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HÖHN: And from January until February 15th you lost only two crews?

MASCHEL: But perhaps they didn’t fly so often, only every third day. The weather was only favourable latterly—no fog or anything.

Altogether we had two old and six new crews and of the six new ones three have already crashed… and it won’t be long before the other new ones do, too—

HÖHN: Surely more new crews are coming along?

MASCHEL: Yes, that’s true, but they are all greenhorns, who have only made three or four operational flights. That’s the reason why I always used to fly a few times with the old crews, otherwise I should only have made four operational flights, too. And the new ones…. We had an N.C.O. crew which hadn’t got any aircraft and now… have already gone, three crews. Now it’s our turn…. We’ve got an old observer in the Staffel, who is still flying, he has been [in] seventy-five operations over POLAND, he’s completely finished.

HÖHN: How old is he?

MASCHEL: I believe he is twenty-three or twenty-four and he’s lost his hair. He’s practically bald, like an old man. He’s hollow-cheeked, he looks terrible. He once showed me a picture of himself as a recruit, when he first joined up—he had a face full of character and looked so fresh. When you talk to him he is so nervous, he stutters and can’t get a word out.

HÖHN: Why does he still fly operations?

MASCHEL: He has to.

HÖHN: But people must see that he’s done for.

MASCHEL: Then they will probably tell him… to pull himself together. The crew he used to have doesn’t fly any more. The pilot was… into a sanatorium—then he was allotted to the other crew.³⁰⁵

Maschel, who had ejected from his burning Dornier 217 over Scotland on March 25, 1943, was a member of Luftwaffe Bomber Wing 2, one of the few units to continue flying bombing raids against Britain after the summer of 1941. The wing suffered heavily in their attempt to take aerial warfare to enemy territory, losing 2,631 men, of whom 507 were killed in 1943 alone.³⁰⁶ Statistically, the unit was exhausted, and the psychological consequences of such heavy losses, as this conversation shows, were dramatic. The members of the unit were all too aware that it was only a matter of time until they, too, were shot down. The Luftwaffe did not have the sort of rotation system used by the British and American air forces, in which bomber crews were withdrawn from the front after flying twenty-five sorties.

To numb their growing fear as German prospects deteriorated during World War II, more and more soldiers turned to alcohol, drinking “like mad.”³⁰⁷ Staff Sergeant Nitsch of Bomber Wing 100 admitted in September 1943 that they also took stimulants like Pervitin: “We had terrific drinking bouts before each sortie. We had to get up our courage. However drunk I am, I can always fly. The only thing is, if I get tired. But then I just took one of those tablets and was then as refreshed and cheerful as if I’d been drinking champagne. The things really have to be prescribed by a doctor but we always had some with us.”³⁰⁸