by Richard Fox
Manfred popped open his leather jacket, revealing his dress uniform and a chest full of medals.
Despite being the son of a minor noble, high society was something of a mystery to Manfred. He’d been in a cadet’s or officer’s uniform since he was eleven years old. His mother schooled him on the proper protocol of visiting with the rich and well-connected people around his hometown of Schweidnitz, but the attendees at Bad Kreuznach were leagues beyond his experience.
Manfred kept to the outer wall, a small plate of cookies and candied cherries at hand. The Pour Le Merite at his neck wasn’t unique, as Manfred spotted the award on several officers milling about the ballroom. As one of the only lieutenants in the room, the average rank of the officers in the room seemed to be colonel and above, Manfred decided that discretion was the better part of valor when it came to socializing.
Not that his desires mattered. News of his arrival wasn’t a secret, and he was inundated with small talk and star-stuck eyes of those in attendance. The only other draw for the room was who lay on the other side of the gilded doors across the room.
Well-heeled civilian men, and their uniformly plump wives, gravitated toward a set of double doors at the opposite end of the ballroom. The Kaiser was on the other side of the door, and he had a long line of well-wishers waiting for him.
Laughter and animated conversations filled the air; waiters wandered from clique to clique, carrying trays of champagne and freshly squeezed juice. If Manfred hadn’t shot down a Sopwith triplane the day before, he could have sworn this was a peacetime gathering. The congenial atmosphere, hint of soap and cologne in the air, and lack of artillery thundering in the distance made Manfred feel out of place. He wanted to leave and get back to the war, what he knew, before this illusion of quietus could take hold.
Until then, he would enjoy the shortbread cookies with strawberry jam on his plate. He shoved an entire cookie into his mouth and savored that something so sweet and wonderful could still exist in the world.
“There’s Lieutenant von Richthofen,” said a voice from behind Manfred. Manfred dropped his plate on a table and spun around, wiping his hands on a napkin. He choked down the cookie and looked around for the speaker. Riegel squeezed past a pair of men crowding the macaroon croquembouche.
“Richthofen, the Kaiser would appreciate the pleasure of your company in a few minutes. Come with me,” he said.
Manfred dabbed crumbs from his mouth and followed the captain, who maneuvered around the throng of people with practiced ease.
“How goes the war?” Riegel asked.
“I thought you’d have a better idea than I would, given the company,” Manfred said. Riegel stopped aside the door leading to the Kaiser’s room.
“I don’t blame you for thinking that. All I know is what the dispatches say, and the great news that the intelligence and propaganda weasels can fabricate from those reports. You, on the other hand, are there. So how goes the war?” Riegel put his back to the wall and kept an eye on the baroque double doors a few yards away.
“We fly over the same territory over and over again. For every plane we send down it feels like they have two more in the air the next day,” Manfred said, his voice low enough so only Riegel could hear him.
“Your men?”
“The best. I could not fly with better men unless Boelcke was still with us,” Manfred said.
A tremendous crash broke through the din of the party, Manfred’s combat instincts sent him into a crouch and he almost dived under a table for cover. He looked down a side hallway and saw a plinth lying on its side, a bronze bust of some notable face down on the carpet. Two servants scrambled to right the plinth as a housemaster in a tailed suit gave fervent directions to the two men.
Manfred felt his heart thunder in his chest. He fought to keep his breathing steady as he righted himself. Riegel looked as stressed as Manfred felt; the crippled man seemed to hum with adrenaline.
As for the rest of the attendees, the crash managed to ruin the punch line to a few polite jokes. The sound held no more significance than the pop of a car backfiring.
“It never leaves. All these months up here, and it never leaves,” Riegel said.
“What doesn’t, sir?”
“The Front.” Riegel’s right shoulder shrugged, his left hand reaching for an old wound on his missing arm.
The doors to the Kaiser’s room opened, and a trio of generals walked out. Conversation died away as the crowd waited to see who would be summoned next. A colonel with a monocle over an eye beckoned to Riegel with a quick flip of his hand.
“When you see the Kaiser, remain upbeat and positive. You can show more candor with General Ludendorff when you see him,” Riegel said. Manfred swallowed hard and followed Riegel into the grand room beyond the doorway.
Sunlight poured through windows stretching from floor to ceiling. Map tables held the latest snapshot of each theater of war: the trench lines in France, the Austrian push into the Italian Alps, the Russian retreat from Poland, lines of sea mines in the north Atlantic around Jutland, the English push into Palestine. An officer on a ladder updated an enormous graph table mounted on the wall, showing the effective strength of armies and divisions fighting the war. Officers clustered around each map, heads bent in consultation with each other. The constant clattering of telegraphs and typewriters was a harmless echo of the machine guns engaged in war.
Standing in the center of the German war effort left Manfred feeling small. Despite all he might do in the air, he was just one man amid the struggle of millions.
