by Richard Fox
Bohme had barely spoken a word since the accident, other than to give orders to keep the squadron ready to fly. The man sat at the end of the table, catty-corner to Boelcke’s empty seat. He had his chin to his chest, arms crossed over his stomach.
Low murmurs from the pilots gave the meal the feeling of a wake.
Manfred pushed his potato pancake around the applesauce on his plate, like a child who refuses to eat. The door creaked open and Bodenschatz, the orderly, handed him a folded telegram.
“Your Blue Max?” Voss asked quietly.
Manfred rubbed the telegram between his fingers, as if trying to tease out the message.
“Probably orders to attend a hearing.” He looked to Bohme and opened the paper.
Manfred sat stone still as he read, too shocked to even breathe.
“Your Blue Max,” Voss said with certainty, and he gave Manfred a quick pat on the back.
“No, not that. I’m to take command of Squadron 11 at Douai, effective immediately,” Manfred said.
“I’m to report to Squadron 11, effective immediately,” Wolff said from across the table. He waved his telegram by its corner. “Sir,” Wolff added.
Voss grabbed his wineglass and started to raise his arm in a toast. Manfred’s hand snapped out and held Voss’s arm to the table.
“No, not yet,” Manfred said.
Bohme was looking at them, his eyes red. Bohme mouthed some apologies to the men sitting around him before pushing himself away from the table and leaving the room.
Wolff pursed his lips in thought, “Suppose we should pack?” he asked Manfred.
They followed Bohme out and made for their rooms. They reached the base of the stairs leading to their rooms and were met by Bohme, who barreled past them without a word. Bohme shoved open a door that led to the airfield. Manfred watched him go, and saw a pistol in Bohme’s hand just before he left the chateau.
“Damn it,” Manfred said as he ran after Bohme, Wolff right behind him.
Manfred found Bohme on the drainage ditch bordering the airfield. His hand squeezing the pistol’s handle.
Bohme raised the pistol to his temple.
“Bohme, stop!” Manfred yelled.
Bohme turned around, the gun still to his head.
“It’s my fault, Manfred! I killed him,” Bohme said, his voice wracked by sobs.
“No, you didn’t. I was there; it was an accident.” Manfred stopped a few feet from Bohme, his arms held out as if trying to stop Bohme from running into him.
Bohme sobbed and cocked the hammer back.
“Why do you fly?” Manfred asked. The question as much a surprise to him as it was to Bohme, who looked at Manfred in confusion.
“Boelcke asked me that once. I told him I flew to fight beside him, beside you. Did he ever ask you that question?” Manfred asked, grateful that Bohme’s thoughts of suicide were delayed for a few more moments.
“I told him I fought for him, for all of us,” Bohme said, his voice far away with the memory.
“Remember when he told us that the squadron is always stronger than a single pilot?” Wolff said.
“I do,” Bohme said.
“What will happen if you leave us, Bohme? What will happen to the squadron?”
“He’s gone. The Boelcke squadron is done,” Bohme said.
“No, he taught us everything he knows. We are the Boelcke squadron…and we are less without you, Bohme,” Manfred said. He took a cautious step toward Bohme.
Bohme lowered the pistol slowly, then turned it around in his hand and held the butt toward Manfred, who snatched it from his hand. Manfred uncocked the hammer slowly and shoved the weapon into a pocket.
Bohme sank to the ground and started crying. Manfred sat next to the man and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. Wolff knelt next to them, his delicate hand on Bohme’s knee.
They stayed in the moonlight and mourned Boelcke with tears and silence.
Chapter 6— “Did Your Gun Jam?”
Manfred gritted his teeth as the car hit another pothole. The road to the Douai airfield wasn’t paved, but after enough bumps like that, Manfred wondered if the driver was aiming for them.
“No kills,” Wolff said from the seat behind him. “How is it that Squadron 11 has no kills to its record?”
Manfred shrugged, the gesture lost in the gyrating cabin.
“Voss heard that some general at Lille is so terrified of English bombers that he had the squadron flying over his headquarters to keep him safe,” Manfred said.
