From 'The Blond Knight of Germany', a biography of Erich Hartmann.
"The Sormovik sagged, shuddered and flared alight from nose to tail. Erich pulled up hard over the stricken Il-2, ready to swing back into the other ground-strafing Stormoviks. Explosions like backfires banged and jarred under the fuselage of Karaya One. Erich saw one of his engine doors fly off and whip away astern in the slipstream. Choking blue smoke came belching back into the cockpit.
He was talking aloud to himself again. "What in hell has happened, Erich? Flak, ground fire, stray shells from the air battle? Which? Never mind! Get out of here and head west while you can. Quick! Before this damned bird goes in." He made a steep turn to the west and pulled his throttle back. Ignition and fuel switches off. "Yes, she's going in. But where? There's a field, a large one, lots of sunflowers.... head for it. Ease here down... ease her down, Erich... just like the gliders your mother taught you to fly."
The fighter came down easily, and bucked its way to a halt with a grinding of metal. Erich would walk away from this one. He unbuckled his parachute and made ready to leave the "bent" fighter. Reaching forward to the instrument panel, he began undoing the retaining studs on the aircraft clock. Standing orders required all pilots surviving belly landings to take these precision instruments with them, since the clocks were in short supply.
Struggling with the milled studs that anchored the clock, Erich felt a little let-down from the action. "Damn it, Erich. You didn't get any breakfast this morning-" he broke off his monologue as a movement caught his eye through the dusty windshield. A German truck came rumbling into view. He felt relieved. He didnt know how far he had flown west before the belly landing, but the German truck was reassuring. Luftwaffe pilots landing behind Soviet lines were seldom heard from again. He went on battling with the clock, and glanced up as he heard the truck brakes squeal. He did an alarmed double take.
Two hulking soldiers jumped down from the truck bed wearing a strange looking uniform. German infantrymen wore green-gray tunics. These soldiers were clad in yellow-gray uniforms. Then the two men turned in the direction of the crashed fighter and Erich felt his skin crawl with fear. The faces were Asiatic.
These Russians were using a captured German truck, and now they were about to capture a German to go with it. Erich broke out in a cold sweat as the two Russians approached. If he tried to get out and and escape, they would shoot him down. Only one choice remained. He must feign injury. He would decieve them into thinking he had been injured internally in a crash landing."
Quick thinking on Hartmann's part. But, it gets better-
"He feigned unconsciousness as the soldiers jumped on the wing and gawked into the cockpit. One of them reached down under his armpits and tried to lift Erich out. The russian smelled sickeningly sour. Erich cried out with pain, and kept crying and sobbing. The Russian let go of him. The two men jabbered in Russian and then called to Erich, "Comrade, comrade. The war is finished, Hitler is finished. It doesnt matter now" (this is 1943 mind you-)
"I am wounded" Sobbed the Blond Knight, pointing to his abdomen with his right hand and cradling it with his left. Through lowered lids, Erich could see they had swallowed the bait.
The Russian carefully helped him out of the cockpit, while Erich blubbered and sobbed through an Acadmy Award performance. He fell on the ground, 'unable' to stand up. The Russians went back to the truck, got an old tent, and laid the 'wounded' pilot on the folded canves. They toted him over to the truck like a bundle of wet washing and laid him out carefully on the truck bed.
The soldiers tried talking quietly to Erich, in friendly fashion. Their mood was happy, because last night's action had won them a big victory. Erich kept on groaning and clutching at his belly. Exasperated and unable to alleviate his 'pain', the Russians finaly got back in the truck and drove him to their HQ in a nearby village.
A doctor appeared. He could speak a few German words, and he tried to make an examination. The physician stank of a sour perfume. Every tiem he touched Erich, the Blond Knight cried out. Even the doctor was convinced. His captors brought him to some fruit, and he made as though to eat it. Then he cried out again, as though some penetrating strain had been placed on his organism by the act of biting.
For two hours the theater continued. Then the same to soldiers came again, laid him out on the tent and carted him back to the truck. As they went jolting eastward back behind the Russian lines, Erich knew he would have to make a break-and soon-or spend the rest of the war in a Soviet prison. He weighed the situation. The truck had gone about two miles back into Russian territory. one soldier was driving, the other was in the bed guarding the injured German Captive. As Erich's thoughts raced, from the western sky came the chararcteristic whining roar of Stukas.
The German dive bombers passed low overhead, and the truck slowed, ready to ditch. As the guard in the back of the truck stared apprehensively upward, Erich sprang to his feet and charged the Russian with his shoulder. THe guard slammed into the back of the cab with his head and collapsed in the truck bed.
Dropping off the tail gate, Erich went bolting into a field of man-high sunflowers beside the road. As he made their cover, screeshing truck brakes told him his escape had been discovered. Pluning and staggering deeper and deeper into the sea of sunflowers, Erich heard the crash of rifle fire and the whine of bullets as his captors fired at the waving indications of his passage...."
Erich eventually made it back to 9./JG52 the next day to score a couple hundred more kills before the war's end.
