Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch Read Online Free PDF Page B

months and had not been long back in Germany at his training school when the reckless, headstrong Hanna landed on his doorstep. Still reeling from the effects of his own crash, van Husen’s tales of Hanna’s adventures were enough to make him sweat. The last thing the Grunau School needed was a fatal accident involving a girl. ‘We must get rid of this girl,’ Hirth told van Husen. ‘We don’t want any corpses.’
    That night Hanna sat on her bed mulling over what she had done. Her temper was dulled by thoughts of what could have happened, how she could have been seriously hurt or worse. Van Husen’s words kept ringing in her ears and it was difficult to contain tears of frustration and humiliation. It would be hard to live down the episode, especially among her fellow students. Worse, Hanna was now grounded. She had a tendency towards self-pity throughout her life, but as a teenager it was natural enough and the long hours of winter darkness were not helping. She desperately wanted to prove herself to van Husen, to everyone.
    Finally, at some point in the wee hours of the night an idea struck her; she might be physically grounded, but no one could ground her mentally. She sat on the bed and wedged a walking stick between her knees as if it were the steering column in a glider. Then she imagined the finely balanced plane all around her, and practised keeping the stick perfectly upright so a wing-tip would not dip and touch the ground. In her mind the students were clustered around the bungee, she called to them, ‘Heave!’ They pulled. ‘Double!’ They pulled harder. ‘Away!’ They released her and Hanna was so engulfed in her fantasy she felt her body jerk as the glider started on a long ground slide. So Hanna continued for the next hour, practising ground slide after ground slide, before falling into an exhausted sleep. Hanna would fly one way or another.
    Three days without flying were torture, but Hanna endured them, consoling herself with her imaginary night-time flying. Van Husen was watching her like a hawk, looking for any reason to be rid of her for good, but Hanna refused to give him such pleasure. Instead she was the perfect student and even began to form friendships with some of the boys on the course. One was a handsome student with curly blond hair and a broad smile who seemed like any other enthusiast to Hanna, even if he was a little dreamy, his mind far away out in the reaches of space. Wernher von Braun was a rocket man. As a boy in Berlin he had found himself in a police station after attempting to create the first rocket-powered child’s wagon. The experiment, in the middle of fashionable Tiergartenstrasse, had gone disastrously wrong. The six large skyrockets he had attached to his wagon had quickly gone out of control, shooting the flimsy cart violently back and forth across the street while streaks of flame flew out behind. Naturally he had scared a number of people, caused a minor panic and come close to endangering the wellbeing of several passersby. It was an inauspicious start to the career of the man who would be pivotal in the creation of the V2 rocket and jet-propelled aircraft. Sitting quietly on the grass between gliding flights, Hanna could hardly imagine the role this young, dashing man would play in her future. By 19 von Braun had his glider pilot’s licence; by 21 he had a regular pilot’s licence. Throughout her life Hanna would remain friends with the boy who dreamed of rockets.
    But friendship at Grunau was always tainted with the mockery Hanna ‘Stratosphere’ earned simply for being female. She had failed and no one would let her forget it. Then luck finally fell in Hanna’s favour. Another student had had a disastrous A test flight and van Husen wanted to explain the reasons why to his students. He told Hanna to sit in the empty glider to ensure it didn’t move while he lectured the group. Hanna did as she was told; sitting at the controls, she envisaged herself on