FIRST HOURS OF THE FLIGHT-INTO THE STORM-THE LAND UNDER THE SUNRISE-SAFETYSYMBOLS OF FREEDOM-THE KEEPSAKE-FALSE RUMOR.

 

This time we were flying over Ireland in weather conditions which were very different from those which prevailed during our flight the previous summer. We took off at 5 :35 A.M., and the morning which followed was wonderful. A shining sky dotted with small specks of clouds smiled over the green island which Koehl and I had soon learned to love, thanks to the great friendliness and kindness which we had experienced there. And as we reached Galway, flying quickly at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, we saw that the sea was a picture of peace. No howling winds confronted us, as in August. Sunshine and peace reigned everywhere.

We began the great crossing under the best of auspices. We continued in this peaceful manner for many wonderful hours. Every now and then we dropped smoke bombs in order to establish the velocity and direction of the wind. Slight engine troubles, such as all motors experience, were easily overcome, or perhaps I had better say cured themselves. On the whole the wind was favorable, and in a short time we covered many miles. After flying for fifteen hours, which considerably lengthened the day for us, as we were flying in an East to West direction, enormous strata of fog and clouds began to rise in front of us. The thermometer dropped. We had reached the ice zone of Newfoundland. Koehl lifted the machine over the clouds. Their weird uncanny formation had a threatening and at the same time grotesque effect. We encountered an icy cold, howling wind blowing from the West. What could we do? We had expected such an experience, and we had to come through it at any price.

We flew along over these masses of clouds which looked like fantastic mountains. I saw that Fitzmaurice was trying to shout something to Koehl. However, the noise of the storm and motor was too great. He grabbed a pencil. Koehl—I was familiar with his every move, with every motion of his well controlled body—became serious, even worried. I tried to cast a glance at the slip of paper, and succeeded. It contained this message: "Make land as long as it is possible. Our oil tank is apparently leaking." Charming news! Koehl afterwards told me that in order to collect himself at this point he muttered to himself the "pater noster" three times. He smiled at Fitzmaurice. Fitzmaurice gave a slight bow. All three of us knew that should our fears be confirmed we were hopelessly lost.

in the meantime the gale had acquired such terrible strength that the plane stood almost still in the air. We came down through the fog and clouds. Below us appeared the roaring sea. Thoughts of our first storm flight with the Bremen came back to our memory. She really did not seem to fly any more; she seemed to dance. But she kept up and somehow made headway—a sign that we did well to trust in Dessau.

As was the case nine months ago, the night set in just at the moment when hell seemed to descend upon us. Then, however, we had land beneath us, or at least close by. Here we were far from land and could not return. Still, we would not expect good weather along the entire route. We must go forward. Although it was night, the morning would follow. I threw a brief glance at the small golden cross which hung in my cabin. It shone in the light of my flash lamp. What did they think of us at home? My mother, who had lost my father three days before our first attempt to cross the Atlantic, had given me the little heart I carried about with me in my pocket. We must not give in. We had all been in the war, and had fought then as now for an idea. On and still onward!

Night, fog and gale. The machine grounded and trembled. We went down from 6000 feet to 300, and then up again. Koehl, the founder of fog flights in Germany, knew how to stand the test. He could master the fog even at night. Many, many were the hours ; the minutes of which seemed years. Would the darkness never end? Here and there stars appeared. Light seemed to emerge. The coast, lighthouses? Mi­rage followed mirage. Will o' the wisps de­ceived us. We were in the zone of arctic light. Would this night never come to an end? Every now and then the polar star shone through. It became our guide. Something went wrong with the illumination of our instrument board. The icy fog blinded the eyes of the pilots. Gale, fog and night! We dozed off in turns for a few min­utes. Still there was no sign of daybreak. But the day would come; and we hoped it would come for us.

The sun rose, glowing red. A warning of gales! Below us stretched the land. We had reached the other continent, and we were still in the air. Our flight continued, over endless woods, mostly snow covered, lonely and forlorn. Labrador? Probably! The deviation of the compass had assumed dimensions in excess of all our calculations. I shall return to this point later. Now we were busy with the gale, which again set in after having somewhat abated during the second part of the night. The sun was climbing the sky, and below stretched always the same picture. No house; no village; nothing but dead land. We kept on flying. Steep moun­tains, bald or white with snow, rose up; these had to be overflown in the howling gale. Giant rivers, forlorn and covered with ice, spread out below us. There was .no sign of human activity as far as the eye could see.

