A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos Read Free Book Online Page B

of speech. No freedom to travel. No freedom to choose to serve in the military. No freedom to change things. In the days when possessing an outlawed letter could earn someone a sentence in a camp, the best Franz knew was to stay out of the line of fire, so neither he nor his brother would end up in Dachau.

     
    T HAT SUMMER , F RANZ pinned the wings on August’s uniform when he graduated from flight school. August received his wings in time towear them when he married his fiancée shortly thereafter. During the wedding ceremony, Franz could not bring himself to look upon his new sister-in-law with much affection. He was still worried. After the wedding, August went to twin-engine school, the path of a bomber pilot, and Franz returned to instructing.

     
    T HAT AUTUMN 1939, Franz’s cadets approached him in the mess hall one morning waving newspapers in their hands. The big, gothic headlines declared: WAR WITH POLAND! The young cadets were smiling and shouting. They wanted Franz’s opinion—would their training be hurried so they could get into the war? Franz did not share their glee. War was the last thing he wanted. But in the minds of the flight school cadets, the world’s affairs were simple. According to the German papers, the Poles had threatened German farmers on the shared border. Polish troops had attacked a German radio station on the border in order to transmit slander against the Germans, and Hitler had no choice but to declare war. The cadets thought Hitler was right, just like they had reasoned that Germany’s other neighbors, Czechoslovakia and Austria, had wanted to become part of the new German empire. The annexation of those countries, that year and the year prior, had been bloodless.
    In reality, the Austrians and Czechs had no choice. Germany had been militarily rebuilt and seemed unstoppable. And the “Polish troops” who had raided the German radio station were actually German commandos wearing Polish uniforms. Hitler had ordered this. He wanted a war of expansion, and he lied to his own people to get it. What neither Franz nor any of the cadets could fathom was that Hitler had knowingly picked a fight with much of the rest of Europe, dragging Germany into a repeat of their fathers’ war. Britain and France had pledged that if Poland was ever attacked their empires would fight on the Polish side. Hitler attacked Poland anyway. His gamble would eventually cost the lives of more than 4 million Germansoldiers and more than a million civilians. World War II had officially begun.
    ONE YEAR LATER, MID-OCTOBER 1940
     
    Franz worked alone at his desk in an empty classroom. His instructors were out, each training students for war. German troops now occupied all of Europe from Poland to France and had beaten the English back to their island. The “Battle of Britain,” as the British called it, was over. The battle had taken place late that summer when the Germans had tried to destroy the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in the sky and to bomb their airfields on the ground. But before the German Air Force could succeed, a grievous mistake shook their focus. During a night raid, a German bomber mistakenly missed its target, an oil depot east of London, and bombed several homes on London’s East End neighborhood. Hitler had given orders that British cities were not to be bombed. But a week later, another German bomber hit homes again. In response, the British sent bombers to attack Berlin, a raid that also missed its military targets and bombed the city’s civilians. In a speech Hitler warned the British to stop their attacks on German cities, but it was too late—both sides had stepped over the line. Cities and civilians soon became fair game.
    From then on, both sides bombed each other’s cities at night and called one another “terror bombers.” Franz knew August was on the front lines, flying a Ju-88 bomber, a fast, twin-engine plane with a four man crew. August and his crew had been assigned to