The Red Baron: A World War I Novel

by Richard Fox

  Manfred reached out and closed the dead man’s eyes. If the situation were reversed, he hoped the Englishman would have done the same.

  The tricolor circle on the tail and the serial number were intact, but taking those as a trophy didn’t interest Manfred. He pulled the retaining pin holding the Lewis gun to its mount and let it fall to the ground.

  He picked the machine gun out of the mud and carried it back to his plane, looking over the foreign weapon. How many Germans had fallen to it? He slid it into his seat and pulled himself into the plane.

  He looked at the dead pilot while he readied for takeoff. It was wrong to blame the weapon, he decided. The pilot was the crux of the Royal Flying Corps. Their empire could produce endless weapons, bullets, and planes, but all of them were useless without a trained man in the air.

  His Uhlan cavalry uniform was immaculate in the hallway mirror. Manfred hadn’t worn it since the Kaiser’s birthday parade, held just before the war started. The observer’s and pilot’s badge were strange ornamentation for a unit that lived and died by its horses. Manfred ran a thumb over the Iron Cross medal he’d received the week before.

  He craned his chin up to check that his neck was properly shaved. The bare spot on the center of the collar would look much better with a Blue Max, he decided. With eleven victories, he had surpassed Boelcke and Immelmann when they received their Blue Maxes, and beyond the ten that was rumored to be the new threshold for the award.

  A gentle tug straightened out the tunic. He looked up at the Lewis gun hanging over his doorway, the trophy from his last victory from a few days earlier, and went into the hallway and knocked on Wolff’s door. No response. He knocked again. A muffled voice bade him entry.

  Wolff sat at a small writing desk, the kind administrative soldiers used to process paperwork while in the field. A blank sheet of paper lay before the slight man; crumpled sheets littered the ground around the desk. Wolff had his arms crossed as he kept up the staring contest with the paper.

  “You have to use the pen to get words on there,” Manfred said.

  Wolff touched the pen, then pulled his hand back.

  “She wants to know what it’s like,” he said. “Maria, my girlfriend. Every letter she wants details about shooting and the flying…all that.” He tipped his head toward a picture frame on the nightstand next to Wolff’s bed. Wolff and a rather tall and buxom blond woman dressed in a noble’s finery smiled for a camera.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I’ve been in the dispatches for my six kills.” Wolff took to using Boelcke’s word for “victories,” the bureaucrat-preferred and newspaper-friendly term. “Those get sent back to my mother who shares them with Maria. She wants details.” Wolff frowned and kept up his vigil against the blank paper.

  “Why don’t you just tell her? Give a few details that aren’t in the dispatches, and that should be enough.”

  “My dear Manfred, I am a poet. I once sent her a three-page letter describing how the sun shone through her hair. A few platitudes simply won’t do,” Wolff said.

  “I don’t think that’s what she really wants to know. Being mentioned in dispatches means you’re in combat, you’re in danger. She’s just worried about you,” Manfred said.

  “Then what do I tell her?”

  “Tell her how lucky you are to fly with Boelcke. Mention the dashing and handsome Prussian pilot who was with you on your first victory.”

  Wolff groaned and fiddled with the pen. “What do you tell your family?”

  “The bare details. I’ll share a bit more with my brother, Lothar. He’s with the infantry near Verdun,” Manfred said. “By the way, does Maria have any sisters?”

  “She has three sisters,” Wolff said with a sideways glance at Manfred.

  “Who has three sisters?” Voss asked from the doorway.

  “No one!” Wolff said as he snapped to his feet.

  Wolff scooped up his uniform from the bed and pushed past Voss.

  “Come on, can’t be late to our own party,” Wolff said.

  A bright white flash left Manfred blind. He blinked away the effects from the camera and tried to smile toward where he thought the photographer was standing. Wolff and Bohme, their arms intertwined with his, swayed in similar discomfort.

  “Was that bright enough? You know we need our eyes to fly,” Boelcke said from farther down the line of pilots.

  The photographer answered by packing up his camera.

