A Higher Call

by Adam Makos

“So sad about the bear, isn’t it?” Sinner said. Franz fell back in his seat. He knew Sinner was talking about Bobbi, the Squadron 6 mascot. Sinner told Franz that he had heard their old squadron had been so torn up in the fighting that during their retreat to central Germany they needed to leave the bear behind. They could not release the bear into the wild, because he had been raised by humans and did not know how to hunt. Since the bear had come to weigh four hundred pounds, he was too heavy to transport. When the zoo would not take the bear back, the squadron had no other options. The squadron pilots and ground crew could not bring themselves to do what had to be done. Franz looked away, afraid to hear the rest. “They handed the bear to a neighboring unit that led it into the woods and shot it,” Sinner said. Franz sat, unmoving and unblinking. Sinner saw this and put a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. Franz would later think how silly it must have looked, a grown man grieving over an animal. But to Franz, the killing of his bear was symbolic of so much more than just one death. As he had once told the pool manager in Wiesbaden, the bear never bit anyone.