too soon.

One accepts the order if only as an experiment. At all events he sets about it so energetically that he almost makes me dizzy. He sets the whole of my thigh up to the groin in plaster of Paris without first greasing it or fitting a protective cap. After letting it dry he remarks laconically:

“Think of something nice!”

At the same moment he wrenches with all his strength at the hard plaster of Paris cap in which the hairs of my body are embedded and tears it off. I think the world is falling in. The fellow has missed his vocation, he would have made an excellent blacksmith.

My 3rd Squadron and the Wing staff have meanwhile moved to Görlitz where I went to school. My parents’ home is just nearby. The Russians are at this moment fighting their way into the village; Soviet tanks are driving across the playgrounds of my youth. I could go mad to think of it. My family, like many millions, must long since have become refugees, able to save nothing but their bare lives. I lie condemned to inactivity. What have I done to deserve this? I must not think of it.

Flowers and presents of every kind are proof of the people’s affection for their soldiers; every day they are delivered to my room. Besides the Reichsmarschall, Minister Göbbels whom I did not before know visits me twice. A conversation with him is very interesting. He asks my opinion of the purely strategic situation in the east.

“The Oder front,” I tell him, “is our last chance of holding the Soviets; beyond that I see none, for with it the capital falls too.”

But he compares Berlin with Leningrad. He points out that it did not fall because all its citizens made every house a fortress. And what Leningrad could do the population of Berlin could surely help him to do. His idea is to achieve the highest degree of organization for a house to house defense by installing wireless sets in every building. He is convinced that “his Berliners” would prefer death to falling victims to the Red hordes.

How seriously he meant this his end was afterwards to prove.

“From a military point of view I see it differently,” I reply. “Once the battle for Berlin is joined after the Oder front is broken I think it is absolutely impossible that Berlin can be held. I would remind you that the comparison between the two cities is not admissible. Leningrad has the advantage of being protected on the west by the Gulf of Finland and on the east by Lake Ladoga. There was only a weak and narrow Finnish front to the north of it. The only real chance of capturing it was from the south, but on that side Leningrad was strongly fortified and could make use of an excellent system of prepared positions; also it was never entirely cut off from its supply line. Lighters could cross Lake Ladoga in the summer and in winter they laid railway lines over the ice and so were able to feed the city from the north.” My arguments fail to convince him.

In a fortnight I am up for a short while for the first time and am able to enjoy a little fresh air. During the allied air attacks

I am up on the platform with the A.A. guns and see from below what is probably very unpleasant up above. I am never bored; Fridolin brings me papers which require my signature or other additional problems, sometimes accompanied by one or other of my colleagues. Field Marshal Greim, Skorzeny or Hanna Reitsch look in for an hour’s chat; something is always doing, only my inner restlessness at acing out of it torments me. When I came into the Zoo bunker I “solemnly” declared that I would walk again in six week’s time, and fly. The doctors know that their veto is anyhow useless and would only anger me. At the beginning of March I go out for a walk in the fresh air for the first time—on crutches.

During my convalescence I am invited by one of my nurses to her home, and so am the guest of the Minister for Foreign Affairs. A real soldier is seldom likely to make a good diplomat, and this meeting with von Ribbentrop is rather intriguing. It is an opportunity for conversations which shed light on the other side of the war which is being conducted without weapons. He is greatly interested in my opinion of the strength of the east front and our military potential at this particular moment. I make it clear to him that we at the front hope he is doing something through diplomatic channels to loosen the stranglehold in which we are caught on every side.

“Cannot the Western Powers be made to see that Bolshevism is their greatest enemy and that after an eventual victory over Germany it will be the same menace to them as to us, and that alone they will no longer be able to get rid of it?”

