Aces (10 page)

He glanced back at Goering, who was still on his right wing. Goering waved.

“So far, so good,” Goldstein muttered to himself as he sighted in on the closest Spad rushing toward him. “We’ve had our differences,
Herr Oberlieutnant, but surely we can put them aside while we deal with our common enemy.”

The Spad’s cowling filled his gun sight. Goldstein thumbed his firing button. His airplane shuddered, and glinting brass tumbled
from the ejection ports of his guns as his orange tracers skittered forward, chewing bites out of the Spad’s wings and fuselage.

The Spad slid away, its prop slowing. Goldstein glimpsed it leaving the battle.

One down
. He grinned.
Nine to go
.

He put his own machine into a climb and was looking for another target when he saw tracer rounds streaking past him from the
rear, tearing at his Fokker’s wings, chipping away at his struts. He glanced in his rearview mirror. The glass was filled
with a Spad on his tail, its twin guns winking fire at him.

“Get him off me, Goering,” he muttered, as he twisted around in his seat to look over his shoulder.

Goering was nowhere.

“Bastard!”

Goldstein slammed the D VII’s stick into the pit of his stomach, zooming quickly upward into a loop so that the enemy on his
tail slid beneath him. He dropped down on the offending Spad’s tail and let loose a burst, but now other Spads were coming
at him from every direction. His Fokker took more tracer fire. Rounds tore through his cockpit, shattering the compass near
his foot. His engine began to cough and smoke. The needle on his petro gauge was sinking fast. A round must have cut his fuel
line.

There was no longer any question of fighting. Goldstein was merely desperate to get away so that he could either glide to
earth or parachute in relative safety. He kicked his rudder right, pushing his stick in the same direction, and the Fokker
fell over, sliding sideways into a whirling, gut-wrenching spin.

The Spads backed off to see what would happen. Goldstein watched his altimeter, letting the Fokker plummet as long as he’d
dared in order to buy himself some room. At five thousand feet he ran out of nerve. He didn’t want to get any closer to the
ground with a faltering engine. He struggled to pull out of the spin. The controls were sluggish, and for a second he’d thought
he’d waited too long, but at last the D VII responded. Goldstein brought her around hard, and began to run for his own lines.

He was less than three minutes from safety, but he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He was losing RPMs and altitude. He decided
to use his parachute, but before he could the Spads were at him like angry bees.

He took a burst in his right wing. He slid his wounded Fokker sideways, but that just cost him more precious altitude and
put him across the sights of another American pilot. Goldstein took more rounds into his engine, which died on him altogether.

And then Goldstein’s guns were hit, and suddenly splinters were flying off the varnished wood trim of his cockpit, and he
was screaming in pain as bullets leapfrogged across both thighs. His lap welled up with blood as his legs instantly, thankfully,
went numb.

Goldstein was approaching German lines, but a succession of Spads were diving down on him. Their tracers were falling around
his airplane like orange rain. Bullets hit his fuel tank, and what was left of his petrol ignited in a puff, setting on fire
his tail section.

The Spads lifted off and veered toward their own lines. They knew he was finished.

He unbuckled his harness and tried to haul himself out of his cockpit in order to parachute to safety, but he couldn’t make
his legs function, and his arms were too thin and weak to hoist him over the cockpit’s high sill. By the time he thought to
roll the Fokker upside down and just fall out of the cockpit, he’d lost still more altitude. Now he was less than fifty meters
above the ground; too low to parachute.

The wind was fanning the blazing tail section’s flames away from him, but the heat was still blistering. His goggles were
fogged with sweat, but he didn’t dare remove them, not wanting to expose his eyes to the oily black smoke spewing from his
killed engine. Sliding past beneath him in a blur were the men and machines of war, but Goldstein couldn’t tell to what army
they belonged. The ground was coming up at him fast. Directly ahead was a wooded knoll. He jerked the stick, and, miraculously,
the ailerons sluggishly responded. He just managed to avoid the knoll, the trees’ branches tearing at the Fokker’s underbelly.
He saw that the grassy pasture ahead of him had more trees, but now he no longer had a choice. He was just skimming the ground.

