The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

frequently scanning his instrument panel. It was a pity, he thought, that
Göring had not flown in his Schwarm. ‘By now,’ he noted, ‘he might be
having second thoughts about his pompous statement that England is no
longer an island.’
The third Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 52 was not the only unit to be moved
back to Germany. A large number were doing so. Dolfo Galland, now
commander of the 3rd Staffel of JG 26, accompanied his new first Gruppe
to Mönchengladbach in North Rhein–Westfalia, which, conveniently for
him, was near his family. JG 52’s first Gruppe had also been posted back to
Germany, to Zerbst, some eighty miles south-west of Berlin. Günther Rall
might have been sanguine about their move to the North Sea, but for Ulrich
Steinhilper and the men of the 2nd Staffel the posting in early June had
been a huge disappointment. They all felt they had hardly been given a
chance to prove themselves.
For Ulrich, however, there was one benefit to the move. Like Stan
Fraser, Ulrich was a keen amateur cine photographer, and on arrival at
Zerbst had shown a roughly edited cut of his footage to the entire Gruppe. It
had gone down well and so the I Gruppe commander, Hauptmann Wolfgang
Ewald, suggested they start a movie war diary and get a new camera and
some film for the purpose. In these times of heavy rationing, this was no
easy task, but Ulrich called a dealer in Stuttgart and, with the help of his
girlfriend Gretl’s family, managed to get hold of a good one.
It was thus only fair that he should be the one to go and collect it.
Taking the Staffel’s Me 108 four-seater Taifun, he was also charged with
stopping at the town of Trier, on the banks of the Moselle near the
Luxembourg border. There, in the monastery that had become a field
hospital, was one of their wounded colleagues, Feldwebel Karl Munz.
Ulrich was going to take him to hospital in Stuttgart instead, near to Munz’s
wife.
The experience of visiting the field hospital left a lasting impression on
Ulrich. There were wounded and dying men everywhere. When they saw
his uniform, one man cried out, ‘To hell with you, Herr Leutnant! To hell
with the whole bloody lot of you! Now we’re wounded and not much use,
we’re on the scrap heap. Nobody cares!’ Even Ulrich could see there were
nothing like enough doctors and staff for the number of patients. He
eventually found Munz near the roof of the old monastery. Munz was