  Boelcke unraveled himself from Voss and Bohme. He’d insisted all five pilots stand arm in arm for the photo, part of the tradition for the night’s ceremony. Boelcke looked up at bruised clouds filling the sky before saying, “Inside, I’ve got something special waiting for the three of you.”

  One of the chateau’s three dining rooms served as the officers’ mess. A long table sat the fourteen pilots and the rest of the officers. White tablecloths, bleached so bright that they nearly reflected the lights from the chandelier, bore fine china and proper silverware. The owner of the chateau had donated the table set without his knowledge. Boelcke sat at the head, Wolff, Voss, and Manfred sat nearest to him, backward from the normal seating order that followed a strict rank and seniority protocol.

  Boelcke led the men in prayer, then signaled to the orderlies to start dinner service. The pilots remained silent, their eyes on the commander.

  Boelcke, decked out with his Blue Max and a whole host of medals from the many kingdoms that made up the German Empire, looked out a window as thunder rumbled in the distance. He turned back to his men and sighed.

  “I doubt we’ll fly in the morning. Bodenschatz,” he said to his orderly. “Schnapps.” Men cheered and banged fists to the table. Flying with a hangover was hazardous, and Boelcke rarely allowed alcohol with meals.

  The orderlies brought out the first course, roasted dove on toast with a brandy gravy, and filled each man’s glass with clear schnapps that smelt of cherries. More wild game dishes, and more schnapps followed.

  “Manfred,” Boelcke said, his face flush from drink, “what are we eating tonight that you didn’t hunt down for us?” He held up a bit of boar on his fork.

  Manfred, so tipsy that Boelcke’s face blurred in and out of focus, jabbed at his plate twice before he skewered a dumpling. He held it before his commander.

  “Sir, I did not shoot these potatoes,” he said, slurring his words. Laughter erupted around the table.

  Boelcke signaled to Bodenschatz, who brought three boxes to the table and placed one next to the plates of Voss, Wolff and Manfred. The orderly slid a piece of paper under the commander’s napkin before he left. Boelcke tapped a schnapps glass with a fork and conversation around the table died.

  He stood on wobbly legs and kept a hand on the back of his chair before he spoke. “Men, I have the great honor of presenting three of our promising new pilots with a special honor.”

  Someone jogged Manfred’s elbow, and he got to his feet with slightly less trouble than Boelcke. Voss and Wolff stood as well, Voss’s arm cocked on top of Wolff’s shoulder.

  “The commander of German air forces, Lieutenant General von Hoeppner, gives this gift to each pilot after his first air-to-air victory. Naturally, by the time this arrives, most pilots have more than one kill to their name.”

  Orderlies reached on to the table and flipped the boxes open. A silver cup as tall as a beer stein but cylindrical in shape, lay in a bed of satin. Manfred picked up the cup and held it under the dim light of the chandelier. Two eagles, locked in combat, were embossed on the cup. The words “To the Victor in Air Combat” were written in elegant script.

  “With typical high command imagination, this is your Ehrenbecher, your first cup,” Boelcke said. He raised a class as the rest of the pilots cheered.

  Something popped behind Manfred, and an orderly poured champagne into his Ehrenbecher until it bubbled over the brim. Wolff and Voss got the same.

  “Drink!” said Bohme. Each pilot raised a glass of schnapps and downed
it. Boelcke held his empty glass upside down over his head. Manfred took a sip of the champagne and caught himself; the taste could only come from French grapes.

  “Bottoms up, you three,” Boelcke said.

  Manfred gulped his champagne, determined to empty it before it left his lips. Voss finished first with a smack of his lips.

  “We took Champagne away from the French. Don’t spill a drop and spite those bastards in Paris,” Boelcke said.

  Manfred finished and held the cup over his head. A burp escaped his lips. Wolff finished a moment later and almost fell over backward before a helpful orderly pushed him upright.

  Pilots banged their fists to the table as Boelcke lowered his glass and the rest followed suit.

  “Well done, men. Well done,” he said.

  Manfred sank back into his chair, his head already pounding from too much alcohol.

  A knife tapped against a schnapps glass again. My God, what’s left? Manfred thought.

  Boelcke sat back in his chair, the bottom buttons of his tunic undone, the piece of paper left by Bodenschatz in hand.

