Paul Brickhill

As he pondered this problem, there were two events that demonstrated Bader’s fame even here
among his enemies.
First, the Germans told him that the British were indeed sending him a spare leg, and Field
Marshal Hermann Goering himself, head of the Luftwaffe, had approved it being dropped by
plane.
Second, he was invited to a local air base by General Adolf Galland, a renowned Luftwaffe ace
and clearly an admirer of his.
Bader was intrigued. It would be churlish to refuse, and in any case it brought a breath of the
chivalry lost from modern war.
And it was a chance to spy out the country, to see the other side, life on an enemy fighter station,
to weigh it up and compare.
The two duly met — Bader now back in his uniform — and chatted like old friends. They had
tea in the mess, with waiters in white coats bringing sandwiches and real English tea.
He reflected to himself that it could have been an RAF mess, except that all the other uniforms
were wrong.
Galland even allowed Bader to climb inside the cockpit of a Messerschmitt, which he did, hauling
himself on to the wing and swinging in unaided.