Due to the deviation of our compass, we had lost in the fog and gale the exact direction of our course. Moreover, our struggle with the ele­ments had cost us more gasoline than we could afford. Our supply was running low. Well, another "pater noster." If we had to land now, we would probably be lost in the wilder­ness. Koehl remarked later that he would have felt himself the owner of an enormous forest! We had to keep our sense of humor! Let him who is doomed to die, die with dignity: but until everything is lost he must fight for his life.

The good old Bremen was doing her utmost. She knew what she owed to her name and to her designer. Her pilots lived up to her. I myself took off my fur coat and in the icy coldness laid myself down between the tanks. On and on! So far we had lived through, and experienced much that might be very important so far as the future of air transportation was concerned if only we won through to relate it. If we did not? "Into thy hands I commend my fate"

We changed our course. The mountains receded. In front of us glimmered frozen water. Were we going towards the pole? The compass became unreliable. The fuel could only last us for a very short time longer. Was this the end? All of a sudden Fitzmaurice shouts: "A boat." We kept an outlook. What we had thought to be a boat was a house on the coast. The house approached, and nearby a lighthouse emerged. Men and dogs became visible. We were safe.

A few minutes later Koehl with a masterful hand landed the machine on the ice. It was the shortest and best landing I have ever experienced. But the ice crust gave way, the plane broke through and tipped slightly forward. However, she stood and was only slightly damaged. We discovered that he had flown around Labrador, and that we were on Greenly Island. The first East to West flight across the Atlantic in a plane had succeeded! We were surrounded by touching hospitality and simple sincere kindness. Our fight for life had ended, and when the next day we received a touchingly kind message of welcome from the President of the United States we knew that our flight had been followed with sympathetic understanding.

Thoughts during the flight! They come and go. The cabin of the Bremen is full of all sorts of souvenirs and pictures of saints. I am not a Roman Catholic, but do not my comrades believe in the same God of Christianity, in Thee to whom also my prayers rise? In Baldonnel before our take-off we received a number of such proofs of the sympathy of the religious population. These I stuck with pins on to the fabric covered rods of the fuselage of our plane. How often did I glance at them during the flight? This I cannot tell. But every glance made me remember some kind word, some line written in friendship, or the handshake of a comrade. Is not our will in itself sufficient to lead us to success, if we trust in God? The pictures on the fuselage, the medallions and souvenirs in my pocket, became somehow welded with my will and that of my companions. Koehl said to me later on Greenly Island: "I only now realize fully that you had to have those tokens in front of your eyes. During the night hours when the gale roared around us, when all the elements of hell seemed let loose, Fitzmaurice and I had to fight, and fight for our lives. But you were condemned to inaction; you had to sit still, to believe in us and trust." How well the friend understood the friend!

There hangs solemnly before me a small black cross. Thousands of these can be obtained in Ireland. This symbol of Christianity is to be found in every home of Irish patriots, no matter what its size may be. In the center is a harp, the emblem of the "Green Island." These crosses are carved out of ancient oaks, the stumps of which are sunk deep in the moors. One of them was given to me as a present during our first stay in Erin. One comes from Galway, that wonderful harbor, which seems doomed to inactivity until some future day when the whir of propellers will create in it new life. A friendly hand gave it to me.

Now what about the flight! Below us booms the ocean. Torn clouds chase by. Will o' the wisps appear and disappear. The plane bumps about to such an extent that I am thrown against the low ceiling of the cabin. In the fleeting shine of my flashlight sparkles the black cross. Ireland! In my mind's eye I see again the road I covered by car from Limerick to Galway, six weeks ago. Along that road there stood poor houses built in a rough and ready fashion of rock. Rocks lay scattered over the fields, crushing out all latent life and spread wing like an enormous shroud over the whole land. Flock after flock of crows fly over the field, circle round the scanty sycamores and round the dead houses and huts. For these abodes, built by living men for living men, are without life. Where are the occupants, and where are the builders ? Gone ! Driven by want and gnawing hunger they sought distant lands, and emigrated to mighty America to create for themselves a new existence under the Star Spangled Banner.

Ireland is unable to support her children. Yet her children love their mother soil with every bit of their hearts. They love it more than their own lives, which they are always ready to sacrifice in fighting for the freedom of green Erin. The streets of the large cities tell the same story as those uninhabited houses. To the right and left ruins rise, witnesses of the fight for freedom. And in the chasms of the mountains one cry was heard through the shots : "Freedom!" How goes the old word of the Bible? "Wenn die Menschen schweigen, werden die Steine reden." "When man shall be silent the stones will speak."

