 7. Paul had not been in Spain long, but already felt like he had never lived anywhere else. He slid into belonging immediately. There was no blustering to prove himself or to be broken in. He simply assumed a position as one of the pack. Paul was always old before he was new. He was nineteen. He was quiet, but it was a dynamic kind of silence. A regal animal, like some dangerous pet, he did not need to speak, but he was someone you wanted around. Paul could be deceptively gentle. Even in his wrath he tended to whisper. When a barbed jest came at him, he received it with a soft smile and slipped a return line back neatly as a dagger between the ribs. His face was unlined. His light skin had taken on a handsome bronze in the Spanish sun with the slightest sprinkle of freckles across his nose. There was allowed a certain diffidence toward Paul Ritter even in this aggressive hard-living group. "You're too quiet, Ritter," Fritz said. "Makes people think you're disapproving of them." "Why would I care what they think?" "Also makes them think you're deep. They think there's more to you than they can see. Of course I know better." Fritz von Soden was Paul's only comrade from what Paul called his past life. Anything before joining the Luftwaffe no longer existed for him. Fritz held Paul in bald envy of his money, his royal drop-dead attitude, and his wardrobe, for Paul was the best dressed man Fritz ever knew. Paul had smuggled his gold cigarette case to Spain, and he had more silk scarves than a French whore. The silk folded up into nothing and easily fit into the single cheap suitcase the legionnaires had been issued for their trip to Spain. And he pulled it off with such an air of understatement. Paul never insisted. He just was. He was less the peacock than the panther, something elegant that moved in darkness. Fritz von Soden was the only one in the squadron who belonged to the Nazi party. Under the Weimar constitution members of the military were forbidden to join a political party. The world had changed, and the new ruling party apparently made exceptions for the new ruling party, because Leutnant Friedrich "Fritz" von Soden was a Nazi. Everyone thought him an unlikely socialist, being an aristocrat. "Funny about that," Fritz would say, and he would look significantly to Paul, who never indicated that he was even paying attention. Paul thought Germans were better than everyone else, but he was not a socialist. He was not working class. He had been born to a bourgeois manufacturer and the disowned daughter of a baron. His mother died of influenza before he knew her. Fritz first saw Paul astride a chestnut horse, a young hawk on his gloved fist -- this during the depth of a world depression while Fritz's mother stood in line for bread. The mounted youth reined in, looked down with dark eyes utterly opaque, said, "I am called Ritter." "I'm sure you are," said Fritz. Paul supplied Fritz with a horse and a gun and told him to come shooting with him. Fritz asked if he were immune to poverty. Paul said the hard times had affected him too. His father had lost one of his factories. "You don't stand in line for bread," said Fritz. "No. We send the manservant." The land, the horses, belonged to Paul's maternal grandfather, the baron, who found forgiveness for his prodigal daughter only after she was dead. Paul got anything he wanted. He moved at all times as if he were being filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. Fritz asked once, "Do you do that on purpose?" Fritz had not said what "that" was, and Paul did not need to ask. "Of course I do." Paul finished school with no aims, no plans. He went to a music conservatory in Salzburg at his stepmother's suggestion. But music was not in his soul. He played with hollow precision and exact dynamics. The maestro told him he played like a machine and told him to go home. Paul then joined the cavalry, but soon realized that in the modern world, in battle on horseback was the last place he wanted to be. The Luftwaffe was Fritz's idea. On a snowy evening in March 1935, when Paul was bound for home on leave, he suddenly could not bear the thought of his father's house. He had never done more than exist in that house, dutiful with quiet wrath. His father was afraid of him, though Paul had always done his bidding. Paul jumped off the train a station short of his stop and walked to Fritz's flat. Fritz answered the door in a black uniform. "What the hell is that?" He knew what that was. "SS," said Fritz, with a sharp heel rap. "Shit, Fritz, I hate police." At least he hadn't done something as stupid as join the brownshirts. "Let me in." They talked all night, a candle burning down between them alongside a bottle of rather horrible schnapps, and they got very drunk. Neither was happy with his current lot. The newly announced German military freedom and re-armament depressed Paul. Things would be changing fast now. Paul felt antiquated overnight. "There are some beastly weapons coming off the line these days, Fritz. Shells thick as your schwanz." "That big?" said Fritz. "Do you know what kind of target a man on a horse makes? Have you ever seen a horse dive for a trench? Have you ever seen a tank" Took a swallow of vile schnapps, shuddered at its caustic burn going down. "You're too pretty to send to the front, Ritter." "You're right. I shall spend the war here in Berlin, dragging important caskets to the Invaliden Cemetery to lie in the company of the Red Baron. We look superb. Do you want to see my sword?" "Not ever," said Fritz. Fritz complained that he was not advancing rapidly among that bunch of thugs in the SS, and that he was going to apply to Luft Hansa as a pilot. "Don't do that," said Paul. It was a choice position, good paying, and thousands of young men wanted in, but , "I don't aspire to drive an air taxi." Paul had no aspirations at all. He had no aim before that night, only knew he wanted to be more than he was now. It was his name that gave them the idea. Ritter. Knight. Fritz called him the Black Knight. There had been an Expert in the Great War called the Black Knight for his black Fokker D.VII. "Let's become fighter Expertn." Ritter stared into his glass. "Sounds good." "Red Baron and Black Knight," said Fritz. The schnapps stared back from the glass. Ritter set it aside. "I like it." Before this month there had been no Luftwaffe -- not officially -- to aspire to. Hitler had only just unveiled the Luftwaffe on March 14. The idea lost no luster once they were sober. It did not daunt Paul at all that thousands of