That was in March 1940, two days before the Finns capitulated. His pelvis fractured and back broken, he’d been hospitalized for eighteen months, was undergoing final therapy and still a lieutenant in the Finnish Air Force when, on June 25, 1941, Finland joined forces with Nazi Germany and declared war on Russia.
He’d returned to flying duties gradually, working as an instructor, not directly involved in any action. The months had gone by and suddenly, the roof had fallen in. First Pearl Harbor and then the declaration of war between Germany and Italy and the USA.
They held him in a detention camp for three months, the Germans, and then the officers had come to see him from the SS. Himmler was extending the SS foreign legions. Scandinavian, French, the neutral Swedes, Indian prisoners of war from the British Army in North Africa. There was even the Britisches Freikorps with their collar patches of three leopards instead of SS runes and the Union Jack on the left sleeve. Not that they’d had many takers, no more than fifty, mostly scum from prison camps attracted by the offer of good food, women and money.
The George Washington Legion was something else again. Supposedly for American sympathizers to the Nazi cause, as far as Asa knew, they never had more than half a dozen members and he hadn’t met the others. He had a choice. To join or be sent to a concentration camp. He argued as best he could. The final agreement was that he would serve only on the Russian Front. As it happened, he seldom flew in straight combat, for his skill as a pilot was so admired he was employed mainly on the courier service, ferrying high-ranking officers.
So, here he was, not too far from the Russian border with Poland, at the controls of a Stork, forest and snow five thousand feet below, Hauptsturm-Fuhrer Asa Vaughan from the US of A, an SS Brigade-Fuhrer called Farber sitting behind him examining maps.
Farber looked up. ‘How long now?’
‘Twenty minutes,’ Asa told him. He spoke excellent German, although with an American accent.
‘Good. I’m frozen to the bone.’
How in the hell did I ever get into this? Asa asked himself. And how do I get out! A great shadow swooped in, the Stork bucked wildly and Farber cried out in alarm. A fighter plane took station to starboard for a moment, the Red Star plain on its fuselage, then it banked away.
‘Russian Yak fighter. We’re in trouble,’ Asa said.
The Yak came in fast from behind, firing both cannon and machine guns and the Stork staggered, pieces breaking from the wings. Asa banked and went down, the Yak followed, turning in a half circle, and took up station again. The pilot, conscious of his superiority in every department, waved, enjoying himself.
‘Bastard!’ Asa said.
The Yak banked again, came in fast, cannon shell punching into the Stork and Farber cried out as a bullet caught him in the shoulder. As the windscreen shattered he screamed, ‘Do something, for God’s sake.’
Asa, blood on his cheek from a splinter, cried, ‘You want me to do something, I’ll do something. Let’s see if this bastard can fly.’
He took the Stork straight down to two thousand, waited until the Yak came in, banked and went down again. The forest in the snow plain below seemed to rush towards them.
‘What are you doing?’ Farber cried.
Asa took her down to a thousand, then five hundred feet, and the Yak, hungry for the kill, stayed on his tail. At the right moment, the American dropped his flaps, the Yak banked to avoid the collision and ploughed straight down into the forest at three hundred and fifty miles an hour. There was a tongue of flame and Asa pulled back the column and levelled out at two thousand feet.
‘You okay, General?’
Farber clutched his arm, blood pumping through. ‘You’re a genius – a genius. I’ll see you get the Iron Cross for this.’
Thanks.’ Asa wiped blood from his cheek. ‘That’s all I need.’
At the Luftwaffe base outside Warsaw, Asa walked towards the officers’ mess, feeling unaccountably depressed. The medical officer had put two stitches in his cheek, but had been more concerned with Brig-adeFuhrer Farber’s condition.