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          " you can't lay him down" said a man. His voice sounded distant, far away. " He'll have to stay sitting up otherwise he'll bleed to death all over the floor". Powerful hands lifted me up under my arms and thighs and carried me until my feet once again made contact with the floor - I was in the driver's cab of a truck. I tried to sit upright but as soon as I put any weight on my feet, waves of agonising pain lanced through my body and literally took my breath away. It was as black as night, but from their voices and the silhouettes of their bulky forms I knew that these men around me were German Landser. My state of consciousness was such that I really couldn't make out anything else. Now that I was seated and not being moved, the agony seemed to ease slightly. Glimpses of what had happened flashed back into my minds eye. I had been shot down. My 109 had taken hits. The enormous shadows of the ground had rushed up to meet me like some unholy monster from the underworld stirring from an eternal sleep. And then - nothing else.

             Two men sat either side of me on the seat to support my body. An order was barked to the driver, a door slammed shut and the truck pulled away with a jerk, bumping across the frozen ground. For gods sake, stop now!! I wanted to scream out but managed only a dull groan. As the truck rolled over each stone and rut, pain drilled through me. Gasping for air, I was scarcely able to draw breath. Once again I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness but the terrible pains from my back brought me round immediately. Despairingly I clutched tightly onto one of the men seated alongside me.

          "yes, yes .." I could just make out over the noise of the engine.." you've cracked your skull open well and good! But its no big deal! They'll soon  patch you up in Taganrog. We've taken others like you there before now". What was wrong with my skull - aside from the fact that I had a splitting headache. Agony and shock were welling up inside me.  Either I was going out of my mind with pain  or I was about to die there and then. With the force of desperation I struggled to open my pistol holster on my belt.

"Stop. Stop this now ! - otherwise I'll shoot. I can't do this!"

       Then I lost consciousness again.

       Straw. My hands were touching stalks of straw. Alongside me in the dark, someone was groaning. I couldn't see him. I'd been laid down on what looked like a bed of straw in what was possibly another truck. Another wounded soldier lay alongside me. My senses were gradually returning...with an enormous amount of will power I managed to lift my arm. I slowly slid my hand upwards, groping my way over the sheepskin jacket and paused at a point on my chest where the jacket had acquired an icy sheen. This 'icing' flaked and crumbled when I pressed my fingers into it. I raised my fingers to my mouth to try and identify the substance that I was apparently covered in.

        Blood. My own blood. It had pooled on my chest and frozen like ice in this bitter cold...there was something wrong with my head. Where I should have been able to feel skin and hair there was just a nasty mess. Every move hurt.

         The field hospital. A wrecked school building in Taganrog, dingily lit. A treatment table bathed in a weak half-light. The smell of disinfectant. Hands unwinding the bandages swathed around my head, prodding and feeling the wound they had protected. The voice of the doctor described how the skin on the left side of my skull had been torn away as if some one had been trying to scalp me. My head must have smashed into the canopy-jettison lever in the crash....The last thing I recall is the doctor preparing his needles and then I was given an injection and slipped under.

   I was more dead than alive when I came too later that night. It was impossible to tell what sort of room I was in or how large it was. A single electric light bulb gave off a weak light. From the noises of men groaning and whimpering and the broken snatches of conversation from disturbed dreams I got the impression that there were as many as fifty men lying around me. I had been placed on a trolley that might have seen better days as a bed and next to me someone was seated on a stool - this person seemed to be pleased when he saw me open my eyes and look at him. He had a small, gray face but his most prominent feature was a pair of metal-rimmed spectacles. He wore a crushed forage cap that gave him a decidedly non-military bearing. The rank badges on his Wehrmacht great coat told me that he was an Obergefreiter in the Sanitäts Dienst. He spoke to me in a quiet, friendly voice, as if trying to keep me awake. The terrible pains in my back had soon returned to the point where I found it impossible to concentrate on his words, but the sound of his voice alone kept me from slipping away. Now and again he put a cigarette to my lips and I felt that he was fighting for my life - a life for which the doctors here had done all they could without necessarily being able to save it....I had to go the toilet. There was a rumbling in my bowels and the desire to go was so strong that trying to hold it in made the pains in my back even worse. What could I do? I had to let it out somehow, I couldn't hold it any longer. I felt the shame rising in me. Here I was, Günther Rall, Oberleutnant and Staffelkapitän, victor in 36 aerial combats, having to perform a bowel movement in front of this Obergefreiter. Chatting all the while as if it was the most natural thing in the world, my new friend helped me raise my buttocks and thighs up onto the edge of the bed pan as it was pushed under me. The pain was sheer torture. I thought then that my back injuries must be far more serious than the head wounds I had sustained - I would have rather died of constipation than go through that palaver again.

