The Red Baron: A World War I Novel

by Richard Fox

  The general in charge of the imperiled sector called Manfred and begged him and his squadron to do something, anything, to help. Manfred hadn’t argued that his was an air superiority squadron, or stuck to protocol requiring such requests go through the corps commander. He asked for the map coordinates to the massing troops, and led his squadron into the air.

  They found the English in the open, massed around mess carts and fires. His nine pilots strafed the English, scattering them like a handful of dropped marbles. Manfred stayed above the fray, keeping an eye open for English planes.

  Lothar’s red-and-yellow plane peppered a half dozen English as they raced for a creek bed. They leapt into the creek and bobbed up and down in the water, as if Lothar was a swarm of angry bees chasing them.

  The rest of the squadron dipped and dived at the English, none taking a chance of an aimed shot from an English rifle by flying as low as Lothar. They were there to break up the English formations and delay the attack, not build up a body count.

  Allmenroder flew next to Manfred and pointed to the west. Manfred saw at least three dozen English planes heading right for them. Manfred looked at Allmenroder and made a slashing motion across his neck, their job was done.

  Manfred pulled a flare gun from a holster and fired it. The flare burst, a falling star bright enough to garner attention in the sky darkening to purple and black. Manfred’s squadron pulled up from their attack runs and flew toward where the flare burst—all but Lothar.

  Lothar flew over a trench, firing at the English and tossing grenades from his cockpit. English infantry were popping up in his wake and shooting at Lothar as he kept on a steady course. Manfred vowed, again, that if the English didn’t kill Lothar, he would do it himself.

  Manfred let loose with his machine gun as he swooped down, parallel to his brother. At least he could give the English another target to fire at. He caught up with his brother and jabbed his hand back to the German lines.

  Lothar nodded and pulled into a loop. Manfred’s heart leapt into his throat at his brother’s mistake; the loop robbed Lothar of all his forward motion, making him a nearly stationary target for the English.

  A machine gun erupted and tracer rounds slashed at Lothar. Lothar came out of his loop and buzzed the top of an English trench as he escaped into no-man’s-land. Manfred pulled alongside him, shaking his head at his brother.

  Lothar pressed a finger to his mouth, and then pressed it against his shoulder. He jerked the finger away and shook it, as if his shoulder was red hot. Lothar tossed his head back in a laugh, then his engine ground to a halt. Lothar’s demeanor changed instantly as his propeller slowed to a stop and his plane glided to the earth. A glut of benzene poured from a bullet hole in Lothar’s tank.

  Manfred watched as his brother hit the ground, crushing the wheels. His plane dug into the earth and slid like a bull struck through the heart by a matador. Manfred banked around, praying to see some sign of life from Lothar’s plane.

  Dust swirled around the Albatros as Manfred circled overhead. A column of dirt erupted a hundred yards from the wreck, an English mortar lobbing shells at Lothar.

  Lothar emerged from the wreck and waved to his brother. Another mortar struck, this time between Lothar and the German lines. The English were bracketing Lothar’s plane, the next round would land right on top of him if the mortar men had any skill.

  Lothar looked around frantically, as if he didn’t know which way to go.

  Manfred twisted his plane so it was belly-up and flew over Lothar, pointing to the German lines. Lothar wasted no more time and took off running.

  A mortar landed a few yards from Lothar’s plane, and then more came in quick succession, smashing the red-and-yellow craft into a million pieces.

  Manfred watched as Lothar ran around barbed wire and finally made it to the German lines. Lothar disappeared into a trench.

  An artillery shell ripped past Manfred. The near miss flung his plane into the air like a kite caught by a gust of wind. More shells hit the German trenches as Manfred fought to regain control of his plane. The English attack had begun, and Lothar was right in its path.

  Wolff and Schafer sat next to each other at the dinner table, speaking to each other with a conspirator’s whisper.

  “No word yet?” Schafer asked.

  “Nothing at all from where Lothar went down. The bombardment must have cut the telegraph lines,” Wolff said.

