Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot Page 4

  And so the clouds darkened on the political horizon. For me and most of my peers they held the promise of adventure. Brought up on a steady diet of propaganda extolling the glorious exploits of past German history, our immature critical faculties were all too receptive to the ideas we were being fed. We dismissed the fears of our elders out of hand. We knew better.

  Chapter 3

  WAR IS DECLARED

  The German invasion of Poland in the early hours of 1 September 1939 widened the gulf between the generations even more. Many people of my parents’ age had watched Hitler’s increasingly brazen expansionist foreign policies with mounting, if mostly unspoken, alarm. And when this latest venture–the first to be carried out by force of arms–resulted in England and France declaring war on Germany, they saw their worst fears realized. They remembered all too clearly the horrors of the First World War, which had ended in Germany’s defeat little more than two decades ago. This renewed outbreak of hostilities witnessed none of the spontaneous popular jubilation that had greeted the start of the earlier conflict. It must be said, however, that the voices of the ‘grumblers and grousers’–the party’s own words–grew progressively fainter as the campaign in Poland ran its victorious course.

  We of the younger generation viewed matters entirely differently. The final weeks’ countdown to war had taken place during the summer holidays, which had given us ample time and opportunity to get together to follow and discuss the political developments with mounting patriotic fervour. Even after we had returned to school, the news from the front that September occupied our minds far more than did our studies. The unstoppable advance of our troops through Poland had totally captured our imaginations. Each new success was reported by a ‘special announcement’ on the radio. They were always preceded by a triumphant fanfare and were listened to with rapt attention.

  It was our last year at school and we had been given automatic deferment from military service to allow us to take the Abitur, our final exams, which we were due to sit in the spring of 1940. But now something new had been introduced: the so called ‘War Abitur’. This did not involve any kind of examination, but was based entirely on a pupil’s performance and his grades in school to date. If these were deemed to be satisfactory, the ‘War Abitur’ was duly awarded–provided the recipient volunteered for the armed forces when he turned eighteen.

  To several of my school friends and myself this was hugely tempting. Filled with the true recklessness of youth, motivated by a mixture of allegiance to the fatherland and boredom with school, and fired up by visions of heroic deeds and impressive medals, it seemed to us to offer all the prospects of a great adventure. But such a course required parental consent. In those days the age of majority was still twenty-one. Resigned to the fact that they were not going to be able to stop me, my parents gave the necessary consent, albeit with a marked lack of enthusiasm. On the morning of my eighteenth birthday, 30 October 1939, I duly volunteered my services to the Luftwaffe.

  A few days later I received my call-up papers ordering me to report to Manching airfield near Ingolstadt, some sixty kilometres to the north of Munich, on 15 November 1939. Manching was currently home to Fliegerausbildungsregiment 33 (Luftwaffe Basic Training Regiment 33) and it was here that I was to do my ‘square-bashing’. Early on 15 November a small group of us–myself and four of my best friends from school–made our way to Rosenheim railway station fairly bursting with anticipation. Our mothers all turned up to see us off, of course, but tactfully kept their distance. They responded to our excited waves and laughing faces as the train pulled out of the station by fluttering their tear-stained handkerchiefs after us.

  At Manching we were abruptly and unceremoniously plunged into the world of the military. But we had known what to expect and were not unduly alarmed. The barracks echoed to the sound of barking–not of the canine kind, but the shouted commands of the kapos, or NCOs, who were there to ‘help’ us draw our uniforms and equipment…“that helmet fits perfectly, it’s your head that’s the wrong shape!” As nothing else was available, I was issued with a tunic bearing a corporal’s insignia. For the rest of the day, and much to my embarrassment, I was constantly being treated with unwarranted deference and respect by people I didn’t know. I couldn’t wait to get back to our barracks room that evening and remove the offending braid.

  After such a long passage of time it is difficult to remember much about my basic training, the main purpose of which seems to have been to teach us how to walk properly; something we had apparently failed to master as civilians. My weeks at Manching are now just a blur of marching and drilling, drilling and marching. But one thing does stick in my mind. A misdemeanour by one resulted in collective punishment for all. I put my roommates’ forbearance severely to the test on one occasion by arriving on morning parade without my rifle. Considering the importance attached to this item and the reverence in which it was held, the kapo’s reaction can be imagined.

  I could only catch the gist of what he was screaming at me in his near apoplectic fury, but I was led to understand, among other things, that nothing like this had happened in the German army since the days of Frederick the Great. The upshot was that we were all ordered to do fifty ‘Prussians with applause’–fifty push-ups with a handclap between each. Another infringement of the rules (I wasn’t the guilty party this time) resulted in a punishment that seemed to us to be less of a deterrent and more of a chance for the NCOs to relieve their boredom. The wrongdoer had to climb to the top of one of the tall pines that fringed our training ground. Swaying in the wind, he was then commanded to start shouting “cuckoo” at the top of his voice while the rest of us joined hands and danced around the base of the tree singing a well known ditty of the time, ‘All the little birdies up there on high’.