  “Gentlemen, I have news. The British ace, Major Lanoe Hawker, is dead.” Silence fell across the table. Hawker had nearly as many kills as Boelcke and was the deadliest British pilot of the war. “He went down two days ago just north of our airfield.” Boelcke looked at Manfred, who was too drunk to make the connection. “The pilot who shot him down is none other than our Lieutenant von Richthofen.”

  Manfred’s world shrunk as the news sank in. He focused on the battling eagles on his Ehrenbecher as hands shook his shoulders and slapped his back in congratulations. The pilot of the D.H.2, the last owner of the Lewis machine gun hanging over his doorway, was the best pilot the English had to offer, and Manfred killed him.

  Manfred and Voss sat outside the barracks. Manfred had his Ehrenbecher still in hand. Voss had a cigarette. Scattered raindrops flitted through the lamplight, heralds to the approaching storm.

  “I know his name,” Manfred said.

  Voss exhaled smoke from his nostrils and squinted at Manfred.

  “What are you talking about?” Voss asked.

  “Hawker, I know who he is. The rest have all just…been there,” he said.

  “So? You think he gave a damn who you were when he was shooting at you?”

  “No, but what if I’d known it was Hawker? The best of the best and me in the air. Maybe knowing that, things would have gone differently,” Manfred said.

  “What do you want? Us and them to exchange names and back off twenty paces before we start killing each other? We’re going to shoot anyone flying a plane that’s a different color than ours. Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be.”

  Manfred held his cup in the air. Raindrops spattered against the silver. An idea, stronger than the haze of alcohol, burst into his mind.

  “I’ll make a cup for each victory! Details of each one etched on the side. A proper way to remember Hawker and the rest of them…and a larger cup for each tenth victory…” Manfred’s voice trailed off.

  “I think you’ve had too much to drink,” Voss said.

  “No, Werner, we should honor them,” Manfred said. Hawker’s dead eyes stared at him from memory. “We should honor them.”

  “Where is the balloon? The balloon is still in the sky!” Manfred slammed the field telephone and stomped out of the headquarters toward the line of Albatroses waiting for the action bell.

  He passed Boelcke, who was posing for yet another series of Sanke postcards, and climbed into his plane. A camera flash popped as he ran his fingers through the hemp ammo belt, checking for rips and tears that might jam his weapon. He cocked the gun and peered into the chamber, muttering under his breath.

  “Something wrong, Manfred?” Boelcke asked from aside his plane.

  Manfred sat back and crossed his arms. “Fourteen, sir. Fourteen victories for the Fatherland, and Hawker, but no Blue Max,” Manfred looked at the award on Boelcke’s neck. “High command wants to know why I haven’t shot down a balloon,” Manfred shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no sport in shooting down a balloon!”

  Boelcke chuckled and unclasped the Blue Max from his neck. He held it out to Manfred, glinting in the morning sun.

  “Take it,” he said.

  “No, sir, that’s yours,” Manfred said.

  “If it will make you fly any better or shoot any straighter, then take it.”

  Manfred shook his head and Boelcke pulled the award back.

  “Is this why you fly? For baubles?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why do you fly?”

  Manfred looked over the flight line, at Voss, Wolff, and Bohme and the rest of the pilots enjoying a last smoke and joking among themselves. The thump of distant artillery in the air.

  “For you and for them. For the soldiers in the trenches who need us,” Manfred said.

  “That’s what I thought.” He clasped the award around his neck. “The medals come if you want them or not; focus on what you can control.”

  “Then why do you wear it all the time?”

  “I have it on in all my pictures. How else will anyone recognize me?” Boelcke said, a wide smile on his face.

  The action bell clanged from the headquarters. An orderly ran to Boelcke’s plane, holding a sheet of paper bearing their orders in hand. Boelcke gave Manfred a flippant salute and went to his plane. Boelcke patted at his flight suit, searching for something. He knelt next to the plane and looked at the high grass underneath before climbing into the cockpit.

  The pilots watched as Boelcke looked over the paper from the orderly. The commander held his hand in the air, and pointed it forward as his plane was the first out of the chocks.

