A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (42 page)

A day later, Roedel called. Franz promised Roedel he could still fly, but Roedel knew better. He told Franz to take a leave of absence to the fighter pilot’s rest home. Franz had heard of the resort on the banks of Lake Tegernsee, at the foot of the Alps below Munich. There sat a tall white, Alpine-style chalet, with the resort’s name,
FLORIDA
, in bold letters over its wide, double doors. Pilots’ weddings and Knight’s Cross award parties were often held there. It was a place of levity where a tired pilot could check in with his commander’s consent to enjoy good food, alcohol, a warm bed with feather comforter, views of the lake, and a place to repair his mind. A pilot could stay there weeks or months. If he claimed his nerves were no better, he could sit out the rest of the war. To placate Roedel, Franz agreed to check into Florida. As Franz packed his bags, sadness struck him when he looked at his tan JG-27 cuff band that said
AFRIKA
. He had been with JG-27 for two years and seven months before a lone bullet took him down. The men of the legendary “Desert Wing” had become the only friends he had left, and now he was leaving them.

At a time when Germany needed every fighter pilot, Franz Stigler was out of the war.

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, NOVEMBER 1944

Franz was amazed at the destruction around him as he sat in a train that chugged through the suburbs of Berlin. The train passed by buildings that looked like cutaways, whole walls sheared off and their insides gutted. Stairways in apartments climbed up to floors that had fallen through. Children played among the rubble in the streets. Other
children watched from the sidelines, some on crutches, others missing limbs. Sixteen RAF firebomb raids had likely caused this ruination. The 8th Air Force had hit Berlin the prior March, before shifting focus to bomb targets in France in preparation for D-Day.

The people who sat in front of and behind Franz were silent and depressed. Their clothes were worn and tattered. Everyone wore the same weary frown. Franz had heard how the British had sent a few speedy Mosquito bombers over Berlin every night, just enough to trigger the air raid sirens and send people stumbling outside to the bomb shelters, a form of psychological warfare to deny the populace sleep. It worked.

Now their tired eyes glanced at Franz in his black leather jacket and gray riding pants. They saw that his black gloves had all their fingers intact. They looked at his thick cheeks and knew he was healthy, while their faces were lean and gaunt from substitute “ersatz” foods. Their “coffee” was made from oats and barley and tinted with an extract taken from coal tar. Their “meat” and “fish” were really just rice cakes flavored with animal fat or fish oil. Their “bread” was made of flour from ground chestnuts. In some cases, the people expanded their rations with pet rabbits and house cats.

Shouldn’t you be flying?
their eyes seemed to ask Franz with sarcasm. His officer’s cap obscured the bandage on his forehead. He looked away, knowing he could never explain what he had seen. After his medical expulsion from JG-27, Franz had gone home and found his mother cold and hungry, alone in their empty house. Father Josef checked on her when he could but had told Franz that his father’s war pension and death benefits had stopped flowing. His mother had no income to rely on. Father Josef’s letters to the old soldier’s office had gone unanswered. So Franz decided to travel to Berlin, a three-day train ride through bombed-out train yards, to find out where his father’s pension had gone. Only after his mother had been cared for would Franz allow himself to report to Florida.

Walking the streets of Berlin, Franz saw that they were dotted
with piles of black rubble, the result of the citizens’ daily cleanings. In craters that had been buildings he saw rats drinking where pipes had burst. Franz entered the tall “old soldier’s” office, its white façade now pitted by bombs. There, Franz sat across from a bureaucrat who supervised pensions, a balding man with a round face, glasses, and sagging cheeks. The man introduced himself as Mr. Greisse. He wore a round, red National Socialist swastika pin over his breast.

Mr. Greisse made small talk, asking Franz about his unit. Franz told him he was “in between outfits,” but reporting to Lake Tegernsee next. Mr. Greisse asked Franz what unit was there, so Franz told him about the Florida resort. Mr. Greisse said he admired fighter pilots and would have permitted his eldest daughter to date one if her mother had not forbidden it. Franz smiled at the backhanded compliment, well aware that fighter pilots had gone from heroes to villains in the eyes of the German people due to Goering’s slander.