  In those early days of the war it was the norm for a Luftwaffe training base to house two units: one a basic training regiment such as ours, and the other an elementary flying training school. Both would share the same numerical designation and it was generally the case that a recruit, having successfully completed his basic military training in the first, would then progress to the second to commence flying training. But Manching’s ‘twinned’ flying school, Sch/FAR 33, had been transferred up to Königsberg only days before we arrived and our regiment was moved lock, stock and barrel to join it there in early December.

  Lying in the firing butts at Königsberg in the depths of an East Prussian winter, I came down with a nasty bout of influenza and found myself spending Christmas 1939 in the station sick quarters. At the beginning of January 1940 we were on the move again, this time along the coast to Elbing, close to the western end of the Frisches Haff lagoon. Here it was, if anything, even colder. In temperatures as low as minus 33 degrees there were several cases of frostbitten ears and noses. We were quartered in wooden barracks furnished with three-tier bunk beds. The huge iron stoves that were used to heat the rooms had to be fed throughout the night by the sentries coming on and off watch. The only trouble was that those in the lower bunks were constantly demanding more warmth while those in the top tiers–including me–were practically suffocating from the heat. We were only at Elbing for a month, thank God, before our basic training came to an end.

  Early in February 1940 we four holders of the War Abitur, rather than being transferred across to the elementary flying training wing as we had hoped, unexpectedly found ourselves posted instead to a long-range reconnaissance Staffel. Equipped with Dornier Do 17s and based at Brüsterort on the extreme tip of the Samland peninsula northwest of Königsberg, this Staffel formed part of the Fernaufklärungsgruppe/Ob.d.L. which, as its designation suffix indicates, was a special unit subordinated directly to the Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe (Luftwaffe High Command). Its present task was to fly reconnaissance missions along the Baltic to keep a covert eye on what the Russians were up to, even though the Soviet Union was signatory to a non-aggression pact with Germany at this time.

  Despite our joining the Staffel as ‘airm
en/general-duties’, in other words, the lowest of the low, the disappointment at not being selected for flying training was somewhat mitigated by the atmosphere that greeted us. Brüsterort was very much an operational station. There was none of the screaming of orders that had accompanied our every waking moment during basic training, nor any of the petty and seemingly pointless rules and regulations that had made our lives such a misery. Most of the Staffel’s general-duties personnel were reservists and there was a very relaxed air about the place. We wouldn’t have been unduly surprised had they addressed us as ‘Herr’ rather than ‘Airman’.

  Not that we behaved very much like Herren in our off-duty hours, which were spent larking about like the overgrown schoolboys we still were. In those early weeks of 1940 the winter landscape of the Baltic coastline was a magnificent natural spectacle. Before freezing over completely, the angry sea had hurled huge blocks of ice on to the beach. We scrambled and slid about on these like a pack of demented polar bears. Less enjoyable were the hours of backbreaking toil spent shovelling deep snow from the airfield’s roads and runways.

  In the spring of 1940 the Staffel was transferred from Brüsterort to Döberitz, west of Berlin. I was to remain with the unit until the late summer and so got ample opportunity to explore my country’s capital city. As a Bavarian–and a provincial one at that–it made an enormous impression on me. To someone of my rather sheltered upbringing it all seemed so vibrant and modern. I was particularly struck by the Haus Vaterland, a so called entertainment and pleasure venue on the Potsdamer Platz. This establishment even had a telephone on every table, which permitted you to strike up a conversation with a lady sitting anywhere in the room–something, I must admit, I never had the courage to do.

  Towards the end of August 1940 I received a fresh posting. I was being sent to newly occupied France to join a mobile meteorological centre (Wetterzentrale XII mot.) currently based at Étampes, southwest of Paris. This move meant saying a final goodbye to my Rosenheim schoolmates. But at Étampes I soon found a new friend in Rudi Breu from Augsburg. Like me, he had chosen to take the War Abitur and was now serving as a deciphering clerk; our job being to decode the weather reports sent in by aircraft and ships out in the Atlantic, and by German-manned weather stations operating in Greenland.

  A four-engined Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor maritime reconnaissance bomber of KG 40 based at Bordeaux. It was one of the author’s duties to decipher weather reports from aircraft such as this flying far out over the Atlantic.

  The unit was housed in a small country mansion on the southern outskirts of Étampes. Our living quarters, we were informed, were to be treated with the utmost respect and kept in good order with the help of local cleaning ladies. I was given a tiny room all to myself. It contained a small four-poster bed, complete with canopy, and had presumably been the bedroom of one of the daughters of the house. Unfortunately, it was also an absolute flea trap. The place was alive with the things. In fact, they were so numerous that during my first night, each time I switched on the light to gain a few moments’ respite from their incessant biting, I swear I could clearly see the last of my tormentors hurriedly jumping for cover! By the morning I was so covered in bites that the CO of the unit, Dr. Christians, immediately called in the pest controllers to disinfect the whole house. After that there were no further problems.

