#stalag luft III | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

major-mads · 5 months

Text

Dulag Luft

Places of Interest in Masters of the Air

Masterlist

When captured by the Germans, Allied airmen would be sent to Dulag Luft, the interrogation and transit POW camp for the Luftwaffe that was just northeast of the city of Frankfurt. This is the camp where Cleven and Egan were held in solitary confinement for weeks before being transported right outside Sagan to Stalag Luft III.

Dulag Luft interrogators were some of the best in the business, and Miller describes them in Masters of the Air as "deeply skilled specialists who preferred methods more subtle than a rubber hose (Miller, 2007, pg. 386)." Many of these interrogators had spent time in America and were fluent in English. The conversation "would begin by offering him chocolate and cigarettes and then draw him into some light banter about American baseball or movies.... [the conversation] became so congenial that many airmen were unaware that the interrogation had begun (Miller, 2007, pg. 386)."

The interrogators had thick folders on each man and their bomb group. They gathered their information from intercepted communications, Stars and Stripes newspaper articles, and anything else they could get their hands on. It unnerved some of the men that the Germans knew such specific details of themselves, their families, and their bombardment groups. The conditions were terrible, and many of the officers were subjected to solitary confinement for weeks at a time.

Miller writes about this in his book:

“Downed Allied airmen felt safer in the hands of the German military than they did with the local citizenry they had bombed. Luftwaffe police and interrogators were in official charge of captured airmen, and their tactics for extracting information were rough but rarely barbaric. After being captured, Lou Loevsky was shipped with other downed American airmen to Dulag Luft, the Luftwaffe interrogation center for Allied airmen at Oberursel, a suburb of Frankfurt am Main. At one point in his interrogation a smiling Luftwaffe major asked Roger Burwell why the men in his 381st Bomb Group at Ridgewell had not yet fixed the broken clock in their officers club. Airmen who refused to provide military or personal information were usually threatened verbally. Some were told that their families would not be informed they were alive and "safe" until they began to cooperate; men captured without identification tags were warned that they could be turned over to the Gestapo to be executed as spies. One stubbornly tight-lipped officer - married and with children - was told that if he persisted in his obstinacy, a report would go out the next day from the German radio station in Calais that the night before he was shot down he had been at the Grosvenor House in London, in room 413, with an attractive blond woman. Knowing that the information was exactly correct, the major is reported to have fainted on the spot. Prisoners were also softened up by the appalling conditions at Dulag Luft: the tomblike isolation, the starvation rations, and the mice that ran free in the dank cells, and crawled in prisoners' pockets searching for food. Sometimes the promise of a shower, a shave, and a hot meal was sufficient to loosen a man's tongue. The guards also fiendishly manipulated the temperatures in the cells, shutting off the electric wall heaters in the winter and turning them up to intolerable levels, to 130 degrees, in warmer weather. Hundreds of airmen arrived at Dulag Luft wounded and were denied medical treatment, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions regarding prisoners of war. "My interrogator said he could see that I was injured and needed treatment and that my being stubborn would only delay my being sent to a hospital," Roger Burwell re-called. On the other hand, high-ranking Allied fliers believed to possess specialized military information were taken on hunting trips or invited to raucous drinking parties with German officers.

Most of the information was gathered from Allied sources by Dulag Luft's efficient staff, who scrutinized American magazines and newspapers brought in from neutral Portu-gal, including Stars and Stripes, a rich source of hometown information about airmen. Additional information, including logbooks, briefing notes, and airmen's personal diaries, was gathered from clothing and other personal belongings found in the charred wreckage of bombers. These documents often contained highly secret data about flight patterns, the effectiveness of German defenses, and targets marked for future bombing. An officer in the American Air Force's Counter Intelligence Corps noted at the time that 'it was not uncommon for large German manufacturers to ask the Luftwaffe if their factories were on the list, and if so, when they could expect to be bombed." German linguists also monitored Allied airmen's wireless communications. According to Hanns Scharff, the interrogators at Dulag Luft had at their disposal a copious file in which "nearly every single word spoken in the air from plane to plane or from base to plane or vice-versa was carefully noted." As Air Force counter-intelligence experts noted in their own secret files, "nothing in the way of documents, written or printed, was too insignificant to merit close scrutiny" by the intelligence staff at Dulag Luft. A case in point is the airmen's ration cards. Every American flier in the European Theater received exactly the same kind of card, and there was nothing on the card to indicate where he was stationed. But investigators at Dulag Luft were able to identify an airman's bomb group by the way his card was canceled. At Thorpe Abbotts, for example, the clerks on duty in the PX marked the cards with a heavy black pencil. The PX counter was made of rough board. All the cards canceled there carried the impression of its distinctive pattern in the black pencil markings. The Air Force's Counter Intelligence Corps estimated that 80 percent of the information obtained by Dulag Luft was supplied by captured documents and monitored radio traffic, with the remainder coming from POW interrogations. After the war, when he was hired as an interpreter by the American military, Hanns Scharff estimated that all but twenty of the more than 500 airmen he questioned disclosed operational and tactical information that proved useful to the Luftwaffe. Few of these airmen, he emphasized, did it knowingly, or through intimidation or a conscious desire to improve the conditions of their confinement. "I suppose he got something out of me," said one flier, "but to this day I haven't the least idea what it could have been." After being released from Dulag Luft, Loevsky and several dozen other airmen were taken by tram to Frankfurt, where they were herded onto cattle cars and sent deep into German-occupied territory to Stalag Luft III (Air Camp number three), near the town of Sagan, a hundred miles southeast of Berlin, one of the half-dozen main POW camps operated by the Luftwaffe hence the term "Luft," or air-for Allied airmen (Miller, 2007, pg. 387-89)."

