The Last Knight

I came across a photograph of a German Focke Wulf 190 fighter crash-landed in a snowy field. All photographs have a story to tell, and not knowing the tale behind this picture, I gave it one.

War makes enemies of those who would well be friends in peace, and in war it is easy to forget that both friend and foe are more alike than different. The struggle of nations, the clash of ideologies and systems, the simple fight for survival down to which all war devolves in battle -- these things make demons of the enemy and turn them into faceless, nameless monsters to be killed. The evil which nations do in aggregate is always passed down upon its individual soldiers and citizens, no matter their complicity or innocence, and it becomes all too easy to forget that our enemies are not demons, but human beings, just like ourselves. Human beings who, whether ally or enemy, share the common human love of friend and family, and, in the end, human beings who will fight as last knights to protect them, giving their best, and their all.

Post Script: I did, eventually, find the actual story for the photograph. On March 11, 1943, Feldwebel (Flight Sargeant) Kurt Dombacher and his wingman, Feldwebel Theobald Jasbecmade, suddently flew into bad weather and became lost. Dombacher made a successful forced landing on the Norwegian island of Tarva; Jasbeck and his aircraft were never seen again, probably having crashed at sea. Dombacher was, in many ways, a Last Knight, one of the relatively few German fighter pilots who survived the war. Flying over 800 missions and scoring 68 kills, Dombacher received the Iron Cross. He was captured by the Soviets at war's end, and held for five years before being released in 1950. A warrior and protector at heart, Dombacher returned to service in 1956, and reached the rank of major in the Bundeswehr, the unified armed forces of West Germany. He retired in the 1970's, and died at the age of 73 on October 8th, 1993, in Rust, Germany, having lived to see the downfall of his once enemy, captor and decades-long national adversary, The Soviet Union.