A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (34 page)

Charlie told Pinky to cut engine four just before touchdown so it would not run wild and careen the plane out of control. The aim was to try to land a four-motor plane on an engine and a half. Charlie slipped off his gloves to better grip the yoke. Ahead the runway seemed to swell. From his window, he watched the left landing gear slowly descend and lock down. Frenchy popped back into the cockpit to report that the gear on both sides was down but the flaps were frozen. Charlie told Frenchy to fire the emergency flare and then get everyone into the radio room to brace for a crash.

A
T THE
A
MERICAN
air base of Seething, the airmen of the 448th Bomb Group formed a crowd around the tower. They had poured from their quarters and hangouts when they heard the P-47s circling overhead. Now they watched the damaged B-17 shakily descending from the distance.

The men of the 448th had been in eastern England just a month and had yet to enter combat. Their green B-24s ringed the base in
hardstands where mechanics stopped their work and stood atop the planes’ high-mounted wings. Alerted by the P-47s’ radio calls, the base’s fire trucks and “Meat Wagon” ambulances pulled up along the runway. Everyone was somber and quiet as they listened to the bomber laboring toward the earth.

F
ROM THE CEILING
window in the radio room, Frenchy fired red flares, alerting the emergency responders that the bomber contained wounded men.
The Pub
wobbled, drifting faster with her gear down, passing below seventy-five feet then fifty feet. Charlie told Pinky “Now!” and Pinky cut engine four. Charlie gently pulled on the yoke, keeping the bomber’s nose up as she settled to earth.

The bomber flared then stalled as her front tires kissed the concrete with a breath of smoke.
The Pub
raced along the runway, her tail up and wings level with the ground, as if trying to show the onlookers that she had landed on her own accord and undefeated. Finally the bomber’s tail wheel dropped to earth and slowed her roll. The emergency vehicles chased the bomber. From the tower, airmen and officers boarded jeeps and raced after the ambulances.

Charlie and Pinky mashed the plane’s spongy brakes, and
The Pub
graciously complied, coasting to a slow stop, her propellers still wheeling. Charlie and Pinky pulled back the throttle and turbocharger levers. They flicked off the fuel switches and the engines stopped. Charlie leaned back and put a hand over his Bible. Pinky leaned forward and buried his head on the yoke. Frenchy entered the cockpit and saw the pilots sitting in silence. He left them alone. It was nearly 3:30
P.M.
The crew and
The Pub
had completed their first mission together.

P
INKY DEPARTED THE
bomber first, swinging his feet through the hatch in the nose. Charlie followed him. The seasoned pilot who
dropped down to the tarmac was different from the nervous boy who had boarded
The Pub
that morning. Charlie’s hair was matted and his eyes were glassy. Blood from his nosebleed covered his mouth and yellow life preserver. He looked ten years older.

When Charlie’s feet hit the concrete, he found that his legs were wobbly. Unable to support his own weight, Charlie staggered a few steps and collapsed under the bomber’s nose. Seething smelled like the nearby ocean, and he sat on the tarmac, breathing in the cool sea air. Charlie knew his men were being cared for. He had seen dozens of people congregating around the bomber’s rear door. His mind turned fuzzy. His eyes focused ahead, but he saw nothing. A tall, lanky second lieutenant who resembled a young Gary Cooper approached and knelt at Charlie’s level. He wore a leather jacket like a pilot’s, but he was not a flyer. His name was Second Lieutenant Bob Harper and he was the base’s assistant intelligence officer.

“Lieutenant? You okay?” Harper asked, shaking Charlie’s arm.

Charlie turned to face Harper. “What a hell of a way to start a war,” Charlie said.

Harper nodded.

“What a hell of a way to start a war,” Charlie repeated.

Harper hollered for a medic. When the medic came, Harper moved rearward to help the more seriously wounded men. Pinky and Frenchy stood behind the medic, concerned about Charlie. The medic wanted Charlie to lie on a stretcher, but he protested.

Shaking himself from his stupor, Charlie wiped the blood from his face and slowly stood to convince the medic he was not wounded. He told the medic he had been hit by fatigue, nothing more.

The medic noticed the blood on Charlie’s shoulder from the bullet fragment. Charlie knew the rule that a wound meant he would be grounded for at least three days. Pinky and Frenchy knew it, too, and realized they might get stuck flying with a lesser pilot if Charlie acknowledged his wound.

“It’s just a scratch,” Charlie told the medic. But the medic insisted he could see a hole in Charlie’s jacket. Charlie cut him off and told him to go look after the crew. Pinky and Frenchy grinned with relief. Charlie whispered that one of them would have to help fish out the bullet shard later.

His strength renewed, Charlie stumbled under the bomber’s nose and back toward its rear exit. He stayed out of the way as medics steadied Pechout and Blackie and helped them into the back of an ambulance that whisked them away. Four airmen carried Russian out on a stretcher and slid him onto the floor of another ambulance. Charlie looked inside and saw that Russian was unconscious. “Will he make it?” Charlie asked a medic who hunched over the gunner. The medic made no promises but indicated that they had stabilized him.