Dulag Luft was the first stop in a sequence of camps and transportation depots that downed airmen had to go through. Hopefully, we'll get to see more of the camp in the show! We're less than a month away, guys! The wait is almost over!!

tag list: @ronald-speirs @footprintsinthesxnd @georgieluz @sweetxvanixlla @coco-bean-1218 @gloryofwinter

message or comment if you want to be added to the tag list! <3

30 notes · View notes

fuckyeahjeremyclarkson · 11 months

Text

Behind the scenes at the Prison Camps Museum, Żagań (these photos from the museum's Facebook page)

#jeremy clarkson #richard hammond #the grand tour #Eurocrash #the grand tour eurotrash #stalag luft III #the great escape #Muzeum Obozów Jenieckich

14 notes · View notes

tomoleary · 8 months

Text

Hank Porter "Stalag Luft III" WWII Insignia Preliminary Design Original Artwork (Walt Disney, 1940s)

Source

A few more by Hank Porter:

#hank porter #Stalag Luft III #WWII Insignia #original art

3 notes · View notes

california-112 · 1 year

Text

Today is the 79th anniversary of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III!

#the scientist speaks #stalag luft iii #the great escape #like i said. obsessed

1 note · View note

quotesfrommyreading · 11 months

Text

But Germany's military successes left it with the huge logistical problem of what to do with the men scooped up as it surged through Europe. Prisoners were not just British, Commonwealth and American but French, Polish and Dutch and – as countries changed sides – Italian and Russian. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Germans took nearly three million soldiers prisoner in the first four months of fighting; by the end of the war she had nearly six million Russian prisoners. After the Italian Armistice in September 1943, Germany sent 60,000 of her former ally's troops to POW camps. Russian POWs were treated particularly badly and many British POWs are still haunted by memories of the starved and broken bodies they glimpsed through the barbed wire that separated the compounds. Like the Japanese, the Soviet Union had no sympathy for soldiers who had allowed themselves to be taken prisoner and these men (and some women) became non-persons. The Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention and Russian prisoners could expect no assistance from home. While German captors felt a cultural connection with the British men they captured, they had only distrust for the Russians. It was left to other POWs to lob their own precious supplies over the wire to help the starving Russians.

At the start of the war Germany had thirty-one POW camps; by 1945 this figure had risen to 248 – of which 134 housed British and American men. After Mussolini joined forces with Hitler in June 1940, men who were captured in North Africa were usually held in Italy and by the time Mussolini was overthrown and an armistice declared in September 1943 there were nearly 79,000 Allied prisoners in the country. By the end of the year, 50,000 had been taken to Germany and more, like the future travel writer, Eric Newby, who had spent some time on the lose, were later rounded up.

There was a huge diversity of architecture among camps that varied dramatically depending on the prisoner's rank, his escape record and whether or not he was made to work. Andrew Hawarden's first camp of Stalag XXA does not conform to either of the two most common stereotypes of a POW camp – the barbed wire, barrack huts and sentry posts of somewhere like Stalag Stalag Luft III, near Sagan (now Żagań) one hundred miles southeast of Berlin, which Paul Brickhill made famous through his book, The Great Escape, and Colditz, the glowing castle which many people still cannot think of without recalling the ominous music which accompanied the TV series of the same name

Most POW camps were nearer in design to Stalag Stalag Luft III, which was run by the Luftwaffe. In 1940 the German air force decided to build and control separate camps but they were quickly overwhelmed by the intensity of Allied bombing raids and many POW airmen ended up in military camps, albeit in separate compounds. My father's first camp, Stalag IVB, at Mühlberg, near Dresden, was built to hold 15,000 men but at its peak housed double this and included a large RAF contingent.

At first, naval and merchant-sailor prisoners were held at Stalag XB near the North Sea coast at Sandbostel until the German navy took control in 1942, when they were concentrated at a purpose-built site nearby at Westertimke. Naval POWs were held at two compounds (one for officers and the other for petty officers and senior ratings) at Marlag (an abbreviation of Marine Lager). Merchant seamen were held nearby at the larger camp of Milag (Marine-Interniertenlager).

— The Barbed-Wire University: The Real Lives of Allied Prisoners of War in the Second World War (Midge Gillies)

0 notes

kylaym · 3 months

Text

Hammy Murphy and Kitten 👉👈

#masters of the air #hambone hamilton #frank murphy #and the stalag luft iii kitten

25 notes · View notes

floating-hasselblad · 2 years

Text

Crying what’s a POV camp

#i don’t need the pov #I knew a guy who was there #wwii #luft stalag iii

2 notes · View notes

buckysegan · 2 months

Text

We've been waiting for you, John Egan

summary: there's more waiting for john when he gets back from stalag luft iii. john egan x she. word count: 2.1K a/n: something in me felt a little feral tonight and this was needed. a little curvy fmc mention but nothing too much. i just love john egan and would give him all my babies i guess??? again we're rolling with some historical inaccuracies. a continuation from here

it had been five hundred and fifty one days. that was how long it had been since she had seen major john egan. that long since she had slept a whole nights sleep without worrying. that long since she'd known what i was like to be really settled. she tried not to think about it, how much time had passed and how hope seemed to get a little bit worse with each passing day. but it was so hard when she had such obvious proof of just how much john was missing whilst he was away.

she hadn't even realised at first, what the signs were. she had been so consumed in work with more pilots to care for in the hospital than ever before she had barely noticed that she was tired. the nausea was just a sure sign of how much she was missing john. she was confident of it. despite her not eating, the swell of her already generous hips was inconsequential compared to the rest of her worries so she barely paid attention to any of it.

