Colonel Hans von Hammer, now grounded from combat flying due to age, was among the officers posted to 12th Luftwaffe Field Division when it was formed in early 1943. In the autumn of 1943 Hammer was promoted from battalion to regimental commander. In this excerpt from his memoir, The Hammer of Hell, Hammer speaks of a most unusual soldier that he encountered during his ground combat service.

Enemy Ace: The Doom-Sayer

I spent hours being briefed by Oldendorf [Colonel Rudolph Oldendorf, Hammer’s predecessor as regimental commander ed.] regarding everything I would need to know before assuming command of the regiment. At one point the conversation turned to our regimental clerk, one Corporal Jakob Heiligeist. “What’s your impression of Heiligeist?” Oldendorf asked me.

I thought over my interactions with the man. He was in his forties, a bit below the average in height. He gave the impression of having something of a tendency toward fatness, though the rigors of wartime service had mostly taken care of that. I had observed him to be a quiet sort, serious and conscientious in carrying out his duties. I said as much to Oldendorf.

“Yes, that’s Heiligeist, all right,” Oldendorf said. “You may rely upon him to perform his work well, and to do his best to battle the paperwork monster on your behalf. You should know, though, that Heiligeist has his…eccentricities.”

“Eccentricities?” I said.

“Yes. Are you familiar with a religious sect known as the Adventists?”

After thinking on the matter a moment I told him that I recalled vaguely hearing of a sect by that name.

“They’re a kind of doomsday cult, imported from the United States,” said Oldendorf. “Sometime in the last century a man named Miller predicted that the End of Days was coming upon a certain date. He was of course proven wrong when the date passed. Somehow this Miller held on to his adherents. They’ve been awaiting the End Times ever since. They’re also notorious for a peculiar insistence that the old Jewish Sabbath is the proper day for Christian worship.

“Adventist missionaries established a foothold in Germany some years ago. I understand that we have a few tens of thousands of them now. They’ve always kept out of politics. When the Fuhrer took charge, their leaders assured him that they would be loyal citizens. Voiced their support of most policies, even where it seems to have conflicted with their consciences. They’re supposed to be pacifists, you know.

“Some individual Adventists have refused to do their duty since the outbreak of the war. They’ve gone to prison for it. Others have more pragmatically agreed to serve in non-combatant roles. I understand that there are a number of them in the medical services.

“Heiligeist came from a clerical background. He spent the first part of his time after conscription into the Luftwaffe serving as a stores clerk. When we were all dragooned into becoming combat soldiers, he became a regimental clerk. I suppose even the military now and then manages to place a square peg into a square hole. He’s done well in his role.”

“But you say he has his eccentricities?” I said.

“The man’s a thoroughgoing Bible-nut. Insists on taking time early in the morning or late in the evening each day to read his Scriptures and pray by himself. He’s the most pious soldier I’ve ever seen. Doesn’t smoke, won’t even touch beer, keeps his vocabulary as mild as a maid’s. Peppers his speech with biblical phrases.

“He’s tried to chat me up now and then about his beliefs. I’ve instructed him to keep them to himself, but he forgets himself now and then. Don’t be surprised if he says something to you at some point.

“Since he is such a good functionary, I’ve allowed him two concessions. First, I’ve allowed him to refuse absolutely to carry any sort of service arm. Makes little enough difference for a regimental clerk. Second, whenever possible I let him take a few hours away to himself every Saturday to observe the Sabbath. I suppose he spends the time praying and reading and singing hymns softly to himself. An eccentric, but harmless enough.”

I found Heiligeist to be much as Oldendorf described him. He was abstemious in his habits, mild in his speech and actions, conscientious and efficient in his duties. He seemed to bear everything that came to him, every asinine demand and denial from “higher up” with equanimity. Though I on occasion lost my temper in his presence—even once or twice was guilty of using him as a handy target for my spleen—he seemed impossible to perturb. He possessed a sort of inner tranquility in the face of Fortune’s slings and arrows that was both enviable and, at times, almost unnerving.

He was indeed a “Bible-nut.” Heiligeist seemed to have a quotation from Scripture for every occasion. He even now and then had a sense of humor about it. On one occasion some rear-echelon officer came to my command post and subjected us to a typically asinine harangue of the sort such people were prone to delivering. Heiligeist said afterward that the man’s speech reminded him of “the peace and mercy of God, in that it surpassed all understanding and endured forever.”

Though he was a man of no great education, I found that Heiligeist was surprisingly widely read. Once, when I learnt that he had read Livy (albeit only in translation), I found myself discussing Roman history with him. He insisted on reading every historical development through a perspective drawn from his reading of Scripture.

That was entirely characteristic of him. Heiligeist’s Bible faith was everything to him. He insisted on taking everything in Scripture at face value. Biblical injunctions were what he sought to live by. He even took the odder passages in a literal fashion. This was especially the case of anything having to do with the “End Times.” Heiligeist expected the world to come to an end as detailed in the Apocalypse of Saint John and elsewhere in the New Testament. Indeed, he professed himself inclined to believe that the End of the world as we know it would not linger much longer. Given what I knew about the military situation on various fronts—not to mention the recurring devastating air raids on Berlin that were taking place around that time—I wondered at times whether he might have something there.

The most remarkable thing about it all is that he seemed to look forward to the world’s Doomsday. He believed that he and his fellow believers would at last be carried to away to a new Heaven and Earth at that time. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to believe in such a thing in times such as the ones we found ourselves living in.

Heiligeist’s habit of going off by himself on Saturdays—what he called “the Sabbath”—was as Oldendorf had noted. When I asked him what he was doing, he said only that it was to undertake “divine service.” I had resolved not to get into too much of a hurry to alter Oldendorf’s arrangements for doing things, unless and until I had seen good reason to do so. I therefore let Heiligeist continue to observe his custom.