He takes my remarks as a gentle personal reproof; no doubt I am only playing over a record he has had to listen to many times. He at once explains to me that he has already made a number of attempts which have failed, because every time the necessity for a fresh military retirement on one or other sector of the front shortly after he had opened negotiations has encouraged the enemy to continue the war in any case and to leave the conference table. He cites instances and says somewhat reproachfully that the treaties which he had brought off before the war, among other things those with England and Russia, were surely no mean achievement if not a triumph. But nobody mentions them any longer; today people see only the negative aspects, the responsibility for which is not his. Naturally even now negotiations were still going on, but whether with the general situation such as it was the success he wished for would still be possible was problematical. This peep behind the scenes of diplomacy sates my curiosity and I am not anxious to learn more.

In the middle of March I take my first walk in the spring sunshine with a nurse in the Zoo and on my very first excursion I have a slight accident. We, like so many, are fascinated by the monkey cage. I am attracted by a particularly big ape sitting quite unconcernedly and lazily on a bough with his long tail hanging down. Of course I cannot resist doing just what one should not do and I push both my crutches through the bars with the intention of tickling his tail. I have hardly touched it when he suddenly grabs hold of my crutches and tries with all his monkey strength to pull me into the cage. I stumble on my one leg as far as the bars; of course the beast will not get me through them. Sister Edelgarde hangs on to me and we both pull on our end of the crutches in a tug of war with the monkey. Man versus Ape! His paws have begun to slip a little along his end, and meet the rubber caps at the bottom which are supposed to prevent the crutches from sinking into the ground or skidding when one is walking. The rubber caps excite his curiosity, he sniffs at them, tears them off and swallows them with a broad grin. At the same moment I am able to pull the bare sticks out of the cage and so have at least wrested part of his victory from the ape. A few seconds later the wailing of sirens gives warning of an air raid. The exertion of walking over the sandy paths of the Zoo makes me sweat because the crutches sink deep into the ground and meet with hardly any resistance. Everyone round about me is hurrying and scurrying and so I can hardly use them to support me and hobble on clumsily. It is slow work. We just reach the bunker in time as the first bombs come down.

Gradually Easter approaches. I want to be back with my colleagues on Easter Sunday. My Wing is now stationed in the Grossenhain area in Saxony, my First Squadron has again moved from Hungary into the Vienna area and still remains on the Southeastern front. Gadermann is in Brunswick, for as long as I am away, so that during this time he can exercise his profession as a doctor. I ring him up to tell him that I have ordered a Ju. 87 to fetch me at Tempelhof at the end of the week and intend to fly to the unit. As shortly before he has spoken to the professor in charge of my case he does not really believe it. Besides he is feeling ill himself. I shall not see him again in this war, for the last operations now has come.

His place as my gunner is taken by Flight Lt. Niermann who has no lack of operational experience and wears the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.

After first obeying the order to report to the Führer before I leave I say goodbye to the bunker. He reiterates his pleasure that everything has gone relatively smoothly. He makes no allusion to my flying, for presumably the idea of my doing so does not enter his head. I am sitting in my aircraft again for the first time in six weeks, my course is set for my comrades. It is Easter Eve and I am happy. Shortly before I take off Fridolin rings up and tells me to fly straight to the Sudetenland; he is just on the point of moving the unit to Kummeram-See near Niemes. In the aircraft at first I feel very strange, but I am soon back in my element. Steering is complicated by the fact that I can use only one foot on the rudder-bar. I can exert no pressure on the right because I have not yet got an artificial limb, and have to use my left foot to lift the left rubber-bar, thus depressing the right one which gives the desired result. My stump is wadded into a plaster of Paris sheath and projects under the instrument panel without knocking against anything. So an hour and a half later I land on my new airfield at Kummer. The Wing flying personnel have arrived here an hour before me.