it was douglass, sweet douglass that made the first joke about how if he didn't know better with how often he'd seen her run away to throw up he'd assumed she was pregnant. after that it hadn't taken long for the room to fall silent and for everyone to slowly do some of their own math. the other nurses has scooped her up, rushed her away to the infirmary and sat with her as she did her own calculations on what had happened. three months since she had last bled. dear god.

she should have been sent home. everyone around her knew that was likely when her bump started to show under her uniform and she was ready too, to be sent home and discharged, but the hundredth had always been an unruly bunch and it was almost as if no one could bare to send her away just in case. what would egan do if he got back and they weren't here? no one asked her, who the father might have been, everyone knew without anyone having to utter the words, hardin pulled plenty of strings to keep her around for his boys.

weeks of knowing, turned into months and each of the men around her stepped up in place of their friend. blakely rubbed at her shoulders when she looked a little tired. crosby was around day or night to fetch anything she might have needed. rosie tossed out baby names for girls and boys alike, offering sincere ones and ones that he knew would make her laugh. jack left the traded jacket for her on her bed and no one said a damn thing when she wore it around base. each of them did their best but when she laid on her bunk at night, hands cradling her bump it didn't take away the longing for her major.

those quiet times were when she let herself imagine what it would be like if all of this was happening at different times. how much larger johns rough hands would look splayed across her stretched stomach. just how good he would be at building things ready for the baby and preparing for their impending arrival. the soft spoken words that would have been offered in encouragement through her doubt.

it was two hundred and eighty two days since she had seen john, when the screams of a baby boy filled out a hospital wing and cheers of the hundred went up at the sound. a new soul welcomed into the world and surrounded with so much love despite the fact his dad was stuck somewhere out there.

jokes were passed around at the spirit of baby egan and the hope that he offered for the men. every time the men went up, there he was in the tower reminding them what they were all fighting to come back for. what good in the world still made it all worth while. as cheesy as she had always found it, she knew that the saying it took a village to raise a child had never been truer than it was here in thorpe abbotts.

gale cried when he saw them for the first time. the woman he knew his best friend had been fighting for and the bundle of brown curls in her arms. guilt flooding him that john had allowed him to escape when he had this to return home too. a family. a pair of matching blue and a smile that warmed his heart waiting for him to make it back. he told her as much, that he was sorry and it should have been bucky that made it home and she was quick to remind him that, john egan, wouldn't be the man either of them loved if he had ever left buck behind.

the days seemed to be longer now gale had made it home and she was still waiting on her bucky. each laugh her son offered and mile stone he hit causing a contradiction of emotions in her. joy that she got to witness it all and devastation john was missing it all.

it had been five hundred and fifty one days. that's how long she had been counting when blakely flew into the hospital, douglass and crosby on his tail. "john's home." the two words alone were enough to make her knees buckle as she looked back at the trio, who were all seemingly holding their breaths as they waited for her to respond. she would have cried, with joy, with relief, with the overwhelming sense of emotion that flooded through her. she was going to cry, she was sure of it but right now she needed to see john and she needed to make some introductions. with gale still away on relief mission, everyone knew who john would be asking for first.

bucky could feel something was wrong the second he landed. people had been happy to see him for sure, but there was a buzz around the boys. they were all looking at each other, over him, like they were all sharing a secret he couldn't be privy to right now. it was driving him crazy and that was saying something.

"buck alright?" he found himself asking because if anyone liked to tiptoe around him, it was usually around his best friend but everyone seemed to jovial for that to be the case. even kenny was here with that god damn stupid grin on his face that the rest of them seemed to be wearing. what was he missing?

"yea bucks fine, he's flying today but nothing to worry about, just dropping supplies, we just thought there might be someone else you wanted to see." blakely offered with a nod of his head, and john was sure his face was a continued picture of confusion as he watched the men part like some sort of celebrity was on base but his frown quickly vanished as he saw her. the last time he had seen her this clearly she had kissed him goodbye before they had dragged themselves away from each other.

"we've been waiting for you, john egan." god her voice was even sweeter then he remembered but it was the we in her statement that drew his attention to the small bundle in her arms. a baby. a boy by the looks of it and he felt his stomach drop. she had moved on, of course she had. without him around he wasn't surprised that someone else had scooped her up. he moved to look at each of his men, trying to find which one looked guilty but he was met with more excitement, a little confusion even, what were they surprised he was heart broken she hadn't waited for him.

"you going to stand there all day or are you going to come meet him?" she asked, voice soft as she raised a hand to him and bucky moved towards her without much of a thought because no one seemed ready to stop him and his fingers linked with hers as soon as they were in reach. "you had a baby." john smiled down at her softly, eyes full of wonder as he looked at the small version of herself that she had created.

" i sure did." she nodded with a smile the men hadn't seen in months, the one reserved just for bucky. "i'd like you to meet thomas gale egan." time stood still for a moment then, john was sure of it as he looked between her and the baby she was holding, his blue eyes taking in each feature of the infant before him. their eyes matched he realised after a moment, the dark curls on his head were the wrong shade to be hers, they were his. she was holding his son. "baby...you had my baby?" he asked, as if he needed some sort of further confirmation of what his eyes at told him.

"mhumm, i told you, we've been waiting for you, do you want to hold him?" she offered, her face a mirror of the men around them, all smiles and joy and as john took tommy in his hands with such care she stopped trying to fight the tears that had been ready to spill since she'd heard he was home. with tears rolling down his own cheeks john took in the baby that watched him with what he hoped was quiet wonder, he had a whole baby boy that he had never known about and he was perfect. "thomas gale egan, it sure is good to meet you." reaching a spare arm around her bucky pulled his girl close to his side, unable to move his gaze from his son.