“Voss told me the squadron was the dumping ground for pilots who couldn’t handle combat,” Wolff said. Manfred looked at him, his eyebrows raised.
“What, he didn’t mention that to you?” Wolff said.
The staff car rattled to a halt next to a country manor, lacking the opulence of Bertincourt. Pilots and enlisted men ran from the manor, mechanics left the Albatroses in the hangar and joined the rest of the unit as it formed up on the airstrip.
“Your arrival is foretold,” Wolff said.
Manfred placed his cap over his head and made sure the brim was two fingers’ width above the bridge of his nose. He gave Wolff a hard look. “I will expect nothing less of them than what Boelcke demanded of us.”
The car door opened, and Manfred got out. A small uniformed man with a grandiose mustache closed the door behind him. The man gave Manfred the most proper salute he’d seen in months and clicked his heels together.
“Sir, I am Sergeant Metzger, your orderly,” he said, his accent Prussian.
Wolff ran past the pair and fell in with the rest of the unit.
“Sergeant Metzger, is that everyone?” Manfred asked as he returned the salute.
Metzger pulled a clipboard out of the crook of his arm and ticked something off of a list with a worn pencil.
“With Lieutenant Wolff…yes. Now we do have—”
The orderly scrambled to catch up to Manfred, who made his way to the formation.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but Lieutenant Lang left some paperwork unfinished before he was transferred. I’ll need your signature on these forms.” Metzger pulled a sheaf of papers from the clipboard.
“Later, Metzger. Later,” Manfred said over his shoulder.
The pilots made up the first rank of the formation, Manfred noticed that boots were polished to a mirror sheen and every uniform was freshly pressed. They’re either trying too hard, or they have nothing better to do with their time, Manfred thought.
Manfred stopped halfway across the formation and cleared his throat.
“Squadron 11, I am Lieutenant Manfred von Richthofen. I am honored to be your commander. Starting now, we fly to fight. We will fly over the trenches and against the foe wherever we find them. In thirty minutes’ time I want all the pilots and mechanics to meet me in the hangar to explain the maintenance status of each and every plane. Tomorrow, I will fly with each of you to make sure you’re brave. Dismissed!”
The formation broke apart and drifted back to the hangar. One pilot, a tall man a few years younger than Manfred, approached. His stiff right leg kept his pace slow and measured.
“Sir, I am Lieutenant Karl Allmenroder, ranking officer after Lieutenant Lang’s…departure,” he said.
“Could you tell me why he left in such a hurry? Seems he’s left me with a broken vase and a pot of glue,” Manfred said, and immediately regretted referencing the squadron as a broken thing.
“Lang had a bad case of battle fatigue—did his best to cure it with the bottle,” Allmenroder said. “I think he’s on his way to a territorial guard unit to get his nerves back. Let me show you around before Metzger buries you in paperwork.”
Allmenroder limped alongside his commander.
“Were you hurt recently?” Manfred asked.
“No, sir. I was with the infantry at Ypres and I forgot to duck,” he slapped his wounded thigh. “I can’t run anymore, but that isn’t an issue in the air,” he said.
“Why did you choose the air serv
ice after your injury?”
Allmenroder’s mouth twitched. “War isn’t over, sir. I wasn’t going to sit in the rear and get fat while my boys are still fighting.” Allmenroder looked back at the hangar, pilots, and mechanics scrambling around their planes like ants around a disturbed hill. “We’re going to fight, right, sir? We’ve been waiting for the chance since we got here.”
“That’s right, Lieutenant. We’re going to fight.”
Private Otto crouched against the trench wall as bullets smashed into the earth next to him. The Sopwith Pup that had dogged him from trench to trench broke off its attack run and circled like a vulture, waiting for its prey to move into the open. Otto lurched to his feet and ran for a dugout at the end of the trench, the doors bolted shut from within.
The roar of the plane’s engine was like the growl of a wolf at his back. Otto splashed through a puddle and stepped over the body of a German soldier, the sky hunter’s first victim. The staccato burst of a machine gun sent terror through Otto’s body. He kept running for the door, which seemed to get farther away with every step.
