Low Pass for the Home Folks

On a trip to Garmisch, Germany, Bill Phillips and his wife Kristi discovered a war memorial on a hillside. Surrounding the monument were framed photographs of local young men who had been killed in World War II. Bill was particularly moved by one photograph of a fresh-faced boy, his arms around a cow: “This was no jack-booted Nazi. This was a farm kid who loved his home and went off to fight for it, just as American boys had done.”

The boy’s story began to develop in Bill’s imagination: the young German had gone into the Luftwaffe and learned to fly fighter jets. One day, early in the war, the boy and a friend had buzzed the home valley in their BF-109s. “I guess all pilots have done that, in every country,” says Bill. “The pride of flight is universal.” Bill checked with a German pilot, who said the practice was strictly verboten — “. . . but of course we did it.”