A German fighter ace must choose between humanity and winning the Knight’s Cross after his brother is killed in the war-torn skies of Europe.
It is called A Higher Call
It is a War Drama.
In the vein of Top Gun: Maverick
It is like Hacksaw Ridge meets Valkyrie.
It follows bitter German fighter pilot Franz Stigler.
And rookie American bomber 2nd Lt. Charlie Brown.
As Franz seeks a Knight’s Cross by shooting down American planes and Charlie tries to keep his crew alive.
Problems arise when the Americans start bombing Franz’s homeland and Charlie’s plane is heavily damaged by enemy fire.
Together their sense of chivalry, honor, and duty will result in one of the most remarkable acts of humanity during World War II.
The idea came to me when I was reading A Higher Call by Adam Makos and it reminded me of my own transformation from viewing all Germans as cartoonish Nazis involving someone named Franz.
My unique approach would be a World War II event told mainly from the German perspective in which Americans are seen as the faceless enemy dropping terror from metal beasts in the sky and our protagonist must come to see them as human.
A set piece would be when Franz is flying his Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-6 toward a heavily damaged American B-17F Flying Fortress. He flies up next to the aircraft and looks through the large holes that have been ripped open in its side. He sees the crew working on their wounded comrades, trying to save their lives. He is so impressed when their faithfulness to their comrades that he holds his fire and flies level with the B-17’s cockpit. He motions for the pilot, Charlie Brown, to land. Brown does not. Franz flies next to the American plane as it flies over the German flack batteries along the coast. The gunners see the German fighter plane escorting the B-17 and hold their fire. Over the North Sea, he motions for Brown to fly to Sweden and sit out the war. Brown keeps flying toward England. Finally, Franz salutes Charlie and turns his plane back to Germany, wishing the Americans godspeed on their journey home.
Target audiences would be men and women, 30-90, aviation enthusiasts, fans of Top Gun, World War II veterans, and their families, pilots and their families, Air Force and military members and their families, Air Force and military veterans and their families, history students, World War II buffs, and gamers.
Audiences would want to see the film for the excitement of airplane stunts and aerial combat, the themes of chivalry, honor, brotherhood, and devotion, and the inspiring story of humanity during one of the darkest moments in history.
Today’s book I would like to pitch as a movie is A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos, with Larry Alexander, from Dutton Caliber.
[Note: Not all the events in the following post are in chronological order, but how I think it would work in a film adaptation. Also, note that Adam Makos is trying to develop A High Call into a movie. You can follow the project’s progress at its IMDb Pro page.]
ACT I
Beginnings (pages 1-5)
The film would open in southern Germany, Summer 1927. 12-year-old Franz Stigler and his sixteen-year-old brother August are flying gliders. They have been trained by their father, also named Franz, and a Catholic priest, Father Josef. Both flew for Germany during the Great War and started the glider club for boys so they could do something positive with their training.
Franz, Jr. is given the job of re-gluing the wing ribs of a glider. He brushes over the wood’s seams with heavy strokes, thinking he could not miss a spot if he coated everything. His father inspects his progress, and sees globs of glue piling up along each seam.
He points them out to Franz, who replies, “It doesn’t bother me. The fabric will cover it.”
To which his father replies, “Always do the right thing, even if no one sees it.”
“No one will know it’s there,” protests Franz.
“Fix it anyway,” says his father. “Because you’ll know it is there.”
This lesson is in Franz’s mind as he and August fly among eagles over the foothills of the Alps and fall in love with flying.
Inciting Incident (pages 5-10)
Jump forward to the early 1930s. Franz, at his mother’s request, is studying at university with plans to become a priest. But he is sneaking out at night to visit his girlfriend, a brewmaster’s daughter, and is engaging in underground dueling clubs where he spars with sharpened swords. He likes the idea of pretending to be a knight errant of ald, with a sense of chivalry and honor.
Then the brewmaster catches Franz with his daughter and drags him before the faculty.
“A man thinks and acts for himself,” Father Josef tells Franz. “Because he knows he only must answer to God.” Then he asks Franz what he really wants to do with his life
Franz replies, “I’d love to fly every day.”
“Then go do it,” the priest encourages. “Your mother will get over it.”
Franz’s dueling is discovered, and he is excommunicated, his name read aloud at Mass for six weeks. But he does not lose his faith, carrying his rosary with him as he flies.
Predicament / Second Thoughts / Lock-in (10-20)
Jump to the late 30s. Franz is flying for Lufthansa Airline, a symbol of national pride and promise for his once economically devastated nation. Franz’s job is to find the quickest and fastest routes from Berlin to international destinations like Rome, Barcelona, and London. With his logbook filling up with passport stamps and flight times in an age of aviation glamour, he couldn’t be happier. Plus, the government has paid for his training.
Then one day an officer with the new German Air Force – the Luftwaffe – approaches with orders, the catch to his “free training.” While remaining a civilian, he will have to train pilots to fly long distances to Spain. During one class a captain sits reading a newspaper in the back of the room and ignores Franz. When Franz reprimands him, the captain says he does not have to take orders from a civilian. When Franz lodges a complaint to the captain’s general, the Luftwaffe officer tells him to write “private” next to his name and that he would handle his enlistment papers personally. He is now officially a member of the German Air Force.
One of Franz’s first cadets is his brother August. He has enlisted despite his mother’s objections because he believes that war was coming and does not want to be drafted into the army. Knowing his brother’s future survival depends on his training he refuses to show favoritism, including tearing up his pass in front of the other cadets because it lacks a stamp. He does not buy August’s excuse of being in a hurry.
“Hurrying in an airplane can get you killed,” Franz announces to the other cadets.
