A Higher Call Signed Book

Signed by Author Adam Makos

Five days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls was 21-year-old 2nd Lt. Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Out of nowhere, a Messerschmitt fighter pulled up on the bomber’s tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler and he could destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger. What happened next would defy imagination and later be called “the most incredible encounter between enemies in WWII.” A Higher Call follows both Charlie’s and Franz’s harrowing missions. Charlie would face takeoffs in English fog over the flaming wreckage of his buddies’ planes, flak bursts so close they would light his cockpit, and packs of enemy fighters that would circle his plane like sharks. Franz would face sandstorms in the desert, a crash alone at sea, and the spectacle of 1,000 bombers, each with eleven guns, waiting for his attack. The U.S. 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them “top secret.” It was an act that Franz could never mention for fear of facing a firing squad. It was the encounter that would haunt both Charlie and Franz for forty years until, as old men, they would search the world for each other, a last mission that could change their lives forever. Features a bookplate signed by B-17 pilot Ronald Martin from the 379th Bomb Group and the author Adam Makos. Hardbound, 392 pages.