"alright any of you clowns going to tell me what else i missed whilst i was gone?"

he had been sure that he would sleep for hours when he returned to base. that his body would crash and that he would need time to recover but he had never felt more wired than he did as he stretched out in bed. it had taken john far to long to shake the rest of the boys, listening to stories of how each of them had helped his girl at some point. stories of all tommy's firsts since he had been born, the photos they'd managed to get all offered to john so he could piece together the time he had missed.

he'd stepped away from them only to check on gale when he had landed who had offered him the biggest grin and wondered if he had met his name sake yet, john still unable to believe she had named their boy so well.

nothing about his should have surprised him though, she was perfect, she had been before he had gone and now as he watched her tucked into his side sleeping softly like her own body could finally rest. tommy was spread across his chest, warm skin to skin, sound sleep on him with his little mouth wide opened as he showed no sign of being anything other that utterly content as he slept on his dad, one of john's hand spread across his tiny back taking up the whole space but to afraid to let him or his mom go as if either of them might vanish on him.

feeling her stir a little in his arms john pulled his gaze from tommy for a second to meet sleepy eyes, his chest flooding with more love for her than he had ever thought possible when he'd had to leave her a life time ago now. "you struggling to sleep?" she asked, her voice thick with sleep as she checked on tommy for a second before her eyes met john's once more. "i'm scared i'm still in that camp and neither of you are real." his confession was quiet as he offered it and with a soft hum, she pushed gently, pressing her lips to his. "sleep daddy, we will both be here in the morning."

"i just want to watch him a little longer." john offered quietly, tucking her back into his arm so she could sleep once more. if he never slept again it wouldn't be a shock to him. how he was ever meant to stop looking at this? well bucky just didn't know. "thanks for waiting for me, baby." he offered, to her sleeping form, lips pressing a kiss to the top of her own curls. he'd been waiting for them too, he'd just not known how to dare dream of it, till they were here in his arms.

#john egan #john egan x reader #mota drabble #callum turner #mota fanfic #im seriously in my own feels rn #bucky egan

419 notes · View notes

clevervonskelli · 3 months

Text

I'm trying to focus on what I liked about Episode 7 and my brain is just looping a few things.

-Was that Colonel Alkire at the camp heading up compound staff? I missed if he was named, but if so, I'm quite pleased to see him.

-Frank Murphy getting a letter from his mom ❤️

-The way the show approached the Great Escape. They managed to keep the focus entirely on the tragedy and incredulousness of the situation, and on how it could directly impact the American prisoners in the other compounds. It felt very balanced and very Great Escape in the context of MotA, not Great Escape eclipsing the show.

- MUSTANGS!!!!! MotA is a bomber-centric show and B-17s are incredible in how they can be beat to hell and keep flying, but fighter planes will always be my first love when it comes to WWII.

-Von Lindeiner's removal from his position as commodant being mentioned. He's someone I find very interesting, plus it's nice to have that hint of how there was a whole world of politics going on when it came to the running of the camps and the tension between the Luftwaffe and the Gestapo.

- I loved all the fountain pen shots we got to see this ep when folks were writing.

#gotta focus on the good #masters of the air #mota spoilers #MotA #MotA: Episode 7 #ngl when they were saying who thier letters were from I pulled an Egan and said “his mom!!” when Frank was talking. i love Frank's mom #I say compound staff bc which compund? unclear. Some of the lads were in South and asked to move to Center #but then they were apparently in West at the time of the march so idk we're just winging it at this point #the p-51s could have had more/better screen time but the Tuskegee boys will be here soon hopefully #frank murphy #darr alkire #Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau #gonna leave out all the middle names bc holy hell would that be a long tag #stalag luft iii #hbo war #ken lemmons

20 notes · View notes

majorhortonisonleaveinlondon · 2 months

Text

If you’re wanting to watch Band of Brothers/The Pacific/Masters of the Air in chronological order with BoB 1st Currahee episode split up in the dates on screen I made a list

(Updated: April 12, 2014 7:58pm pst)

July, 10 1942 Easy Company Trains in Camp Tocca (Band of Brothers Ep. 1 Currahee 2001) August 7, 1942, Allied forces land on Guadalcanal (The Pacific Ep. 1 Guadalcanal/Leckie 2010) September 18, 1942, 7th Marines Land on Guadalcanal (The Pacific Ep. 2 Basilone 2010) December 1942 The 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal is relieved (The Pacific Ep. 3 Melbourne 2010) *June 23, 1943, Easy Company Trains in Camp Mackall N.C. (Band of Brothers Ep. 1 Currahee) * June 25, 1943, 100th Bomb Group flew its first 8th Air Force combat mission (Master of the Air Ep. 1 2024)

July 16, 1943 the 100th Bomb Group bombed U-Boats in Tronbhdim (Masters of the Air Ep.2 2024) August 17, 1943 the 4th Bomb Wing of the 100th Bomb Group bombed Regenberg (Masters of the Air Ep. 3 2024) *September 6, 1943, Easy Company Boards transport ship in Brooklyn Naval Yard (Band of Brothers Ep. 1 Currahee)* September 16, 1943, William Quinn and Charles Bailey leave Belgium (Masters of the Air Ep.4 2024) September 18, 1943 -*East Company trains in Aldbourne, England (Band of Brothers Ep. 1 Currahee)* -John 'Bucky' Egan returns from leave to join the mission to bomb Munster (Master of the Air Ep.5 2024) October 14, 1943, John ‘Bucky’ Egan interrogated at Dulag Lut, Frankfurt Germany (Masters of the Air Ep. 6 2024) December 26, 1943, 1st Marine Division lands on Cape Gloucester (The Pacific Ep. 4 Gloucester/Pavuvu/Banika 2010) March 7, 1944, Stalag Luft III Sagan, Germany, Germans find the concealed radio Bucky was using to learn news of the War (Master of the Air Ep.7 2024) *June 4, 1944, D-Day Invasion postponed (Band of Brothers Ep. 1 Currahee)* *June 5, 1944 Easy Company Boards air transport planes bound for Normandy (Band of Brothers Ep. 1 Currahee)* June 6, 1944, 00:48 & 01:40 First airborne troops begin to land on Normandy (Band of Brothers Ep. 2 Day of Days 2001)