I was, however, unavoidably curious about what he was doing. I had concerns as well. How well did I really know the man? Even a humble regimental clerk was privy to information that the enemy might like to have….

One Saturday evening I resolved to try to follow him discreetly. At that time the Leningrad front was still a quiet sector, at least relatively speaking. Our unit had not moved from its positions in months. We had well-established forward base areas nearby to handle our logistics. I followed Heiligeist to a nearby divisional stores depot and watched him go inside. He emerged a bit later was a load of parcels that was as much as he could carry.

I said to myself Aha! So even the incorruptible Heiligeist isn’t above taking advantage of his connections to snag a bit extra for himself and for the black market!

I continued to follow him. He went to a quiet spot near where our division’s auxiliaries bivouacked. Like many units at that stage of the war, especially those in quieter sectors, ours employed a number of Soviet citizens as laborers and the like. Some were civilians, some had been prisoners of war. It cannot be denied that they were treated none too well. They were subjected to the most ruthless discipline, poorly fed, and worked hard. They bore with it because the alternative, in most cases, would likely have been starvation.

In that quiet area, concealed by the gloom of evening, Heiligeist met with half a dozen of these people—four men and two women. I saw him speak with them in hushed tones. The parcels were distributed among them. It was disillusioning to see that the pious Heiligeist should prove a hypocrite of the first order. I wondered what sort of quid pro quo he expected to receive.

But I saw no exchange of money or favors. Heiligeist simply made his distribution and went on his way. As they parted, I made out something that shocked me. One of the men addressed Heiligeist with a phrase that I had heard only in passing before the present war, in a city’s Jewish quarter. It was a Hebrew blessing. Heiligeist was consorting with Jews! We had always suspected that there might be Jews hiding among our auxiliaries.

I continued tailing Heiligeist. He went to another quiet spot nearby. He spent some time kneeling in prayer. I heard him sing snatches of hymns. Then he returned to our billet area.

The following day, I called Heiligeist to me behind closed doors and told him everything I had witnessed. “What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

“I’m making provision for some desperately hungry people,” Heiligeist said. “There was nothing in those parcels but flour, a bit of sugar and salt, a bit of cooking oil. Nothing the Division would really miss. But among people on the verge of starvation, enough to perhaps mean the difference between life and death.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t fault your charitable impulses,” I said. “But these people are Jews! You are helping to aid and conceal Jews!” Though we were behind closed doors, I said this last in a tone hardly above a whisper.

“Our Lord and Savior was a Jew, as were the Apostles,” said Heiligeist. “They were the children of Father Abraham before we were. As the Lord said to Abraham, `I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you.’ I fear that our people are storing up for ourselves a most terrible curse. As for myself, I had rather work for a blessing.”

“Your `blessing’ could easily be the undoing of you!” I said. “You’d be arrested for certain. The best that you could expect is that you’d find yourself posted to a penal unit, and thrown into some forlorn-hope operation that would be tantamount to suicide.”

“If it is the Lord’s will that I die, I die. Some refuse deliverance in this life that they might obtain a better resurrection.”

I went on attempting to reason with the fanatic. “Have you considered how discovery of your activities would reflect upon me? Have you considered that it might well be to my advantage to denounce you first, now that I know what you’re doing?”

He considered this for a moment. “You must do your duty as you see it, Sir,” he said at last. “I would suggest that you consider first whether it would truly be to your advantage to deprive yourself of the services of what you yourself have described as the best and most knowledgeable regimental clerk that you’ve ever seen or heard of.” He actually managed a wry smile when he said that.

It was true that I had so described him to a fellow officer only days earlier, though I had not meant that for his ears. I don’t know what startled me more—Heiligeist’s continuing calm, or the fact that the humble clerk evidently had such a high regard for himself and his indispensability. He was right, though, in supposing that I should find it most challenging to manage without him.

“How long do you believe you can continue to manage this deception?” I asked. “You can’t keep this up forever.”

“I won’t have to,” he said. “Though I am not privy to the plans of the enemy, we all know that they have long since seized the offensive initiative. They are attacking all up and down the front. Common sense says that our time will come within the next few months. Then we will withdraw, and our local children of Abraham will remain behind. As evil as the Reds are, they do not, so far as I know, take any particular care to murder Jews.”

It was as Heiligeist predicted. I agreed to turn a blind eye to his activities. I knew nothing of what he was doing, and wished to know nothing. And late that winter a Soviet offensive on our front relieved the siege of Leningrad and sent our forces packing. We would subsequently find ourselves trapped in the Courland Pocket, well away from Leningrad.

Before going any further, I should inform the reader that Corporal Heiligeist went on to survive the war. Some years afterward, I had a contact from him. He was now living in retirement near Frankfort. He said that he had heard from some of the Jews whom he had assisted all those years earlier. They, too had survived, and had managed eventually to emigrate to Israel. They had gone to some trouble to look Heiligeist up and give him their thanks.

“Some of that thanks belongs to you as well, Colonel,” Heiligeist said. “You kept our little secret. May the Lord bless you for that.”

I am well into my seventies now, after a life in which I ought to have perished many times over in my youth and middle age. I suppose Heiligeist has been proven right once again.

This is excellent - thank you, Daphne.

You're welcome, Simon!

I've shown these "Enemy Ace" stories to my military-history-buff brother. He was stationed in Germany late in his service career, and has German in-laws. He says that the Germans in the stories tend to talk like Germans actually talk. That means something, coming from him.

It's extremely well written.