There is a further rift when during their holiday break Franz finds a copy of Munich Cardinal von Faulhabar and Pope Pius XI’s Mit brennender Sorge (With Burning Concern), an address to German Catholics that explains in veiled terms that Nazism is a religion based on racism contradictory to the church’s teachings. The Party has reacted by banning the letter, arresting priests, and monks, and closing any press shop that printed the address. Franz wants the burn the copy and suspects that it had something to do with his brother’s fiancé, whose uncle is the cardinal. When Franz confronts him about the dangerous literature, August brushes him off, saying he kept it out of curiosity. Franz reminds him he could end up in Dachau, where political enemies of the Party are being concentrated. Even though The Stiglers have voted against Hitler, they know that the best way to survive is to stay in line. August promises his brother that he will get rid of the papers. During August’s wedding, Franz cannot bring himself to look upon his new sister-in-law who might be causing his brother to step out of line.
Climax of Act I (pages 20-25)
After Franz pins wings on his brother, August is off to train as a bomber pilot. During the Battle of Britain, August flies a Ju-88 bomber, based out of Caen, France. The Luftwaffe’s aim is to destroy the British Royal Air Force. But then a German bomber misses its target and hits homes in London’s East End neighborhood. The British respond by raiding Berlin, missing its military targets, and killing civilians. Now both sides declare open season on civilian targets. August’s primary target of airfields and docks is changed to cities. Franz knows his brother is not happy with such an assignment.
Then one day Franz is teaching when Father Josef appears at the door of the classroom. He tells him to sit down before informing him that “August is with God.” His plan had crashed upon take off and there would be no funeral as his body has already been buried in France. At first, Franz blames himself for failing to teach his brother to be a better pilot. But then he blames the British who had declared war on Germany.
Franz wants revenge.
ACT II
First Obstacle / Subplot (Pages 25-40)
North Africa April 1942. Franz is flying a Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter over the sandy dunes and white beaches of Libya. Flying over the desert, he feels like a Christian knight on the Crusades. The feeling is mutual among German pilots who paint black crosses on their wings and tails as an homage to the Teutonic Knights of Germany. The Teutonic Knights had also inspired the Knight’s Cross, Germany’s highest medal for military valor. For a fighter ace to receive one he had originally needed to achieve 20 victories, but the number was moved up to the “magic 30.” Franz wants one, like that worn by his commander Lieutenant Gustav Roedel.
This part of the movie would be pretty laid back as we see the pilots relaxed and their maverick behavior. Many of the other pilots are after the Knight’s Cross as well because with it comes fan mail and a ticket home. They play a game where they fire at the shadows of planes gliding across the desert floor. One of the first things Franz is asked upon landing in North Africa is if he is in the Party.
“No sir,” answered Franz and many other pilots.
“Another big plus for you,” says the captain. “Keep it up and you’ll do just fine.”
There is a running joke that a captured Tommy pilot asked his German captor “What do you want with Africa, anyway.”
The German replied, “the same thing you do!”
Upon further thought both men shrug, not knowing what that was.
Franz meets Captain Eduard “Edu” Neumann, winner of the Golden German Cross and Iron Cross, who runs “ Edu’s Desert Amusement Park,” including a gypsy wagon flown in from France, where he encourages his men to let off steam by partying and being eccentric. Fighter pilot aces perform skits dressed like belly dancers while Martuba music plays. Until the British jam their radio signals. Nearly every night both the Germans and British night listen to the German love song “Lili Marleen.” As for Franz, he flies with his rosary and reads a book about Catholic Saints during his downtime. He also does not partake in the habit of smoking, common among pilots.
But more importantly, he learns from his mentor characters, the veteran pilots and aces, the code of chivalry by which these knights of the air live. “Honor is everything here,” Roedel tells Franz. “If I ever hear of you shooting down or at a man in a parachute, I will shoot you down myself…You fight by rules to keep your humanity.” During a dogfight, he serves as Roedel’s wingman and learns an important lesson about never abandoning “your wingman” when he is unable to identify Roedel’s victory.
He also makes friends with Hans-Joachim Marseille, the Star of Africa, who has over 150 victories against the British to his name. When he meets Marseille, he is playing chess with a black South African POW, Corporal Matthias Letuku. Marseille teaches him German and Letuku teaches the ace English in a scene of race-mixing incomprehensible in Nazi Germany.
Here’s how I might write their meeting in a screenplay
Franz asks Marseille if it is true that he had flown over a British airfield and dropped notes to the enemy. The legend was that Marseille had shot down a British pilot, and then taken the pilot to the hospital. After getting his name and unit, he flew over the airman’s home base and dropped notes assuring his comrades that he was being cared for. When the airman died, Marseille flew over the enemy base again and dropped notes informing his comrades of his death. The Luftwaffe’s Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, called “The Fat One” due to his heft, was so angry over Marseille’s “stunt” that he put out an edict that no pilot should ever attempt it again. [Note: Goering’s conflict of command with the Air Force officers should be a major subplot in a film adaption of A Higher Call]
Marseille shrugs with a guilty grin. “We only need to answer to God and our comrades,” he tells Franz. Marseille and the other aces and Knight Cross winners become Franz’s mentor characters [like Gandalf and Obi-Wan Kenobi] and teach him not only the basics of being a better fighter pilot but being one with honor.
On May 31, 1942, Franz shoots down his first enemy plane. He and his excited comrades run to Roedel and tell him with a smile that he has “gotten his first kill.” Roedel immediately reprimands Franz and his comrades. “You don’t keep score of kills,” he tells the young pilots. “You keep score of victories.” Franz scores two more kills but keeps his rudder clean to emulate Roedel who does not keep score either. After a British bombing raid on their base, Roedel is injured when his plane hits debris on the runway and is sent home to recuperate.