June, 7 1944 Easy Company Takes Carentan (Band of Brothers 3x10 Carentan)

August 12, 1944, The 332nd Fighter Group attack Radar stations in Southern France (Masters of the Air Ep.8 2024)  September 15, 1944 U.S. Marines landed on Peleliu at 08:32, on September 15, 1944 (the Pacific Part Five: Peleliu Landing)

September 16, 1944 Marines take Peleliu airfield (the Pacific Part Six: Airfield)

September, 17 1944 Operation Market Garden -(Band of Brothers 4x10 Replacements)

October 22/23, 1944, 2100 – 0200 Operation Pegasus (Band of Brothers 5x10 Crossroads)

October, 1944 Battle of Peleliu continues (the Pacific Part Seven: Peleliu Hills)

December 16, 1944 Battle of the Bulge (Band of Brothers 6x10 Bastogne) 

January, 1945 Battle of Foy (Band of Brothers 7x10 The Breaking Point) 

February 14, 1945 David Webb rejoins the 506th in Haguenau (Band of Brothers 8x10 The Last Patrol)

April 5, 1945 506th Finds abandoned Concentration Camp (Band of Brothers 9x10 Why We Fight 2001)

April 1-June 22, 1945 Battle of Okinawa (The Pacific Part Nine: Okinawa) 

May 7, 1945, Germany Surrenders V-E Day - (Master of the Air Ep. 9 2024) - (Band of Brothers 10x10 Points 2001)

August 15 The Empire of Japan surrenders end of the War (The Pacific Part Ten: Home)

#band of brothers #the pacific #masters of the air #HBO War Fandom

226 notes · View notes

jakes3resin · 13 days

Text

Honestly so intrigued by the idea of a role swap between Bucky and Gale when it comes to who took the London weekend pass and who got shot down first.

Gale convinces Harding to give both of them a weekend pass thinking that's the only way to convince Bucky to take a break, paint the town red in London until Bucky starts to feel better, but Bucky says no like Gale did. Gale still goes because he needs a break from missions, from base life, and, as much as he hates to admit it, from Bucky himself right now.

Bucky goes up like Gale did, and Bucky doesn't come back like Gale did.

Gale has a calmer time in London than Bucky, but he still sees the headlines about the 8th and the lost 30 bombers. The panic that runs through him would probably mirror the panic Bucky felt. The urgent need to know what happened, thoughts spinning as he tells himself that Bucky wasn't one of the men the papers say got shot down.

Gale's widow arc after escaping was characterized by desperation, a quiet bone deep desperation tinged by Gale's guilt at leaving Bucky behind. The pain that Bucky gave up his chance at freedom for him cut deep into him. There was some rage during the escape, but once he got to England, you could tell Gale's strings had been cut. His rage melted into grief and desperation. He held white knuckled to the hope, the delusion even, that Bucky was fine, he's always fine, he just had to stay for the men.

His grief after learning Bucky went down in a role swap would be closer to rage, I think. Rage at the Germans sure, but rage at Bucky mostly. Gale tried to get him to London, damn near begged him to come with him because he knew something was going to happen if he didn't get Bucky out of that cockpit.

Of course, the anger is just so he can hide how much Bucky's 'death' is killing him. He's good at hiding his emotions by slipping on a mask and burying them deep within himself, but everyone can see he isn't doing well. The grief and rage are just too much. Gale's slipping, and without Bucky, no one knows how to help him. This isn't the Major Cleven they know. This is the Buck without his namesake that none of them ever expected to see.

Gale would do as Bucky did. Leave London and demand that he be placed on the next possible mission. The pair are a bit too similar sometimes, and he'd want back in the saddle before he processed his emotions. He's back on base when everyone knows Harding didn't call him in from London. He's standing silently at the bar, not ordering a thing simply there because he's still so used to his routine with Bucky that nowhere else feels right. At least here he's with the men. At least here he can pretend Bucky's asking the bartender to fill up his flask. At least here he can be haunted.

No one knows how to handle Buck like this. They've never seen Buck like this with his emotions so volatile as his mask slips. Benny tries to talk to him, but Gale shrugs him off. Jack and Red both try to talk to him, but Gale simply asks when the briefing is. No one can get through to him.

Gale leaves behind Bucky's lucky deuce. He'd carried it for Bucky's sake, and now there's no Bucky to worry.

Oh but what if that's where the role swap ends? Buck still ends up at Stalag Luft III before Bucky, and it's the final nail in Bucky's coffin for Buck. Bucky isn't here. Gale's lost any hope he'd gained seeing Brady and Crank waiting at the fence. Even when Brady swears Bucky bailed before him, he grieves.

Everyone's sure that they're going to lose Gale now. You need strength and at least some measure of hope or fight to survive the camp, and Gale has none of that. He really did think that they'd be the last two left in the air when all of this was over. That dream doesn't matter when he's the only one left. He lost everything when Bucky went down.

Two days later, Bucky walks through the fence, and the heart that stopped beating in Gale's chest back in London finally starts up. Hope returns, and with it, his will to see both of them through this.

#mota #masters of the air #buck x bucky #clegan #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #gale cleven #buck cleven #bucky egan #john egan #role swap au #buckbucky

116 notes · View notes

mastersoftheair · 3 months

Text

buck & bucky @ stalag luft iii:

#masters of the air #hbo war #e6 #john egan #gale cleven #masters of the air spoilers #mota spoilers

114 notes · View notes

middlingmay · 22 days

Text

This one's for @pirateaangel, who requested a feelings realisation fic based in Stalag Luft III, with Gale in denial, Bucky acting out, and a chase into the night.

