This is the second of Jonathan Nicolas‘s books that I have read. I really enjoyed his first foray into the second world war genre with Kittyhawk Down, and so it was with no hesitation that I bought his latest book, Vermisst – Missing in Russia.
The book is divided into 3 parts, starting with Paul Goetz joining the Luftwaffe as an enlisted aircraft mechanic. It follows his journey through his own wide eyed wonder at being part of the mighty German military machine, as he learns his trade and becomes a skilled aircraft technician. As the war progresses though Germany is losing more and more pilots and Paul is selected for flight training, finally realising his childhood dream of becoming a fighter pilot. This part of the book is one that I really connected with, as you can just feel Paul’s joy for flying through Jonathan’s written word – it’s obvious that the author is a pilot himself as you read the prose. As the joy of flight training, cross country trips and the countless ‘firsts’ you experience as a student pilot are recanted with authentic first-person enthusiasm.
Part two focus’s on Pauls posting to the eastern front and the relentless combat sorties he and his colleagues fly. This is where the story starts to take a darker turn as Paul begins to realise what Nazi Germany really represents and what the SS are doing to whole communities of people. I won’t go into too much detail here but there is one particularly graphic description in this section that really haunted me. The author has done a superb job of conveying the horror that I’m sure many German servicemen felt when they fully understood what the SS were really doing.
Eventually Paul’s luck runs out after surviving quite a few close encounters with death, and many forced landings, he is shot down and captured by the Russians. This final part of the book covers his incarceration in Russia, and his treatment as a prisoner of war. I had no idea that Russia kept German prisoners of war until nearly 1950 – and the heart-breaking brutality of their treatment of PoWs, rivalling anything the Nazi’s did, is another thing that kept me hooked to the end.
The book is a long read, but, its broken up into Jonathan’s trademark short chapters of 3 or 4 pages in length, which are easy to consume in short sittings. The writing is in the first person, which adds to the depth of the story and makes it feel more like a non-fiction account, rather than a novel about WW2. This helped me really get invested in the character, and is the same style that Jonathan used so effectively in Dennis Copping’s story in Kittyhawk Down.
Overall its a fantastic book that I couldn’t put down once I got started. Its fairly unique (note to pedants, I realise that using the word fairly and unique together is an oxymoron) in that I don’t think there are too many English language stories of Luftwaffe pilots in world war 2 out there. Personally, I also really got a lot out of it as at school we weren’t really taught anything about the German perspective on WW2 – and how a large part of the population had been indoctrinated into Hitler’s Nazi fantasy since their youth.
The gradual unpeeling of the blinkers from Paul’s eyes is supremely delivered and I ended up really feeling for him, and his colleagues.
If you like a good war story with drama, twists, turns, sex and drugs – then Vermisst – Missing in Russia will not disappoint you.
Highly recommended.
Dan Roach Flying Author 