In the first week of September 1942, Franz receives orders to return to Germany. During his parting conversation with Marseille, the Star of Africa says he has
“On my net leave, hopefully at Christmastime, we’ll be married,” Marseille says. “ If not, I’m waiting until next Christmas – it’s the best time for a wedding.”
Franz says that Marseille will never be much fun with that attitude. Then he leaves Africa on a Ju-52 loaded with wounded groaning Afrika Korps soldiers.
When Franz arrives back in Germany, he goes to visit the brewmaster’s daughter. She is angry when she sees him and screams at him to get out. Franz expresses his woes to his mother, who tells him he had left behind so many girlfriends who wrote again and again to his home address that she had finally replied to them all that “Franz is married! Leave him alone!” Franz burst out laughing. She is still hoping he will come to his senses and go into the priesthood.
Then comes word that the Americans have entered the war, having declared war on Germany the same day Hitler did likewise to them. Soon they land, trapping the Afrika Korps between Casablanca and the British in Egypt. Both Franz and his father conclude that the war is lost. Franz asks his father what he should do.
“You’re a German pilot. That’s all there is to it.” His father replies.
Father Josef comes to the same conclusion. “Don’t worry,” he says. “We fight our best when we’re losing.”
Franz learns of Marseille’s death. He had been flying the Bf 109 G-2 G Model under orders since he did not trust the Daimler-Benz engine with the lives of his men. The engine shattered and broke the oil line. The plane went into a dive and when he jumped the airflow sucked him against the rudder that bore his 158 victories, smashing his chest, knocking him unconscious. His comrades watched helplessly as he fell to his death.
Higher Obstacles / Rising Tensions / Second Subplot (Pages 40-60)
Meanwhile in America, 2nd Lt. Charles “Charlie” Brown is flying his B-17F Flying Fortress through the hills of West Virginia, which are not unlike the foothills of the Alps. He grew up in the hills below on a farm. A rough life, especially after his mother died. His co-pilot is Spencer “Pinky” Luke, a cowboy from West Texas with a goofy demeanor.
Charlie pulls a stunt when he flies toward his hometown and under the bridge at its center. The town’s folk scatter as the plane stirs up dust in the streets. Someone asks who that crazy S. O. B. was. Charlie’s father replies, with a clenched fist, ”You can’t talk about my son that way.”
When Franz returns to duty, he is stationed in Sicily, under the command of Roedel. As part of Squadron 6, the “Bears,” he gets to stay in a medieval fortress. The squadron calls itself the Knights of Sicily.
It is here for the battle for the Mediterranean Sea that Franz has his first encounter with the Four Motors, the B-17 Flying Fortress. Dropping a bomber carries four ‘brownie points” that bring a pilot closer to a Knight’s Cross. During a dogfight with American P-38 fighters, he shoots one down into the sea. He radios the American’s position to the Italians. For a moment he considers being a beacon for the American in the tiny yellow raft in the choppy waves below him but realizes he might be shot down if he stays too long. He prays for a strong westerly wind and flies. It is after this that Franz begins smoking a pipe.
He meets aces and Knights Cross winners Generalleutnant Adolf Galland, and Colonel Gunther Luetzow, “The Man of Ice.” Their mission is to stop the American bombers from attacking Germany via Italy. Galland and Goering have been at odds since the Battle of Britain.
During a meeting, Galland perks up when Franz addresses four Knight’s Cross winners about how to attack the American bombers. He listens as the young pilot tells them that the tail approach to the bombers is not working. “We need to attack from the front with speed.” When questioned further by Galland, Franz replies, “A good pilot will find a way.”
Franz comes to know Luetzow, who believes that professional soldiers should stay out of politics even though he admits “the anti-Semites in the Reich piss me off.” In Russia, he had refused to allow his non-flying personnel to assist the SS in rounding up “undesirables.”
On May 8, 1943, Franz and his fellow pilots realize that the battle for Africa has been lost when battered fighters of JG-77 begin landing in Italy and mechanics crawl out of their bellies. The pilots had refused to abandon their mechanics and many bravely stayed with their planes rather than jump and leave them when they crashed into the sea. Only 40 of JG-77’s 120 planes make it out of Africa.
Meanwhile, in Texas Charlie is meeting more of his crew: Second Lieutenant Robert “Andy” Andrews, his bombardier, from Alabama, Second Lieutenant Al “Doc” Sadok, his navigator, from New York, His turret gunner, Sergeant Bertrand “French” Coulombe, from Massachusetts, Sergeant Hugh “Ecky” Eckenrode, his tail gunner, Sergeant Alex “Russian” Yelesanko, from Pennsylvania, his right waist gunner, Sergeant Sam “Blackie” Blackford, a talkative Kentuckian, his ball turret gunner, Sergeant Lloyd Jennings, his left waist gunner, and Sergeant Dick Pechout, from Connecticut, his radio operator.
As they train together as a crew they become known as “The Quiet Ones” because they never step out of line or break the rules. Except for Russian and Blackie who get into a bar fight. Charlie, with the help of his “wingman” Sadok, takes time to date a member of the WASPs, a woman who flies often untested airplanes from the factories to the air force bases.
June 10, 1945, is one of the most spectacular air victories for the Allies. For the Germans, it is a slaughter. [Note: Maybe in a movie, Charlie can be watching the black and white newsreels of the battle before it transforms into a colorized film showing the German perspective]. Franz is shot down and almost drowns as his plane sinks six feet below the waves of the Mediterranean. He manages to get his canopy open and grab his rosary from his cockpit just in time.
