Halo (Currently on Hold)

~ Chapter One ~

Martin's point of view:

I was born April twenty second of 1913. My parents were Leonard and Yvonne Althaus, and they had me at Frankfurt, some hospital. I have a sister, and her name is Magdalene Althaus. My name is Martin Althaus. My childhood was normal, all of it. With the normal amount of affection, the normal amount of hardship and achievement. I was nothing special when I was a child. Uniqueness seemed like it would never arrive.

I was fifteen when I had my first love. She was a German girl who went to school with me. Her name was Julianne. She had dark brown hair, eyes the colour of the darkest oceans. She was my love for a year, and then my family moved to Berlin. I didn't see another woman, I focused more on my studies. For two years that dragged on, and then when I finally graduated, my life had begun.

It was then that I enrolled in the school for pilots for the German Army. I went on to get to know every plane I had to. For four years I did this, meanwhile Adolf Hitler was rising to power just as quick as my pilot's license was about to make its way into my inventory. I had to submit my genealogy to the Nazi Party so they would find that I wasn't Jewish. When it had proven to show I was pure Aryan, they sent me to pilot in the Luftwaffe as a Flieger, which was the lowest ranking there, but it was still a pilot. I accepted gladly and went on as told.

Through the years I rose up in my pilot career. Within two years I became an Obergfrieter, the leading aircraft man. Apparently, this was when people saw my uniqueness. I was no longer that painfully normal child. I had a talent, and that talent was flying. My superior noticed this, and promoted me quickly. I made my way up the latter with ease, and enjoyed it. Flying was my calling, it was plain to see. I would always be a pilot, and maybe even a hero one day.

It was the year of the war that I was promoted again. This time, I was placed in the officer's ranks. I was now a Fahnenjunker, or an officer cadet. As I assisted in the bombing of many cities, I kept going up. When I saved a fellow pilot from nearly crashing and dying, I was promoted once again. This time to Feldwebel, or a Sergeant. My job was really looking up for me. That was until the early September of 1940, a while after I had turned twenty seven. It went something like this:

We had been ordered to carry out the plan known as Operation Sea Lion. It was massive, a plan to take over the whole of the United Kingdom. We had naval and air forces equipped for this gigantic mission. It had all of us pilots in shambles of anxiety. It would be my first ever mission of invasion, and I was terrified. But I remained composed for Germany, our fatherland, and Hitler. I would be doing this for my family too, to ensure their protection from any sort of danger England could expel upon us. I couldn't let any of it happen, which was enough to keep me grounded and determined.

I was a dive bomber, taking the Junkers Ju 87 Sutka jet. I doubted I was the right man for the job, and this would be proven right later on. Although I knew this would fail when I made my way up the cement runway, my helmet in hand, the fabric of my uniform dragging along my trembling skin. I had two other pilots with me, Othmar Jäger and Carl Steuban. These two men had been flying with me for the longest time, since I entered the Luftwaffen. We had become rather close friends since then, reminiscing about our times at home and drinking to a successful flight or invasion from the Schutzstaffel or the Gestapo.

Othmar was about five foot nine, jet black hair cut close to his head and eyes the colour of desert sand. He was always flipping a coin along his fingers if he was not flying or working. He had it with him at all times. He told Carl and myself that his father gave it to him the morning he died, saying the coin was from hundreds of years ago, coming from his native Austria and travelling to Hamburg with his father shortly before Othmar and his twin brother were born. His brother had died in the Polish resistance back in september of last year, when war had been declared. He was caught in a mass of Polish soldiers and ended up shot in the chest. He was taken to the hospital, but died a day later from the severity of his wounds.