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 Fogbound Encounter 9

   By Katzmarek

   The Magirus-Deutz bus growled it's way along the new cement road.  The
awe-struck passengers pressed their noses to the windows, staring at the
giant grey cigar.

   The `cigar,' though sported giant fins on which the peculiar symbol
designed by Dr Albert Speer was painted, black in a white circle in a red
square.

   This was the new Germany with a new flag and symbols.  Just as the old
empire had been swept away by the first world war, the economic disasters
of the late `20's had dealt a body blow to the fledging Weimar republic.

   The bus drove right up to the giant airship.  Under the nose Kimi read
`Graf Zeppelin' in black gothic writing.

   Everything about it was bigger than anything that had gone before. 
Length, height, gas capacity and along the hull six engines.  Diesels, Kimi
noted, with a wry grin,

   `If only `the Chief' was alive to see this.' he thought.

   A small dais had been set up next to the control car and as the guests
assembled themselves in some sort of order a small welcoming party of
uniformed men arrayed themselves on either side.

   A rather solid looking man in a brown uniform ascended the dais.  Around
his arm he sported a red armband with Dr Speer's symbol, the swastika, on a
white disc.

   "Welcome to the new Germany," the man said, "as deputy Fuhrer of the
German Reich it is an honour to stand before you, veterans of the German
Airship Service of the Great War.  You are, like myself, fliers and heroes
who gave your souls for the honour of the Fatherland only to be betrayed by
those who chose to stay safely in their homes and make profits out of your
sacrifice..."

   Holding her husband's hand with the other wrapped around their
10-year-old son, Eliza whispered to Kimi,

   "Who is he?"

   "Herman Goering," he whispered back, "he was the last commander of the
Richthofen `Jasta' at the end of the war.  He was a lot slimmer then."

   "I don't like his eyes, " she whispered, " he bores right through you."

   "Probably short-sighted," Kimi told his wife.

   "A short sighted pilot?" Eliza giggled, "I don't fancy flying with him."

   Kimi was never one for speeches and this was a long one.  He dearly
wanted to break away from the crowd and have a look at those motors with
his son.  He hoped to have a chance later.

   "... At last Germany, the new Germany, is going to take its rightful
place in the sun.  Already The German government under the guidance of
Chancellor and Fuhrer Adolf Hitler has thrown off the shackles of
Versailles, thrown off the shackles of the Washington naval agreement, we
will see off the last contingent of foreign soldiers from our soil and look
towards the future with pride..."

   Kimi lost track of the speech again.  He looked at his watch in
annoyance.

   `I really wish he'd get on with it.'

   "... We will build fleets of aeroplanes, flotillas of airships, our navy
is rebuilding, our army will be the most feared in the world...so I invite
you, heroes of the Great War to join with us in giving pride to the Reich.
Join with us and become heroes of the future with our great Fuhrer, Adolf
Hitler... sieg heil..."

   "What was that all about?" asked Eliza, "I thought he was going to give
himself a hernia."

   "I gather he wants me to join up."

   "Are you going to?"

   "Not if I have to listen to that all the time," he grinned.

   The Kasemanns had lived in Galston for 15 years.  They'd made a
comfortable life for themselves and 10 year old Jimmy.  If there was any
ill feeling towards him from the locals it had quietly disappeared.

   Now a British citizen, he'd even enlisted in the Royal Navy Reserve and
spent one weekend a month tending the big Thornycroft engines of an inshore
patrol boat.

   While Eliza worked as a nurse at the local village hospital, Kimi ran
the only garage in the area.  He repaired and maintained everything from
private cars to farm tractors, bicycles to ploughs and seed drills.

   Britain was using German technology to build it's own giant airships. 
One, the R100 was being built by Vickers, the other, R101 by the
Government. Kimi and Eliza were planning on taking a voyage on one of them
when they were completed.

   So when he'd received a letter from Germany inviting him and his family
on an honourary cruise on the giant `Graf Zeppelin' they'd jumped at the
chance.

   The voyage had been organised by the Reich war-veteran's association in
conjunction with DLB, the Deutsche Luftschiffbau.  (German Airship Company)


   They had no idea what a propaganda exercise it was to become.  The red
carpet was laid out, tours organised and events arranged for the children.
All to demonstrate what giant strides had been made in Germany and to
encourage the airship men to enlist in the services.