He meets Major Johannes “Macky” Steinhoff. The story is that while fighting on the Eastern Front Steinhoff had seen a Soviet pilot trapped in the cockpit of his burning fighter, unable to open the canopy and escape. Not willing to see his enemy cooked alive, he flew up behind the aircraft and mercifully disintegrated the airplane with his cannons. He is never the same afterward.
A week after Franz’s crash, the black coats, the Gestapo, arrive and want an interview with him. Steinhoff stands up against the Gestapo, dangling his rank and his Knight’s Cross in their faces. They say August had known connections to traitors and were seeing if Franz had the same or was involved in the White Rose, a Catholic resistance movement that had just been discovered in Germany. Franz replies he has been excommunicated from the Catholic Church and the Gestapo leaves.
Meanwhile, Charlie and his crew arrive in England. They are stationed in Kimbolton as part of the 379th Bomb Group, the 8th Air Force, a unit that would lose more men during the war than the U. S. Marine Corps. During one raid, Black Tuesday, the 8th lost sixty bombers, six hundred men, over Germany. Charlie accompanies a veteran pilot on a bombing run. He learns that they don’t call the German fighters “Jerries” or “Krauts,” but Bandits out of respect. The raid goes off nearly without a hitch, most of the planes landing almost without a scratch. Maybe this job isn’t so bad after all, Charlie thinks to himself.
In July, Sicily falls to the Allies. Franz is shot down by the British but manages to land behind friendly lines. Goering sends out an angry memo demanding improvement in fighting spirit, holding Roedel in contempt. Roedel throws the memo in the trash. Goering is known to record rants against his pilots and send them to his men on the frontlines so they can hear his rage.
The pilots read about the increasing bombing raids over Germany. The Americans bomb the factories by day. The British bomb the factory workers by night because they take longer to replace. In Hamburg, a firestorm kills forty-two thousand civilians. The fighter pilots’ mission objective has changed: now they are defending their fatherland, their people.
Franz returns home and finds out that the Gestapo had come to question his mother about August and the White Rose. His father, a sixty-four-year-old World War I veteran, has been drafted by the army to shoe horses. Due to fuel shortages, the German army has gone back to using wagons. Franz begins smoking cigarettes.
Meanwhile, Charlie and his crew are given a B-17, Ye Old Pub, which they simply call The Pub, and begin mentally preparing themselves for their first mission. Orders are given that if any damaged planes land in the neutral country of Sweden where they would have to wait out the war, the crew would be court-martialed. There are stories about pilots and crews who spend too much time on the ground and refuse to go back up. The officer’s club is run by a major who had covered his eyes during a German fighter attack. He runs the place with vigor for his redemption. There is a cook named Snuffy who whistles all the time. Legend is that he was a tail gunner who one day decided that his number was up and refused to fly anymore. His whistle is a siren call for the pilots and crews to remain on the ground. Charlie and his crew start to take off on a bombing mission, but mechanical issues stop them. “We’re gonna miss the big dance,” he tells his crew.
Franz is next stationed in Wiesbaden, Western Germany. He and the Squadron’s mascot, a bear named Bobbi, a gift from The Berlin Zoo, share an apartment and go swimming together. The bear also gets excited by the sound of women’s skirts rubbing against their stockings, causing them to jump on tables, and giving Franz a chance to be chivalrous as he “saves’ them from the “beast.”
Mid Point / Crisis (pages 60-80)
Again, Charlie and his crew try to take off, this time in a fog. The plane ahead of them launches off the runway and explodes, followed by a thunderclap from the mist. Charlie waits, wondering if the mission has been scrubbed. The tower gives him permission for takeoff. Then two planes collide in midair, orange fire curling through the clouds. Distracted by the accident, Charlie lets the plane roll off the concrete and into the muddy grass. He refuses to give up, instead going full throttle until he is able to pull the wheels out of the mud and back onto the concrete. But by the time he takes off and is above the clouds, he realizes he has to turn back since being the lone plane in the sky will be too dangerous for his crew. With two abortive takeoffs on his record, Charlie and his crew are in danger of becoming pariahs, labeled cowards.
In Germany, Franz is talking with some officers. He hears from an ace, Hannes Trautloft, that the rumors of the concentration and extermination camps in the east are true. Trautloft relates how the SS are labeling Allied bomber pilots as “terror fliers,” and are sending them to places like Buchenwald where they will be worked to death instead of Luftwaffe-run P. O. W. camps. Trautloft has been able to save 160 airmen, transferring them out of the camp. Franz is one victory away from the Knight’s Cross but is now conflicted about the holiness of his country’s cause.
On December 20th, 1943, Charlie and his crew are ordered to bomb Bremen, Germany. They are assigned to the “Purple Heart Corner” of the bombing formation, an area vulnerable to fighter attacks. The “Quiet Ones” are truly quiet as Charlie goes through his checklist and The Pub’s four engines rumble to life. Then he pats his pocket Bible and conducts a short briefing with “My Third Pilot.”
“God’s on our side, right, Pinkey,” he says to his co-pilot.
“He better be,” replies Pinkey.
The sky is full of terror, thinks Charlie, as The Pub climbs with 475 American planes upwards into the sky, hoping to avoid the British returning from their night run. Soon Charlie and his crew are at twenty-four thousand feet, leaving England behind. Once they are over the North Sea, mild-mannered Andy requests permission to arm the bombs. Permission is granted. Charlie Brown and the nine lives for which he is responsible have entered the war.
“It’s going to be a white Christmas after all,” Pinky jokes, in reference to the white flakes falling into the plane. Frost has formed on the windshield. The men talk about the Christmas party the local village is hosting that night. Ecky has been saving up his chocolate rations for weeks, wrapping them up as presents for the children of Kimbolton.
