L I T T L ED I E T E R

N E E D ST O

F L Y

a film byWerner Herzog

This is the story of Dieter Dengler, a German-born

American pilot.

Men are often haunted by things that

happen to them in life, especially in war

and other periods of great intensity.

Sometimes you see these men walking

the streets or driving in a car, their lives

seem to be normal,

I never wanted to go to war,

I only got into this because I h a d o n e b u r n i n g d e s i r e

and that was to f ly

but they are not

Mt h e

A

N

The first airplanes I ever saw in my life they

came right over here, they were fighters,

they dove down into the small town…

they made senseless attacks on the small

villages like this

During the Second World War

Dieter Dengler was a young boy

living in Germany. He was

inspired then to one day fly like

the pilots he had seen during the

war. As a child, Dieter saw

things around him that made

no earthly sense at all.

Germany had been trans-

formed into a dreamscape of

the surreal.

Once he turned eighteen, he left

home and followed his dream of

training to become a pilot in the

United States.

I had two brothers

we were out on the top window

and we looked out

and we watched all this

and I clearly remember one of the airplanes

came diving at our house

and it was so unusual because the cockpit was opened

the pilot had black goggles, they were sitting on his forehead

and he was looking, he had actually turned around

he was looking in and of the window

and the machine guns were just firing

because the f lashes

I keep seeing them coming out

and the left wingtip just missed the house by two or three feet as it ripped by

it was just a fraction of a second

i t w a s l i k e a v i s i o n f o r m e !

it was like an all-mighty being that just came out

it was something else, something very difficult to describe

but I knew from that moment on I wanted to be a pilot

I wanted to be a f lyer

I knew from that moment on that little Dieter needed to f ly

BOOM!

t h e W A R

R

More explosions went off of my right wing

T h e b r i g h t n e s s i s w h a t I r e m e m b e r

BOOM!

BOOM!

t h e W A R

plane. From the air, Vietnam

didn’t seem real at all. For

Dengler it was like a grid on

a map. He had suddenly

found himself not only a

pilot, but a soldier caught up

in a real war. But even

though it was all very real,

everything down there

seemed to be so alien and so

abstract. It all looked

strange, like a distant

barbaric dream.

After the crash, Dieter was

captured by Pathet Lao. He

eventually became familiar with

his surroundings and attempted

to escape. Later. when he was

recaptured, things worsened

and he was left at the mercy of

the Vietcong who tortured and

brought him to a prison camp.

In the misery of those

nights, Dengler often dreamt

of oceans and foreign

shores.

BOOM!

They started yelling and screaming

They started kicking me

All of a sudden one of the guards came across the circle and started walking towards me

He had his rifle in his hand, butt first

He came towards me

He hesitated a couple of times

Swung towards me

I moved my head

he hit me in the shoulder. knocked me down on my back

The gun went off

And I clearly remember looking across and another one guard closed his eyes

fell backwards over

he had no shirt on

I saw the blood coming out

T h i s i s w h e n t h e y r e a l l y b e c a m e a g g r e s s i v e

Dieter received his pilot training

through the Navy, finally fulfilling

his lifelong dream after much

struggle. However, his dream

of flying was quickly marred by

the war in Vietnam.

Two and a half hours after his

first combat mission began,

the enemy shot down his

E S C A P

R E S C U E

&

More explosions went off of my right wing

T h e b r i g h t n e s s i s w h a t I r e m e m b e r

BOOM!

I couldn’t believe it!

I didn’t have a scratch

There were five dead guards dead on the ground

Of the seven of us that escaped

I was the only one that came out alive

the other ones disappeared in the jungle

no one ever heard from them again

EE S C A P

The Vietcong prison camp

where Dengler was being

held was located in Laos.

The shortest way out would

have been east to the ocean,

but mountains barricaded

the easiest escape path.

Dieter and the other prisoners

We made

th i s beaut i f u l f i r e

decided on an escape route to

the west, where they would find

freedom in Thailand.

Each second of their escape

was planned.

C A M BODI A

T H A I L A N D

L AO S

BU R M A

N. V

I ET

NA

M

PR ISON C A M P

We waved at night to the airplane that saw us

It circled overhead

and we knew that we would be rescued the next morning

We hugged each other

We cried together

We talked about it

Who’s going in the helicopter first

What are we gonna eat

Who we’re gonna call

And then morning came

and we waited and waited

nothing happened

PR ISON C A M P

After a difficult escape there

were only two people left:

Dieter and Duane. Through

their shared suffering the

two became very close. It

was more than brotherhood,

something inexplicable.

Despite their hope and

endurance, bad luck

struck them. While lost in the

jungle the two friends were

attacked by natives, Dieter

was the sole survivor. With

a crushed spirit and constant

hallucinations, Dieter made

an effort to continue.

Duane, my friend

he was gone and from then on my motions, my progress, became mechanical

In fact, I couldn’t care less if I would live or die

But then later on

there was this bear

this beautiful bear that was following me

It was circling me in fact sometimes

I t w a s g o n e a n d I m i s s e d i t . It was just like a dog

it was just like a pet

Of course I knew this bear was there

he was waiting to eat me

When I think about it, this bear meant death to me

And it is really ironic

That’s the only friend I had at the end, was death

Dieter was eventually rescued.

His weight was down to eighty

pounds and he was missing

teeth. He was a skeleton

crawling in the jungle.

How Dieter Dengler has

been able to cope with

all this, remains a mystery.

He hides behind the casual

remark that this was the fun

part of his life.

At night I would have dreams

I would yell and scream

My friends would tie me down

They even got afraid of me sometimes

So they finally figured it out and they would take me up in the cockpit

At night, they would take me up on top of the carrier and pack me into

a cockpit with two or three pillows next to me

That’s where I felt safe

T h a t ’ s w h e r e I f e l t t r u l y

t r u l y

s a f e

Little Dieter got it all: from horizon to

horizon, the planet covered with aircraft.

But in the end,

Against the anguish of

the Night…