Our airfield lies amid magnificent scenery between two spurs of the Sudeten mountains surrounded by forest with goodsized lakes near by and at Kummer itself a lovely forest-girt tarn. Pending the solution of the billeting problem we foregather of an evening in the room of an inn. Here in the Sudetenland everything still gives an impression of utter peace and tranquility. The enemy is behind the mountains and this front is defended by Field Marshal Schörner; consequently this unruffled calm is not unreasonable. Towards eleven o’clock we hear the treble voices of a children’s choir singing: “Gott grüsse dich.” The local school with its mistress is treating us to a serenade of welcome. This is something new to us hard-boiled soldiers, it touches us in a place which now in this phase of the war we would as soon forget. We listen meditatively, each of us sunk in his own thoughts; we feel that these children have faith in our power to ward off the impending danger with all its accompanying horrors. Here on the threshold of their home we shall not fail them for lack of determination. At the end of their song I thank them for their charming welcome and invite them to visit our airfield in the morning to have a peep at our “birds.” They are keen as mustard. They turn up next day and I start the proceedings by taking up my anti-tank aircraft and firing at a, three foot square target. The children stand round in a semi-circle and can now imagine an attack on an enemy tank; it is a good try-out for me to manage with one leg. On the other side of the Sudeten mountains it is still foggy and as we cannot go out on a sortie I have a little time to waste, so I take up a FW 190 D 9 and give an exhibition of low and high flying acrobatics. That genius, Flight Lt. Klatzschner, my engineer officer, has already readjusted the foot brakes, which are indispensable for this fast aircraft, so that they can be operated by hand.

As I come down to land all the men are gesticulating violently and pointing up into the sky. I look up and through the gaps in the ragged cloud cover I can see American fighters and Jabos, Mustangs and Thunderbolts circling above. They are flying at 4800 to 5400 feet above a layer of mist. They have not yet caught sight of me alone up there, otherwise I should have observed them while in the air. The Thunderbolts carry bombs and seem to be searching for a target, so our airfield is presumably their objective. Quickly, as far as one can use the word of a one-legged man in plaster, I hop over to where the others are standing by. They must all be got under cover. I hustle the children into the cellar where they will at least be safe from splinters but no more, for the house which we use as our operations room being the only one on the airfield is pretty certain to tempt one of those chaps up there. I enter last to pacify the children just as the first bombs drop, one of them close to the building; the blast smashes the window panes and sweeps away the roof. Our aircraft defense is too feeble to drive the bombers off, but enough to prevent low level attack. Fortunately we have no casualties among the children. I am sorry that their innocent, romantic ideas of aviation should have thus been brutally converted into grim reality. They soon quiet down again and the school-teacher marshals her little flock into a crocodile and shepherds them towards the village.

Flight Lt. Niermaun is radiant, he hopes he has got a film of the whole attack. Throughout the performance he has been standing in a foxhole, filming the falling bombs from the moment of their release to their impact with the ground and the fountains of earth they spout into the air. This is a tid-bit for the expert photographer from Spitzbergen, where he has also succeeded in taking some unique pictures.

Fresh met. reports from the Görlitz—Bautzen area forecast a gradual clearing-up of the weather, so we take off. The Soviets have by-passed Görlitz and pushed on beyond Bautzen, which is encircled with its German garrison, in the hope of reaching Dresden by way of Bischofswerda. Continual counter-attacks are launched against these spearheads trying to effect the collapse of Field Marshal Schörner’s front, and with our support Bautzen is relieved and we destroy a large number of vehicles and tanks. This flying takes a lot out of me, I must have lost much blood and my apparently inexhaustible stamina has its limitations after all. Our successes are shared by battle and fighter formations placed under my command and stationed on our airfield and in the vicinity.

In the first fortnight of April a wireless signal summons me to the Reichskanzlei. The Führer tells me that I am to take over the command of all jet units and with them clear the air space above General Wenk’s new army now being assembled in the region of Hamburg. This army’s first objective will be to strike from the neighborhood of this city into the Harz, in order to cut the supply lines of the allied armies already established further east. The success of the operation at this critical juncture depends on the preliminary clearance of the air space above our own lines, otherwise it is doomed to failure; the Führer is convinced of this and General Wenk who is to conduct the operation agrees with him. I beg the Führer to relieve me of this assignment because I feel that I am at the moment indispensable in Field Marshal Schörner’s sector, his army being engaged in a most arduous defensive battle. I recommend him to choose for the task someone from jet command who will not be so out of his depth as I should. I point out to him that my experience is limited to dive-bombing and tank combat, and that I have always made a point of never giving an order which I could not assist in carrying out myself. With jet air craft I could not do this, and should therefore feel ill at ease with the formation leaders and crews. I must always be able to show my subordinates the way.