At 11:05 A. M., the Ye Old Pub crosses over the German coast. Almost immediately afterward they are attacked by “Bandits.” From the ground 250 flag gunners fire their 88mm cannons at the formation, filling the sky with a black fog and orange flashes. The Pub shakes from the concussions. A large swath of the bomber’s Plexiglas nose is sheared away, allowing the subzero wind to come howling in. Then the number two engine is knocked out of commission.
The bombers drop their load over Bremen and turn back for England. Then the number four engine begins winding down. The Pub and other damaged planes start to fall behind and away from the formation. Some explode, empty spaces left where ten living men had just been. German 109s attack the damaged bombers, like wolves descending on wounded deer.
Charlie remembers a maneuver from his boxing days. He begins to haul back on the yoke and climb directly into the path of enemy fighters. He is making The Pub as small and narrow a target as possible as he plays “Chicken” with the enemy.
Doc is hit in the knees. Ecky’s guns are jammed. Blackie’s are frozen. Engine three begins running at half power. At least five 109s are preying on the B-17. Andy, Jennings, and Russian all report that their weapons are iced over. Now only three are operational. Charlie feels his blood in his oxygen mask. A nosebleed from the thin atmospheric pressure.
Then a shot from a fighter’s 20mm cannon shell blows the bomber’s skin outward. Russian’s leg is nearly torn off, hanging on by strips of tendon. Jennings tries to administer morphine, but it is frozen. The tail gun position is destroyed by several cannon shells. Ecky is killed, nearly decapitated. Now cold winds blast through the plane’s rear. Focke-Wulf Fw 190s join in the attack on the B-17.
Then there’s an explosion in the plane’s midsection, blasts of 20mm cannons giving the inside of the plane the look of a cheese grater. Pechout is hit in the eyes by steel shell fragments. Charlie maneuvers The Pub radically, trying to dodge the fighters. The crew are firing the few remaining guns wildly and are hanging on to each other to keep from being thrown out.
Then Frenchy’s gun jams. German bullets tear through the cockpit’s ceiling, puncturing the oxygen tanks, white clouds billowing. A fragment lodges in Charlie’s left shoulder. The plane shudders, the left horizontal stabilizer shot off. Charlie tries to roll the plane. It doesn’t level out. He looks around. His crew has passed out. Then all goes black.
At the airbase at Jever, thirty miles north of the farm fields that The Pub is plummeting toward, Franz is smoking while he questions the ground crew about a .50-caliber slug in his radiator. He is miffed, having recently shot down a bomber but unable to confirm his victory, having lost sight of it before it crashed. He is three points away from the Knight’s Cross, still his obsession but now wanted as a symbol of protecting his people from the Ally’s terror from the sky.
The Pub is dropping. Twenty thousand feet. Fifteen thousand Feet. Ten thousand feet. The lower altitude allows free oxygen to rush into the airplane. Charlie regains consciousness. He franticly wakes up Pinky. The plane is falling to five thousand feet. Then, at three thousand feet, like a Christmas Miracle, a B-17 missing a stabilizer stops diving and the wings begin to flutter. Charlie grabs the yoke and pulls The Pub up at the last moment, rattling the windows of houses on the ground.
Charlie calls for a damage report. The hydraulics are bleeding from the wings. There are man’s sized holes in the fuselages (the main body of the aircraft). They are running on only one good engine. And they still have to make their way through the “Atlantic Wall” of hundreds of antiaircraft guns. Charlie decides to take a shortcut and pass over the city of Jever.
Franz hears, then looks up at a B-17. It is flying so low that it looks like it is going to land. It is so damaged that it would be an easy kill. He flicks away the cigarette, jumps in his 109 despite the slug in the radiator, and takes off in pursuit of the Knight’s Cross.
The Pub is flying low towards the coastal ring of flak guns. Charlie gives the crew permission to bail out and become P. O. W.s before they are over the North Sea. It might be their only chance at surviving. His offer is greeted with silence. They are not going to abandon Russian.
Suddenly Blackie sees a German 109 approaching him. His ball turret gun is frozen, and his microphone is dead. Franz sees the ball turret aimed at him as he approaches the bomber from behind. He puts his finger on the trigger. He looks for the bling of the plane’s guns, but nothing happens. He studies the damage. The stabilizer is blown away. He lifts his finger from the trigger. How is this plane still flying?
He floats behind and above the plane. The tail gunner’s compartment is obliterated. The nose is blown away. The waist gun is missing. The radio room blown apart. And the skin torn away so he can look through the ribs and see the crew working on their wounded comrades, trying to save their lives, administrating the now defrosted morphine to Russian. He wonders why the ball turret gunner hasn’t fired at him. Blackie wonders the same thing about him, and finally gives up trying to clear his guns, and just folds his hands as his eyes meet those of the German pilot.
Two years earlier Franz would have fired. But he has learned the code of honor by which German fighter pilots, the Last Knights of Europe, live, their higher call. He thinks about what his brother August would have done. He thinks about the rosary in his pocket. And realizes that firing would be no victory for him.
In the cockpit of The Old Pub Charlie looks up and his heart jumps. A gray 109 is flying three feet from the right wingtip. The pilot locks eyes with him and nods. Charlie just stares. Franz uses his left hand to point to the ground, trying to convince the American captain to land and live out the war in a P. O. W. camp. The American keeps on flying.
Franz cannot let the bomber go. That would be treason. He cannot leave it alone because another fighter or flak gun would just shoot it down. Instead, he pulls a few feet away from the plane so that the silhouette of his aircraft will be visible.
Along the Atlantic Wall German flak gunners look up. A German Messerschmitt 109 is escorting an American B-17 Flying Fortress. Is it one of “ours” or one of “theirs,” they wonder. The commander has heard rumors about the Luftwaffe building Trojan horse planes to infiltrate Allied air formations. He orders the flak guns not to fire.