In this land the cry for freedom became a reality. Every clod in the fields, every rock of the towering mountains and hills, every stone of the ruins of the destroyed and burned houses on the roads and streets of Dublin, every breaker that hits Ireland's coast, every wave of the tearing Shannon unite in a great cry, which rises from this tortured part of the world to Heaven. "Freedom!" Does not this word sound even now in the roar of the gale which lashes us? Do not the waves of the ocean under me sing the same song? "Freedom!" The fight of the Irish succeeded. Their cry was heard. Green, white and yellow waves their flag over the "Independent Irish Free State."

One of the two men, whose dark shadow-like form I can hardly see, who sits at the controls fighting for the life of the Bremen is a son of this free green island.

My pocketbook contains a slip with a few words written on it. Above the words a four-leafed clover is carefully pressed. I shall never forget the hour, my dear Irish comrade, in which you handed me this talisman of your fate, which later become the talisman of our fate. This little leaf, now yellow and withered, combines the sym­bol of both luck and Ireland. It had accompan­ied Fitzmaurice on his first attempt from which he, like Koehl and I on our first attempt, had had to return overwhelmed by a terrific gale. In the dawn of a rainy, stormy morning, as we sat shiv­ering in the officers' messroom in Baldonnel, the commander of the Irish Air Force gave me his talisman. We Germans were then waiting to take off, and only the soaking wet ground kept us from going. At that moment, when Fitz­maurice in true comradeship handed me this talis­man, when the sportsman greeted the sports­men, there grew in Koehl and me the thought that this man, who was capable of such a noble act, would be the most faithful and best comrade for our flight.

And now the flight has brought us close to­gether. Side by side the two pilots are fighting for success. And the prayer rises in my soul: "God, lead this flight to success for the sake of Germany and Ireland." I look out lonely in the silent and at the same time noisy night. What will the morning bring? Whatever may come, victory or death, we shall die as comrades or live as comrades. The ties which have been formed between Germany and Ireland as a sym­bol that the past is gone and that a new life has begun, will remain forever unbroken either in life or death.

Bloody red dawns the morning. This redness seems to me to presage disaster. The seaman dreads the redness of the rising sun, just as he welcomes a red sky at night. I put my hand into my pocket and feel between my fingers a small wooden heart. This childish token was made in Bavaria. It is painted blue, skyblue, and on it in a white childish hand are the words: "God protect you." My mother gave me this heart, when one day I visited her in Munich at the end of last summer. My father had passed to his last rest fourteen days before. My first unsuccessful flight attempt was behind me and it was sheer luck that we were unhurt. We were intending to make another attempt, and one day when I visited her (she was staying for a few months with my brother) she pressed the small heart into my hand. It was a present that my father had given her and it was to bring me luck. How many prayers of a mother's heart are there incorporated in this small lifeless thing which I am holding in my stiff fingers?

My mother knew that nothing in the world could stop me from attempting the flight either until it succeeded or I was among the dead. Yet she was silent in those days, and did not say one word which would be sad for me to hear. Only once, in the winter, did she say to me: "I was thinking of the days of the war. It had to be. You had all gone to the field, and we had to pray and wait."

The rising sun shows land beneath us. We have reached the longed for continent. But still the gale blows with all its fury—and my two comrades in front of me still fight with the elements.

Koehl's report: "Our fuel is coming to an end. Lie down between the tanks to lighten the plane." I take off my fur coat and crawl between the tanks. The situation becomes serious, more serious than ever. My thoughts again fly back to Germany. Again I see in front of me the small cozy home of ex-Captain Koehl and his charming young wife. How brave is this "Peterle"; how careful not to make her husband's heart heavy. She has the same spirit as my mother. I think of the days we three spent together on the balcony of Koehl's home. Hopes and fears alternated. We believed and hoped at the same time. We had disappointments and happy surprises. And the good comrade of her husband bore everything in silent womanly friendship and love. In Dessau she helped to nurse; and later helped us through our waiting. Will she ever see her "Hermanle" again? Mountain top after mountain top rises up, a grandiose picture of the powerful might of the Creator. Will He lead us to our objective, or will He bid us an eternal "halt"? Still whirs the propeller, still hopes my believing heart. When later on Fitzmaurice left Greenly Island to arrange for a continuation of our flight overhasty voices spoke of dissensionamong the Bremen crew. You faint hearted you not know that such a night as through has knit together our hearts to such an extent that we could never part in anger?