Chapter One Thousand Five Hundred Twenty-One
7th November 1962
Laupheim, Württemberg
“You are not the first one in the FSR to have this happen to you Oberlieutenant” The Medical Officer said, “It just means that you’ll need to take the treatment seriously until there will be a reassessment once you’ve completed it and are deemed fit to return. If you cannot, then you should really consider separation as a viable option.”
Oddly, that came as something of a relief for Kiki.
Learning that she had failed the psychological assessment that had been recommended for all Officers who had spent more than thousand hours in combat had not been a surprise. When that particular regulation had come down a thousand hours had seemed like a lot, Kiki had done more than twice that. While the results were confidential, the consequences were not. Everyone would know that she had not returned to the FSR on schedule and it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out the reason.
There had been a reason why it not been a surprise to Kiki that she would fail. She had been struggling with basic things since her return from Korea and the assessment had gone horribly wrong. Then there was Kat telling her that the tea that Doctor Berg had given her to act as a sleep aid would more or less guarantee that Kiki would have a miscarriage if she had engaged in the sort of risky behavior that they seemed to be afraid that she might. These were two women who Kiki loved, admired and had attempted to model herself after. It was no secret that they had very different views and had never liked each other. Did the tea work as Berg had said it would, to help Kiki sleep? Yes. Was its other property even a factor? No, it wasn’t. Seeing how they were arguing over the matter was the last thing that Kiki needed. She recalled the look on Kat’s face when she had said perhaps Berg was right to have done what she had, a mixture of frustration and disappointment.
A few days later Kiki had been answering the questions for the assessment and had been unable to complete it without starting to cry. After that it was no longer a question of failure, but whether or not she would be given the option of treatment or would just be medically discharged.
The fact that they were giving her a chance to try to get help was hopeful sign. Or it could just be that they understood that it was a pointless effort and they were getting her to leave without as much fuss. Kiki just didn’t know. One thing that was obvious though, Peter Holz was nowhere to be found in all this mess. It was looking like Zella was correct about the nature of her uncle, he had only ever wanted to use her and her value for what he had in mind as the poster girl for anything had grown a lot more questionable lately.
Tegel, Berlin
The airplane was huge compared to any of those he had flown in his youth, Manfred gave it that much. Even the Gotha Bomber had been smaller than the Pfeil. Of the two young men giving him the tour, one he had already been introduced to when he had been in Korea, Lieutenant Benjamin Hirsch was the Pilot who he had suspected of being a love interest of Princess Kristina. Käte had encouraged him to take this tour of SKG 18 to get a better feel of the boy so that she would have more to gossip with about to her friends. The other one, Lieutenant Wilhelm “Wim” Franke, the Weapons Systems Officer/Observer, he had not met before today.
The two of them were enthusiastic in their description of what the plane did and how they had flown a similar plane in combat and Manfred couldn’t help but notice that their plane was the “Black Knight III” meaning that there had been two prior airplanes dubbed the Black Knight flown by them. Earlier they had been a bit guarded about what had happened to the first, the second they had cheerfully given up for the new airplane that they were showing off.
Manfred figured that he knew the story without being told, they had their original airplane shot out from underneath them.
That was when Ben mentioned something about the controls that took Manfred by surprise. “You said that the controls are not conventional?”
“Fly-by-wire” Ben said, “With simulated feedback going back to the pilot. It was something that the Canadians cooked up and Arado kept. The Pfeil wouldn’t be flyable in its present state without it.”
“I do not approve of this particular airplane being a collaborative effort with a British company” Manfred said, “Even if it is the Canadian branch of that company and the English are no longer our enemies.”
“I would like to think that we made all our own when we took on the worst the Chinese could throw at us” Ben said, “We lost more aircraft to groundfire than enemy aircraft.”
That was a reminder to Manfred of a big part of the reason why the 18th Fast Attack Wing had run up the score as high they had. More Prestigious Wings such as Manfred’s namesake JG 1 “von Richthofen” had put in admirable service over Korea but had not had quite as many opportunities.