A HIGHER CALL: AN INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF COMBAT AND CHIVALRY IN THE WAR-TORN SKIES OF WORLD WAR II

A HIGHER CALL: AN INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF COMBAT AND CHIVALRY IN THE WAR-TORN SKIES OF WORLD WAR II
BOOK BY ADAM MAKOS AND LARRY ALEXANDER

THE NEW YORK TIMES AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

December, 1943: A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber’s tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler—and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger... What happened next would defy imagination and later be called “the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.”

The U.S. 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them as “top secret.” It was an act that Franz could never mention for fear of facing a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search the world for each other, a last mission that could change their lives forever.

2nd Lt. Charlie Brown ("a farm boy from Weston, West Virginia", in his own words) was a B-17F pilot with United States Army Air Forces (USAAF)'s 379th Bomber Group stationed at RAF Kimbolton in England, United Kingdom.

Franz Stigler (a former airline pilot from Bavaria) was a veteran Luftwaffe fighter pilot attached to Jagdgeschwader 27; at the time, he had 22 victories to his name and would be eligible for the coveted Knight's Cross with one more downed enemy bomber.

Stigler said he could see crew men wounded trying to aid other wounded crew members, knowing this plane would never fly again he could not fire on it. He motioned to Charlie to land and surrender. NO! He offered to escort him to a neutral landing strip. NO! ENGLAND! was the hand signals. Stigler stayed with him to keep other German fighters from taking it down. then with a salute and dip of his wings, turned and flew home.

THE STORY

There is an inherent respect between warriors that supervenes politics.
The 21-year old American B-17 pilot glanced outside his cockpit and froze. He blinked hard and looked again, hoping it was just a mirage. But his Co-Pilot stared at the same horrible vision. "My God, this is a nightmare," the Co-Pilot said. "He's going to destroy us," the Pilot agreed.

The men were looking at a gray German Messerschmitt fighter hovering just three feet off their wingtip.  It was five days before Christmas 1943, and the fighter had closed in on their crippled American B-17 bomber for the kill.

Brown's Crippled B-17 Stalked by Stigler's ME-109

The B-17 Pilot, Charles Brown, was a 21-year-old West Virginia farm boy on his first combat mission.  His bomber had been shot to pieces by swarming fighters, and his plane was alone, struggling to stay in the skies above Germany. Half his crew was wounded, and the tail gunner was dead, his blood frozen in icicles over the machine guns.

But when Brown and his Co-Pilot, Spencer "Pinky" Luke, looked at the Fighter Pilot again, something odd happened. The German didn't pull the trigger. He stared back at the bomber in amazement and respect. Instead of pressing the attack, he nodded at Brown and saluted. What happened next was one of the most remarkable acts of chivalry recorded during World War II

Stigler pressed his hand over the rosary he kept in his flight jacket.  He eased his index finger off the trigger.  He couldn't shoot.  It would be murder.

 Stigler wasn't just motivated by vengeance that day. He also lived by a code.  He could trace his Family's Ancestry to Knights in 16th Century Europe.  He had once studied to be a Priest.  A German Pilot who spared the enemy, though, risked death in Nazi Germany.  If someone reported him, he would be executed.

Yet, Stigler could also hear the voice of his commanding officer, who once told him:  "You follow the rules of war for you -- not your enemy. You fight by rules to keep your humanity."

Alone with the crippled bomber, Stigler changed his mission. He nodded at the American Pilot and began flying in formation so German anti-aircraft gunners on the ground wouldn't shoot down the slow-moving bomber. (The Luftwaffe had B-17's of its own, shot down and rebuilt for secret missions and training.)  Stigler escorted the bomber over the North Sea and took one last look at the American Pilot.  Then he saluted him, peeled his fighter away and returned to Germany.

"Good luck," Stigler said to himself. Franz Stigler didn't think the big B-17 could make it back to England and wondered for years what happened to the American Pilot and crew he encountered in combat.

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As he watched the German fighter peel away that December day, 2nd Lt. Charles Brown wasn't thinking of the philosophical connection between enemies.  He was thinking of survival.  He flew his crippled plan, filled with wounded, back to his base in England and landed with one of four engines knocked out, one failing and barely any fuel left.  After his bomber came to a stop, he leaned back in his chair and put a hand over a pocket Bible he kept in his flight jacket. Then he sat in silence.
Brown flew more missions before the war ended. Life moved on.  He got married, had two Daughters, supervised foreign aid for the U.S. State Department during the Vietnam War and eventually retired to Florida.
Late in life, though, the encounter with the German Pilot began to gnaw at him.  He started having nightmares, but in his dream there would be no act of mercy.  He would awaken just before his bomber crashed.