He belly-flopped hard. The impact collapsed the Fokker’s tail skid, cracked the fuselage in half just aft the wings. Goldstein
hoped the Fokker’s broken spine would slow her down, but the flaming rear section of the fuselage dragged behind only a few
yards before sheering off in a shower of sparks and twanging, snapped control wires. Goldstein cringed as what was left of
the airplane careened on screeching wheels toward the trees. He threw up his hands as low branches stabbed into the cockpit.
A tree trunk tore away the Fokker’s left wing. Goldstein felt the Fokker slammed to a halt, spinning like a top. The whirling
airplane hurled him from the cockpit, into darkness.

He woke up feeling blissfully comfortable. He was lying on his back, floating in warm sea. The sun was so bright! He had to
squint, else the sun would make him sneeze.

He was at one of the resorts along Germany’s northern coast. He was drifting on his back on the gentle waves, listening to
the joyous cries of children frolicking in the surf. Far off, on shore, he could hear the bells and creak of the revolving
carousel. He was thinking of going ashore to get himself an ice cream, when he fell back asleep.

When he woke up the second time, Goldstein’s mind was clearer. He still felt comfortable, like he was floating, but he realized
that he was lying on a cot, one of many cots, in a large, sunlit room. What he’d thought had been the laughter of children
were the moans and cries of wounded men. The jingle and creak that had been his dreamy carousel was really the sound of traffic
from the road that seemed to be just beyond the room’s open windows.

He was alive. He’d survived the crash. He began to take stock of himself: he could think, see, and hear. His arms were all
right, but he couldn’t move his legs. His legs didn’t hurt. They didn’t anything. It was if they weren’t there…

Weren’t?
—

Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus
—

“Help…” His throat was so dry. His lips seemed glued together. He raised his head to look down at himself, but he was covered
with a blanket from his chest down. He was too weak to throw off the covering, and he just couldn’t tell what remained and
was missing under there.

“Help!” he croaked, adding his own voice to the cries of men in pain. “Someone, help!”

A boy suddenly appeared, leaning over him. “Easy, Herr Sergeant, rest easy.”

“Easy? Fuck easy!” Goldstein shouted above the chorus of moans going on all around him. “Who the hell are you, boy?”

“I’m an orderly.”

“My God, they’re really robbing the cradle…” The boy looked about fifteen. He had blond curls tumbling over his forehead,
and big, soulful brown eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles. He reminded Goldstein of a boy he’d known at the orphanage. That
boy had apprenticed himself to a butcher. On second thought, maybe it was this orderly’s bloodstained white smock that reminded
Goldstein of that other young meat cutter.

“Where am I?” Goldstein managed. “What’s happened to me?”

“You’re at a dressing station to the rear. You’ve been here since yesterday, when your flying machine crashed. You were thrown
from the wreckage. Some infantrymen found you and you were transferred here by ambulance.”

“I can’t feel my legs,” Goldstein murmured.

“You will, Herr Sergeant!” the young orderly said wearily. “You’ll feel in spades! Right now you’re full of morphine, but
our medicine supply is running low. When your injection begins to wear off, you’ll
wish
you were still numb.”

“Why can’t I move below the waist?”

“Your legs are in splints right now. The splints are intended to keep you immobile.”

Goldstein’s eyes widened. “What’s happened? How seriously am I injured?”

“Your legs were fractured by machine gun bullets. Otherwise you just have some bumps and bruises. You’re very lucky. It could
have been your back, or your neck that was broken.” The boy’s puppy-dog eyes brightened behind his spectacles. “I almost forgot,
your commanding officer has sent you a message.”

“The Herr Oberleutnant?” Goldstein demanded. “What’s that about my C.O.?” Goldstein remembered how that bastard Goering had
left him to the American Spads.

“Your commanding officer was informed that you’d been brought here,” the orderly said. “He telephoned a message for you.”
The boy took a scrap of paper from his smock, unfolded it, and handed it to Goldstein.

The Herr Geschwaderkommandeur of J.G. 1 offers his sincerest condolences to Herr Sergeant Hermann Goldstein. How fortunate
for him that he survived. The C.O. regrets that he was forced to withdraw from the air battle due to his airplane’s malfunctioning
armament. The Herr Geschwaderkommandeur is certain that the Herr Sergeant will understand that the former could not remain
in battle with just one functioning machine gun.