Getting down to business, Mr. Greisse told Franz it was heartwarming to see a young man travel so far to look after his mother. But then to Franz’s surprise he said, “Only you can care for your mother these days.” Franz’s father’s pension and death benefits, Mr. Greisse explained, had dried up like those of every other old soldier to meet the needs of the war.

Franz eyed Mr. Greisse’s swastika pin with contempt. “You don’t like me because I’m in The Party?” Mr. Greisse asked him. Franz replied that he had nothing against him personally but that he represented the people who had put his mother in a bad fix. Mr. Greisse leaned forward and in whispers told Franz that some jobs required Party membership—he had worked in veterans affairs before the National Socialists took over his office, as they had the post office, the transportation authority, and every facet of government. Franz nodded that he understood.

“Where are you staying?” Mr. Greisse asked him. Franz said he was taking a train home that night. Mr. Greisse warned Franz that he might be stuck on the platform in the cold, if there was an air raid.
He asked Franz to come with him to his home in Potsdam, a short train ride southwest to the suburbs of Berlin. Franz trusted the man’s smile and agreed.

Hours later, Franz arrived at the tall, stately Greisse home in Potsdam. He was amazed upon entering to see heavy blankets dangling in place of a front door. Inside, the home’s windows had been blown out. Wooden boards had been hammered up in their place. Still, a grandfather clock stood untouched in the hallway and Mr. Greisse bragged that the house’s pipes had not yet burst.

Mr. Greisse introduced Franz to his wife, who was preparing a meager meal. His eldest daughter was out and about, but he introduced Franz to his little daughter, Helga, a short thirteen-year-old girl with strawberry-blond hair. The little girl called herself “Hiya” and was not afraid of Franz or fighter pilots because her sister had brought one home before. Hiya showed Franz to her room, where she kept her bomb shard collection. She handed him one and explained that she would trade the pieces with her friends, swapping unique shapes for bigger ones. Franz saw how the rough edges of the shards reflected light like a prism.

Franz left Hiya and went to talk with her father. Later, around the dinner table, Hiya arrived wearing her Indian costume. She had made a headdress out of cardboard that she’d colored. She had frayed her pants to look like tattered buckskin. Her mother wanted her to take her costume off, but she let her keep it on throughout dinner when Franz acted impressed.

During the meal, Hiya showed Franz how to behave in a bomb shelter. She put both thumbs in her ears and opened her mouth. Franz knew this but pretended to learn. He knew this was done so the bombs’ concussion would not rupture one’s eardrums.

That night, Franz saw Hiya leave the dinner table without a word and run outside. Her parents did not follow her and Franz thought this odd. Her mother started sobbing. Mr. Greisse comforted his wife
while explaining to Franz how hard it was as parents to have to wake Hiya up night after night, to grab her backpack, their suitcases, and run to a bomb shelter. He asked Franz, “What do you say when she asks, ‘Papa, in America are their kids getting up now, too?’”

Franz looked down at the table. After a few moments of silence he asked Mr. Greisse if he could go check on Hiya. Mr. Greisse nodded while hugging his wife.

Franz stepped through the blankets in the doorway and found Hiya standing in the cold looking up to the sky. Franz kneeled next to her and looked up, too.

“If you see the stars,” she told him, “it means the bombers won’t be coming.” Franz nodded. He knew this might have been true in the early war, when the bombers avoided clear skies because the flak gunners could see their silhoutettes, but now nothing stopped them.

“What do you see tonight?” Franz asked her. Looking up, he saw the sky was clear. Hiya turned to him and said with a smile, “Tonight we can sleep.” Franz smiled gently at the little girl, although his eyes were sad.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Mr. Greisse walked with Franz to the train station. The platform was crowded with people sleeping on benches and others waiting in long lines, staring at their toes while facing the empty tracks. Soldiers milled about checking papers.

Mr. Greisse was bound for Berlin and Franz was headed home to Amberg. Mr. Greisse apologized for not being able to help Franz’s mother. Franz reassured him that she would be fine because he would send her his pilot’s salary.

