[Erik Mombeeck]

Hi,
Here's a thread that goes off the beaten track.
Don't forget to add it to the list: At 06:00 on May 7 1945, all officers and soldiers were present on the Leck airfield to attend the execution of Lt. Hermann Gern of I./JG 11, sentenced to death by the divisional field court for having planned desertion. This 29-year-old pilot had belonged 9./ZG 26, in which he had been wounded and claimed a B-17 in February 1944.
This execution is obviously very shocking when you consider that it would have been possible to delay it by a day or two and he would have survived. I hope that Oberst Karl-Gottfried Nordmann will have often thought about it later. Several others similarly “deserted” at the same time, but probably with more agility, such as Albert Palm (JG 4) who managed to reach Landstuhl from Leck. And no one ever blamed him - on the contrary, many admired this incredible flight.

I'd also like to come back to the adjective used by Vince to describe Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel: “infamous”. Here too, I'm shocked that one could still write that after so many decades. I was lucky enough to spend many long hours with this highly educated man in his home in München. And as chance would have it, I've just reread his book recently. Really, he doesn't deserve the adjective “infamous”. I think he understood before many others what Germany's fate would be, and rather than keeping a low profile like most of his fellow captives, he tried, in his own way, to influence his country's fate.
Erik