He finally slammed into the door and screamed for help. He spun around and saw the Pup coming straight at him, its lone machine gun leering at him from behind the propeller’s blur. Otto pulled his rosary from a pocket and kissed it. He might have time to finish a final prayer.
The Pup flew close enough for Otto to look his killer in the eyes…then it flew right over him. Otto kissed the rosary again as an Albatros, the Iron Cross emblazoned on the wings, roared overhead, firing after the Pup.
Manfred put another burst into the Pup and it fell into no-man’s-land. The impact collapsed the wings and it slid into a shell hole, where it overturned. It flopped over, its belly exposed to the sky.
He caught a glimpse of a soldier in the trenches waving to him. At least someone appreciates what I do, he thought.
Manfred turned away from the English lines as infantry rifles blossomed with fire. His squadron had engaged a flight of Pups just minutes before he pounced on the Pup strafing the trenches. He counted eleven planes still in the fight, five were his Albatroses. He’d taken off with six other pilots that morning, but the missing Albatros was nowhere to be seen on the earth or in the sky.
A Pup flamed out and corkscrewed to the ground. Manfred grumbled as the victorious Albatros banked off and fired at a pair of English trailing one of his pilots. At this distance, there was no way to tell which pilot was which, and no way for them to identify him. Boelcke had never mentioned this kind of problem.
Manfred came in behind an Albatros a mere thirty yards behind a Pup. The Albatros stuck to the Pup like glue, yet it didn’t fire. The Pup swooped into an open field and shot through a gap in a windbreak barely wider than the plane. Manfred admired the pilot’s skill as it pulled up, the pursuing Albatros off his back. The Pup pulled straight into Manfred’s gun line, and Manfred’s bullets tore the left wings from the plane. The stricken plane arced over and crashed into the windbreak.
Manfred came up beside the Albatros that should have had an easy victory, and looked at the pilot. Pohl, a young man who’d grown up in Germany’s Africa colonies, was the pilot. He looked at Manfred with shame-filled eyes, and then turned away.
Wolff joined them, wagging his wings as he pointed to the remaining Pup retreating over no-man’s-land. Manfred checked his fuel gauge—too close to empty to give chase—and led his men back to their airfield.
Manfred stood next to a battered Albatros at the far end of the squadron’s runway. Blood crept down the side of the cockpit in red streaks. A stretcher with a sheet-covered body lay on the ground; blood glistened from where it had seeped through the sheet on top of the body’s stomach. The heavy iron stench of a man’s life essence hung in the air.
“He expired a few seconds after we got him out of the plane. I’m sorry, sir,” Metzger said.
Lieutenant Engle, who’d been missing from the earlier battle, lay before him. He must have flown back after being wounded, Manfred thought.
Manfred knelt down and lifted the sheet from Engle’s face. His too pale face was at peace, as if sleeping, a trickle of blood ran from the corner of his lips and dripped on the stretcher. They’d met only yesterday, and now he was gone. Manfred let go of the sheet and stood up.
Engle’s mechanic, a bald man named Hyneman, stood at Engle’s feet, staring at the body.
“Hyneman,” Manfred said. The mechanic snapped alert and wiped a tear away with a sleeve.
“Sir,” Hyneman said.
“How long until you can have the plane ready to fly?” Manfred asked.
Hyneman looked at Manfred like he’d sprouted a second head. Manfred wrapped a hand around the mechanic’s upper arm and spoke softly. “We can’t do anything more for Engle, but we need that plane flying by morning. Can you do that for me?”
Hyneman swallowed hard and nodded. “Morning. She’ll be just like new, sir.” Manfred gave him a pat on the shoulder and walked away.
Wolff had the surviving pilots waiting for their after-action review. He’d gathered them up at the tail of his plane without being asked, Boelcke’s leadership was ingrained on Wolff just as it was on Manfred.
Manfred stripped off his helmet and gloves as he stalked across the airfield, his mind afire with anger. Anger at losing a man, anger at his failure as a leader. Had he pushed them into the air too soon?