“You have not got to fly at all, you have only to organize. If any one questions your bravery because you are on the ground I will have him hanged.”

A trifle drastic, I reflect, but probably he only wishes to dispel my scruples.

“There are plenty of people with experience, that alone is not enough. I must have somebody who can organize and carry out the operation energetically.”

A final decision is not reached that day. I fly back, only to be recalled a few days later to the Reichsmarschall who passes on to me the order to undertake this task. Meanwhile the situation at the front has so far deteriorated that Germany threatens to be divided into two pockets, and the conduct of the operation would hardly be possible. For this reason and those already mentioned I refuse. As the Reichsmarschall lets me guess, this is no surprise to him as since my flat refusal to accept the combat bomber command he knows my attitude exactly. This time, however, the principal motive of my refusal is that I cannot accept the responsibility for something which I am no longer convinced in my own mind is feasible. I very soon perceive how gravely the Reichsmarschall views the situation. As we are discussing the position at the front, bending over a table spread with maps, he mutters to himself:

“I wonder when we shall have to set fire to this shack”—he means Karinhall. He advises me to go to the Führer’s headquarters and personally inform him of my refusal. As, however, I have received no orders to this effect I fly back immediately to my Wing where I am urgently awaited. But this is not to be my last flight to Berlin.

A wireless signal on the 19th April summons me once again to the Reichskanzlei. To reach Berlin from Czechoslovakia in an unescorted aircraft is at this time no longer a simple matter; at more than one place the Russian and the American fronts are very close to one another. The air space is alive with aircraft, but none of them are German. I arrive at the Reichskanzlei and am admitted to the anteroom of the Führer’s bunker. There is an atmosphere of calm and confidence, those present are mainly army officers taking part in present or contemplated operations. From outside one can hear the thump of the two thousand pounders which Mosquitos are dropping in the centre of the city.

It is nearly 11 P.M. when I stand in the presence of the Supreme Commander. I have foreseen the object of this interview: the definite acceptance of the assignment previously discussed. It is an idiosyncrasy of the Führer to beat about the bush and never to come directly to the point. So on this evening he begins with a half-hour lecture explaining the decisiveness in the course of the centuries of technical developments in which we have always led the field, an advantage which we must also now exploit to the limit and so positively turn the tide of victory in our favour. He tells me that the whole world is afraid of German science and technology, and shows me some intelligence reports which indicate the steps the Allies are already taking to rob us of our technical achievements and our scientists. Every time I listen to him I am astounded at his memory for figures and his specialized knowledge of all things technical. At this time I have about six thousand flying hours behind me and with my extensive practical experience there is very little I do not know about the various types of aircraft he refers to, but there is nothing on which he cannot expatiate with an incomparable ease and on which he does not make apt suggestions for modifications. His physical condition is not as good as it was perhaps three or four months ago. There is a perceptible glitter in his eyes. Wing Commander von Below tells me that for the last eight weeks Hitler has had virtually no sleep; one conference after another. His hand trembles, this dates from the attempt on his life on the 20th July. During the long discussion that evening I notice moreover that he is apt to repeat certain trains of thought, which he never used to, though his words are clearly thought out, and full of determination.

When the long preamble is finished the Führer comes to the main theme I have listened to so often. He recapitulates the reasons communicated to me a few days ago and concludes:

“It is my wish that this hard task should be undertaken by you, the only man who wears the highest German decoration for bravery.”