other young men had the same thought, and quite a few had got in early while the Luftwaffe was still and official secret. Paul met the requirements. He was unmarried, German-blooded, not Jewish. He was Catholic, but he had not been to church in years, so screw that. So, freshly shaved and sober, Paul and Fritz were ready to present themselves to the recruiter. Fritz tapped the papers in Paul's hand. "How'd you get your parents' signatures?" Fritz knew damn well that Paul had not gone home. He had stayed with Fritz. "My mother is dead," said Paul. "And I don't need Jutta's permission to do anything." "And Herr Ritter?" "I forged his." "You think he'd refuse you?" "I just don't think I should have to ask him." "Well then forge these." Fritz presented Paul with his parents' signatures. "What do you want me to do? They already signed." "Make them like that." Fritz pointed to his own signature. He had added a "von" to his name. He thought he ought to have one ever since he'd seen Paul Ritter with a falcon on his gloved fist. "Squeeze some vons in there." Fritz had even thought to save the pens with which his parents signed. "It's tight," said Paul. In fact it wouldn't fit, so Paul put it in abbreviated. Fritz's father became Ludwig v. Soden. Paul showed it to Fritz. "Less insistent, I think." "Outstanding," said Fritz. It had a nice off hand touch. "Do Mutti's now." "I didn't know your name was Friedrich." "It's not. I changed that too." Fritz had been planning this for awhile. As a boy he had belonged to a glider club. The secret Luftwaffe recruited men from such sports clubs and from Luft Hansa. Fritz had been too young to apply before now. He expected to be accepted at once for his glider experience, and Paul Ritter was just coming along to watch him succeed. He did not think that Paul had the proper concept of just how select a group he was trying to join. Paul didn't. And it would not have mattered if he did. He was not applying. He was joining. He walked in like the position was already his. He had to get past a medical officer who had a few special trials for the would-be pilots. Paul was strapped into a chair, bent over so his head was down. Then the chair spun round and round very fast. "Sit up!" the medical officer barked. Up? There was no up that Paul could figure. But a primitive nerve center in his spine responded and his back straightened. A voice from somewhere (up?) pronounced, "Excellent." Then he was unstrapped and commanded to walk. Paul stood, made a cautious advance. The room tilted and he stepped out to catch it. His swirling mind realized his error, thought, this is it. I have failed. The voice, wherever it was, said laconically, "Fit." And passed him on to the next examination. And at the end of the ordeal, Fritz and Paul were both accepted for training. Paul had never flown. Fritz thought they had taken Paul with the idea to make him a tail gunner in a bomber, because Paul could shoot with either hand. It turned out he could fly better than any of them. The instructors said Paul was the best natural flier than had ever seen. "Falling is natural. Taking a shit is natural -- " "Can one assume that Fritz von Soden is not a natural?" said Paul. Fritz thought he would have an edge with his SS association. But most pilots were not Nazis. They were a stubborn lot. No one said so, but it seemed that the same thing that made a good fighter pilot made a bad Nazi and vice versa. Fritz was only a Nazi when it suited him. With one hundred flying hours behind them, both Fritz and Paul won their wings. After the first two stages of training, they were sent to a specialized school for fighter pilots. Fritz warned Paul that he might be too good to become a fighter. "Bull shit," said Paul. Then discovered it was true. It was possible to be too good. The best pilots became instructors. A fighter must manhandle the aircraft, make it do things it was never meant to do. Paul had the necessary brutality to avoid the instructor's rating by the narrowest of margins. After a year, his training was over and he was assigned as an oberfahnrich, officer cadet, to I/JG 134 at Werl. Jagdgeschwader 134 was christened "Horst Wessel" for the brownshirt martyr, so the cowling of all its aircraft were painted brown. The aircraft of I Gruppe of JG 134 were Arado 68F-1s, replacing the older HE 51s. Rather a side step, thought Paul. The Arado was just another bi-plane with the same BMW engine, same speed, same guns. A little sweeter temper than the HE 51, but that was all. Not much of an improvement. The Messerschmitt 109 was a revelation. Paul had arranged to be in Berlin for the Olympics to see the new fighter's debut. There he'd met an Englishman. His name was Bryan Catrell. This was the way Paul pictured the raf boys, cocky and handsome in his blue uniform, his hair slicked back, a smile full of big crowded teeth. He was slightly taller, slightly older than Paul, and already a commissioned officer. He was the picture of everything Paul wanted to be, everything he had to be better than. Paul pictured himself in a Messerschmitt and this man in a Spitfire. He knew Bryan Catrell was bound for Spitfires. An inevitability surrounded that image. I have to get a Messerschmitt. A friend told him, "I know where you can get one." Georg had gone through training with Paul. Georg was a Doberitzer now in I/JG 137 "Richthophen" where the cowlings of the airplanes were painted red, and the airplanes were Messerschmitts. The barracks for JG 137 were in the former Olympic Village on the outskirts of Berlin. Georg thought he got the assignment because he was such a brilliant pilot. Fact was, there were a lot of openings at Doberitz because half the squadron had resigned. "Resigned?" said Paul, disbelieving. Richthofen was the primier fighter unit. "No, no. You need to say that with goosefeet around it. 'Resigned.' Once you 'resign' you're put on the reserve list and you disappear for three months to a year. When you resurface, they give you your commission back but you've got a higher rank, and a nice bank account, and a wonderful tan. And I know there are Messerschmitts out there because mechanics who know how to put Messerschmitts together keep draining out of here." Paul's I Group of Jagdgeschwader Horst Wessel was supposed to get Messerschmitts right after Group II, but their shipment had been detoured and Paul was stuck piloting his Arado bi-plane. The new airplanes kept going elsewhere. "Where?" Paul demanded. "It's as secret," said Georg. "Where?" Someone else had Paul's Messerschmitt. "Spain." |