  They took a quick glance at Manfred, who wasn’t at the head of the table. Their commander stood at the windows facing west, watching the distant burst of artillery shells light up the horizon. His meal was untouched.

  “Do you think he’d be this worried if it was you or me out there?” Schafer asked.

  Wolff glared at Schafer. “I know it.”

  Manfred kept his vigil at the widow, tapping his knuckles against the window frame in time with the shell bursts.

  Metzger ran to greet Manfred’s plane as it returned from the dawn patrol. He snapped to attention as the Albatros came to rest on a chalk line running parallel to the hangar. Metzger saluted as the plane stopped; mechanics tossed blocks against the wheels to keep it in place.

  “Any word from Lothar?” Manfred yelled over his engine as it wound down.

  “Sir, your brother is back,” Metzger yelled. “He arrived just after you took off.”

  Manfred climbed from the cockpit and slid to the ground. “He’s all right?”

  Metzger paused, unsure of what words to use. “He’s uninjured, sir. But I don’t think he’s ‘all right.’”

  Manfred, still in his furs, knocked at his brother’s door. A full plate of breakfast sausage and eggs lay against the doorframe. No answer to the knock.

  Manfred knocked again.

  “Piss off!” came Lothar’s muffled reply.

  “Lothar, it’s me,” Manfred said.

  The doorknob shook as it unlocked from within. Manfred opened the door a few seconds later.

  Lothar’s room was full of smoke, a plate of smashed cigarette butts lay on a chair next to Lothar’s bed. A jaundiced yellow glow permeated the smoke, cast by a lamp in the corner. The curtains were still drawn against the dawn’s light. Lothar was nowhere to be seen.

  Manfred closed the door behind him and found Lothar sitting in a corner, his head down, arms outstretched and perched on his knees, a lit cigarette in his hand. Manfred shoved the curtains aside and slid a window open. Fresh air pushed the smoke aside.

  Lothar was filthy. Gray mud covered him from his knees to the toes of his boots. The same mud matted his hair. His left sleeve was stained dark by what must have been blood.

  “Are you hurt?” Manfred asked.

  Lothar picked his head up. His eyes were weary and sunken, and he looked at his bloody sleeve as if seeing the stain for the first time.

  “It isn’t mine,” he said and lowered his head again.

  “What happened?” Manfred said.

  Lothar said nothing, and then he curled his arms and legs against his body. Sobs escaped from him.

  Manfred tossed off his coat and sat next to his brother.

  “I know,” Manfred said. “I know.”

  Lothar flicked the cigarette away and leaned against Manfred, the sobs lessening.

  “It isn’t like that in the air. The plane goes down, and that’s it. I go to the wrecks for proof and the bodies…it’s like someone else did it. Some accident that I just happened to stumble upon.” Manfred wrapped an arm around Lothar and gave him a quick squeeze.

  “In the trenches, the killing was right there. Right in front of me. Not the same. Not as clean. My God, Manfred, the screams,” Lothar said.

  “Not like we thought it would be,” Manfred said.

  “Why? Why didn’t they teach us about this? All those years at Wahlstatt and they never told us the truth about war, about what it’s like to kill a man.” Lothar’s knuckles were raw, likely from striking.

  “How would you explain it to little Karl Bolko? He’s st
ill at the academy,” Manfred said. Their younger brother had been kept away from Manfred’s farewell at the train station, an event that felt to Manfred like it happened a lifetime ago, not a few years.

  Lothar pulled away and sat up, staring at his muddy boots.

  “I don’t…I don’t know. God, I hope this war is over before he’s old enough to fight.”

  “I don’t think you can tell anyone what it’s like. You have to be there, and find out if you have that strength in you,” Manfred said.

  “And are we better, or worse off, with knowing if we can kill another man?”

  “We’re alive, at least.”

  Manfred stood up, and saw a trench knife, stained black with dried blood, on Lothar’s writing desk. The studded brass handguard seemed familiar.

  “That’s for you,” Lothar said.

  “What?”

  “Yes, when they found out I was your brother I became very popular,” Lothar said. “Some lieutenant wanted you to have that.”