With the same and similar arguments as on the last occasion I once again refuse, especially as the situation at the front has still further deteriorated, and I emphasize that it is only a matter of time before the East and West fronts will meet in the middle of the Reich and when that happens two pockets will have to operate separately. Only the northern pocket would then come under consideration for the execution of his plan, and it would be necessary to concentrate all our jet air craft inside it. It interests me that the number of serviceable jet aircraft, including bombers and fighters, on the returns for the day is given as 180. At the front we have long felt that the enemy has a numerical superiority of almost twenty to one. Seeing that the jet aircraft require particularly large airfields it is obvious to start with that only a limited number of airfields within the northern pocket come into question. I point out that as soon as we have assembled our aircraft at these bases they will be pounded day and night by enemy bombers and from a merely technical aspect their operational effectiveness will be nil in a couple of days, in which case it will no longer be possible to keep the air space above General Wenk’s army free of the enemy and the catastrophe will then be inevitable because the army will be strategically immobilized. I know from my personal contact with General Wenk that the army includes my guarantee of a free air space as a reliable factor in all its calculations as we have so often done successfully together in Russia.

This time I cannot take upon myself the responsibility, and I stick to my refusal. And once again I discover that anyone of whom Hitler has reason to believe that he only desires to serve the best interests of the whole is free to express his opinion, and that he is willing to revise his own ideas, while understandably he has ceased to have any confidence in people who have repeatedly deceived and disappointed him.

He declines to accept my “two pocket theory” as an accurate prediction. He bases his opinion on a firm and unqualified promise given to him by the respective army commanders of each sector that they will not retreat from the present fronts which are, broadly speaking, the line of the Elbe in the West and in the East the line of the Oder, the Neisse and the Sudeten mountains. I remark that I trust the German soldier to acquit himself with especial gallantry now that he is fighting on German soil, but that if the Russians mass their forces for a concentrated blow at one key point they are bound to batter a gap in our defenses and then the two fronts will link up. I quote instances from the Eastern Front in recent years when the Russians hurled tank after tank into the battle and if three armored divisions failed to reach their objective they simply threw in ten, gaining ground on our depleted Russian front at the cost of enormous losses in men and material. Nothing could have stopped them. The question then was whether or not they would exhaust this immense reserve of man-power before Germany was beaten to her knees. They did not, because the help they received from the West was too great. From a purely military standpoint every time we gave ground at that time in Russia and the Soviets suffered heavier losses in men and material it was a victory for the defense. Even though the enemy ridiculed these victories we know that it was so. But this time a victorious retirement was useless, for then the Russians would be only a few miles behind the Western Front. The Western Powers have accepted a grave responsibility—perhaps for centuries to come—by weakening Germany only to give additional strength to Russia. At the end of our talk I say to the Führer these words:

“In my opinion at this moment the war can no longer be ended victoriously on both fronts, but it is possible on one front if we can succeed in getting an armistice with the other.”

A rather tired smile flits across his face as he replies: “It is easy for you to talk. Ever since 1943 I have tried incessantly to conclude a peace, but the Allies won’t; from the outset they have demanded unconditional surrender. My personal fate is naturally of no consequence, but every man in his right mind must see that I could not accept unconditional surrender for the German people. Even now negotiations are pending, but I have given up all hope of their success. Therefore we must do everything to surmount this crisis, so that decisive weapons may yet bring us victory.”

After some further talk about the position of Schörner’s army he tells me he intends to wait a few days to see whether the general situation develops as he anticipates or my fears are justified. In the first case he will recall me to Berlin for a final acceptance of the assignment. It is nearly one o’clock in the morning when I leave the Führer’s bunker. The first visitors are waiting in the anteroom to offer their congratulations on his birthday.

I return to Kummer early, flying low to avoid the Americans, Mustangs, four-engined bombers and Thunderbolts, which soon infest the upper air and are above me almost all the way back. Having to fly like this alone below these enemies and constantly on the qui vive “have they spotted you or not?”—is a greater strain than many an operational flight. If Niermann and I occasionally get rather hot under the collar with the suspense it is not to be wondered at. We are glad to set foot again on our home base.

