大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People's War site by CSV Storeygatherer Celia Bean on behalf of Lionel Green. The story has been added to the site with his permission. And Lionel Green fully understands the terme and conditions of the site.

The Max Fischer Story by Lionel Green

Two miles from the centre of Nuremburg lies the lake 鈥淟angwasser鈥�. My wife and I stood by the edge gazing across the shimmering water at the huge Congress Hall on the opposite shore, about half a mile away. The heat of the mid-day sun encouraged an almost uncontrollable urge to enter the water and swim to the building. This was only one of the many thoughts that drifted through my mind in the fifteen minutes that we stood there. A while before we had viewed the building from another vast granite monument of the Third Reich, the 鈥淪tadium鈥�, easily recognised by people of my generation from memories of Adolph Hitler standing on the saluting base amid giant Swastika Flags. His hand is raised to the roar of Sieg Heil from the hoards of Storm Troopers standing rigidly in line abreast over the whole area of the great arena. The occasional flashback film still brings a chill to the hearts of millions of people.

From the edge of the lake I could clearly see the only fault in the uniform granite block assembly of the Coliseum styled building that appeased the appetite for power in the mind of the corporal dictator of the nineteen thirties. The fault, still showing black burn marks around. the edges was a ragged half circle break in the top edge of the circular Congress Hall. I wondered if on April 17th l943 the Wehrmacht was informed from Nuremburg, the Nazi nest of recruiting rallies, that the Hall had been damaged by a Lancaster bomber. Did anyone ask for a full report of the incident? I could have told them that the wreck of the mangled plane and six of the seven man crew lay strewn on the muddy bottom of Lake Langwasser. The damage was caused by the bomber exploding after diving from three thousand feet ablaze and crippled by ack ack from the Hitler Youth defence battalions. Our target had been Skoda Armaments Factory in Pilzen Czechoslovakia, loaded with high explosive bombs in an effort to slow down Nazi war production. I might also have told how I looked from the astro dome and saw the starboard outer engine burst into flame and, how the inside of the fuselage looked like a Brocks fireworks display.

The order to abandon aircraft had come from my Australian skipper and had accelerated me into a headlong run down the plane and a dive from the rear escape exit. The previous year my brother had given the same order over Cologne. I had thought of the dreadful wait for the Pilot controlling the plunging bomber until the crew evacuated.

My parachute had only been open for a few seconds before the roaring aircraft struck. Blast from the explosion set me swinging violently from side to side on the end of the chute, and this was the second piece of good fortune for me that night. With the tracer shells still screaming past I swung in a series of arcs towards the rooftops of Nuremburg. In the last pendulum curve I missed the steep angled slate roof of a three storey building and found myself hanging about eight feet from the pavement. The silken canopy had draped over a chimneystack to leave me suspended down the wall. Had there been a steady descent I would probably have slithered from the roof and broken my neck. Instead, I was hanging in my harness with a very hostile crowd of Nuremberg citizens gathering below. More were coming from the shelters with revenge in their hearts. We had dropped the entire load of bombs in our efforts to remain airborne.

A youth of about seventeen, three years younger than myself, climbed onto some railings and tried to wrench me down. I hit the release on the harness and we both crashed to the pavement. He promptly proceeded to throttle me with both hands, I threw him off in panic and stood with my hands raised, now I had time to experience real fear. Again I fell to the ground with fists striking me. I felt I was about to die for the third time that night.
My reeling senses returned as a firm hand grasped my battle dress and hauled me to my feet. It was the hand of a man of fine stature, some six feet six inches tall. His powerful German voice gave him control of the situation. The pistol he held waved the crowd to one side and he propelled me down the street. The youth who had fallen to the ground with me also recognized the authority of his countryman and fell into step on my other side. We marched away with the murmuring crowd following some distance behind gradually decreasing in number. The youth gave me a lighted cigarette which I sucked gratefully.

Still somewhat numb from shock, I noticed four men emerge from the large door of a grim building and advance toward us. They were shouting and gesticulating to my protector. Once more he spoke in a deep controlled voice looking at them steadily. The four men moved reluctantly to one side and we continued down the street. I learned later that these men were Nazi party members and the building from which they emerged was the local party headquarters. It seems that their intention had been to take me into the building to kill me, perhaps to demonstrate to the following crowd that the party thought only for the Fatherland.

At last we reached the Police Station and even here the tall Bavarian took command with his overpowering personality. The officer in charge was an old man and, as far as I could gather, he seemed undecided in whose hands he should place me. The words Gestapo and interrogation were spoken, and then Wehrmacht, at last I began to relax.

Until now my rescuer had seemed to ignore my presence as a human being and I felt more like a battered brief case that he had undertaken to deliver. Now he turned to me, hand outstretched and I detected friendship in his eyes. 鈥淕oodbye鈥� he said, 鈥淔or you the war is over鈥�. I heard. this phrase many times during the next two years. This was April the 17th 1943 and the start of two years captivity. Two years to the day.

On the evening of April the 17th l945 my brother and I were assembled, with thousands of other R.A.F. P.O.W鈥檚, on the western banks of the river Wesser. I had met him at Stalag Luft Six in Latvia, near the Russian Border. We stayed together on various prison camps until we had been evacuated from Stalag 357, Hanover in front of advancing Allied armies. We were taken by our guards and marched in ragged P.O.W. columns through forest tracks and back roads for a journey something in the region of a hundred miles very short of food, until that evening we arrived in a village a mile from the river Wesser. Evidently the guards had decided to wait for darkness before marching the columns over a bridge across the river. The object was to avoid being strafed by marauding Allied aircraft which were helping to bring the war to a speedy end by blasting anything on the move. (Sixty P.O.W.鈥檚 in these columns were killed in this manner on Apri1 24th after my brother and I had escaped).

Along with two other prisoners we planned the escape before crossing the river, all sharing the view that the Germans might decide to make a last ditch stand beyond the Wesser. We had no desire to be with them in their last battle.

At midnight our guards assembled about a hundred of the P.O.W鈥檚 in the road. My brother, myself and the two other escapees stood in a line of four at the end of the column. We were all counted by three of the guards, two of them returned to the front and prepared to march us over the bridge. The third remained at the rear. Whilst some friends distracted his attention, the four of us slipped quietly into a drainage ditch at the side of the road. Five minutes after the column moved off we climbed out and broke into a barn and hid ourselves in the loft. We remained there for three days watching the enemy troops and tanks crossing the bridge. On the dawn of the fourth day we heard more tanks. These had a different sound, a different look, they were British.

Fifteen years later a friend of mine showed me an edition of the 鈥淓vening Star鈥� dated July 20th 1959. It was a paragraph headed. 鈥淒o you know him鈥�, and went on to read 鈥淢ax Fischer of Nuremburg wishes to trace the man whose life he saved in 1943鈥�. Followed by the details of the crash. I contacted the newspaper whose reporters introduced me to the person who had inserted the request. She gave me the address of the man who had delivered me safely to the Military in Nuremburg, and I promptly wrote to Max Fischer to thank him. He replied and invited me to visit him and here I was with my wife and son gazing across the lake at Nuremburg.

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