Goldstein let the scrap flutter to the floor.

The orderly quickly snatched it up. “You’ll want to save it, of course. I’ll see to it that it’s put safely with your personal
items.”

Oh, that bastard Goering
, Goldstein thought. He could just see Goering’s eyes glinting with swinish malevolence as he’d dictated that note. How it
must have aggravated Goering when he’d found out that Goldstein had survived!

Goldstein hoped the fact that Goering’s cowardly strategy hadn’t managed to kill him festered in the Oberleutnant’s fat gut.
Goldstein knew that was all the revenge he would ever have against Goering. As Richthofen had made plain long ago, an officer
and a gentleman is not to be challenged by a Jew.

“I had hopes of being a flier, myself—” The orderly was blushing.

“What?” Goldstein muttered. “What did you say?”

“I wanted to fly, but I couldn’t pass muster.” The boy tapped his spectacles. “Weak eyes, you know. I hope there’s an opportunity
for you to tell me about some of your adventures before they ship you out.”

“Ship me?…” For a moment Goldstein didn’t understand. “You mean home?” he asked tentatively.

“Home to Germany,” the orderly confirmed. “As soon as the doctors have set your fractures. Herr Sergeant, for you the war
is over.”

It was only when the orderly was gone that Goldstein thought to ask how the war was proceeding. Later he found out that the
news was bad. The Allies had broken through all across the line and had crossed the Marne. Last night, while Goldstein slept,
huge bonfires lit the sky as German soldiers burned everything they were unable to carry before pulling back.

The constant traffic outside the window was the sound of the German army running away.

It was a cool night. The breeze blowing down the Unter Den Linden smelled of smoke. Goldstein zipped up his brown leather
jacket and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his loden trousers as he walked slowly, minding his steps across the rain-slicked,
iridescent cobblestones. The sidewalk was crowded, and now and then someone would grumble an insult as they pushed past Goldstein,
which he ignored.

He’d been out of hospital a couple of months, but when the plaster casts came off Goldstein had to relearn the art of walking.
The doctors assured him that he would eventually walk as well as he ever had, but for now using his legs delivered the same
thrill, and required the same amount of concentration, as had flying.

Goldstein kept his head bowed as he passed the disposed Kaiser’s palace and the sentries at the entrance who watched the street
from behind their tripod-mounted machine gun. One man wore an army infantryman’s uniform and helmet, the other was nattily
attired in a velvet-collared, gray tweed suit and matching fedora. He had on pearl gray, calf-skin gloves that looked intended
for handling a furled umbrella, not ammo belts. Both men wore the armbands of the Social Democratic Party, which had swept
the January elections for a New National Assembly to replace the exiled Kaiser’s Imperial Government. The newly elected Assembly
had met in Weimar to elect as President of the Reich the Socialist Freidrich Ebert. The hope was that the Weimar Parliament
would end the months of vicious street fighting in Berlin and other major cities between rival political factions on both
the left and the right.

Peace born of political stability was the hope, but the new government was taking no chances. The harsh provisions of the
Versailles Treaty had stirred up bitter resentment all over the country. Nationalist politicians were making defiant speeches
threatening rebellion, as if they’d forgotten that Germany had lost the war. The Officer Corps was especially alarmed by the
Allies’ insistence that Germany disarm. The newspapers were filled with reports of bloody skirmishes: between soldiers and
socialist or communist factions; between socialists and communists when the soldiers were not around. The machine gun emplacements
and roadblocks infesting Berlin attested to the fact that the fledgling Weimar government was prepared to clamp down on this
dissent using whatever means necessary.

Goldstein turned left onto the Friedrichstrasse, past the imposing State Library. He was on his way home to his room in a
boardinghouse near the railroad tracks, on the far side of the Spree River, about a quarter mile from the Weidendammer Bridge.
He’d been walking for quite a while, and he still had a couple of kilometers to go, but the doctors had said that the more
walking Goldstein did, the faster his legs would mend.