Flight of Eagles
‘Your grandfather has told you?’
‘Of course. They understand,’ Abe said. ‘Took it surprisingly well. The only problem, it seems, was who was to take possession of Tarquin, but he stays here. That bear sat in the bottom of the cockpit on every flight Jack made.’ For a moment, he seemed lost in thought then he straightened up. ‘Champagne,’ he said. ‘Half a glass each. You’re old enough. Let’s drink to each other. We’ll always be together one way or another.’
The boys said nothing, simply drank their champagne, old beyond their years, as usual, as enigmatic as Tarquin the bear.
The Germany to which Elsa von Halder returned was very different from what she remembered – unemployment, street riots, the Nazi party beginning to rear its head – but she had Abe’s money, so she put Max into school and set about regenerating the von Halder estate. There was Berlin society, of course. One of her father’s oldest friends, the fighter ace from the war, Hermann Goering, was a coming man in the Nazi party, a friend of Hitler’s. As an aristocrat, all doors, were open to him and Elsa, beautiful and rich and an undeniable aristocrat herself, was an absolute asset to the party. She met them all – Hitler, Goebbels, Ribbentrop – and was the toast of café society.
Hitler assumed power in 1933, and Elsa allowed Max to go to America for six months in 1934 to stay with his grandfather and brother, who was a day student at prep school. Abe was overjoyed to see him. As for the brothers, it was as if they’d never been apart, and on their birthday Abe gave them a special present. He took them out to the airfield their father used to fly from, and there was Rocky Farson, older, a little heavier, but still the old fighter ace from the Western Front.
‘Rocky’s going to give you a few lessons,’ Abe said. ‘I know you’re only sixteen, but what the hell. Just don’t tell your mother.’
Rocky Farson taught them in an old Gresham biplane. Someone had enlarged the rear cockpit to take mail sacks, which meant there was room to squeeze them both in. Of course, he also flew with them individually, and discovered that they were natural-born pilots, just like their father. And, just like their father, whoever was flying always had Tarquin in the cockpit.
Rocky took them way beyond normal private pilot skills. He gave them classroom lessons on dogfighting. Always look for the Hun in the sun, was a favourite. Never fly below 10,000 feet on your own. Never fly straight and level for more than thirty seconds.
Abe, watching one day, said to Rocky after they’d landed, ‘Hell, Rocky, it’s as if you’re preparing them for war.’
‘Who knows, Senator?’ Rocky said, for indeed that was what Abe Kelso was now. ‘Who knows?’
So brilliant were they that Rocky used the Senator’s money to purchase two Curtis training biplanes, and flew with each of them in turn to take them to new heights of experience.
During the First World War, the great German ace Max Immelmann had come up with a brilliant ploy that had given him two shots at an enemy in a dogfight for the price of one. It was the famous Immelmann turn, once practically biblical knowledge on the Western Front, now already virtually forgotten by both the US Air Corps and the RAF.
You dived in on the opponent, pulled up in a half-loop, rolled out on top and came back over his head at fifty feet. By the time he’d finished with them, the boys were experts at it.
‘They’re amazing – truly amazing,’ Abe said to Rocky in the canteen at the airfield.
‘In the old days, they would have been aces. A young man’s game, Senator. I knew guys in the Flying Corps who’d been decorated four times and were majors at twenty-one. It’s like being a great sportsman. You either have it or you don’t, that touch of genius, and the twins have it, believe me.’
The boys stood at the bar talking quietly, drinking orange juice. Abe, watching them, said, ‘I think you’re right, but to what purpose? I know there are rumbles, but there won’t be another war. We’ll see to that.’
‘I hope so, Senator,’ Rocky said, but in the end, it wasn’t to matter to him. He had the old Bristol refurbished, took it up for a proving flight one day, and lost the engine at 500 feet.
At the funeral, Abe, standing to one side, looked at the boys and was reminded, with a chill, that they looked as they had at their father’s funeral: enigmatic, remote, their thoughts tightly contained. It filled him with a strange foreboding. But there was nothing to be done about it and the following week, he and Harry took Max down to New York and saw him off on the Queen Mary, bound for Southampton in England, the first stage of his return to the Third Reich.
EUROPE
1934–1941
4
Max sat on the terrace of their country house with his mother, and told her all about it – the flying, everything – and produced photos of himself and Harry in flying clothes, the aircraft standing behind.
