A Higher Call

by Adam Makos

“Those odds may make a man want to fight dirty to survive,” Roedel said, squeezing the bunched-up leather gloves in his hands. “But let what I’m about to say to you act as a warning. Honor is everything here.”

“If I ever see or hear of you shooting at a man in a parachute,” Roedel said, “I will shoot you down myself.” The words stung.* “You follow the rules of war for you, not for your enemy,” Roedel said. “You fight by rules to keep your humanity.”

The more he read, the more Franz was bothered by the hypocrisy of the war he had joined, of people who believed in the same God fighting one another.

But when he came home he saw the values of The Party and how the 44 percent had taken over Germany. Luetzow wrote in his diary,

“The omnipresent, primitive anti-Semitism in the Reich pisses me off.”

The general put Luetzow on his staff and under his protection. Galland agreed with what Luetzow had done and would thereafter call him “a man above all others.”

Franz said everyone had read the writings of von Faulhaber and von Galen. This reply made the Gestapo agents glare. Von Faulhaber had authored “With Burning Concern” in 1937, and in 1941, von Galen had spoken out so vehemently against The Party and the Gestapo that the British had copied his sermons and dropped them from planes across Europe.* German soldiers, civilians, and occupied peoples read them, including the future Pope John Paul II, who found a flyer in Krakow, Poland.

The Franz Stigler who went to Africa to avenge his brother’s death would have had an answer. He would have destroyed the bomber and killed its crew. But there, in the desert, and over ancient Sicily, the last of Europe’s Knights had taught Franz Stigler a new code. Their code said to fight with fearlessness and restraint, to celebrate victories not death, and to know when it was time to answer a higher call.

Each time Charlie felt The Pub shudder and drop a few feet, he touched the Bible in his pocket like a transmitter on a microphone hoping it would beam his prayers up faster. He asked his “Third Pilot” to stay close.

He knew Luetzow had never wanted to join JV-44. But Luetzow was a religious man, of the Lutheran faith, who believed the rule that Marseille had once voiced: “We must only answer to God and our comrades.” Like the others, Luetzow knew he had made a moral mistake by serving his country. He would answer to God for that. Luetzow had reported to JV-44 out of duty to his comrades.

I have the distinct feeling that some power greater than that of our respective governments was looking out for most of us on Dec. 20, 1943. To say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU on behalf of my surviving crewmembers and their families appears totally inadequate.