Wolff saluted as Manfred arrived. “Sir, I—”
Manfred walked right past Wolff and went to Wolff’s plane. Manfred ran his bare hand over the plane, letting his fingers linger over the many bullet holes in the tail and on the wings. Manfred put his hand on the machine gun, and then jerked his hand away from the hot metal over the barrel. Manfred gave Wolff a nod, and Wolff answered with a shrug and pointed to his chin, blackened from gun smoke.
Manfred repeated the silent inspection on Allmenroder’s plane, noting a single bullet hole. He didn’t give Allmenroder a second glance as he went to the next plane, flown by a pie-faced twenty-year-old named Reinhard. Reinhard’s plane had no damage on it, but the machine gun was warm. Manfred shook his head quickly as he moved on.
The last plane belonged to Pohl. The virgin fabric was unmarred; the machine gun had no heat. Manfred pulled himself up on the wing and slapped his hand against the triggers on the control stick. A burst of shots flashed through the back of the hangar and knocked a rotten plank from the wall. Sunlight shone through the new holes in the wall.
Manfred jumped from the plane and squared off from Pohl. Manfred looked Pohl in the eyes and waited. Pohl’s chin trembled for a moment, and then his head sunk to his chest.
Manfred stormed off, leaving his stunned men behind.
The silence continued until Manfred was out of earshot.
“That could have gone better,” Reinhard said.
“That was the worst dressing down I’ve ever had,” Allmenroder said. “Pohl, what was that all about with your gun?” Pohl had walked away, and Allmenroder saw him disappear around the corner.
Manfred watched as his pilots filed past Engle’s open grave and tossed earth onto the casket below. The propeller from Engle’s Albatros had been sawed away into a makeshift cross for a gravestone. A few flowers lay at the base of the propeller; no time to make a traditional wreath for the departed.
Pohl was the last to honor Engle. A priest said a few words over the body and motioned to two enlisted men armed with shovels to fill in the grave. The ceremony over; men trickled back to the manor.
“Pohl,” Manfred said as the man passed him.
“Sir,” Pohl said.
“Did your gun jam?”
“No, sir. I couldn’t do it. I can’t kill another person. I thought I could but…”
“That was your first combat?”
Pohl nodded.
“I’ll have you transferred immediately. If you can’t fight in the air, there’s no place for you here,” Manfred said.
“Do you think I’m a coward?”
/> “No. A coward would have told me his gun jammed,” Manfred said. He walked over to the foot of Engle’s grave and tossed a handful of dirt onto the casket, a simple affair made from wood scrounged from the crumbling horse stable on the estate.
He looked down at Engle and knew he wouldn’t be the last man to die under his command. To lose someone so quickly scratched at the back of Manfred’s mind. A nagging doubt that he’d never live up to Boelcke’s example. Maybe I don’t deserve the Blue Max, he thought.
If proper paperwork could win the war, Germany would stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern tip of Russia, Manfred mused. He signed off on another supply request, detailing every bullet and drop of gas his squadron had used in the last two weeks, and put it on top of a pile of other reports for Metzger to deliver. When he wasn’t flying, mentoring his pilots, or taking care of life’s necessities, his time was consumed by bureaucracy. Odd that in all his military studies at the academy, the report signing prowess of von Moltke or Frederick the Great were never mentioned.
Metzger tapped at the door to his office and let himself in.
“Sir, the replacements have arrived,” his orderly announced.
Manfred didn’t look up—too busy trying to remember how many potatoes the mess hall had cooked in the last week. He scribbled down his best guess and saw his two new pilots. One he knew, the other he knew by reputation.
“First Lieutenant Emil Schafer, formerly of Third Squadron,” Meztger said, reading from his clipboard.
Schafer, his broad face seemingly stuck in a smile, said, “Thank you for having me, sir.”
“And Lieutenant Lothar von…Richthofen?” Meztger said, as if he couldn’t believe what he was reading.
Lothar, a wry smile on his face, clicked his heels and winked at his older brother.
“Thank you, Metzger. Get them settled, and I’ll fly with them in the morning,” he said. “Lieutenant von Richthofen, a moment.”