‘I’m going to fly, Mutti, it’s what I do well.’
Looking into his face, she saw her husband, yet, sick at heart, did the only thing she could. ‘Sixteen, Max, that’s young.’
‘I could join the Berlin Aero Club. You know Goering. He could swing it.’
Which was true. Max appeared by appointment with Goering and the Baroness in attendance, and in spite of the commandant’s doubts, a Heinkel biplane was provided. A twenty-three-year-old Luftwaffe lieutenant who would one day become a Luftwaffe general was there, named Adolf Galland.
‘Can you handle this, boy?’ he asked.
‘Well, my father knocked down at least forty-eight of ours with the Flying Corps. I think I can manage.’
Galland laughed out loud and stuck a small cigar between his teeth. ‘I’ll follow you up. Let’s see.’
The display that followed had even Goering breathless. Galland could not shake Max for a moment, and it was the Immelmann turn which finished him off. He turned in to land, and Max followed.
Standing beside the Mercedes, Goering nodded to a valet, who provided caviar and champagne. ‘Took me back to my youth, Baroness, the boy is a genius.’
This wasn’t false modesty, for Goering was a great pilot in his own right, and had no need to make excuses to anybody.
Galland and Max approached, Galland obviously tremendously excited. ‘Fantastic. Where did you learn all that, boy?’
Max told him and Galland could only shake his head.
That night, he joined Goering, von Ribbentrop, Elsa and Max at dinner at the Adlon Hotel. The champagne flowed. Goering said to Galland, ‘So what do we do with this one?’
‘He isn’t seventeen until next year,’ Galland said. ‘May I make a suggestion?’
‘Of course.’
‘Put him in an infantry cadet school here in Berlin, just to make it official. Arrange for him to fly at the Aero Club. Next year, at seventeen, grant him a lieutenant’s commission in the Luftwaffe.’
‘I like that.’ Goering nodded and turned to Max. ‘And do you, Baron?’
‘My pleasure,’ Max Kelso said, in English, his American half rising to the surface easily.
‘There is no problem with the fact that my son had an American father?’ Elsa asked.
‘None at all. Haven’t you seen the Führer’s new ruling?’ Goering said. ‘The Baron can’t be anything else but a citizen of the Third Reich.’
‘There’s only one problem,’ Galland put in.
‘And what’s that?’ Goering asked.
‘I insist that he be kind enough to teach me a few tricks, especially that Immelmann turn.’
‘Well, I could teach you that,’ Goering told him. ‘But I’m sure the Baron wouldn’t mind.’ He turned. ‘Max?’ addressing him that way for the first time.
Max Kelso said, ‘A pity my twin brother, Harry, isn’t here, Lieutenant Galland. We’d give you hell.’
‘No,’ Galland said. ‘Information is experience. You are special, Baron, believe me. And please call me Dolfo.’
It was to be the beginning of a unique friendship.
In America, Harry went to Groton for a while, and had problems with the discipline, for flying was his obsession and he refused to sacrifice his weekends in the air. Abe Kelso’s influence helped, of course, so Harry survived school and went to Harvard at the same time his brother was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Luftwaffe.
The Third Reich continued its remorseless rise and the entire balance of power in Europe changed. No one in Britain wanted conflict, the incredible casualties of the Great War were too close to home. Harry ground through university, Europe ground onwards into Fascism, the world stood by.
And then came the Spanish Civil War and they all went, Galland and Max, taking HE51 biplanes over the front, Max flying 280 combat missions. He returned home in 1938 with the Iron Cross Second Class and was promoted to Oberleutnant.
For some time he worked on the staff in Berlin, and was much sought after on the social circuit in Berlin, where he was frequently seen as his mother’s escort, and was a favourite of Goering, now become all-powerful. And then came Poland.
During the twenty-seven-day Blitzkrieg that destroyed that country, Max Kelso consolidated his legend, shot down twenty planes, received the Iron Cross First Class and was promoted to captain. During the phoney war with Britain and France that followed, he found himself once again on the staff in Berlin.
In those euphoric days, with Europe in its grasp, everything seemed possible to Germany. Max’s mother was at the very peak of society and Max had his own image. No white dress jackets, nothing fancy. He would always appear in combat dress: baggy pants, flying blouse, a side cap, called a Schiff, and all those medals. Goebbels, the tiny, crippled Nazi propaganda minister, loved it. Max appeared at top functions with Goering, even with Hitler and his glamorous mother. They christened him the Black Baron. There was the occasional woman in his life, no more than that. He seemed to stand apart, with that saturnine face and the pale straw hair, and he didn’t take sides, was no Nazi. He was a fighter pilot, that was it.