The slight relaxation of the pressure exerted by the Russians west of Görlitz is partly due to our daily operations which have inflicted heavy losses. One evening after the last sortie of the day I drive into Görlitz, my home town, now in the battle zone. Here I meet many acquaintances of my youth. They are all in some job or other, not the least of their activities being their home defense duties with the Volkssturm. It is a strange reunion; we are shy of uttering the thoughts that fill our minds. Each has his load of trouble, sorrow and bereavement, but at this moment our eyes are focused only on the danger from the East. Women are doing men’s work, digging tank traps, and only lay down their spades for a brief pause to suckle their hungry babies; greybeards forget the infirmities of age and labour till their brows are damp with sweat. Grim resolution is written on the faces of the girls; they know what is in store for them if the Red hordes break through. A people in a struggle for survival! If the nations of the West could see with their own eyes the happenings of these days pregnant with destiny and realize their significance they would very soon abandon their frivolous attitude towards Bolshevism.

Only the 2nd Squadron is billeted in Kummer; the wing staff has its headquarters in the schoolhouse at Niemes, some of us live in the homes of the local in habitants who are 95 per cent German, and do everything possible to meet our every wish. The business of getting to and from the airfield is not altogether plain sailing, one man always squats on the mudguard of every car as look-out for enemy aircraft. American and Russian low-flying planes scour the country at every minute of the day, actually criss-crossing one another in this region. The more unpleasant visitors come from the West, the others from the East.

When we take off on a sortie we often find the “Amis” lying in wait for us in one direction and the “Russkis” in another. Our old Ju. 87 crawls like a snail in comparison with the enemy aircraft, and when we approach the objective of our mission the constant aerial combat strains our nerves to snapping point. If we attack the air is instantly alive with swarming foes; if we are on our homeward course we have again to force a passage through a ring of hostile aircraft before we can land. Our flak on the airfield usually has to “shoot us a free path.”

American fighters do not attack us if they see that we are headed for the front and already engaged in aerial combat with the Ivans.

We generally take off from the Kummer airfield in the morning with four or five anti-tank aircraft, accompanied by twelve to fourteen FW 190s carrying bombs and at the same time acting as our escort. The enemy then waits for our appearance in overwhelming superiority. Rarely, if we have sufficient petrol, we are able to carry out a combined operation with all the formations attached to my command, and then the enemy in the air outnumbers us by only five to one! Yes indeed, our daily bread is earned with sweat and tears.

On the 25th April another wireless signal from the Führer’s headquarters reaches me, completely jumbled. Practically nothing is intelligible, but I assume I am again being summoned to Berlin. I ring up the air command and report that I have been presumably ordered to Berlin and request permission to fly there. The commodore refuses, according to the army bulletin fighting is going on round the Tempelhof aerodrome and he does not know if there is any airfield free of the enemy. He says:

“If you come down in the Russian lines they will chop my head off for having allowed you to start.”

He says he will try to contact Wing Commander von Below immediately by wireless to ask for the correct text of the message and where I can land if at all. For some days I hear nothing, then at 11 P.M. on the 27th April he rings me up to inform me that he has at last made contact with Berlin and that I am to fly there tonight in a Heinkel 111 and land on the wide east-to-west arterial road through Berlin at the point where the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory monuments stand. Niermann will accompany me.

The take off with a Heinkel 111 at night is not altogether easy as our airfield has neither flares round the perimeter nor any other lighting; it is, besides, small and has good-sized hills on one side of it. In order to be able to take off at all we have to partly empty the petrol tank so as to reduce the weight of the aircraft. Naturally this cuts the time we can stay in the air, a serious handicap.