I hope you like it! Read under the cut.

I do accept fic requests if you have them, though feeling a bit of the midweek blues so would particularly welcome something upbeat this week!

After the men were seen to, and Gale had personally checked they had all the meagre offerings a desperate place like Stalag Luft III could possibly offer - blankets, one pillow, and a bunk to put ‘em on, medical attention (if not intervention), and some barely passable food and water - perhaps John Egan should not have been the first thing on his mind.

But there he was, as large and demanding and present in Gale’s head as he ever was in person. That had been the way of it ever since Bucky had wormed his way into Gale’s affections, into his friendship: whenever the responsibilities of leadership waned, and Gale was left with a few moments of quiet, his thoughts invariably turned to John, at least for a moment.

What trouble is he gettin’ into?

He better not have forgotten to eat again.

He’s gotta stop pissin’ off the Colonel. For a guy so affable, he sure did have a problem with Colonels.

Gale wasn’t some obsessive dame or nothin’. Just, someone had to look out for John whilst he looked out for everyone else, and Gale got the job.

Gale liked the job. Whenever anyone jokingly offered to take the other Major off his hands for a while, Gale would smile with the rest of them, but managed to keep John as his, well, as his somethin’.

And here in Poland, now that the quiet had descended and the men were all privately coming to terms with their new lot in this war, Gale wondered who’s job it was now.

Who told him that Gale went down? It was chaos, and he wasn’t convinced anyone would have observed any chutes. John would have sat there, fresh faced and relaxed after enjoying his leave in London, and have to hear 'No record', about where his buddy went down.

Gale wondered if it was vanity that made his assume John would be at least a little cut up about it. Lord, he hoped John didn’t drink over him.

If there was a way for him to write John, let him know he was okay, he would have done it. He woulda done anything, to spare his friend the grief.

Because if it were the other way around? If he’d had to find out that John had gone down, with no record, whilst he’d been yucking it up in London? Gale woulda drowned in that kind of guilt. Only the responsbility towards the other men in the plane with him the next time he took to the air would stop him from doing something reckless and final in the name of John Egan, KIA.

And in the relative privacy of his bunk, in the dark, Gale let himself wonder if that was normal? If it was something other men felt about bonds forged and severed by war.

And like always, he pushed the thought away. Course it was normal. It was known. There was no Buck without Bucky. And vice versa. Which gave him hope of a future out of this POW camp. So long as John was out there fighting the good fight, Buck could still exist.

It was also why he was equal amounts elated and devastated to see Brady two days after their internment at Stalag Luft III.

After Gale had secured them a bunk, and the fellas left to give Brady and Murph their space to settle, Brady had grabbed Gale’s wrist as he went to walk away.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you alive, Major,” Brady said, though there was no trace of joy on his face. Only something grim and sad.

“What is it, Brady?”

It took the pilot a few moments to gather his courage but he tugged on Gale’s wrist and he sat on the edge of Brady's bunk and listened.

“John was the commanding pilot on the mission.”

And Brady, for his part, got the front hand seat to both Egan and Cleven's grief at hearing the other went down. He watched the breath leave Major Cleven, watched something shutter behind his eyes, watched him swallow convulsively around words he didn’t want to ask but desperately wanted to know.

“Is he—do you know if—?”

“He bailed. I made sure of it, Major,” and Brady grabbed him with a mad sort of desperation, trying to make Gale understand in a way he couldn’t with John. “We were right behind each other, but we got seperated on the way down and the German’s were shooting at us as we fell…”

No record. More or less.

So that’s what it felt like. Cold, icy panic stabbing at his belly. Roiling nausea sparking up his throat. A floaty, buzzing sense that blinded him to Brady, and the fellas, and the bunk house, and landed him in a flak-ridden freefall with John Egan.

Had it been a hard landing? The kind that killed you on impact? Had it been soft and now he was all alone in enemy territory? Had he died before he hit the ground, or had German guns put one through his head and he fell to earth limp and gone, like a doll?

“..jor? Major!”

Brady looked at him concerned. The other fellas had returned and were shooting looks their way. Gale wasn’t sure how much they heard. Digging down to find that steel core John liked to tease him about, he stood from Brady’s bunk.

“Brady’s just informed me he’s missing one from his crew. Major Egan might still be out there.”

An excited chatter erupted amongst the boys. Benny grinned and slung his arm around Crank. The effect John had on people was astounding. In the middle of this miserable goddamned place, he still brought cheer and hope.

He let them have it, even if Gale wouldn’t allow it for himself.

Then, after a few more days, when the men were getting more and more despondent at the lack of familiar faces staggering into the camp, he heard it.

“Bucky! John!”

“Murph? Crank?!”

“Do any of you know if Buck made it? Do any—”

And of all the things swirling in his head as he stumbled towards the barbed wire fence, he found himself shouting, raspy and loud, “John Egan! Your two o’clock!”

He’d seen the back of John, grubby and dirty and greasy like the rest of ‘em when they'd came here. But when John whirled round on hearing his voice, and Gale saw the blood and the bruises and the sticky, rotten evidence of everything that had tried to keep John from stumbling into their camp - from coming back to him - and he saw John lighting up with relief and joy aimed at the sight of Gale, that fierce feeling he kept in his chest for John flared and caught and burned, and damn near choked him with the horror of it.

Because when John all but collapsed into his arms, and Gale couldn’t stop himself from clutching him right back until the tips of his fingers were white, he knew. He knew he loved him in ways he didn’t love the rest of their men, and he loved their men from the 100th. But Gale loved John in ways that kept him up at night. He loved him in ways that had him knowing just how many freckles John got in the sun, especially over his eyes. He loved him in ways that hurt with worry when John wasn’t there, and with a fury whenever John put himself in danger.

