Rybin, Y. Luftwaffe ace Walter Schuck researched / Christer Bergstrom, Yuriy Rybin. - Sweden : [s. l.], 2019. - 190 p. : ill.

WALTER SCHUCK Josef “Jupp”Kunz and a reindeer outside one o f the new barracks at Petsamo. JosefKaiser. mushroom dishes. Now and then they took the Kubel- wagen to pay a visit to the German coast artillery. The artillery soldiers caught fish by simply blowing gre­ nades in the sea water, and then they could go out with a small boat and pick as many fish as they wanted. Since Schuck’s family lived so close to France, his mother often was able to get hold on lemons - a rarity in Germany during the war. His caring mother used to wrap up the lemons, one by one, and post them to his son far in the North. When the lemons arrived, they were dry and black, but Schuck used to slice them with a razor. Then he soaked them in water. Walter Schuck’s fish with lemon was a popular delicacy among the men at Petsamo aerodrome. Due to the darkness and the sinking temperatures, both sides restricted their flight operations to a mini­ mum during the beginning of the winter. Instead there was much leasure time. The first quartering barracks had been built for the ground crew during the autumn, but some time after the arrival of the winter, the barracks for the pilots were ready. Schuck moved into a three-man barrack. Half the barrack was occupied by a new officer in the 9th Staffel, and Schuck and a Feldwebel were assigned one each of the barrack’s two remaining rooms. Schuck’s phonograph was running hot in the mess bar­ rack, and soon more and more of his mates came to like the Jazz music. In fact, Jazz music would characterise much of the atmosphere in JG 5. As “Tiger Rag” or “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” rang out over the dark, snow covered vicinity, a new­ comer must have thought that he was having a halluci­ nation. If he entered the mess, he would see a dozen men playing cards, drinking and enjoying the heat from the fire place. On a table stood a phonograph, playing an American Jazz record, and next lay a pile o f maybe a hundred records. Once every week the pilots would attend the sauna which had been built on the slopes of the Petsamojoki river near the airfield. The unaccustomed Germans soon learned from the Finns how to enjoy a really hot sauna. When they had heated up until they hardly could take it any more, they leapt out, slid down the icy slope and into a hole they had cut in the river’s ice. Shouting like kids they then stumbled up the wooden stairs which led them back to the warmth in the sauna. As the temperature outside dropped below 20 degrees Celsius, occasionally below 30 degrees minus, keeping it warm in the barracks became a special problem. Each room was equipped with one iron stove, but while there had always been someone who guarded the stove in the six-man tents, the pilots were alone in each room in the barracks. To keep the cold away, Schuck slept like H. C. Andersen’s Prin­ cess and the Pea on a multi-layered bedding: First a thick layer o f newspapers, then two rugs, followed by a paliasse, and another two rugs. Next, Schuck cov­ T