  Although he was our commanding officer, Dr. Christians was not, strictly speaking, a member of the Luftwaffe as such. A qualified meteorologist in his own right, his actual position was that of a Wehrmachtsbeamter, or official of the armed forces. I point this out because the met unit was a completely new experience for me. After the rigours of basic training, Brüsterort’s relaxed atmosphere had been a welcome surprise. But it had nothing on Étampes. Here, although everyone was in uniform, things really were run on civilian lines. It was like working in a friendly office. There was none of the usual military hustle and bustle. If their badges of rank were anything to go by, the unit’s wireless operators were all corporals. But they were like no corporals I had ever met; they were extremely pleasant and approachable. The cartographers who prepared the weather maps were themselves meteorologists and, like Dr. Christians, employed as officials of the armed forces.

  The unit operated around the clock, working in three eight hour shifts. Rudi and I asked to be put on the same shift and this request was readily granted. This meant that we could spend our off-duty hours together. Before our first venture out into occupied France we were told how we were expected to behave. We were not to strut around like conquering heroes, but to be polite and reserved. No attempts at personal contact with the French populace were to be made. We were only allowed out in groups of two or more, never alone, and only during the hours of daylight. After all, the war with France had only ended little more than two months earlier. For their part the French, while not openly hostile, were very cautious and guarded. Older people, in particular, remained extremely cold and brusque in their manner.

  But Germany’s behaviour towards occupied France began to pay dividends in a surprisingly short time. The official policy in these early days of not provoking confrontation, of trying to wean the French away from their mental alliance with the British and fostering better German-French understanding, certainly appeared to have an effect. It was not very long before we were able to move around in France pretty much as we would do at home. Rudi and I also found that our schoolboy French came in very handy. People’s attitude became much more friendly at our stumbling attempts to address them in their own language.

  Rudi was a huge fan of American swing music and I used to go along with him whenever he trawled through the record shops of Étampes looking to add to his collection of discs. These became increasingly hard to find, as many were now on the banned list for being ‘un-German’. I can still vividly recall the dreamy expression of bliss on his face as he sat listening to his favourite melodies. Nobody in the unit, by the way, took the slightest offence at the illicit strains of ‘Tiger Rag’, ‘Jeepers Creepers’, ‘Dinah’ and the like, which regularly issued from Rudi’s room.

  Late in September 1940 the Wetterzentrale was transferred up to Deauville-Trouville at the mouth of the River Seine. These twin seaside resorts, famous as playgrounds of the rich in the years between the wars, lay along a kilometre of beach fronted by luxury villas and casinos. At the time of our arrival, however–still not all that long after the end of the war in France, and with the onset of autumn–the place had a somewhat deserted and melancholy air. We set up camp in one of the half-timbered, Norman-style villas overlooking the beach. The interior of the building was palatial, and the reason we had been allocated such grand quarters soon became apparent.

  An even more imposing villa diagonally across from ours was the official residence of Generalfeldmarschall Hugo Sperrle, the AOC of Luftflotte 3, one of the two main air fleets currently engaged in the air war against England. The weather played an important part in the planning of operations and it was to be my and Rudi’s duty, on alternate days, to deliver the latest met report to the great man’s office. At first, I could hardly grasp the fact that I–an ‘erk’ of the lowest order–was to come into such close contact with one of the most important and powerful men in the Luftwaffe.

  But my initial nervousness was soon dispelled by the frequency of my visits and by the Generalfeldmarschall’s obvious interest in the information I brought to him. Besides, despite his intimidating appearance, he was known for the consideration he displayed towards the lower ranks, as I myself can testify. It was said that he reserved his worst tongue-lashings for the more senior members of his staff, something else I can vouch for–we could occasionally hear his roars of displeasure from the other side of the road.

  Our present surroundings were even more attractive than those we had enjoyed at Étampes. The villa in which we were quartered was actually located in Deauville, where there was a quaint little fishing harbour. It was also a small but thriving regional market town offering a variet
y of diversions and amusements. In keeping with its recent cosmopolitan past, Deauville boasted a number of well-stocked music shops, which allowed Rudi to indulge his hobby to the full. Another sign of its previous international flavour were those villas still occupied by Americans living in France, most of which could be identified by the stars-and-stripes flying from the flagpoles in their front gardens.

  One day Rudi and I happened to be passing one of these villas just as a couple of attractive American girls came out the front door. Rudi immediately started loudly to hum ‘Jeepers Creepers’, while I misguidedly tried to accompany him by whistling through my teeth. Total disaster! The looks that the two girls gave us were icy, bordering on the withering. We slunk away with our tails between our legs, trying to come to terms with the fact that we were not the two personable young gallants out for a pleasant afternoon’s stroll that we had fondly imagined ourselves to be–just another pair of those ‘nasty Nazis’.