Gale loved John in a way that was dangerous here. And as he led John back to their hut, and got him squared up with a bunk next to his and called for a medic and got him clothes and bedding and water and food, he vowed to himself that he wouldn’t let his love endanger John.

Not here, not now, not ever.

And he tried, but he struggled.

It was ingrained into him, taking care of John. John was the mama hen of the 100th, don’t be fooled. He’d joked once about making a nest for the dodos when he was shipped off to England ahead of them all, but it wasn’t really a joke. He got the boys little things to make them more comfortable, made sure they got the chance to blow off steam to keep them sane, went toe-to-toe with the higher ups to defend the boys as best he could, and was the hand at their back when they stumbled.

Gale wasn’t like that. John liked to rib him and tell him he was the 100th’s poster boy, but in one of his more serious moments, he'd expanded:

“I’m serious, Buck. I don’t just mean all this,” he’d gestured all over Gale with a lopsided grin. “The boys look up to you. They copy you, try to emulate you. When they see you calm and steady, that’s what they do. When they see you thinking all careful, they give a little more thought, too. Ain’t no bad thing.”

But with John, caretakin’ came natural to Gale. And in the camp, it was no different. And that was the problem.

Whenever John winced, Gale was at his side propping him up, hands soothing over his back. But as soon as he righted himself, Gale abandoned him again for space and distance.

When John started coughing Gale gave him his own ration of hot water and helped him drink it down through the spluttering, but when John tried to touch his hands, in thanks or comfort, Gale snatched them away.

One night when Gale let his guard down and was telling John about how they got there, his eyes were far away and he didn’t see John’s hand reach out. But he felt the shock of John’s finger tips tracing the scar on his cheek.

Gale had frozen, words stuck in his throat and muscles locked as John rubbed his thumb back and forward.

And God, did it burn. It burned and tingled so good and Gale wanted to sob and drop his head into John’s hand but he couldn’t. He’d get them killed. He had to get them out of here in one piece and get back to Marge and marry her to keep both him and John safe from Gale’s love.

So when John opened his mouth to speak, Gale snatched up John’s wrist in a tight grip, and said firm and fierce, “Don’t.”

Things changed after that.

The distance that suddenly sprang up between the Majors became painfully clear to the rest of the 100th stuck with them in Stalag Luft III. Hell, it became clear to folks outside of the 100th, who had listened to heroic, humanising stories about the Buckies - the famed leaders of the Bloody Hundredth.

Gale avoided John at all costs. He still tried to do little things for him, he couldn’t help that compulsion, but when he left a biscuit from his Red Cross package on John’s pillow just before lights out, he felt it hit the back of his head as soon as dark hit. When he tried to give John easier jobs as he and the rest of the boys built up their strength, John would glare at him and take himself off to the tree stumps or the races the boys set up out of spite.

And if John hated him, that would have been easier. But when Gale overheard someone bitching about his orders, he also overheard a smack and a curse and caught sight of John stalking away from a young man clutching the back of his head. When Gale tried to give his food away just to cheer someone up, he felt John’s glare on the back of his head and more than one fellow had refused Gale’s offer, stammering and glancing between Gale and wherever John glowered behind him.

Gale just couldn’t stop loving him.

It came to a head when they tried to rebuild the radio.

Something in Gale had crumbled when the goons found the first one, and he threw himself into building a new one. And John, temporarily forgetting his righteous fury with Gale, constantly dropped bits and pieces he remembered they needed from the last one in front of Buck.

And one night, after everyone had gone to sleep and by the barely-there light of one dull candle, Gale thought he finally finished it. He let out a stunned breath, the cold billowing it in front of him, and fell against the back of his seat.

“Hey,” Bucky whispered from his bunk before scrambling from under the thin and ratty blanket. “You okay? What is it?”

Gale eyed the radio warily before flicking his eyes to Bucky. “I think - I think it’s finished.”

John’s eyes lit up with delight and pride and Gale flushed but couldn’t look away.

“Alright then,” he smiled. “Never doubted you. You wanna give it a try?”

The notion filled Gale with terror, but also with a desperate sort of eagerness and he couldn’t have said no if he tried. So he didn’t say anything, and only nodded.

With trembling fingers, and John by his side hurrying into the chair next to him and dragging himself as close as he could get, Gale tried to bring the radio to life.

Nothing.

But it was alright. The last one took a couple of tries, too.

But again, nothing.

And nothing.

Gale’s eyes burned and his throat tightened and the disappointment felt like lead shot right in his belly.

“Fuck,” Bucky cursed softly in his ear. One of those large, heavy hands came up to Gale’s neck and squeezed. “I’m sorry, Buck.”

And it was too much. It was too much because that hand was the only thing grounding him and Gale wanted to grab on to it and never let go. He wanted to bring it to his mouth and press his lips against the callouses and the veins and the heartbeat underneath. He wanted to trust it to muffle the cries of frustration he was choking on.

He slapped John’s hand away and the sound cracked in the silence. The hurt cutting through the softness Bucky somehow still retained for him hit him louder though, and Gale dragged in a breath so ragged, he hoped it sounded like anger.

Anger he could nurture right now. Not love.

But so could John. Oh, so could John.

Those dark blue eyes sparked angry in the dull light and he muttered low and spiteful, “The fuck is wrong with you, Buck, huh? What’s your problem?”

He couldn’t tell him. He couldn’t tell him. He couldn’t tell him despite the words thumping against his chest, beat after beat after beat.