As they walked through the room, a throaty cackle erupted from the group by the windows. The huddle opened as Manfred approached, revealing a short man in a general’s uniform, medals covering the left half his chest from his collarbone to his solar plexus. A flat mustache with upturned tips was unique to all of Germany, as this was Kaiser Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Emperor of the German Empire.
“My boy, you’re here at last!” the Kaiser slapped Manfred on his left shoulder, then wrapped his arm around Manfred’s waist and pulled him toward the windows. Panic coursed through Manfred as he stutter-stepped alongside the Kaiser. Being manhandled by one of the most powerful men in Europe wasn’t how he thought this audience would play out.
“You’re the expert, so I need you to settle an argument for us. Look,” the Kaiser let Manfred go and pointed to an antiaircraft gun set between two long rows of roses and blue chamomiles. A neat stack of shells was at the ready, and a handful of soldiers—in their not-for-combat dress uniforms—meandered around the weapon. “They insist that one of those…things…sit in my garden. They’re all over the estate and are simply repulsive. I’m certain they’re useless and I know that it would be much better to just have you and your boys overhead. Don’t you agree?”
One of the luminaries surrounding the Kaiser cleared his throat loudly and with purpose. Manfred licked his lips as he considered his response.
“Kaiser, every pilot respects the danger from antiaircraft artillery. While the best weapon to use against an airplane is another airplane, my pilots and I must land to refuel. Those guns will never tire, they will not be stopped by fog or the fatigue of the crew,” Manfred said.
The Kaiser tugged at his lip and grunted. “Good points, lad, good points.” The Kaiser’s left arm slipped from its place at his hip and flopped at his side. The Kaiser grabbed the loose arm and resecured it to his waist. While watching the maneuver, Manfred noticed that the Kaiser’s left arm was a good deal shorter than his right, and the left hand was shrunken, as if it belonged to a child.
“Speaking of points, how many do you have now?” the Kaiser asked.
“Points, sir?”
“Yes, points. The very reason I gave you that medal around your neck and all those other pilots,” the Kaiser said.
“Fifty-eight, sir. I shot down two more just yesterday. We normally call them victories, or kills.”
“Kills? Nonsense, my soldiers don’t kill the enemy
, they annihilate the opposition!” The Kaiser raised his voice so the entire room could hear his proclamation.
In that moment, Manfred wished he could take the Kaiser to the Front. To see the men suffering in the trenches, smell the bodies left to the rats in no-man’s-land, feel the fear that was every soldier’s constant companion. A single afternoon listening to shots fired in anger and having his breath stolen by the crush of a shell burst might change the Kaiser’s view on war.
“Too bad you won’t make it to sixty,” the Kaiser said. “We can’t afford to lose such a hero like you.” He pursed his lips then looked to an aide behind him. “I have forbidden him from flying, haven’t I?”
“High Command feels that Captain Richthofen’s experience is best used at the Front, Your Excellency,” a low voice said from beyond the huddle. Officers parted and Manfred snapped to attention as General Ludendorff approached. Ludendorff, the coleader of Germany’s military with Hindenburg, had stern, intelligent eyes that seemed to measure up everyone he saw in exact details within moments. By his word, millions of men fought and died. If this burdened his spirit, Manfred couldn’t see it in the man. Ludendorff held a pair of rank epaulettes in his hand.
“Captain?” the Kaiser asked.
“Yes, he’s earned it,” Ludendorff said.
The general unfastened the buttons atop Manfred’s shoulders and tossed his first lieutenant rank to the floor. He slid the new rank onto Manfred’s uniform and slammed the ball of his fists on Manfred’s shoulders to christen the rank.
“Plus, he’ll need it to lead the first fighter wing,” Ludendorff said. “Four squadrons under your command. Make a difference at the Front, Richthofen. Germany is counting on you.” Manfred’s mind swam at the sudden promotion and the implications of leading a fighter wing.
“May I borrow Captain Richthofen for a few minutes, Your Excellency?” Ludendorff said to the Kaiser. “He and I need to discuss a few things.”
“Not yet.” The Kaiser cast a sly glance at Manfred. “I understand your birthday is in a few days, correct?”
“Yes, Excellency, I’ll be twenty-five.”
“Well then you deserve a gift from me,” the Kaiser raised his good hand and snapped his fingers.
The two servants that had dropped something heavy in the hallway minutes earlier grunted as they carried that same something, hidden under a table cloth. They set it on a table and stepped away gingerly. The Kaiser grabbed the cloth and pulled it away with no small amount of theater. Beneath the cloth was a bronze bust of the Kaiser. It was at least half again the actual size of the Kaiser’s head and shoulders.
“Nice, isn’t it?” the Kaiser said.
“Magnificent, sir, my deepest thanks.” Manfred reached out to test the weight. There was no way he could fly it back to Douai, much less carry it back to the waiting plane.