Ye Old Pub is now over the North Sea. Charlie was so focused on the threat a few feet from his wing that he forgot about the flak gunners. He looks at the pilot who is mouthing something to him. Franz, who has a better idea of how damaged the plane is than Charlie does, is saying “Sweden.” Instead of flying two hours across the cold sea to England they could fly thirty minutes to a neutral country and live out the war. But Charlie just shrugs his shoulders. What a dumb guy, thinks Franz.
Here’s an example of how it might look in a (faux) screenplay
Finally, Charlie decides that the pilot wants them to turn around and head back to Germany. He tells Frenchy to get up in his turret and point his guns at the 109. Franz sees the guns pointed at him, and realizes that they are frightened by him.
Then Franz does something unexpected. He salutes the Americans,
“Good luck, you’re in God’s hands,” he says as he pulls back and returns to Germany.
Blackie sticks his head out of his turret and says to Charlie and the rest of the crew, “I think he flew up to salute us.”
Charlie doesn’t know who the pilot was who had just flown alongside him for ten minutes without firing or saying a word, but the image of the pilot’s salute is now frozen in his mind. He is sure the pilot was a good man.
[Note: while it would be tempting to portray the incident with a rousing score, flashy editing, and soaring cinematography for an emotionally stunning moment, I think at a midpoint in a movie it should be more procedural and shot documentary style, a throwback to 1970s filmmaking. Because at this point Franz is not sure he has made the right decision, he does not know if the men will survive or if he will be executed for treason. Was it worth it? ]
After the crew jettisons most of their guns, ammo, radio equipment, and so forth into the North Sea, The Pub crash lands at one of the first air bases they reach in England. The entire time Charlie taps his Bible and prays to his Third Pilot. Russian lives, although he loses part of his leg.
In Germany, Franz and his fellow fighter pilots land their planes in fields near the crash sites of Allied planes or where the parachutes of their crews were last seen. Other pilots drive cars from their air bases to the sites, hoping to “rescue” the crews before they are captured by the SS or the Gestapo. Franz wonders if the Gestapo will be waiting for him at the air base. In a nation where telling a joke at the expense of Hitler can result in execution under the Subversion Law, death will surely be the punishment for not only letting an enemy bomber escape but escorting it to safety.
Back in England Charlie debriefs with intelligence lieutenant and aspiring painter Robert Harper. He tells him that even with their stabilizer shot away it felt like the plane was being held up by an Invisible Hand. He tells him everything about the mission, including the 109 that flew alongside the bomber like the German pilot was escorting them home. When Harper asks why they didn’t bail out, Charlie says he gave his crew the chance to do so, but they refused for the sake of just one man, Russian. He requests a Distinguished Flying Cross for each man and a posthumous Bronze Star for Ecky. Harper says the brass will take one look at the damaged plane and give every one of them a Bronze Star.
A few days later Harper returns with bad news. There will be no medals for the crew. In fact, their part in the raid over Bremen did not even happen. The brass heard the story about the lone 109 and does not want other crews to hear about friendly Germans lest, seeing their enemy as human, they hold their fire, expecting other enemy fighters to show them the same chivalry. Charlie and his crew are not to talk about the incident. An angry Charlie tells his crew. “I should have bailed out over Germany,” Doc jokes.
Charlie returns to the base at Kimbolton and finds an obtuse crew replacement has already taken up residence in his bunk. He threatens to shoot the man in his leg with his pistol, telling him that a court-martial will find him “combat certified” – flak happy. After the new guy has left, Charlie sits down on his bunk. He thinks about the bareback of the leather jackets that belong to him and his crew. He immediately contacts an artist in the squadron and asks them to paint the backs of his crew’s jackets with the word “Bremen.” He and his crew will remember December 20th, 1943.
Climax of Act II
The next scene could be two different Christmas parties. One in Wiesbaden, Germany, the other in Kimbolton, England. Franz and Bobbi the Bear are having a grand time. One of his fellow pilots asks if he needs help identifying a downed bomber from a few days before. Franz tells him not to worry about it. Then both parties start to sing the same song, “Stille Nacht” (“Silent Night”).
ACT III
Rising Stakes / Higher Obstacles / Ultimate Tensions (pages 80-100)
Franz is reassigned to Southern Austria. [Flashback] Is it because they found out about the B-17? He is sad he must leave the Squadron 6 Bear’s mascot behind, but his comrades say they will take care of Bobbi. Many of the recruits he trains in Austria are teenagers. A generation of youth are paying for the sins of their leaders. Word comes down from high command that one must get the “Magic 40” before being considered for the Knight’s Cross. Since December 20 he has not shot down a single plane. Instead, his mission is to bring his boys home and protect his fatherland as his character fully arcs from the mentored to the mentor character.
Franz leads his pilots against new, better bombers: American B-24s. However, the leader of the group does not attack the B-24s. Franz watches as the city of Graz explodes, lighting up the clouds. Even though he will be investigated and the incident with the damaged B-17 might be discovered, he disobeys orders and leads his wing in attacking the Americans.
Afterward, Franz tells Roedel that he had four victories with help. After Roedel leaves, he looks at the two young pilots and says, “Two of them are yours.” Franz paints his twenty-five marks on his wing with a swirling white streak painted through it for a hypnotic effect to inspire his rookie pilots. They now outnumbered the veterans three to one. He writes letters to the parents of those killed, downing cognac to get him through the night. He has become the man who wrote the letter to his parents about August. He refuses to know the names of new pilots, some of whom are 17 years old.