   Curiously absent on the tours were the scenes of streets with `Juden'
(Jews) daubed on shops and homes?  Nor, indeed the camps quickly filling up
with opponents of the Nazi Party.

   While Eliza and Jimmy were conducted on a tour of the airship's luxury
interior, representatives of Daimler-Benz and DLB showed Kimi and other
veterans, an engine car.

   The engine was a conventional upright six, but innovative in it's use of
lightweight materials.  It wasn't, however, reversible.  The time required
to stop the engine, then set it in reverse was too long.  Additionally,
two-cycle diesels hadn't reached the required level of reliability by 1934,
except for large marine engines.

   MAN of Nuremberg had developed a set for the new armoured ship,
`Deutschland', then just launched, however these large engines were a
constant headache to the Navy.

   Descending the ladder from the car, Kimi came face to face with Goering.
He was a large man in every way, resplendent in his brown party uniform and
always accompanied by a pair of boot-clicking aides.

   An aide read out Kimi's name from a list and the Deputy Fuhrer extended
his hand.

   "Joachim, I'm pleased to meet you.  I hope you have been impressed by
what you have seen?"

   Kimi nodded.

   "Good, we have need of good men like you.  Let me tell you of what I've
been planning.  Soon we will unveil the new German Luftwaffe.  For years
the French has crippled Germany by the treaty that those traitors at
Versailles signed.  But no more!  We will once again take our place among
great nations."

   Kimi didn't really want another speech but the commanding presence of
this big man held him spellbound.

   "Joachim, I will personally offer you an Officer's commission if you'd
join the new Luftwaffe.  Who knows, soon you might be a General in charge
of aircraft engineering, no?" Goering said laughing.  The big belly laugh
commanded those around him to laugh too.

   "I hear you are to be taken around the Reich in the `Graf'.  Take a
look! See what we have been able to do in two years with our Fuhrer at the
helm and imagine what can be accomplished in the future, good day.  "

   He strode off saying,

   "Reichenau, that man was a Captain wasn't he?"

   Kimi was feeling unsettled by all the snapping and saluting going on
around him.  The old airship service had been relatively informal and the
clicking of heels was beginning to annoy him.

   It was night before they returned to Munich.  The airship veterans and
their families were taken on a sedate tour of southern Germany

   As they approached the town of Nuremberg, Kimi saw pillars of light from
searchlights aimed straight up into the sky.  On the ground below, a giant
swastika was illuminated.

   The Zeppelin drifted slowly around what appeared to be a floodlit
stadium.  Below were ranks and ranks of soldiers packed together in 4
blocks of humanity.

   Many of the passengers on the airship were mesmerised by the sight.  On
cue, the massed ranks below extended their arms in the Nazi salute, making
the blocks appear to jump before their eyes.

   Someone down the promenade deck started shouting `sieg heil' in
response. Someone else shouted,

   "I'm with you!"

   Kimi and Eliza looked at each other in disbelief and moved young Jimmy
away from the windows.

   "Kimi, lets go home," Eliza told her husband.

   "Aye!  I don't doubt they'll be bringing in all the farm equipment soon.
Harvesting is coming up."

   "Kimi, you don't want to go back into the air again, do you?"

   "Generals don't fly, love.  They just keep desk chairs warm," he teased.

   "Well?  Do you want to be part of this?"

   "This is all crazy," he said, "with all the talk, I don't doubt they'll
want a war, soon, against France, maybe Russia.  Once was enough for me."

   As the Kasemann's headed back to Scotland on the London to Glasgow
Express, Kimi felt the letter burn a hole in his pocket.  It was the formal
offer made by the German Air Ministry, the Reich Luftfahrtministerium, of a
position as an instructor at an aero engine maintenance school.  He told
them he'd consider it and put it in his breast pocket.

   It was a world away from Galston and it's broken tractors and blown
gaskets, an exciting and challenging world with a more luxurious lifestyle.

   But Germany now disturbed him.  There was overconfidence about the
people he'd met that bordered on the arrogant.  It was if overnight,
headmaster's sons and bakers daughters had been elevated to the aristocracy
by putting on an armband and uniform, and it gave them the right to be
boorish and overbearing and downright rude.



   He thought of his old Captain, Karl Heinz Freiherr von Dalwig zu
Leichtenfels.  He had expected deference to his rank and title and received
it.  This Goering and his people DEMANDED it by menace.

