Maria, Pull the Trigger and Kill (a World War II adventure)

Berlin 1945

The very same day, I drove to the airport Berlin Tempelhof. German workers were there cleaning up.

With the 8th Airforce having been in the process of going to Japan, the operation of the airport Tempelhof was largely returned into German hands. A couple of officers of the US Army Air Force held the reigns in their hands, but the real work was carried out by German civilians, of which most had served in the Wehrmacht beforehand.

Sitting in the parking lot, were a couple of FW190. I picked the one in best shape and said: "In the name of the President of the United States of America, General Clay, Snow-white and the seven ugly dwarfs I confiscate you FW190." I was not entirely sure, if that would be enough for everybody to recognize, that this was my personal aircraft now and so I asked my way around, until I found a painter. I demanded white color and tape.

With that, I painted white stars over the Wehrmacht cross and painted US Army OMGUS in big letters on the aircraft. After an hour, the job was done. It looked ugly, pretty ugly. I had really done a great job in making a nice looking aircraft shaggy. The white star was way too big so that it would cover the Wehrmacht cross. On top, it was irregular. The letters looked like the scrawl from a 7 year old. Looking at my disputable work, it dawned on me, that I would need a wheel-based vehicle to get me from airports and airstrips to the final destination. The FW190 was fast and agile and provided enough firing power, if still needed, but it could not transport more than a suitcase. An aircraft, which could hold a car, would be quite big, too big for many airstrips. As such, a motorcycle was the better option. An aircraft holding a motorcycle did not have to be so big. There were a couple of Junkers 88, twin-engine bomber aircraft, which were big enough to hold a motorcycle, sitting in one corner of the parking lot. They looked like they had just been waiting for me. Merciful as I was, I picked a JU88 V5 in good shape. It was somewhat bigger than the Lockheed A-29, mostly longer. The JU88 V5 had two 1200 HP engines (as powerful as the A-29), but was 70mph faster, even though it was about 250 pounds heavier. I believed, that I would be doing much worse of a paint job with this aircraft, than with the smaller Focke Wulf FW190 and so I just crudely painted a couple of white stars on it. When I returned the paint and tape to the German painter I asked: "Können Sie malen einen US Army Stern on Flugzeuge?"

He shrugged his shoulders and answered: "Wahrscheinlich! Zeigen Sie mir das Flugzeug!"

I led him to the two aircraft and we discussed the way I wanted the paintjob done and negotiated a price.

Now I just needed to find a motorcycle to seize. Somewhere in this Berlin, there was a motorcycle waiting for me. The difficult question was just, where?

Maybe I should search the parking lots of the various former Wehrmacht offices? After all, Berlin did have too many of them.

The closer I came to the city center, the heavier the destruction. Not a single building in the center had survived. It gave one an idea, what Armageddon would look like. This was the capital of the enemy, the heart of the 3rd Reich, the center of evil, yet it was heartbreaking to see this brutal destruction. Century old buildings turned into rubble by the bombs. The destruction did not even stop before churches. And why should it? Bombs did not care whether it was holy ground or historical buildings or the cradle of evil. Bombs were atheists by nature. People were living in the rubble using canvas sheets, tents, sheet metals, cartons and whatever else to make a home within the debris. Side roads were unpassable for cars, only the main roads had gotten cleared and could be plied. I did not have a real plan in regards to the motorcycle and as I was interested to see the headquarters of all evil, the Reichstag, I stopped and asked a pedestrian for the way. I followed the description and only a few minutes later, I stood right in front of it. I looked for a place within the rubble, where I could park the BMW and alighted. Right now, that building was a ruin. Many of the decorative stones had fallen off, the glass dome was largely destroyed, most windows shattered and the original grey was overlaid with black sod. This had been a very impressive building before the bombing, a true headquarter of sorts. It was sad to see the fine work of gifted craftsmen crashed to pieces and yet, it marked the end of the Nazi regime in a brutal, unambiguous and undeniable way. Maybe, it had to be so for humans to get the message: we all came forth from the same creator, we are all equal and war does not produce a winner, just losers. Well, I'm sure, some high ranking jerks would argue, that the allies had won the war, but what did we win? We won a country, which was destroyed, scorched soil, filled with a peoples which were broken and hungry. And what did we pay for it? The young American men paid with their innocence, their limbs and their lives. The US tax payer had to turn their hard earned dollars over to the IRS. Now one could argue, that the world had gotten cleaned of the Nazis, but it did not. Most of the Nazis were still around, still pulling at the strings of power. The difference was, they were now pretending to be democratic and pro human rights. For the Germans on the other hand it was even worse. Their stupid ideas of a Herrenrasse ruling the world had gotten shattered and buried deep. The immortal und unfaultable Führer had committed suicide. Most young men dead or maimed. Masses of orphans and widows, the country bombed to smithereens, occupied and ruled by the enemy, and now, they were hated by the rest of the world. Truly, I did not understand, what broken sprockets worked in the heads of men (specifically German male humans) to believe, that anything can be gained from war?