“I ain’t got no problem,” Gale hissed, jaw tense and somehow, miraculously, managing to hold John’s angry gaze with his own. “If you hadn’t been such a child lately, I’d have been able to focus on this properly instead of keeping an eye on you—”

John’s eyebrows met his hairline. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

And before Gale could snipe back John barrelled over him. “Whose the one that’s scrounged up most of your materials for both radios, huh? Do you have any idea what I head to do to get all that? Twice? No. Because youv’e had your head up your ass about something, avoiding me. Keeping an eye on me? Gale? You can barely stand to fuckin’ look at me.”

Gale bit the inside of his cheek bloody trying to ignore the crack of John’s voice, which the older man coughed away with a sneer and a grit of his teeth.

Through the blood and saliva, Gale said, “You’ve been impossible to be around, John.”

Impossible. Because every moment Gale spent near him, it was harder and harder to control himself and remind himself why he couldn’t just have what we wanted, who he wanted, the love he wanted, just this once.

“Like you would know?! What - what did I do, Buck? Huh? What did I do? ‘Cause I’ve been spiralling here, barely holding it together, and the one goddamn thing that has me holding it together is you, and now it feels like I don’t even have that.”

“John-” Gale pleaded. He pleaded, to John, to whatever force, heavenly or otherwise that might listen and bless him this repreieve.

And John reared back in his seat and Gale saw the worst thing he might have seen in this war: defeat settle in the eyes of Major John Egan.

John who whispered thick and sorrowful, like loved ones at a bedside vigil, “That’s it, huh? I did go and lose you to this war after all?” And in the protection darkness offered, Gale saw that John let his eyes fill with grief he wouldn’t quite let spill.

“Why did you go, Buck? What did I do?”

In violent contrast to the softness of John’s grief, Gale sprang from his chair, the wood screeching against the floorboards and grabbed him a tangled, gnarled fistful of John’s shirt. John didn’t fight back; he only reared back in shock and his legs sprawled open to try and keep his balance as Gale stepped into the space between and bent Bucky back at a painful angle over the back of his chair and snarled in his face,

“You made me love you, you goddamn sunnuva bitch.”

And Gale took a full, harsh, selfish kiss all his own. He breathed in sharp at the drag of dry lips which told him that they might be down but they were fightin’ and alive, and he pushed into the heat of Bucky’s mouth and let himself claim one hungry taste of John Egan, before he made his hands, which had somehow come to clutch Bucky by the throat, push him away.

“That’s why.”

And Gale stalked out into the night. Curfew be damned.

He got maybe, half way down the side of their hut, heading for the shadows that would hide him from the goons, before he heard footsteps he would know blind come running after him.

Well. If Bucky was going to retaliate, may as well be now in the dark, in one of the few hidden spaces they had, instead of in front of their men in broad daylight.

John had never been a violent man, but maybe if he decided to smack some sense into Gale, he could knock this feeling out of him.

So when a hand grabbed Gale’s bicep so hard it pinched the skin and he knew there’s be bruises like fingerpaints there tomorrow, he didn’t fight it. He let John drag him further down the gaps between the huts and shove him against the cold and damp wood. He let John grab his neck and the back of his hair, and he didn’t say anything even as the man faltered when he got a look of Gale’s face. What did he see? Defeat? Desperation? The grief that in a few short moments, Buck and Bucky, the most important, defining, greatest relationship of his life would be over, all because he let his control slip just once-

“Then we’re even, you stupid, stupid bastard.”

John slid his hand around the back of Gale’s neck, tightened his hold on the back of his head and hauled Gale up until he was damn near on his toes, and he wasn’t even that much shorter than Bucky, and swept Gale up in his scent, his presence, and his taste.

John kissed him. Out there in the dark, on the precipice where Gale thought he would be expelled from John’s orbit altogether, John kissed him. It weren’t sweet like he imagined John kissed the dames, and it weren’t rough like Gale had kissed him.

John kissed like he was hungry. He pressed full and heavy and kiss after kiss onto Gale’s lips; sucking on his bottom lip, nipping at its plumpness, and when Gale sobbed when John angled his head just so and pulled Gale in even further, John slid his tongue against Gale’s and the shock, the vibrancy, the life it sent thrumming through him had him weak. And John continued to devour. The hand at Gale’s head came under his chin and tilted his head up so John could lick all the way down Gale’s tongue, caress him on the way back up, only to do it all again. Gale’s breaths were short and panting. Was this what is was like to come back to life? When they restarted your heart? He felt his heartbeat, their pulse, in his mouth and it guided him to yank John down and give as good as he got. He swallowed John’s groan down his throat. He finally, oh finally, got a handful of those curls and pulled, and John whined high and pretty and got his hands under Gale’s thighs and hauled him up, just off the ground, so the only thing keeping him upright was John’s body pressing him against the back of the hut and one of John’s thighs which slid between Gale’s own legs-

And Gale had no choice but to break off the kiss with a curse and another tug on John’s hair. “Fuck, Bucky.”

Pressed chest to chest, their heartbeats felt like rapid fire.

And Bucky’s hands, holding onto his waist, and the breaths Bucky huffed into Gale’s ear, and the solidity of his presence slowly lowered Gale back down to earth until his feet touched the ground.

Bucky dropped his head to Buck’s.

Gently, sweetly, he kissed Buck’s crown. “Next time, Buck, save a girl some heartache and just buy me some flowers.”

A little hysterical, Gale snickered into Bucky’s neck. “M’sorry,” he mumbled against the skin. “I just don’t know how—”

John hummed and pulled Gale back by the scruff and dropped his head so they were forehead to forehead. “Me either. But you’re the smartest person I know - when I’m there to get’cha outta your head, at least.”

Gale kicked his shin half-heartedly.

“You and me, Buck,” John said. “Just like I told you.”

And for now, Gale let himself believe.

#clegan #john egan #gale cleven #fic #mota #masters of the air #buck x bucky #fic request

80 notes · View notes