At the bomber’s rear door, airmen reverently passed the stretcher containing Ecky’s body to waiting hands outside the plane. A blanket covered Ecky, but not his small flying boots that pointed skyward. The stretcher bearers loaded Ecky into the ambulance with Russian then slammed the vehicle’s double doors. Charlie watched the ambulance drive away.

One of the stretcher bearers wore a leather pilot’s jacket and wiped his bloody hands on his pants as he approached Charlie. He was an older man with silver hair and a small mustache that gave his strong face a dashing quality. He introduced himself as the 448th’s commander, Colonel Jim Thompson. Thompson asked Charlie if he was the pilot, and Charlie said he was. The colonel laid a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Son, your men are okay, you did your job. What can we do for you?”

Charlie saw Pinky, Frenchy, and the others tossing their flight gear into jeeps. He knew he had to call Kimbolton and probably attend a debriefing. But something more important was on his mind.

“Sir, I’d just like to use the bathroom,” Charlie said. “I’ve been holding it for eight hours.”

ACROSS THE NORTH SEA, JEVER AIRFIELD

Some twenty minutes after his encounter with the B-17, Franz landed at Bremen Airport to have his radiator changed. He wanted to get home to Wiesbaden but also knew he could not risk catastrophic engine failure on the flight there. He had chosen Bremen Airport over Jever Field to avoid questions about his encounter with the American bomber. Franz knew from the moment he had peeled away from the bomber that he had committed a dangerous act. He could not tell anyone the truth—he had helped the enemy escape. If anyone pinned him to that act, he knew he would face a firing squad. People in Germany had been killed for far less. The prior June, a woman had been executed for telling a joke during a break from work at a munitions factory. Her crime was to say:

“Hitler and Goering are standing atop the Berlin radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to put a smile on Berliners’ faces. So Goering says: ‘Why don’t you jump?’”

That was it. Someone overheard her tell that joke and turned her in. The fact that the woman was a war widow made no difference. Hitler’s “Blood Judge,” Roland Freisler, ordered her to be killed for violating the Subversion Law.
¹

Franz wanted to get as far from the scene of his crime as possible. He asked a mechanic to get to work on his plane so he could fly home that night.

“You won’t be going anywhere,” the mechanic said. “This will take hours.” Reluctantly, Franz prepared to stay the night. If the Gestapo came looking for a pilot who had let a B-17 escape, Franz would play dumb and pray for the best. His fate, he knew, was in God’s hands.

Franz headed for the tower to call Wiesbaden. On the way he saw a small Fieseler Storch observation plane in a hangar, its high wing and ungainly long landing gear giving it the look of an insect. Franz was eager to escape the base, even for a few hours. After reporting his
status to Wiesbaden, he got permission from the Storch’s pilot to borrow the plane. He lifted off and flew northwest of Bremen. There, he scanned the countryside, looking for the crash site of the B-17 he was sure he had downed earlier. He spotted the bomber in a farmer’s field. Franz wondered what had happened to the pilots—did the farmer have them in his barn waiting for the military to pick them up? Or worse, had he called the Gestapo? Franz decided to investigate, to ensure that the men had been treated with civility.

Franz knew the Storch could operate from rough, unfinished airstrips, so he assumed the farmer’s field would be no problem. He eased the plane down toward the earth, aiming to land alongside the crashed B-17. But Franz’s mind was back at Jever, wondering if the Gestapo would be waiting for him when he returned to the base. He failed to notice that the farmer’s field was deeply furrowed. The Storch touched down, caught a furrow, and nosed over, its wooden propeller snapping away. Franz emerged unhurt and shook his head as he looked over the wrecked plane, cursing his luck.

The farmer who owned the field ran to his aide. He informed Franz that the entire crew had been taken prisoner by the German Air Force. Franz breathed a sigh of relief. He knew the Air Force would treat the American pilots fairly. A captive Allied airman made a tempting candidate for a lynching by mobs of civilians displaced from their cities, or German farmers if their livestock had been strafed by fighters. Worst of all were the SS, whose capacity for mercy was epitomized by the death’s head insignia on their black caps.

In seeking out his enemy to guarantee their safe conduct, Franz’s actions were not exceptional. Somehow, even during the destruction of their homeland, many pilots of the German Air Force continued a style of chivalry similar to that of the desert. No longer did they seek out their downed opponents to talk with them; now they sought them out to save their lives. Since German pilots often did battle over their bases, they would often land, grab a driver, and hurry to locate their
downed opponents to ensure their protection before their countrymen could reach them.
^*

Using the Storch’s radio, Franz called Jever Field for a ride. Franz explored the downed B-17 as he waited for his lift. As Franz sat on the wing of the downed bomber, his thoughts raced to the bomber he had escorted out of Germany. He wondered if its crew were alive, kissing the tarmac and hugging one another in relief. Or were they floating in a raft in the North Sea, or on the bottom of the ocean in their Four Motor tomb? Their fate mattered to him. He could not get the thought out of his mind:
Was it worth
it?