As for Harry, just finishing at Harvard, life was a bore. Abe had tried to steer him towards interesting relationships with the daughters of the right families, but, like his brother, he seemed to stand apart. The war in Europe had started in September. It was November 1939 when Harry went into the drawing room and found Abe sitting by the fire with a couple of magazines.
‘Get yourself a drink,’ Abe said. ‘You’re going to need it.’
Harry, at that time twenty-one, poured a Scotch and water and joined his grandfather. ‘What’s the fuss?’
Abe passed him the first magazine, a close-up of a dark taciturn face under a Luftwaffe Schiff, then the other, a copy of Signal, the German forces magazine. ‘The Black Baron,’ Abe said.
Max stood beside an ME 109 in flying gear, a cigarette in one hand, talking to a Luftwaffe mechanic in black overalls.
‘Medals already,’ Harry said. ‘Isn’t that great? Just like Dad.’
‘That’s Spain and Poland,’ Abe said. ‘Jesus, Harry, thank God they call him Baron von Halder instead of Max Kelso. Can you imagine how this would look on the front page of Life magazine? My grandson the Nazi?’
‘He’s no Nazi,’ Harry said. ‘He’s a pilot. He’s there and we’re here.’ He put the magazine down. Abe wondered what he was thinking, but as usual, Harry kept his thoughts to himself – though there was something going on behind those eyes, Abe could tell that. ‘We haven’t heard from Mutti lately,’ Harry said.
‘And we won’t. I speak to people in the State Department all the time. The Third Reich is closed up tight.’
‘I expect it would be. You want another drink?’
‘Sure, why not?’ Abe reached for a cigar. ‘What a goddamn mess, Harry. They’ll run all over France and Britain. What’s the solution?’
‘Oh, there always is one,’ Harry Kelso said and poured the whisky.
Abe said, ‘Harry, it’s time we talked seriously. You graduated magna cum laude last spring, and since then all you do is fly and race cars, just like your father. What are you going to do? What about law school?’
Harry smiled and shook his head. ‘Law school? Did you hear Russia invaded Finland this morning?’ He took a long drink. ‘The Finns need pilots badly, and they’re asking for foreign volunteers. I’ve already booked a flight to Sweden.’
Abe was horrified. ‘But you can’t. Dammit, Harry, it’s not your war.’
‘It is now,’ Harry Kelso told him and finished his whisky.
The war between the Finns and the Russians was hopeless from the start. The weather was atrocious and the entire country snowbound. The Army, particularly the ski troops, fought valiantly against overwhelming enemy forces but were pushed back relentlessly.
On both sides, the fighters were outdated. The most modern planes the Russians could come up with were a few FW190s Hitler had presented to Stalin as a gesture of friendship between Germany and Russia.
Harry Kelso soon made a name for himself flying the British Gloucester Gladiator, a biplane with open cockpit just like in the First World War. A poor match for what he was up against, but his superior flying skills always brought him through and as always, just like his father in the First World War, Tarquin sat in the bottom of the cockpit in a waterproof zip bag Harry had purchased in Stockholm.
His luck changed dramatically when the Finnish Air Force managed to get hold of half a dozen Hurricane fighters from Britain, a considerable coup in view of the demand for the aircraft by the Royal Air Force. Already an ace, Harry was assigned to one of the two Hurricanes his squadron was given. A week later, they received a couple of ME109s from a Swedish source.
He alternated between the two types of aircraft, flying in atrocious conditions of snowstorms and high winds, was promoted to captain and decorated, his score mounting rapidly.
A photo journalist for Life magazine turned up to cover the air war, and was astonished to discover Senator Abe Kelso’s grandson and hear of his exploits. This was news indeed, for Abe was now very much a coming man, a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s kitchen cabinet.
So, Abe once again found a grandson on the cover of a magazine, Harry in a padded flying suit standing beside one of the ME109s in the snow, looking ten years older than when Abe had last seen him and holding Tarquin.
