A HIGHER CALL

My God, what a book! Adam Makos with Larry Alexander bring us this harrowing and chivalrous story of two World War II Air Forces. This is not just a story about an incident involving a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 and a U.S. B-17 Flying Fortress. No, it’s also about both sides fighting with courage and perseverance while maintaining a healthy respect for each other. The German Air Force fighter pilots were not Nazi Party members; in fact, their attitude was a thorn in the side of the German Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering (German spelling). They fought because they had no choice: fly or die.  On page 288, the pilot's attitude is confirmed when Major Hohagen of the German Air Force tells a joke to one of the book’s protagonist, Ace Franz Stigler: “Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and all of their friends are out on a boat at sea, there’s a big storm and their boat sinks! Who’s saved?” Franz knew the joke. “Germany.” If a political officer overheard this joke, by law they both would have been executed. Herr Goering would occasionally slip a political officer into the ranks of the Air Force to get the flavor of the pilots. I extol the effort the authors made to bring the readers this compelling non-fiction Pulitzer Prize worthy story. I know that says a lot, but you haven’t read this book.

The book opens with the story of Franz Stigler, a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter pilot, who completed 487 missions by the war’s end and focuses on his time served in North Africa and his service defending Italy and Germany from U.S. and British bombing raids. The reader meets many aces such as Hans-Joachim Marseille, The Star of Africa , and General Adolf Galland, leader of all fighter pilots. Most of the pilots we meet were awarded the Knights Cross (30 or more victories). Bear in mind that you are going to feel empathy for these men, even though they are the enemy. They fought bravely for their country, not for the Nazi Party. They fought with honor and with a knight's chivalry throughout the war. They had a code of ethics similar to the American fighters and bombers: they didn’t shoot a parachuting enemy pilot, nor mistreat them as a POW. Unfortunately, that can’t be said if the SS did the capturing. It’s sad that the typical German citizen hated the German fighter pilot at the end of the war because: ”You didn’t keep the bombs from falling.” That's a pretty sad statement since no one could stop thousands of B-17's dropping bombs every day. The Germans called our monstrous B-17 Flying Fortress "The Four Motors." Each plane rained down a payload of twelve 500 pound bombs.

The second part of the book tells the story of a twenty year old American pilot, 2nd Lt. Charlie Brown (Not of Snoopy’s Red Baron squad). He is a member of the 379th bomber group stationed in England. You are going to like his crew: Al ‘Doc’ Sadok, Robert ‘Andy’ Andrews, and Spencer ‘Pinky’ Luke, to name a few. They get into a now famous incident with Franz Stigler on Charlie’s first bombing raid as a Captain that winds up becoming the title of this book. My definition of "a higher call" is “vacating a duty for a better one" or "it’s God’s wish". I don’t know if the author had my definitions in mind, or not. You might ask, "What is the incident?" Well, I can’t tell you! You'll have to read this wonderful story yourself to find out. By the way, this book doesn’t read like the history that it is; instead, it reads like a novel such as Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts .

The third part of the book deals with Goering’s dissatisfaction with Germany’s famous fighter pilots. He would have liked them executed for treasonous statements, and he accuses them of being cowards, but they are too popular, so he makes them form the JV-44’s unit (the squadron of experts). They are responsible for defending Germany against the massive U.S. bombing raids in the last months of the war. Goering figures that they will die quickly against overwhelming odds. He forgets that these men are legends in their own time: Franz Stigler, Major Gerhard Barkhorn (301 victories!), Col. Luetzow, Oberst Steinhoff, Oberst Roedel, Major Hohagen, Oberst Trautloft, and Hauptmann "The Count" Krupinski. This part of the book was very exciting and sometimes very sad. The rest of the book deals with what happened to these men (German and American) in the ensuing years after the war. Well, like Arte Johnson on the Laugh-In show used to say: “It’s very interesting”. So is this gripping book!

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Reichsmarshall Goering was an ace fighter for Germany in World War I and joined the Nazi Party in 1922. He spent most of his time stealing art and property from the Jewish people. He was sentenced to hang by the neck at the Nuremberg Trials but took a cyanide pill the night prior to his sentence being carried out. A U.S. private is said to have given Goering the pill hidden in a fountain pen that was smuggled into the prison by a German woman.

After the war, Franz saw the ghosts in his dreams of the Holocaust, the crimes of the minority (the Nazi Party) that had spoiled every German fighting man’s honor. One German pilot spoke for the fighting forces when he wrote, "The atrocities committed under the sign of the Swastika deserve the most severe punishment. The allies ought to leave the criminals to the German fighting soldiers to bring to justice." (pages 348-349.)

Adam Makos is a journalist, historian, and editor of the military magazine Valor. In his fifteen years of work in the military field, Makos has interviewed countless veterans from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and present-day wars. In the bibliography section of the book, Adam states that "It’s important to note that Franz Stigler flew 487 combat missions during WWII, and Charlie Brown flew 29. Both men had documented the time, date, and place of every mission in their logbooks, but only Charlie’s logbook survived the war. In May 1945, American interrogators seized Franz’s logbook and it was never seen again."

And finally, I thought the part in the book about the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) was a real eye-opener for this reviewer. Only 1,074 women passed the flying courses that allowed them to pick up and deliver all sorts of military planes from the factory to the bases.The character in the book was Marjorie Ketcham, who had a budding relationship with Lt. Charlie Brown until he was transferred to England. According to Wikipedia, “They flew sixty million miles of operational flights from aircraft factories to ports of embarkation and military training bases. They also towed targets for live anti-aircraft artillery practice, simulated strafing missions, and transported cargo. Women in these roles flew almost every type of aircraft flown by the USAAF during World War II. In addition, a few exceptionally qualified women were allowed to test rocket-propelled planes, to pilot jet-propelled planes, and to work with radar-controlled targets. Between September 1942 and December 1944, the WASP delivered 12,650 aircraft of 78 different types."