A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II

In mid-April 1945, Munich-Riem’s battered jet unit, Jagdverband 44, suddenly swells with renowned aces. Franz Stigler greets 301-victory Major Gerd Barkhorn, soon followed by “Man of Ice” Colonel Günther Lützow; together with Adolf Galland, Johannes Steinhoff and others, the roster now reads like a roll-call of Luftwaffe legends, earning JV-44 the nickname “Squadron of Experts.” While Galland tries to keep morale aristocratically high—formal dinners, waiters, no personal nose-art—the men grasp the Me 262’s unforgiving quirks and the war’s hopeless trajectory.

Nightly Mosquito raids, P-51 strafing, and B-17 fire-bombing weaken the unit. Franz mentors Barkhorn on the jet’s fragile engines, witnesses Steinhoff’s take-off crash: a blown tire flips the 262 into flames; Steinhoff survives but is hideously burned, leaving leadership to Galland, technical duties to Franz and operations to Eric Hohagen.

Days later, the unit flies without Steinhoff; Lützow is last seen veering south after a skirmish, presumed killed. Amid ruined runways, growing casualty lists and rumors of concentration-camp atrocities related by visiting Colonel Trautloft, the exhausted “outcasts and condemned” cling to duty, even as Germany collapses around them.

By late April 1945, JV-44 is disintegrating while Germany collapses. Galland now lets pilots volunteer; Franz Stigler keeps flying, though Goebbels’ bunker broadcasts and daily P-47 attacks underline the futility. Major Barkhorn is forced down but survives; days later Galland returns in Stigler’s Me 262 with a wounded knee after a strafing run, minutes before Thunderbolts rake the field.

Radio bulletins announce Goering’s “heart condition”—really his arrest—while Munich-Riem reels under raids. When young Lt. Pirchan begs for a sortie, Stigler reluctantly loans him White 3 for a token circuit; the novice panics on take-off and dies, convincing Stigler the war is lost. Galland, on crutches, secretly plans to ferry the unit’s surviving jets to U.S. lines and surrender them; he asks Stigler to escort the move to Salzburg, then grants him release.

On 28 April, Stigler delivers his jet, steals a tracked motorcycle and disappears into the Alps. Six days later—after Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s southern capitulation—the pilot surrenders to American troops near Berchtesgaden, having slipped past an SS ambush. Interrogators seize his log-book; the “last fighter pilot” chapter of his war is over.

In March 1946, ex-fighter-pilot Franz Stigler is eking out a living in bomb-scarred Straubing. After punching a brick-yard foreman who rejects him for having flown with the Luftwaffe, local policemen drag him into a side alley—but instead of beating him they share American cigarettes, reveal their own wartime service, and end by saluting the surprised veteran before walking away. Unable to find steady work, Franz finally joins Messerschmitt’s post-war sewing-machine line (1947) and marries Eva (1948). A 1953 reunion with former commander Günther Roedel tempts him to await a reborn German Air Force, yet Franz opts for freedom and emigrates to Canada to join the top-secret Avro Arrow project. Security rules bar the German newcomer, so he becomes a diesel mechanic at a remote Queen Charlotte logging camp; the isolation ends his marriage but steady pay keeps him.

Correspondence with Hiya Greisse—the Potsdam girl he once comforted—blossoms; she emigrates in 1956 and the pair wed in Vancouver. Life in the mountains revives war memories: Hiya’s trauma at the Northern Lights and Franz’s drunken attempt to “greet” a mother bear recall past losses yet underscore their shared resilience. Visits from Franz’s devout mother and sporadic news of comrades close the chapter on combat, replacing “orders” with ordinary hard work and tentative peace.

In 1980 Franz Stigler and his wife, Hiya, enjoy a quiet retirement near Vancouver—flying his restored Messerschmitt-108, fishing, and hosting old comrade Adolf Galland. Five years later Boeing invites Franz to the B-17’s 50th-anniversary gathering. There he remembers the crippled Fortress he spared in 1943 and wonders if it ever reached England. Meanwhile in Florida, retired U.S.

Air Force colonel Charlie Brown—pilot of that very bomber—relives the event in nightmares and begins searching for the unknown German who let him go. Through the magazine Jaegerblatt and Galland’s help, Charlie’s “looking-for” note finally reaches Franz in January 1990. A phone call confirms their shared memories and the extraordinary mercy that linked them.

That June, the former enemies meet in Seattle, weeping as they embrace and recount the battle from opposite cockpits; Medal-of-Honor pilot Joe Jackson records the reunion. In September, Franz attends a 379th Bomb Group reunion where Charlie introduces him to surviving crewmates and families whose lives exist because he withheld fire. Franz signs a book, calling Charlie “as precious as my brother,” answering at last his lingering question—yes, it was worth it.

The afterword traces what becomes of the principal figures after 1945. When West Germany joined NATO in 1955, many former Luftwaffe officers—Trautloft, Barkhorn, Krupinski, Roedel, Hohagen, Hartmann and Steinhoff—are reinstated at their wartime ranks, several retiring as generals in the new Bundeswehr. In the United States, B-17 pilot Charlie Brown finally tells his crew in 1957 that he was only 20 when he flew Ye Olde Pub. Neither he nor Stigler re-encounter Marjorie, the English girl who inspired the bomber’s nose art.

Through the 1990s, the two men tour North America recounting their shared story to museums, military units and civic groups, promoting reconciliation. Stigler dies in March 2008; Brown follows eight months later. Shortly before Brown’s death, the U.S. Air Force reopens the 1943 incident and awards Brown the Air Force Cross while issuing Silver Stars to each crew member. Although Stigler never receives the Knight’s Cross he once sought, he tells friends he has gained something better: peace and a brotherhood that crosses former battle lines.