In July 1944 conspirators led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenbreg attempt to assassinate Hitler. Hundreds are rounded up, jailed, and executed upon suspicion of being part of the conspiracy. Franz receives a call from Berlin. [Flashback] Is it about the B-17? No, it is an order that all military personnel, including pilots, are to start using the Sieg Heil salute. The same call also informs Franz that he will receive the new German Cross. But it is not even a cross. Instead, a black swastika, to be worn below the Knight’s Cross, as a reward for “six brave acts.” After having flown four hundred combat missions, Franz is insulted.
Now Allied fighters are entering German airspace before the bombers, killing Luftwaffe pilots before they can form up a defense of their homeland. The stratagem is devastating. Goering issues an order that the fighter force is to give battle to the last mam. Any pilot who refuses is to be put into the infantry. Any fighter guilty of running from a fight is to be shot on the spot.
Ridiculous orders when considering that British pilots are going into combat after 450 hours of training and Americans after 600 hours while Franz’s rookies are sent to face the enemy only after 150 hours of flying. Franz does his best, telling his men to stick close to him. But even he has over seven months been forced to bail out and belly-land his fighter over a dozen times. On October 26, 1944, he is hit in the head by a .50 caliber slug but manages to land his plane. Roedel orders him to take a leave of absence.
He goes to Berlin to learn why his father’s pension, on which his mother is surviving, has dried up, and he sees the ruinous effects of Allied bombing raids. Children play amidst the rubble while gaunt and tired adults stare at this well-fed pilot who is supposed to keep them safe and who Goering is publicly accusing of cowardliness. And he wonders if letting the bomber go was worth it. He spends Christmas with a family whose windows and doors are blankets and wooden boards after being blown out by bomb blasts. Their 13-year-old daughter Helga, who calls herself “Hiya,” shows him how she and her friends play with bomb shards, twisting them into shapes and trading them. She also shows him how she protects her ears during the bomb blasts by opening her mouth. That night Hiya says there will not be a bombing raid because they can see the stars and the Allies won’t fly when their airplane bodies are silhouetted against the black sky. Franz knows that the Allies are still flying on starry nights, and he spends the holiday wondering if sparing the American bomber was worth it if it is inflicting such pain and devastation upon people like this girl and her family.
On January 19, 1945, Günther “The Man of Ice” Luetzow, Eduard Neumann, Gustav Roedel, Johannes Steinhoff, and Hannes Trautloft, all popular aces of the Luftwaffe, lead the Fighter Pilot’s Revolt against Goering. Their commander Galland is left out because he is under investigation by the SS for violating the Subversion Law after opposing an SS wing of the air force. At the Haus der Flieger they present Goering with “Points of Discussion”- bitterness at his charges of cowardice, lack of direction, lack of confidence in his leadership, his dismissal of Galland. Goering roars that their actions are treasonous, and he will have them all shot. Instead, the mutineers are banished to office jobs and forbidden from approaching airfields. [Flashback to December 20, 1943] Would Franz, the pilot who let the American bomber escape, be swept up in the storm of Goering’s wrath?
Galland is sacked. However, before he can commit suicide, Hitler intervenes. There is a new jet – the Messerschmitt Me 262 – that needs test pilots. Galland, Steinhoff, and Luetzow are to take part in the program. Their fate will be to die in combat. Even though Galland knows the war is lost, the best he can do is stop as many Allied bombers as possible from incinerating his country until his government surrenders. In recognition of the madness, his squadron of 262 jets becomes known as The Flying Sanatorium and Galland’s Circus.
Franz is reassigned to the squadron and learns that Galland’s brothers have been killed in the war. He also learns that Bobbi the bear had to be put down when retreating German forces could not take him with them. Hannes Trautloft is sent to the squadron, to fly a jet that burns so much fuel that it feels “as if the angels are pushing you,” while German civilians are reduced to using horses or walking due to gas shortages. Germany can no longer access cobalt and nickel to make strong blades. Now propellers are overheating and breaking. Some pilots stop wearing their Knight’s Crosses in protest of Goering’s treatment of their comrades. During the day the pilots park their jets in caves, in forests, and autobahn underpasses, fighting like partisans. At night the Squadron listens to “Rapsody in Blue” and sings “Little Marline.” They are the last knights defending their homeland.
Franz receives word that his father has been killed, kicked by a horse. Perhaps poetic license could be taken and show the horse startled by a bomb explosion. Franz wonders if the bomb was dropped by the B-17 he escorted to safety.
The Allies are fighting dirty, targeting parachutes, and strafing downed planes, knowing that any German pilot that has survived this long is an expert. Hitler considers ordering the German pilots to do the same, but due to Galland’s steadfastness, the order is never issued. After Steinhoff, who mercifully killed the Soviet pilot rather than let him be cooked to death in his cockpit, is horrifically burned and disfigured by fuel in a jet accident, even Goering admits to Galland that he had been wrong in not following his advice regarding the 262. (Goering later commits suicide rather than face execution for war crimes.)
The airbase is being overrun with planes as pilots flee before the advancing Allied armies. Franz no longer keeps score. There is no time to watch the bombers fall and confirm his victories. During a mission, Franz and his fellow pilots watch as Luetzow peels off from the formation and flies toward the Alps. Nobody tries to stop him as they know he wants to die in peace, denying the enemy the honor of killing him. Franz thinks about Marseille’s words, “We must only answer to God and our comrades,” as he watches an orange flash in the distance.
On April 25th,1945, Galland calls the pilots together and says that for them the war is over. Several pilots leave, but Franz and others stay on, trying to stop the bombers or deny the Americans their jets. On April 27th when Franz returns from the fatal crash site of one of his young pilots, Galland tells him that he has just missed being arrested by the SS. A Catholic revolt has begun in Munich. Franz wonders if they were looking for a Catholic pilot who had let a B-17 escape. He decides to leave. Galland tries to stop him, telling him that he has put him in for the Knight’s Cross. If he stays a little longer it might come through. But Franz’s mind is made up and he deserts.