Mr. Greisse shook Franz’s hand and said, “Good luck wherever you end up.” Franz felt his medical excuse in his pocket. He was days away from an easy chair in Florida’s opulent bar while the rest of Germany suffered in the cold. But Franz now had a problem with that
notion. He had seen a little girl living in fear, without sleep, collecting bomb shards for toys. He knew the government of the 44 percent had long abandoned her. He would not join them. His sense of duty had never been to Hitler or The Party or Goering, it was always to Germany. But now, in the war’s last days, Germany had a new face, that of a little girl.

“I won’t be at Tegernsee long,” Franz told Mr. Greisse. Mr. Greisse smiled because he knew what Franz meant.

“Be careful up there,” he said. Then he turned and walked away, vanishing among the weary, shuffling crowd.

NEARLY TWO MONTHS LATER, EARLY JANUARY 1945

The snow crunched beneath the tires of the long black staff car as it pulled up and parked at the small hunting lodge on Lake Wannsee, southwest of Berlin.
^*
A small sports car and then a
kubelwagen
with its top up followed the staff car. In long coats, men scurried from the vehicles, stopping only to glimpse the gray, icy lake that blended with the evening winter sky. Inside the lodge, dangerous words were spoken, words that could carry fatal consequences after von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Hitler.
⁶

“We are convinced that we can put a stop to this devastation from the air and save the lives of innocent people,” said one voice.

“We must examine the reality of our situation. Hitler needs to go, we all know that, but Goering must go first,” said another.

“Treason is the only way you can explain what we are discussing.”

“Exactly.”

TWO WEEKS LATER, JANUARY 19, 1945, BERLIN

Through snow flurries, the black boots of five of the bravest men in the German Air Force marched up the snowy steps to the “House of Flyers,” as the Air Force club was known. The snow and the late afternoon light cast an eerie blue glow over the empty streets and the men in their long coats. The House of Flyers loomed with its tall marble columns and ornate carvings set into the building’s façade. The men had legendary names among Germany’s fighter forces: Roedel, Neumann, Luetzow, Steinhoff, and a colonel named Hannes Trautloft. They had all gathered for the most dangerous mission of their lives. They glanced anxiously over their shoulders as chauffeurs drove their staff cars away. They knew there was no turning back.

Roedel had proposed they shoot Goering that day, but the others talked him out of it, aware of an awful truth: killing Goering would not solve their problem. They needed him to step down. Stauffenberg could have shot Hitler but instead used a bomb because he knew that Hitler could be replaced by someone equally evil from his entourage. The same rule applied to Goering. Instead of killing him, the fighter leaders decided they would stare down the second most powerful man in the Reich and tell him it was time for him to go. They wanted Galland to take his place, reasoning that maybe he could do something to stop the bombing of Germany and, after consolidating power, maybe he could stand up to Hitler.

The fighter leaders entered a conference room with dark wood walls and paintings of Air Force heroes, including Goering. There they waited for Goering on their side of a wide table. The radiator blasted hot air that filled the room with the scent of old cigars. The men began to sweat. A stoic intensity clouded Luetzow’s face as he clutched his chair, his mind elsewhere. He had lost his brother, Werner, at sea, a year prior. He knew his wife, Gisela, his four-year-old son, Hans-Ulrich, and his two-year-old daughter, Carola, were suffering
under the same bombs as millions of other innocents, waking up three or four times a night to hurry to air raid shelters. The Man of Ice’s “easy charm” had vanished—he had flipped the switch and frozen his emotions, just like when he flew. Steinhoff lingered by the door like a bodyguard, while Roedel lounged at the table in a thick, padded leather seat, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Neumann nervously peeked from a snow-streaked window, watching for Goering’s arrival. Trautloft, the inspector of Germany’s day fighters, sat and stirred a cup of coffee, staring at the table. Trautloft’s thin lips tightened and his low-hanging eyelids had narrowed over his light blue eyes, causing them to almost disappear. He worried how Goering would react when he saw him there. The
Reichsmarschall
had no idea that Trautloft had cast his lot with “the Outcasts.”