A Long Road Home

By Patrick Harris

1940. Major Peter Hoffa, Luftwaffe ace is shot down a few weeks before the Battle of Britain. He crash-lands his Messerschmitt 109 Emil in a Sussex field. On the run in the land of his enemy, he has one distinct advantage. He speaks perfect English. This is his story and his bid to escape, and return to Nazi Germany to carry on the fight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amolibros
• Release date: Sep 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781908557339

Patrick Harris

Patrick Harris is a former soldier, academic, and corporate lawyer. He has worked in many industry sectors, inlcuding mining, insurance and energy supply. He now writes full time.

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A Long Road Home

by Patrick Harris

Published as an ebook by Amolibros at Smashwords 2012

A daring bid by a downed Luftwaffe ace to escape — set against the backdrop of wartime Europe.

In memory of Mel Harris, 1959 – 2008. We miss you every day.

Copyright © Patrick Harris 2009. First published in 2009 by North Downs Press, 61 Kingshill Drive, Hoo St Werburgh, Rochester, Kent, ME3 9JW

Electronic edition published by Amolibros 2012, Loundshay Manor Cottage, Preston Bowyer, Milverton, Somerset, TA4 1QF tel/fax [phone] | http://www.amolibros.com

Cover painting, In the corner of a Sussex field © Alan Fairbairn.

The right of Patrick Harris to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted herein in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is purely imaginary.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This book production has been managed by Amolibros

About this book

1940. Major Peter Hoffa, Luftwaffe ace is shot down a few weeks before the Battle of Britain. He crash-lands his Messerschmitt 109 Emil in a Sussex field. On the run in the land of his enemy, he has one distinct advantage. He speaks perfect English. This is his story and his bid to escape, and return to Nazi Germany to carry on the fight.

About the author

The author was born in 1950 in Kent and still lives there. He was educated at the Harvey, Folkestone and Chatham Grammar Schools. He has now retired from the petro-chemical industry and is a widower. He has two grown-up children and has recently become a grandfather. This is his first novella, although he has written many short stories and poetry.

Chapter One

Herr Major Returns

The Kuebelwagen dug into a rut causing the driver to fight for control of the steering.

‘Sorry, Herr Major.’ The driver was a girl. Saxon, he guessed from her accent, and from her ample build and ruddy complexion, farming stock.

He smiled his reply.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve been through worse.’

The Kuebelwagen, a military derivative of Ferdinand Porsche’s Volkswagen Beetle, turned past the remains of a French twin-engine light bomber being roughly dismantled by some ground crew using a gas-cutting torch and fire axes. The bomber had been destroyed on the ground, not by him or his Gruppe. They had been involved in fighting northeast of here, over the Belgium border.

This was early July, 1940, and the airfield at Abbeville, located roughly half way between Calais and Paris, was in German hands, like the rest of northern France.

Major Peter Hoffa, Gruppe commander, was returning from medical leave. He had missed the final days of the fighting in France and the Low Countries and their surrender. An anti-aircraft shell fragment had struck the Plexiglas canopy of his Messerschmitt 109E-Emil as he attacked allied troops and their transports, embedding part of an aluminium strengthening-strut in his upper arm.

The subsequent loss of blood pumping from the wound under his heavy flying-suit was very nearly his undoing, but he managed to belly-land the fighter, slithering along on a field of lush growing crops, with surprisingly little damage to the plane. He landed on the German side of the front line and a unit of engineers, with some wounded among them, administered first aid, and then escorted him to a field hospital in a nearby town.

The Kuebelwagen bumped to a halt in front of a camouflaged dispersal pen. Three of the sides consisted of sand-bagged walls; three easy chairs were ranged around an old worn card table. His three ground crew members were seated in the chairs, eating, talking, and seemingly oblivious to his arrival.

This structure was built to house his trusty Emil. She had been recovered and repaired at the central repair depot in Germany. He knew that the plane, old in terms of fighter design, would soon be sent into semi-retirement, possibly with a training group or a reserve Staffel on the Russian or Swiss borders. No one expected the weak Swiss, with their soft lifestyle and cuckoo-clock society, to threaten the Reich.

But the Russian question? Now that was a different story. The older planes would be sent there, as at the moment Germany and Russia were allies. The Russian air force flew out-of-date aircraft and, in the event of any traitorous aggression, Germany’s reserve planes could easily match them, until the full force of the Luftwaffe could be brought to crush them.

The next mark of the Messerschmitt would be allocated to his Staffel. The mark ‘F,’ or Friedrich. They had heard rumours that this was a rushed design. On the Luftwaffe grapevine there were rumoured to be other developmental problems.

A ginger-haired figure leapt from one of the chairs shouting a command as he did so. The two remaining ground crew struggled