As day broke I was pushed out of the room into a corridor. Bodies were pushed out alongside me - I counted thirteen of them. At midday I received a visit from my Rottenflieger ; " boy, Herr Oberleutnant", he said a little awkwardly, "that was a real mess with those two Russians.."

"Well, at least I'm still alive Steffan. But I have no idea what happened between the crash and arriving here.."

"You had a stroke of good fortune, Herr Oberleutnant. As luck would have it you came down right into a cleft in the hillside. Your engine was found at least fifty meters away from the fuselage, both wings were torn off instantly in the crash. Then the whole bloody lot with you inside started to slide back down the hill. I didn't see what happened myself. Thank heavens there were some of our tanks in the area - they'd watched the dogfight going on over their heads. One of the tanks rolled out to the crash site and the crew attempted to extricate you from the wreckage - with not much success. In the end they had to take a pickaxe to the canopy - it was stuck fast - and cut you out of the smashed-up crate.."

"It doesn't look as if we'll be flying together any time soon Steffen. I'm in agony I can tell you."

"yeah, I know. We've spoken to the doctor that treated you. Your head injuries aren't as bad as all that - or so he said - at least not as bad as the damage you appear to have done to your spine. He can't do anything else here for you though. There's no x-ray machine to enable them to find out what the real problem is.."

"what a kettle of fish this is ! Whats going to happen now?"

" We'll get the Gruppe transport Ju and fly you to the hospital in Mariupol as soon as the doctor says that you're fit to travel. The main thing is to get you out of this shitty hole. We'll fetch you and pilot you there."

     The next day found my pilot comrades standing around my bed; Steffen, Köppen, a few others, even Edmund Rossman from 7. Staffel. I was carefully lifted onto a stretcher. There were no trucks available, so I was manhandled all the way to the airfield through deep-lying snow and lifted into the Ju 52. Forward from where I was wedged in, two or three window apertures were missing their glass and were open to the icy slipstream. In order to protect me from the worst of the elements the pilots stood with their backs against the opening. One of them slipped me a blank March Order for III./JG 52. I would just have to sign and date it once my convalescense was over to return directly to the unit and thus avoid having to report to some Frontflieger -Sammelstelle or other. Had I ended up there it was likely that I'd be sent to any unit that happened to require a Staffelkapitän.

   Even in Mariupol there were no facilities to enable a correct diagnosis of my spinal injuries. At night the town was bombed by the Red Air Force. A munitions convoy parked a few streets away was blown to smithereens during one raid. I had no idea whether or not I was making any sort of recovery or not since the regular injections of morphine dulled my senses - there was no medical assistance worthy of the term. Until one day when Gotthard Handrick - who was still flying with his Geschwader somewhere between the Crimea and the Don - suddenly appeared at my bedside.

"Don't worry Günther. If I've anything to do with it, you won't waste away here. We've organised your transfer to Bucharest"

By the time I reached Bucharest around three weeks had passed since my crash. I'd spent several days in Taganrog, a further ten in Mariupol, a spell in Chersonnez and had finally arrived in Bucharest at a well-equipped civilian hospital just before Christmas after a lengthy train journey. I was straight away examined by a doctor from Vienna. As he scanned the x-ray films I could see him shaking his head. He didn't beat about the bush.

"Herr Owaleitnant, dös mit'n Fliagn…dös kennan's vagess'n… you can forget about ever flying again "

There was a long moment's silence.

"I will fly again, you can be sure of it Herr Oberarzt.."

"I doubt it very much. You've fractured your eighth and ninth thoracic vertebrae and the fifth lumbar vertebra. ..San's froh, wann's amal wiada laufen kennan…you'll be lucky if you ever walk again.."

.  (to be continued..)