He makes his way west, passing bodies hanging from trees, men whom the SS have found guilty of desertion on the spot. He bravely walks through an SS roadblock. Apparently, they are not looking for a pilot who had spared an enemy bomber. And he makes it to American lines.
Climax of Act III– Dark Night of the Soul
Ultimate Obstacles (pages 110-115)
Then Franz faces his toughest obstacle: the wrath of the German civilians. He sees their condemnatory glares as he walks in his fighter pilot uniform, even when it is just his boots underneath his civilian clothing, down the streets of their bombed-out cities that he was supposed to protect. They refuse to hire him for menial jobs. Some even beat him. He was supposed to keep them safe from enemy bombers. Bombers like the one he had refused to shoot down. (There can be a flashback of the December 20th incident while he is being beaten by of mob of civilians.)
Franz gets married and moves to Canada. He becomes a logger, and a chain smoker, and he and his wife divorce. Then Hiya, now a grown woman, begins corresponding with him and they marry despite their age difference. Franz loves to watch the northern lights, but they make Hiya cry, reminding her of the fires from bombing raids during the war. Raids conducted by a bomber that Franz let escape. Franz himself does not talk about the war.
Act IV
Descending Action (Pages (115-120)
40 years later he and Hiya are walking home, well, she is while he is staggering drunk. He sees a bear and begins approaching it, calling it “My bear” and “Bobbi.” Hiya knows that he is going to get himself mauled, so she knees him in the rear. The next morning Franz asks her why he is so sore. She tells him about the bear, and he replies it had something to do with the war. Then she encourages him to talk more about his experience and he tells her about the bomber he let escape and how he wonders if the crew ever made it home safely. She encourages him to find his answer. Franz begins flying at air shows and connecting with American veterans. He is even invited to the 50th Anniversary party for the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, but none of his former opponents have any leads.
Meanwhile, in Florida, Charlie is living his golden years with ease. He and his crew had survived the war, serving twenty-eight missions over Germany. All the time he had looked over the eastern horizon, expecting to see that same German 109 flying next to him. But now nightmares about The Pub falling through the sky wake him up at night and he stands in the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. He needs closure. He joins veteran groups and asks former intelligence lieutenant Robert Harper to paint a 109 flying along The Pub. When Harper asks what number needs to be put on the German plane, Charlie says, “Let’s leave that part blank just in case we find him.”
Charlie writes the German newsletter Jaegerblatt (Fighter Journal) asking them to print the story. At first, they refuse to carry the story, but then Galland orders them to print it. Franz receives his copy of Jaegerblatt in the mail and immediately shouts for Hiya “It is him!” He quits smoking cold turkey.
Resolution (pages 120-125)
Franz and Charlie meet on June 12, 1999. At this point in a movie, there should be a flashback showing Franz sparing Charlie and his crew. This time it would be portrayed as a glorious moment with heroic music, fast-paced editing, fancy lighting, and soaring cinematography. Franz looks at the children and grandchildren of the men whose lives he had saved that day and realizes that his actions were worth it in the end.
Here’s the way it could be written in a screenplay
The US Air Force opens an investigation into the events of December 20, 1943, and determines that a mistake had been made in the handling of the case. In April 2008, Charlie and his last living crewman, “Doc” Sadok, receive Silver Stars while eight more are posthumously given to the rest of the crew. Franz never receives a Knight’s Cross, but he says he found something better: A brother. Both Charlie and Franz die in 2008, just a few months apart.
Closing Thoughts
There are many reasons that A Higher Call would not only make a great movie but would also make a great Christmas weekend release. It’s soaring aerial stunts and combat is tailormade for the big screen. Its universal themes of honor, chivalry, brotherhood, devotion, bravery, courage, forgiveness, and nonconformity in the face of evil and tyranny would attract audiences to the theater. On Christmas weekend people would come to see it for its inspirational tale of humanity set against an epic historical background.
I am sure it would become a Christmas Season classic. And even though I think Christmas has become too materialistic, I would love to see more Christmas décor, ornament, and the like featuring Messerschmitt 106s and B-17 Flying Fortress flying side-by-side during the Holiday Season.
Personally, I would like to see Franz and Charlie’s story turned into a movie for two reasons. First, because like Adam Makos, the author of A Higher Call, I once too viewed all Germans as Nazis. That is until my sister married a man from Germany named Franz. Even though he was technically Russian-German, “his people” were being shipped to Siberia and Central Asia in cattle cars by Stalin during the war, but that didn’t stop pre-teen me from calling him “Nazi scum” while “playing war” or hiding out in the woods with my plastic weapons when his German relatives and friends came to visit. But over time and through my relationship with my brother-in-law and trips to Deutschland I began to see that there was a lot more to the beautiful country, culture, and people of Germany than Nazis and that no matter how dark history is there are always humans willing to be a light no matter their nationality or ethnic origin (It is also why I am so enamored with the story of the Berlin Airlift). That is why as someone named Charlie with a brother-in-law named Franz, I find the story of Franz Stigler and Charlie Brown so moving. 2) As someone who has PTSD from a situation in which I was falsely accused of not doing my duty and was denied my reward, I can empathize with the crew of The Pub. Telling stories of people who finally see justice even if it takes sixty years is part of my healing process. And what better time to tell a story of injustice righted than the season celebrating the birth of the One Who came to bring justice?
Because it is an exciting story not just of chivalry and honor in aerial combat but also an inspirational one of humanity and forgiveness during an epic but dark moment in human history, I think A Higher Call by Adam Makos Should Be A Christmas Season Movie Release.
