A Higher Call: The Incredible True Story of Heroism and Chivalry During the Second World War

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If I could have given more than 5*****, I would have. This book was that good. it was so well written, yet the story could have written itself. It is something you usually read about in novels, but think, "This could not be for real." But yes, it was. I concerns two WWII pilots, Franz Stigler, a German and Charlie Brown, an American. Neither was political. Stigler was a young German born of devout Roman Catholic family in Bavaria who were avidly anti-Nazi and Charlie was the son of American farmers. Both were dedicated to their countries. One day, Charlie was bombing northern Germany when a score of German fighters appeared around him. he was strafed on all sides, and his plane was rapidly getting punched to pieces by all the bullets. Suddenly the German fighters were gone, and Charlie was just beginning to hope he could turn around and try and make it home when a lone German plane showed up on his right wing. Franz Stigler. At first Charlie thought "this is it" we are goners. but for some strange reason no shots were fires and the German pilot hung on their right wing as they turned towards the North Sea. He kept pointing and mouthing words which were intelligibly to the Americans, but Franz was trying to get them to go to Sweden, a 1/2 hours flight where they could be safe. But Charlie did not understand, not did he realize that the German gunners on the North Sea shore did not fire because they saw one of their own with the American plane and figured he was going to take them down over the water. But instead he escorted them farther out to a safe area and watched them turn toward England. Saying a prayer he returned to Germany. Neither plot knew the other and Franz knew he had to keep quiet or he could be shot.

Charlie and his crew know they are done when they see the plane. The German pilot keeps making a motion to them they don’t understand.December, 1943 A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber's tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler--and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger... Makos is editor of a military history magazine, Valor. [4] He writes regularly about the Second World War and as in the book, he relates some of his work to his own life changing experiences. [5] He describes the book title as "one man's humanity over his nationality". [6] Summary [ edit ]

Notable Alumni". Lycoming College. Archived from the original on November 20, 2022 . Retrieved November 20, 2022. The final part of the book covers Franz and Charlie during their post-war lives, including their unlikely reunion. The story is well told. Adam Makos presents the lives and fates of the American and the German pilots in parallel, as a joint fictionalized memoir, in third person narration. He spent some 8 years on interviewing the protagonists, researching, and finally writing the book. I obviously had multiple problems with this book. Had it not been written and presented as a true story, but rather as a non-fiction novel ala Capote's "In Cold Blood", I would have had less of a problem. The purple prose recalling minute details of events, scenarios and conversations that supposedly were recalled from memory 50 or 60 years before was just too far beyond credibility. This book is written so well and the characters centered in and around this story portrayed so richly, that at the end I felt like I knew each and every one of them. I felt like I experienced everything with them. And I have to applaude Adam Makos for executing this heroic and awe inspiring story so well.The story is their stories but the author didn’t neglect the larger forces swirling around these two fliers and how significant players in the world conflict, especially Hitler and Goering, impact the futures of these men, their families, and their countries. I have to say this book is mainly about the German pilot who according to his amarican counterpart was the ‘hero of this story’. I appreciate how the authors wove the stories of the two men in an excellent chronological method. It’s not your typical memoir. The writing puts the reader side-by-side with the two men as their paths slowly, but surely converge on that fateful meeting in 1943 over the war torn skies of Germany.