We make a start at 1 A.M.—a pitch dark night. We fly over the Sudeten mountains into the battle zone on a north north westerly course. The country below us is illumined eerily by fires, many villages and towns are burning, Germany is in flames. We realize our helplessness to prevent it—but one must not think about it. On the outskirts of Berlin the Soviet searchlights and flak already reach up at us; it is almost impossible to make out the plan of the city as it is enveloped in thick smoke and a dense pall of vapor hangs above it. In some places the incandescence of the fires is so blinding that one cannot pick out the landmarks on the ground, and I just have to stare into the darkness for a while before I can see again, but even so I cannot recognize the east-to-west arterial road. One conflagration next to another, the flash of guns, a nightmare spectacle. My radio operator has made contact with the ground; our first instructions are to wait. That puts the lid on it, especially as we have only so much petrol. After about fifteen minutes a message comes through from Wing Commander von Below that a landing is impossible as the road is under heavy shell fire and the Soviets have already captured the Potsdamer Platz. My instructions are to fly on to Rechlin and to telephone to Berlin from there for further orders.

My radio operator has the wave length of this station; we fly on and call Rechlin, not a minute too soon, for our petrol tank is nearly empty. Below us a sea of flame, which can only mean that even on the other side of Berlin the Reds have broken through in the Neuruppin area and at the best only a narrow escape corridor to the west can still be free. On my request for landing lights the Rechlin airfield refuses; they are afraid of instantly attracting a night attack from enemy aircraft. I read them in clear the text of my instructions to land there, adding a few not exactly polite remarks. It is gradually becoming uncomfortable because our petrol may give out at any moment. Suddenly below us to port a niggardly show of lights outlines an airfield. We land. Where are we? At Wittstock, nineteen miles from Rechlin. Wittstock has listened in to our conversation with Rechlin and decided to show its airfield. An hour later, getting on for 3 A.M., I arrive at Rechlin where the V.H.F. is in the commodore’s room. With it I am able to get in touch with Berlin by telephone. Wing Commander von Below tells me that I am not now to come into Berlin as, unlike me, Field Marshal Greim has been reached in time by wireless and has taken over my assignment; moreover, he says, it is momentarily impossible to make a landing in Berlin. I reply:

“I suggest that I should land this morning by daylight on the east-west arterial road with a Stuka. I think it can still be done if I use a Stuka. Besides it is essential to get the government out of this danger point so that they do not lose touch with the situation as a whole.”

Von Below asks me to hold the line while he goes to make enquiries. He comes back to the telephone and says:

“The Führer has made up his mind. He is absolutely decided to hold Berlin, and cannot therefore leave the capital where the situation looks critical. He argues that if he left himself the troops which are fighting to hold it would say that he was abandoning Berlin and would draw the conclusion that all resistance was useless. Therefore the Führer intends to stay in the city. You are no longer to come in, but are to fly back immediately to the Sudetenland to lend the support of your formations to Field Marshal Schörner’s army which is also to launch a thrust in the direction of Berlin.”

I ask von Below what the feeling is about the situation because he tells me all this so calmly and matter-of-factly.

“Our position is not good, but it must be possible for a thrust by General Wenk or Schörner to relieve Berlin.”

I admire his calmness. To me everything is clear, and I fly back to my unit forthwith to carry on operations.

The shock of the news that the Head of State and Supreme Commander of the armed forces of the Reich is dead has a stunning effect upon the troops. But the Red hordes are devastating our country and therefore we must fight on. We shall only lay down our arms when our leaders give the order. This is our plain duty according to our military oath, it is our plain duty in view of the terrible fate which threatens us if we surrender unconditionally as the enemy insists. It is our plain duty also to the destiny which has placed us geographically in the heart of Europe and which we have obeyed for centuries: to be the bulwark of Europe against the East. Whether or not Europe understands or likes the role which fate has thrust upon us, or whether her attitude is one of fatal indifference or even of hostility, does not alter by one iota our European duty. We are determined to be able to hold our heads high when the history of our continent, and particularly of the dangerous times ahead, is written.