   But most of all, the system demanded scapegoats and that fell on the
Jews, and Communists and anyone else deemed `undesirable.'

   He'd rather live in a village where the only thing you had to fear was
Alec Gorman's bad temper, when his Fordson got stuck in a drain.

   Donald, Kimi's young apprentice, picked the tired family up from the
railway station in the little Dodge tow truck.  The young mechanic
chattered to Kimi about all the jobs he'd done, and those needed doing
while Eliza snuggled into Kimi's shoulder.  Jimmy sat on the deck of the
truck, still dreaming of airships and massed saluting.

   His parents barely tolerated the next few days of young Jimmy stiff-arm
saluting and clicking heels and the `sieg heil's' when he came and went.

   But when he asked his mother to make him one of those armbands, Eliza
snapped.

   "Joachim Kasemann!  Tell your son to take his pure Aryanism out of my
house.  If he clicks his heels one more time I will put him in fluffy
slippers."

   Kimi took his son on a little walk.

   "What have you got against Jewish people?" he asked him.

   Jimmy shrugged his shoulders.

   "Then why would you want to drive them out of their homes, smash up
their furniture and close their shops and businesses?"

   "I wouldn't."

   "Well that's what the Nazis are doing in Germany.  In the old Imperial
Navy there were many Jews, good loyal Germans and Jewish.  Now your Nazi
friends are saying they are all traitors and war profiteers and must be
driven away.  You know the Draper, Mr.  Klein?"

   Jimmy nodded.

   "Mr.  Klein who gives you toffee when you pass his shop?"

   Jimmy nodded again.

   "Who brought you home in his Morris car when you fell off your bicycle?"

   "You want to smash his windows, Jimmy?  Ban his children from school? 
Paint insults over his house and dump manure over his door?  Is that a good
thing to do?  You want to go around to his shop with a gang of thugs and
beat him up in the street?

   Kimi's voice rose in volume.  He turned to face his son.

   "How do you think Mr.  Klein feels when you give the Nazi salute.  How
do you think he would feel if you strutted around with a swastika armband?
Think about his friends and family who are being bashed up in Germany,
Jimmy.  For Mr.  Klein's sake let's have no more Nazi stuff, ok?"

   "Ok."

   Jimmy Kasemann's unofficial membership of the Nazi Party ceased.

   Later that night, Kimi and Eliza cuddled in bed together.  Jimmy was
asleep in the next room, Kimi had lit a candle by the bedside.

   " I understand what you mean about floating in an airship," his wife
said, "it's like being held up by angels."

   Kimi put his hand over her pussy and planted a kiss over her breast.

   "Helium!  The US navy's on the right track.  But it needs to be cheaper
to produce.  Hydrogen is too tricky to use... your headlamps are on," Kimi
said licking a nipple.

   "Very funny!  And what do you call this?" Eliza said, grabbing his stiff
cock.

   "Ready!" he said, undoing the buttons of her nightshirt.

   POSTSCRIPT

   In 1939 Joachim `Kimi' Kasemann became James Cheeseman by deed poll. 
Initially as a Sub-Lieutenant (Reserve) and later as a full Lieutenant he
served on the Aircraft Carriers HMS Formidable and HMS Illustrious in the
Mediterranean and the Far East.

   He survived the war and resumed his business in Galston.

   In 1962 he retired and lived in the same village until his death in
1982, aged 85.

   Eliza died the year before at age 83.  She was matron at the village
hospital in Galston for 30 years.

   A sister, Isabel, joined Jimmy in 1936.  They are both still alive.

   Jimmy Cheeseman joined the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and was training
as a pilot when the war ended.  He worked with his father post-war,
eventually taking over the Garage when his father retired.

   Isabel is married and lives in Glasgow.

   Jock Smyth became Game Warden to the Duke of Tavistock and Lough after
the 1st World War.  He retired in 1929.

   Bruno Lody emigrated to the US in 1920 to be an artist in New York.  Not
successful in that competitive world he founded a chain of delicatessens
that still bear his name.

   Herman Schoemann remained in Germany and joined the Nazi Party in 1924.
An alcoholic he was killed in an argument outside a tavern by a fellow SA
member.  Dr Goebels added his name to the list of `martyrs to the cause,'
and claimed the Communists killed him.  Then had the real killer
assassinated.

   The 3rd Waffen SS Division `Herman Schoemann' was annihilated in Russia
during the battle of Kursk.

   THE END