Flight of Eagles. Jack Higgins
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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