Abe read the account of Harry’s exploits with pride, but also sadness. ‘I told you, Harry, not your war,’ he said softly. ‘I mean, where is it all going to end?’ And yet, in his heart of hearts, he knew. America was going to go to war. Not today, not tomorrow, but that day would come.
Elsa von Halder was having coffee in the small drawing room at her country mansion, when Max arrived. He strode in, wearing his flying uniform as usual, in one hand a holdall, which he dropped on the floor.
‘Mutti, you look wonderful.’
She stood up and embraced him. ‘What a lovely surprise. How long?’
‘Three days.’
‘And then?’
‘We’ll see.’
She went to a drinks table and poured dry sherry. ‘Do you think the British and French will really fight if we invade?’
‘You mean when we invade?’ He toasted her. ‘Of course, I have infinite faith in the inspired leadership of our glorious Führer.’
‘For God’s sake, Max, watch your tongue. It could be the death of you. You aren’t even a member of the Nazi party.’
‘Why, Mutti, I always thought you were a true believer.’
‘Of course I’m not. They’re all bastards. The Führer, that horrible little creep Himmler. Oh, Goering’s all right and most of the generals, but – Anyway, what about you?’
‘Politics bore me, Mutti. I’m a fighter pilot, just like this fellow.’ He unzipped his holdall, produced a copy of Life magazine and passed it to her. ‘I saw Goering in Berlin yesterday. He gave that to me.’
Elsa sat down and examined the cover. ‘He looks old. What have they done to him?’
‘Read the article, Mutti. It was a hell of a war, however short. A miracle he came through. Mind you, Tarquin looks good on it. Goering heard from our Intelligence people that Harry got out to Sweden in a Hurricane. The word is he turned up in London and joined the RAF.’
She looked up from the article, her words unconsciously echoing Abe Kelso’s. ‘How will it all end?’
‘Badly, I expect. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll have a bath before dinner.’ He picked up his bag and went to the door and turned. ‘Twenty-eight Russkies he shot down over Finland, Mutti. The dog. I only got twenty in Poland. Can’t have that, can we?’
There were at least thirteen American volunteers flying in the Battle of Britain in the spring and summer of 1940, possibly more. Some were accepted as Canadians – Red Tobin, Andy Mamedoff, Vernon Keogh, for example, who joined the RAF in July 1940. The great Billy Fiske was one, son of a millionaire and probably the first American killed in combat in the Second World War, later to be commemorated by a tablet in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. And others bound for glory like Pete Peterson, a DSO and DFC with the RAF, and a lieutenant-colonel at twenty-two when he transferred to his own people.
Finland surrendered on 12 March 1940. Harry flew out illegally in a Hurricane, as Max had told his mother, landed at an aero club outside Stockholm, went into the city and was in possession of a ticket on a plane to England before the authorities knew he was there.
When he reported to the Air Ministry in London, an ageing squadron leader examined his credentials. ‘Very impressive, old boy. There’s just one problem. You are an American and that means you’ll have to go to Canada and join the RCAF.’
‘I shot down twenty-eight Russians, twelve of them while flying a Hurricane. I know my stuff. You need people like me.’
‘A Hurricane?’ The squadron leader examined Harry’s credentials again. ‘I see they gave you the Finnish Gold Cross of Valour.’
Harry took a small leather box from his pocket and opened it. The squadron leader, who had a Military Cross from the First War, said, ‘Nice piece of tin.’
‘Aren’t they all?’ Harry told him.
The other man pushed a form across. ‘All right. Fill this in. Country of origin, America. I suppose you must have returned to Finland to defend your ancestral home against the Russians?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Ah, well, that makes you a Finn and that’s what we’ll put on your records.’ The squadron leader smiled. ‘Damn clerks. Always making mistakes.’
Operational Training Unit was a damp and miserable place on the edge of an Essex marsh. The CO was a wing commander called West with a wooden leg from 1918. He examined Pilot Officer Kelso’s documents and looked up, noticing the medal ribbon under the wings.
‘And what would that be?’
Harry told him.
‘How many did you get over there?’
‘Twenty-eight.’
‘It says here you’ve had considerable experience with Hurricanes?’
‘Yes, the Finns got hold of a few during the last couple of months of the war.’
‘All right, let’s see what you can do.’
West pressed a bell and the station warrant officer entered. ‘I’m going for a spin with this pilot officer, Mr Quigley. Set up my plane and one of the other Hurricanes. Twenty minutes.’
