A Higher Call by Adam Makos

368 pages

"Five days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a twenty-one-year-old pilot. Half his crew lay wounded or dead. It was their first mission. Suddenly, a sleek, dark shape pulled up on the bomber's tail--a German Messerschmitt fighter. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber with the squeeze of a trigger. What happened next would defy imagination and later be called 'the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.'

This is the true story of the two pilots whose lives collided in the skies that day: the American--Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown, a former farm boy from West Virginia who came to captain a B-17--and the German--Second Lieutenant Franz Stigler, a former airline pilot from Bavaria who sought to avoid fighting in World War II.

A Higher Call follows both Charlie's and Franz's harrowing missions. Charlie would face takeoffs in English fog over the flaming wreckage of his buddies' planes, flak bursts so close they would light his cockpit, and packs of enemy fighters that would circle his plane like sharks. Franz would face sandstorms in the desert, a crash alone at sea, and the spectacle of one thousand bombers, each with eleven guns, waiting for his attack.

Ultimately, Charlie and Franz would stare across the frozen skies at each other. The American 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them as 'top secret.' It was an act that Franz could never mention or else face a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search for each other, a last mission that could change their lives forever." -Dust Jacket

Wow. What a great, inspiring book. It's very well written and great in the sense that it reminds the reader of one important fact: the atrocities committed in World War II were committed by the minority of the German people. Most members of the German Air Force were not Nazis and most were good, honorable men who had a code of honor and chivalry. Franz was led by those sorts of men. Franz fought at first to avenge the death of his brother August but the men he served under and with changed that. He learned from the fighter pilots in Africa a different way and reason for fighting. He was an ace, credited with several kills, but he took no pleasure in it. The Knight's Cross, a medal he had actively sought to earn in the beginning, ultimately meant nothing to him. Charlie's plane would have earned him that cross since bombers counted for more kills than a fighter.

I like that this book starts with Franz. You read about a young boy who wanted to learn how to fly and how he was brought into the German Air Force. You realize what a desperate situation they were in against the Americans and you can't help but feel a sense of admiration and sympathy for them. My husband loves the P-51 Mustang. It was a beautiful fighter plane and reading about it from the other side was really interesting. The German pilots were treated with disdain among their own people, blamed for losing the war and being cowards when they were not, yet another example of the propaganda spewed by Hitler's people. They had a hard time finding work at the end of the war. Some of the pilots Franz served with were men who plotted to overthrow Goering. They hated The Party.

Both Charlie and Franz were men of faith and believed that a higher power was helping and sustaining them. This book was such a good reminder that good people can be found on both sides of war and that forgiveness and love is the only way to peace. I think the men of JV-44, the Squadron of Experts, are admirable men. I'd like to read more about them in the future.

I think the whole experience of this book can be summed up with this on page 202:

"'What are you waiting for?' Black said quietly as the German's eyes met his.

The Franz Stigler who went to Africa to avenge his brother's death would have had an answer. He would have destroyed the bomber and killed its crew. But there, in the desert, and over ancient Sicily, the last of Europe's Knights had taught Franz Stigler a new code. Their code said to fight with fearlessness and restraint, to celebrate victories not death, and to know when it was time to answer a higher call.

Franz gazed at the men in the waist tending one another's wounds. He looked into the ashen face of the ball turret gunner. He thought about what his brother August would have done.

A gear clicked in Franz's soul. He laid a hand over the pocket of his jacket and felt his rosary beads within. This will be no victory for me, Franz decided. I will not have this on my conscience for the rest of my life."