This story may not strike many as much and as huge a devotee of this era as I am this story still escaped me until today… A crippled B-17 escorted to safety by a German Me109.
I have two loves besides firearms. The study of the European side of WW2 and aviation. Also my grandfather was a ball turret gunner on a B-24 in the ETO. Considering what could have happened,post op, to the German pilot says alot about the man. Not to mention he risked being torn up by the vast supply of M2 Brownings on board the Flying Fortress.
Things like this are more common than people realize.
Ambrose wrote about a German soldier who climbed out of the safety of his foxhole to grab a US soldier from the middle of the road who had been wounded and pulled him to safety.
When American forces later arrived they asked the German what he was doing and he replied “He was calling for help so I helped him.”
This is the worst thing about wars, that eventually good people have to fight good people. But thankfully that isn’t always the case.
Not every fighter pilot would have seen a limping bomber in the same context as a parachute.
What Ambrose book is that? Haven’t read that one yet. I do know there is a memorial in Germany to a Lieutenant in the Wehrmacht who lost his life saving a wounded 4th I.D. soldier from a mine field during the battle of the Hurtgen forest.
Stories like this are just intriguing to me. The media mainly focuses on the atrocities (and there were many honestly) of forces such as the branches of the Waffen SS yet many German forces were very human. I honestly do much of my studies on the Russian-German side of the war and honestly ask myself who was worse. Yes the Germans had the Einsatzgruppen SS but there are reports of as much as 2 million German women being raped by Russian soldiers.
There are certainly atrocities committed by all sides. And some worse than others. The Russian “vengeance” on Germany was quite the thing.
Stories like the one here help to restore your faith in humanity. At a time when the entire world went mad and young men were trained and expected to destroy the enemy at every opportunity without hesitation there were times when these men did something like this just to feel human again. Even for a little while…
On the Western Front yes. On the Eastern Front, not so much. The Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine were less NAZIfied. Eric Hartmann and Gunther Rall were some class acts.
There is a lot of misinformation about aviators meeting in combat. It was not unheard of for aviators to let a wounded bird get away after it was clear that it was out of the fight during WWI because the people (mainly) fighting in British and German forces were old school knights, royalty, and Officers of noble lineage. There was supposed to be a code of honor amongst pilots which was sometimes broken. The Red Baron (2008) was a good example of this. It continued through WW2 because each pilot could see themselves in their targets eyes and I believe that everyone here would feel the same way staring down a gunsight. It is extremely hard to kill a human being unless it is an immediate circumstance and even then it can creep up after the fact.