  Manfred looked at the knife, and wanted nothing to do with it.

  “You keep it. I think you earned it. Get cleaned up, you’ll fly in Reinhard’s plane, he’s off on leave now,” Manfred said.

  “What?” Lothar said.

  “Yes, you fly tonight. This isn’t a hotel. You’ll earn your supper.”

  Lothar looked up at his brother and nodded.

  “Father is coming to visit. He sent a telegram last night,” Manfred said.

  Lothar stood up and shook the mud from his hair. “Don’t tell him about any of this. He’ll worry.”

  “I promise.”

  Otto looked up from the trench, and watched as the all-red Albatros pursued an English Sopwith triplane. Sunlight glinted in the air, reflecting from the brass cartridges falling from the German plane. Otto watched the casings fall to the ground, just a few dozen yards into no-man’s-land.

  The Sopwith pitched over and corkscrewed to the earth, trailing black smoke. Cheers erupted from the rest of the soldiers in Otto’s trench, and he took a chance.

  The soldier slithered into no-man’s-land and crept toward where he saw the brass fall. He kept his belly on the ground, pulling himself forward like an infant that hadn’t mastered crawling.

  A patch of red poppies grew around a shattered wheel, an artifact of some long-lost horse carriage that ferried ammo or artillery during the early days of the war. A single brass cartridge lay in the poppies, and Otto reached out and grabbed it. It was still warm to the touch and smelled of freshly struck gunpowder.

  A childish giggle escaped from him as he turned around and slunk back to his trench. Less than a dozen yards from safety, Otto got sloppy and lifted his head up. A bullet snapped past his head, followed by two more that smacked into the dirt beside him.

  Otto scrambled the last few feet and fell head over heels into the trench as English bullets chewed into the sandbags along the trench line.

  Otto lay on the wooden planks of the trench floor, staring into the sky.

  Sergeant Haas leaned over him, blocking out the sun. “Otto, what the hell were you thinking?”

  Otto held up the casing and smiled. “It got it! Straight from Richthofen’s gun!”

  Manfred stepped from his D.III, the hot engine ticking as it cooled in the morning air, and he shrugged off his fur coat. He looked to the sky, the fall air crisp and clear with a few transient clouds.

  “Get her ready,” he said to Hyneman, who had the foresight to bring a gas can with him. He looked over the line of fighters going through preflight ministrations; an Albatros the color of a winter sky was parked next to the hangar. He had a visitor.

  He found Lothar and their father sitting on the veranda, steaming mugs of coffee in their hands. His father was in the uniform of the territorial guard, having been called up to oversee the occupation of a Belgian village a year after the war started. He hadn’t seen his father in uniform since the elder Richthofen was medically retired from the army when Manfred was a boy. Seeing him in uniform again reminded Manfred of when he was a child, and his father’s infrequent visits from the field were rare moments of joy in the Richthofen manor. The more things change, the more things stay the same, Manfred thought. Albrecht von Richthofen looked out of place at the table, as he was flanked by two young officers wearing the bottom of their fur flight suits, held up with suspenders, and shaggy overboots.

  With them was Werner Voss, who was pantomiming a one-on-one aerial battle with his hands. Voss had promised to stop at Manfred’s aerodrome when one of his many solo hunting flights brought him near. Manfred wasn’t surprised that Voss would arrive in time for breakfast.

  “Father, I have shot down an Englishman!” Manfred said as he joined the table.

  Albrecht tilted his good ear—he went stone-deaf in the other after rescuing a cavalryman from drowning in a freezing stream many years ago—toward his son, and Lothar repeated Manfred’s boast.

  Albrecht nodded and clapped his hands quietly, which was high praise from him.

  “Careful, Lothar, Werner tends to fight more and more Englishmen every time he tells a story,” Manfred said as he sat down.

  “Actually, I was telling them about the time you shot down Hawker,” Voss said.

  “I don’t remember you being there…”

  “I was on my way to help, saw everything,” Voss said.