  Where is his lucky walking stick? Manfred thought.

  The Albatros dipped its wheels into cloud tops like a stone skipped across a lake. Manfred looked over the side into the abyss below him, the white of Venetian lace deepened to melancholy grays as the cloud deepened.

  Manfred spied Bohme and Boelcke above him, Boelcke’s white scarf flapping behind him like a pennant. He lost them in the sunlight and blinked hard as he looked back to the cloud just beneath his plane.

  He held out his hand, as if to catch a whiff of cloud. For him, flying was a beautiful thing. Shame that this war is what brought him to it.

  Part of the deep darkness moved, a leviathan’s tentacle reaching out for him. Manfred scrambled to load his machine gun as a D.H.2 burst through the cloud layer. Manfred’s plane reared up, missing the rising English plane by a few yards.

  The D.H.2 pilot glanced over his shoulder, then did a double take when he saw Manfred. Manfred was close enough to see the shock on the pilot’s face. The D.H.2 banked into a turn and Manfred followed suit.

  Manfred fired, failing to connect, as their turn took them back toward the clouds. The D.H.2 pulled up and skirted the cloud tops as if they were as solid as the ground below. Manfred fired another burst and gray smoke burst from his target. He closed in for the kill as the D.H.2 lost airspeed.

  Bullets zipped past Manfred, a guy line between his wings snapped with the twang of a broken cello string. There was another D.H.2 firing on him from behind, and three more rising from the clouds with it.

  Manfred did exactly what training forbade—he dove straight into the clouds. Water drops coalesced on his goggles and rain slicked over his plane. There was nothing but gray around him and in his panicked dive he’d lost track of which way was up. He said a quick prayer and changed direction against the most resistance from his control stick, hoping that would lead him skyward and not into an uncontrolled dive to the ground.

  The purgatory gray vanished as Manfred found blue skies. A swirling dogfight just ahead, Manfred opened the throttle and raced to the battle.

  Boelcke, two English on his tail, dived into a spiral, and nearly collided with Bohme who was climbing to reach the conflict. Bohme waited until Boelcke crossed out of his line of fire, then li
t in to the two pursuers, who hadn’t seen Bohme until they’d dived to follow Germany’s greatest ace.

  One of the D.H.2s banked right to avoid the attack, the other banked left. The planes collided, the sound of the crash lost to the wind and roar of engines. The planes disintegrated and fell into the clouds, like a street lamp smashed by a rock.

  Manfred found his first target. The smoke had gone black but this wasn’t enough to send the pilot racing for the safety of his own lines. Manfred strafed the top of the English as he crossed over, and the smoke gave way to flames. Manfred admired the man’s courage as the D.H.2 stalled and fell to the earth.

  Bohme was on the last D.H.2’s tail. Boelcke followed the pair from a lower elevation. The last D.H.2 pulled straight up, and lost all its airspeed in seconds. It hung in the air for a moment, and then the heavy engine pulled the nose to the ground. The maneuver threw Bohme off its tail, and Bohme’s Albatros jerked about as Bohme tried to reacquire his target.

  The D.H.2 recovered from its dive and made for the clouds, Boelcke hot on his heels.

  Bohme swooped toward the D.H.2, his course leading him dangerously close to Boelcke.

  Manfred screamed a useless warning as Bohme came down and his landing gear collided with Boelcke’s upper wings.

  Boelcke’s Albatros continued on for several pregnant seconds, then the spar between his left and right wings collapsed. The wings pulled back, and the Albatros fell like a dove shot in midflight. The wings ripped from the fuselage and fluttered in the air as Boelcke vanished into the clouds.

  Squadron 2’s pilots sat in silence around the dinner table, Boelcke’s chair at the head of the table forever empty. Manfred’s gaze crept from his untouched meal, to the empty chair, and to Bohme over and over again.

  As second-in-command, Bohme was now the de facto leader of the squadron following Boelcke’s death. High command had demanded to know the circumstances of Boelcke’s accident, and Bohme’s mea culpa of culpability was so forthright that Manfred’s statement to the investigation felt unnecessary.