Adam Makos was brought up on the outskirts of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. [1] He completed his early education from Montoursville Area High School. [2] At the age of 15 years, while in high school, he started to write military history and was one of the founding members of Ghost Wings, a forerunner to Valor, a magazine depicting veterans' stories. [3] [4] He was a member of the school's French club and was signed up for a trip to Paris until opting to go to Walt Disney World with his family. [2] The clubs flight to Paris was the fatal TWA Flight 800, which has been a major life changing event for him. [3] In 2003 he graduated from Lycoming College. [3] [5] Career [ edit ] December, 1943: A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber’s tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler—and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger... The final section of the book is how the two men eventually met and became fast friends until their deaths in 2008. After the war Stigler spent many years trying to find fate of the men he spared but, was unsuccessful until they finally met at reunion in the late '80s.

Colorado author Adam Makos on war and memory and WWII veterans". The Denver Post. April 4, 2013. Archived from the original on November 21, 2022 . Retrieved February 28, 2019. The 2022 film, Devotion, is based on his 2015 book of the same title, which recounts the true story of a friendship between two U.S. Navy pilots in the Korean War. [9] If I could have given more than 5*****, I would have. This book was that good. it was so well written, yet the story could have written itself. It is something you usually read about in novels, but think, "This could not be for real." But yes, it was. I concerns two WWII pilots, Franz Stigler, a German and Charlie Brown, an American. Neither was political. Stigler was a young German born of devout Roman Catholic family in Bavaria who were avidly anti-Nazi and Charlie was the son of American farmers. Both were dedicated to their countries. One day, Charlie was bombing northern Germany when a score of German fighters appeared around him. he was strafed on all sides, and his plane was rapidly getting punched to pieces by all the bullets. Suddenly the German fighters were gone, and Charlie was just beginning to hope he could turn around and try and make it home when a lone German plane showed up on his right wing. Franz Stigler. At first Charlie thought "this is it" we are goners. but for some strange reason no shots were fires and the German pilot hung on their right wing as they turned towards the North Sea. He kept pointing and mouthing words which were intelligibly to the Americans, but Franz was trying to get them to go to Sweden, a 1/2 hours flight where they could be safe. But Charlie did not understand, not did he realize that the German gunners on the North Sea shore did not fire because they saw one of their own with the American plane and figured he was going to take them down over the water. But instead he escorted them farther out to a safe area and watched them turn toward England. Saying a prayer he returned to Germany. Neither plot knew the other and Franz knew he had to keep quiet or he could be shot. Many years after the end of the war, both Brown and Stigler wondered what had become of one another. Neither knew the other's name, yet neither had forgotten that strange encounter in the skies over Germany. Eventually they would have their reunion and become brothers not of shared blood, but of shared life. Notably, though fifty years had passed since the end of WWII, once this story became public, Franz Stigler began receiving hate mail, presumably from Germans who felt that he should have blown Charlie and his crew out of the sky. I guess hatred is in no danger of becoming extinct any time soon. I loved that it was written with such a wide perspective from the Germans side since the time of his childhood. It made it so much easier to understand the German pilot, Frank Stigler, who amidst the cruelty, violence and war surrounding the WW2, would do an act of pure chivalry and humane that it shows to everyone that ‘enemies are better off as friends’.

Success!

I sometimes hesitate to recommend certain books because they can be a chore to read. Adam Makos books are different. They read like novels and they always start out painless, maintain the reader’s interest and end with a reunion of the combatants. It is recipe for success. On one hand, there is an account of an American bomber crew who survived at both the mercy, grace, and self-sacrificing chivalry of their opponent. But theirs is the highlight side story tale, which brought this bio to life. While the description of Stigler escorting the bomber to safety is moving, the scene that meant the most to me was at a veterans reunion where Charlie Brown introduced Stigler to two of the crewmen who had been onboard the bomber that Stigler spared. As the four men hugged and cried they were joined by the descendants of the American fliers -- people who owed their lives to the act of generosity and kindness shown by Franz Stigler. Stigler and Brown remained close friends until their deaths, both in 2008. Meanwhile, Franz Stigler was in need of one more bomber on his victory list to qualify for the coveted Knight’s Cross. But when he caught up with Charlie’s plane, he could see it was missing most of a rudder, and through the numerous holes, he could see the injured crew members trying to patch each other up. For some reason, Franz decided to let the injured bomber go. He didn’t shoot—in fact, he escorted it through a flak zone. Glancy, Josh (1 September 2013). "A Higher Call by Adam Makos with Larry Alexander". The Times . Retrieved 25 October 2021.

Such a fantastic book that reads like fiction but has been thoroughly researched to prove truth can be stranger than fiction. It was incredibly inspiring to read about WW Two from the perspective of German ace pilots. My grandson age 12 is already a WW Two buff. I foresee books by Adam Makos as presents in my grandson's life. The narrative illuminates what the life of a fighter pilot was like in the Luftwaffe. For example in telling the story of Stigler’s service in North Africa, the sand, bad food and probably more importantly the comradeship between pilots and their crew chiefs/mechanics is well drawn. In fact, when North Africa falls, Stigler along with most of his squadron mates squeeze their mechanics into their airplanes when they are transferred to Sicily rather than let them be captured. During this period Stigler’s ambition to win a Knights Cross is emphasized. O'Sullivan, Michael (November 3, 2022). "Here are the movies everyone will be talking about this holiday season". Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 20, 2022 . Retrieved November 20, 2022. His other works include Voices of the Pacific (2013), based on a collection of oral histories of marines and seamen who served in the Pacific during the Second World War. I was a pre-teen during the war and rooted for the shooting down of Luftwaffe planes when I read the newspapers and saw newsreels of the day, and found myself doing the same thing as I read this book. Don't forget who started that war and every German plane shot down meant Allied lives saved. One act of bravery or whatever it was didn't save the rest of it for me.Of the twenty-eight thousand German fighter pilots to see combat in WWII, only twelve hundred survived the war.”