BEST OF JODY’S BOX: MY FATHER WAS A GERMAN ACE IN WORLD WAR II

By Jody Weisel

My father claimed to be an ace in the Second World War. An ace is a pilot who shoots down five or more aircraft, and my father was proud to say that he was a German ace—responsible for the shooting down of five Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses over Europe. The only problem? My father wasn’t in the German Luftwaffe, he was in the U.S. Army Air Corp, flying a B-17 out of Ridgewell, England, with the Eighth Air Force.

His claim is based on the fact that he was shot down five times by Messerschmitt Bf109s, German flak and Focke-Wulf Fw190s. He almost always brought his shot up Flying Fortress, and its ten-man crew, back across the English Channel on however many engines were still running before making forced landings, although once he was brought down near Brussels in “Crack-O-Dawn” and had to stay in a house with 11 members of the French underground. He was shot up in “Stage Door Canteen” over the Rheine Airfield, wounded in “Buckeye” on a sortie to Vechta and wounded again in “Phyliss” on a mission to bomb the Zeitz oil refinery. In the process, he won the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal (with three Oak clusters) and, of course, the Purple Heart. He was 22-years-old.

By comparison, by the time I was 22 I was a fair-to-middling motorcycle racer. I traveled freely around the world, racing in countries that my father had bombed, even staying in luxury hotels not far from where he was holed up with 11 French partisans those many years before. I don’t think that I ever told him how grateful I was for what he and his generation had done for me (or, by proxy, for you). It all happened before I was born, had been replaced with new history and, as a career Air Force pilot, my father had other wars to serve in.

But, I think about it now. The freedom to make a living as a motorcycle racer (and as a test rider as I got older) is something that I can’t take for granted. The blessing of engaging in an activity, even a livelihood, simply for fun is all but impossible for the majority of people on this planet. Those of us who enjoy the fruits of other’s labor can never show enough gratitude to the dog faces, gyrenes, Seabees and fly boys.

As with all Air Force pilots, my father was a motorcycle nut. There was never a time when I was growing up, that he wouldn’t throw me across the gas tank of his Indian or Sunbeam and go blasting around the Strategic Air Command bases that we consecutively called home. To me he was an exacting father, but on his motorcycle or in his airplane he was a different man. He got a big smile across his face whenever he twisted the throttle. In flight, on the ground or in the air, he exuded a sense of freedom I didn’t fully understand. How could I comprehend what freedom meant to men who had risked their lives for it?

I like to think that I inherited my love of motorcycle racing and aerobatic airplanes from my father, but I didn’t. I merely emulated him; copied what gave him joy; savored what the sacrifices of men like him had made possible. I flew aerobatic planes because he did. I rode motorcycles because he did. And, in the cloistered world of motocross, I found a semblance of what he must have felt in the wee hours of the morning before a bombing run to Berlin. The camaraderie of like-minded men; the trepidation of the task ahead; the adrenaline rush of what can be both exhilarating and deadly at the same time; a sense of belonging to something more than the armchair quarterback club; a feeling that what we are about to do is beyond the realm of average men.

It is ludicrous to think of motocrossers in the same breath as World War II pilots, but the parallels are evident on an ideological level. The helmet, goggles, gloves and gear. The pre-race check of equipment, right down to a kick of the tires. The superstitions thought to bring luck, or at the very least, ward off chance. The motion of the dogfight, a swirling mass of men and machines searching for weakness and probing for openings. Ultimately, racing against other machines without thought about the men aboard them. And the relief when we all roll across the line at the end of the day.

I never asked my father about the war. I never dared to wonder out loud if he was ever afraid. Now I can’t because time did what the Luftwaffe couldn’t. More importantly I don’t need to hear the answer. I know that when men are true believers in the job ahead of them, especially a task with inherent dangers and great risks, they have no fear. Even as others around them fail, they believe in their own indestructibility, their own preeminence over fate, their own abilities and the powerful mantra—“It won’t happen to me.” So, the next time you race your $10,000 motocross bike, think about what men your age were doing so many years ago to make it possible.