___________________________________

Brown took on a new mission.  He had to find that German Pilot.  Who was he?  Why did he save my life?  He scoured Military Archives in the U.S. and England.  He attended a Pilots' Reunion and shared his story.  He finally placed an ad in a German Newsletter for former Luftwaffe Pilots, retelling the story and asking if anyone knew the Pilot.

 

 

 

 

On January 18, 1990, Brown received a letter. He opened it and read:  "Dear Charles, All these years I wondered what happened to that B-17, did she make it home?  Did her crew survive their wounds?  To hear of your survival has filled me with indescribable joy..."

It was Stigler.    

He had had left Germany after the war and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1953.  He became a prosperous Businessman.  Now retired, Stigler told Brown that he would be in Florida come summer and "it sure would be nice to talk about our encounter."  Brown was so excited, though, that he couldn't wait to see Stigler.  He called Directory Assistance for Vancouver and asked whether there was a number for a Franz Stigler.  He dialed the number, and Stigler picked up.

"My God, it's you!"  Brown shouted as tears ran down his cheeks.

Brown had to do more. He wrote a letter to Stigler in which he said: "To say THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU on behalf of my surviving crew members and their families appears totally inadequate."

 

 

 

 

 

The US crew of Charlie Brown B 17 in 1943.

 

The two Pilots would meet again, but this time in person, in the lobby of a Florida hotel.  One of Brown's Friends was there to record the Summer Reunion.  Both men looked like retired businessmen:  they were plump, sporting neat ties and formal shirts. They fell into each other' arms and wept and laughed.  They talked about their encounter in a light, jovial tone.

The mood then changed.  Someone asked Stigler what he thought about Brown.  Stigler sighed and his square jaw tightened.  He began to fight back tears before he said in heavily accented English: "I love you, Charlie."

Stigler had lost his Brother, his Friends and his Country.  He was virtually exiled by his Countrymen after the war.  There were 28,000 Pilots who fought for the German Air Force. Only 1,200 survived. 

 The war cost him everything.  Charlie Brown was the only good thing that came out of World War II for Franz.  It was the one thing he could be proud of.  The meeting helped Brown as well, says his oldest daughter, Dawn Warner.

They met as enemies but Franz Stigler, on left, and Charles Brown, ended up as fishing buddies.

Brown and Stigler became pals. They would take fishing trips together. They would fly cross-country to each other homes and take road trips together to share their story at schools and Veterans' Reunions. Their Wives, Jackie Brown and Hiya Stigler, became Friends.

 

 

Brown's Daughter says her Father would worry about Stigler's health and constantly check in on him.

"It wasn't just for show," she says. "They really did feel for each other. They talked about once a week."  As his friendship with Stigler deepened, something else happened to her father, Warner says "The nightmares went away."

Brown had written a letter of thanks to Stigler, but one day, he showed the extent of his gratitude.  He organized a reunion of his surviving crew members, along with their extended families.  He invited Stigler as a Guest of Honor.

During the Reunion, a video was played showing all the faces of the people that now lived -- Children, Grandchildren, Relatives -- because of Stigler's act of Chivalry.  Stigler watched the film from his Seat of Honor.

 

"Everybody was crying, not just him," Warner says.

Stigler and Brown died within months of each other in 2008.  Stigler was 92, and Brown was 87.  They had started off as Enemies, became Friends, and then something more.

After he died, Warner was searching through Brown's library when she came across a book on German fighter jets. Stigler had given the book to Brown. Both were country boys who loved to read about planes.

Warner opened the book and saw an inscription Stigler had written to Brown:

"In 1940, I lost my only brother as a night fighter. On the 20th of December, 4 days before Christmas, I had the chance to save a B-17 from her destruction,

a plane so badly damaged, it was a wonder that she was still flying.

The Pilot, Charlie Brown, is for me as precious as my Brother was.

                                                                        

Thanks Charlie.

Your Brother, Franz

Watch the video of the first interview of both former enemies after that 1943 day ... 40 years later



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8EkmyoG83Q

 

Does the world have any men like this today?