  Metzger appeared with porcelain cups and a pot of coffee. As the squadron’s commander, Manfred had one habit, a good cup of coffee after a morning patrol. This cup of coffee was oily and had a strong smell of chicory. A pair of unwrapped hard ginger candies were on the saucer in place of sugar cubes.

  “Ersatz coffee again, Metzger?” Manfred said as he tossed the candies into his coffee.

  “Fresh coffee will arrive next week, sir,” Metzger said.

  “They said that last week,” Lothar said.

  “Problem getting supplies?” Albrecht asked.

  “We have plenty of bullets and gas, but other items,” Metzger put a bowl of reconstituted pea soup with a lump of salted bacon in front of Albrecht and the rest of the table, “are lacking.”

  “I think this bacon is older than I am,” Lothar said, examining the lump of meat on his fork.

  “Do you not want it? Things aren’t any better at Boelcke’s squadron,” Voss said. Lothar answered by eating the bacon, and spent the next minute chewing it.

  “How is Mother? Any problems getting food?” Manfred sipped at the bitter coffee and grimaced. He’d left a sooty mark on the cup, and took a napkin to his face to wipe away the remains of gas fumes and gun smoke.

  “She’s fine. Has her own little vegetable garden next to the rose bushes just to be patriotic,” Albrecht said. “All her letters are about how little you two write to her, never come home for leave, that sort of thing.” Albrecht could inflict guilt on his children with the best of parents.

  The action bell rang with urgency, sending the three pilots at the table to their feet and their eyes to the sky. Voss kept his coffee cup to his mouth, trying to gulp down the last few sips.

  “There!” Lothar pointed to the end of the run way. A German Aviatik, pursued by two Sopwith Camels. The Aviatik was smoking, and pitched down onto the runway as the Camels took shots. Bullets zipped down the runway and smacked into the hangar with the sound of storm driven hailstones.

  The Aviatik touched down and rolled toward the manor. The Camels roared over the airstrip, the pilots close enough for Manfred to lock his eyes with an Englishman. The wounded plane stopped in the middle of the airfield, the propeller shuddering from some internal damage to the engine.

  “Medic!” Lothar yelled. He leapt from the veranda and ran to the Aviatik, Voss and Manfred close behind.

  Lothar made it to the plane, reached into the cockpit, and killed the engine. He and Voss manhandled the pilot out of the cockpit. The pilot was limp, moaning as they lowered him to the ground, a red stain blossoming with slow-motion horror on his chest.

  Manfred
stripped off the man’s flight cap, revealing a blond mass of hair matted with sweat. He couldn’t have been a day over nineteen. The pilot wheezed, flecks of blood escaping from his mouth with every breath.

  Lothar took the trench knife from his waist and cut open the flight suit. A bullet had pierced the man’s right lung. Jagged ribs marked the exit wound, a pink wrecked lung labored in his chest, sucking at the air over his chest.

  Manfred looked to Voss. “Medic, stretcher.” Voss ran off. Lothar pressed one of the table napkins against the wound, turning it red almost instantly.

  “Look at me,” Manfred said to the wounded man. “You’ll be all right, I promise.”

  The man’s eyes rolled around in their sockets before focusing on Manfred. His breathing increased.

  “Richt...Richt,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m Richthofen. Don’t talk,” Manfred said.

  Bloody hands pawed at Manfred’s chest and arms. Manfred grabbed the man’s hand in his own and squeezed it, hot blood oozing between his fingers. The pilot gritted his teeth and groaned, the brothers struggled to hold him still, and Lothar lost his grip on the napkin. The pilot took a shallow, bubbling breath and stiffened. He went limp a moment later and lay still.

  Lothar cursed and flung the bloody cloth to the ground. Manfred placed the pilot’s hand over his chest. He was little older than a boy, whatever life he might have lived, gone. Once, Manfred might have had the heart to mourn him, but only anger seethed in his chest. They stood up and found their father standing a few steps away, his face deathly pale as he looked at his two bloody sons and the dead man. There, right in front of their father, was the all too real danger faced by his sons.

  The Sopwiths flew back over the airfield, one wagging its wings as a salute or a boast. Two soldiers ran toward them carrying a stretcher.