The warrant officer, without a flicker of emotion, said, ‘Right away, sir.’
West got up and reached for his walking stick. ‘Don’t let my leg put you out. I know a man called Douglas Bader who lost both in a crash and still flies.’ He paused, opening the door. ‘I got twenty-two myself in the old flying Corps before the final crash so don’t mess about. Let’s see if you can take me.’
Those in the curious crowd which assembled to stare up through the rain were never to forget it. At 5000 feet, West chased Harry Kelso. They climbed, banked, so close that some in the crowd gasped in horror but Harry evaded West, looped and settled on his tail.
‘Very nice,’ West called over the radio, then banked to port and rolled and Harry, overshooting and finding him once again on his tail, dropped his flaps and slowed with shuddering force.
‘Christ Almighty,’ West cried, heaved back on the control column and narrowly missed him.
Harry, on his tail again, called, ‘Bang, you’re dead.’ Then, as West tried to get away, Harry pulled up in a half-loop, rolled out on top of the Immelmann turn and roared back over West’s head at fifty feet. ‘And bang, you’re dead again, sir.’
The ground crews actually applauded as the two of them walked back. Quigley took West’s parachute and gave him his walking stick, then gestured towards Kelso.
‘Who in the hell is he, sir?’
‘Oh, a lot of men I knew in the Flying Corps all rolled into one,’ West said.
In his office, West sat down, reached for a form and quickly filled it in. ‘I’m posting you immediately to 607 Squadron in France. They’ve been converted from Gladiators to Hurricanes. They should be able to use you.’
‘I flew Gladiators in Finland, sir. Damn cold, those open cockpits in the snow.’
West took a bottle of brandy from a drawer and two glasses. As he poured, he said, ‘Kelso – an unusual name, and you’re no Finn. I knew a Yank in the Flying Corps called Kelso.’
‘My father, sir.’
‘Good God. How is he?’
‘Dead. Killed in a motor accident years ago.’
‘That fits. Didn’t he use to fly with a bear?’
‘That’s right, sir. Tarquin.’ Harry picked up the bag that he’d carried out to his plane and back, took Tarquin out and sat him on the desk.
West’s face softened. ‘Well, hello, old lad. Nice to see you again.’ He raised his glass. ‘To your father and you and brave pilots everywhere.’
‘And my twin brother, sir.’
West frowned. ‘He’s a pilot?’
‘Oberleutnant in the Luftwaffe, sir.’
‘Is he now? Then all I can say is that you’re in for a very interesting war, Pilot Officer,’ and West drank his brandy.
607 Squadron was only half-way through its conversion programme when the Blitzkrieg broke on the Western Front on 10 May. In the savage and confused air war that followed, it was badly mauled and took many casualties, the old Gladiator biplanes being particularly vulnerable.
Harry, flying a Hurricane, put down two ME109s above Abbeville at 15,000 feet and although neither of them was aware of it, his brother shot down a Hurricane and a Spitfire on the same day.
The squadron was pulled back, what was left of it, to England and Dunkirk followed. Harry, awarded a DFC and promoted to Flying Officer, was posted to a special pursuit squadron code-named Hawk, near Chichester in West Sussex, only there was nothing to pursue. The sun shone, the sky was incredibly blue and everyone was bored to death.
On the other side of the English Channel, Max and his comrades sat in similar airfields on the same deck-chairs and were just as bored.
And then, starting in July, came attacks on British convoys in the Channel: dive-bombing by Stukas, heavier stuff from the Dorniers and Junkers, protected by the finest fighter planes the Luftwaffe could supply. The object of the exercise was to close down the English Channel and the RAF went up to meet it.
So Harry Kelso and his brother, the Black Baron, went to war.
The air battles over the Channel lasted through July and then came the true Battle of Britain, starting on Eagle Day, 12 August.
Hawk Squadron was based at a pre-war flying club called Farley Field in West Sussex – grass runways, Nissen huts, only four hangars – and it was hot, very hot as Harry and the other pilots lounged in deck-chairs, smoking, chatting or reading books and magazines. Two weeks of boredom, no action, had introduced a certain apathy and even the ground crews working on the dispersed Hurricanes seemed jaded.
The squadron leader, a man called Hornby, dropped down beside Harry. ‘Personally, I think the buggers aren’t coming.’
‘They’ll come,’ Harry said and offered him a cigarette.