The East and West fronts are edging closer and closer to each other, our operations are of increasing difficulty. The discipline of my men is admirable, no dif ferent from on the first day of the war. I am proud of them. The severest punishment for my officers is, as it has always been, not to be allowed to fly with the rest on operations. I myself have some trouble with my stump. My mechanics have constructed for me an ingenious contrivance like a devil’s hoof and with it I fly. It is attached below the knee joint and with every pressure upon it, that is to say when I have to kick the right rudder-bar, the skin at the bottom of the stump which was doing its best to heal is rubbed sore. The wound is reopened again with violent bleeding. Especially in aerial combat when I have to bank extremely to the right I am hampered by the wound and sometimes my mechanic has to wipe the blood-spattered cockpit clean.

I am very lucky again in the first days of May. I have an appointment with Field Marshal Schörner, and before keeping it want to look in on my way at Air Command H.Q. in a castle at Hermannstadtel, about fifty miles east of us. I fly there in a Fieseler Storch and see that the castle is surrounded by tall trees. There is a park in the middle on which I think I can land. My faithful Fridolin is behind me in the plane. The landing comes off all right; after a short stay to pick up some maps we take off again towards the tall trees on a gentle rise. The Storch is slow in gathering speed; to help her start I lower the flaps a short distance before the edge of the forest. But this only brings me just below the tops of the trees. I give the stick a pull, but we have not sufficient impetus. To pull any more is useless, the aircraft becomes nose-heavy. I already hear a crash and clatter. Now I have finally smashed my stump, if nothing worse. Then everything is quiet as a mouse. Am I down on the ground? No, I am sitting in my cockpit, and there, too, is Fridolin. We are jammed in a forking branch at the top of a lofty tree, merrily rocking to and fro. The whole tree sways back and forth with us several times, our impact was evidently a bit too violent. I am afraid the Storch will now play us another trick and finish by tipping the cockpit over backwards. Fridolin has come forward and asks in some alarm: “What is happening?”

I call out to him: “Don’t budge or else you will topple what remains of the Storch off the tree into a thirty foot drop.”

The tail is broke off as well as large pieces of the wing planes; they are all lying on the ground. I still have the stick in my hand, my stump is uninjured, I have not knocked it against anything. One must have luck on one’s side! We cannot get down from the tree, it is very high and has a thick, smooth trunk. We wait, and after a time the General arrives on the scene; he has heard the crash and now sees us perched up aloft on the tree. He is mightily glad we got off so lightly. As there is no other possible way of getting us down he sends for the local fire brigade. They help us down with a long, extending ladder.

The Russians have by-passed Dresden, and are trying to cross the Erzgebirge from the north so as to reach the protectorate and thus outflank Field Marshal Schörner’s army. The main Soviet forces are in the Freiberg area and southeast of it. On one of our last sorties we see south of Diepoldiswalde a long column of refugees with Soviet tanks going through it like steam rollers, crushing everything under them.

We immediately attack the tanks and destroy them; the column continues its trek towards the south. Apparently the refugees hope to get behind the protecting screen of the Sudeten mountains where they think they will be safe. In the same area we attack some more enemy tanks in a veritable tornado of flak. I have just fired at a Stalin tank and am climbing to 600 feet when, looking round, I notice a drizzle of bits and pieces behind me. They are falling from above. I ask:

“Niermann, which of us has just been shot down?” That seems to me the only explanation and Niermann thinks the same. He hurriedly counts our air craft, all of them are there. So none of them was shot down. I look down at my Stalin and see only a black spot. Could the explanation be that the tank exploded and the explosion flung up its wreckage to this height? After the operation the crews which were flying behind me confirm that this tank blew up with a terrific explosion into the air behind me; the bits and pieces which I saw raining down from above were from the Stalin. Presumably it was packed with high explosive, and its mission was to clear tank barriers and other obstacles out of the way of the other tanks. I do not envy Niermann on these operations, for now flying is certainly no life insurance; if I am forced to land anywhere there is no longer any chance of making an escape. He flies with an incomparable placidity; his nerve amazes me.