“We’ll have it sent to your home in Schweidnitz,” Ludendorff said. “Kaiser, if you’ll excuse us.”
“Yes, go count your beans or whatever it is you need to do,” the Kaiser said. He looked to his aide. “Who’s next?”
Manfred and Riegel walked along a wooded path leading back to Manfred’s plane. Manfred carried a plate full of cookies and small cakes covered by a napkin in one hand, the plans and associated orders for his fighter wing in a folder in the other. The conversation with Ludendorff had been one sided, the Quartermaster General of the German armed forces and coleader of the same with Marshal Hindenburg, laying out his vision for the wing and explaining to Manfred how it would function under General von Hoeppner’s direction.
Ludendorff was interested in Manfred’s opinion of the planes they flew and the quality of the aircraft used by the English. Manfred asked for a plane with better climbing ability and more maneuverability. If there was anyone in Germany who could grant his wish, it was Ludendorff. Ludendorff promised that newer planes were in development, and that something from the Dutch engineer Anthony Fokker, would make it to the front lines soon.
“What did you think of the Kaiser’s offer to take you out of the air?” Riegel asked.
“I can’t refuse orders, but I don’t want to leave my men,” Manfred said.
Riegel chuckled. “You were the topic of some debate in headquarters for the past few days. After Boelcke was lost, the entire empire went into mourning. Taking you out of combat would eliminate a significant risk to morale.”
Manfred’s heart sank as he thought of Boelcke, his mind’s eye drawn to the last moment before Boelcke’s broken plane vanished into the clouds.
“Boelcke would never have stopped fighting. To hide on a staff far from the fight would have shamed him,” Manfred caught himself, realizing that he’d just insulted Riegel. “I’m sorry, please don’t think that I—”
“Don’t worry about it. I thought the same way until the decision was made for me.” Riegel shrugged the shoulder of his missing arm.
“I am to tell you that a staff position can be found. Should you want one, there’s plenty of room in the Great Shack.” Riegel said.
They continued on in silence as Manfred considered the offer.
“Do they think I’m a coward?” Manfred asked. “Do they think now that I have some rank and a few medals I can declare that my war is over?”
“I’ll tell them the offer was made, but politely refused,” Riegel said. “But the offer stands.”
“Is any soldier ever too important to fight?”
“I don’t think so, but others differ in opinion,” Riegel said.
Manfred shook his head in disgust as they entered the open field where Manfred’s plane waited.
Savage sat beneath an oak tree, his and Manfred’s flight suits hanging from branches as they dried in the spring air. A pair of boys climbed on top of the Aviatik; one straddled the back of the plane and pushed himself along the plane like it was a banister.
Manfred handed the plate to Savage, whose eyes lit up when he saw the treats beneath the napkin.
“It’s him!” one of the boys squealed. The two ran toward Manfred.
“Sorry, sir, couldn’t keep them off the plane. They overpowered me,” Savage said. The mechanic ran a square of Turkish delight covered in powdered sugar beneath his nose before shoving it into his mouth.
The boys fished Sanke cards from muddy pockets and brandished them before Manfred as the two jumped about like excited puppies. Manfred laughed and plucked the Sankes from their hands. He signed the cards as the boys shot rapid-fire questions at him. Manfred’s face ached from the genuine smile on his face.
One of the boys dragged Manfred by the hand to his Aviatik, and Manfred lifted the boy into the pilot’s seat. Then he had to lift the other boy into the observer’s seat before he burst into a tantrum.
“Die, you English dogs!” the boy in the pilot’s seat cried. He made machine gun noises and shook the lip of the cockpit.
“Take this, Frenchies!” The other boy dropped a rock over the side of the plane, watching his imaginary bomb fall to Paris and win the war in a single stroke.
Manfred watched the boys playing at war, and his smiled faded away. He was just as anxious to fight when he left his family at the train station at Schweidnitz. Let them have their fun, he thought; maybe there won’t be a war to fight when they’re my age.
Chapter 9— “To the Victor”
Allmenroder adjusted the wooden plank on his lap and leaned over. He blew charcoal dust away from picture he was drawing and glanced up at Manfred sitting in the cockpit of his D.III. Allmenroder took a sharpened stick of charcoal and added another line to his sketch.
“At least I don’t have to smile,” Manfred said.
Chuckles erupted from the men lounging behind Allmenroder. Half a dozen pilots sat along the wall of the hangar, half-dressed in their flight suits. So long as a fogbank blanketed the airfield, there was little more to do than sit and wait for better weather.
“Never rush an artist…sir,” Allmenroder said.
Udet entered the hangar hol
ding coffee mugs by their handles.
“We put you in a dirndl, change the coffee to beer and you into a lovely young lady, and it’s Oktoberfest,” Reinhard said as he took a mug from Udet. The peasant woman’s work dress of Bavaria and Austria was known for its scandalous exposed ankles and ability to enhance the wearer’s bosom.
“Bit of a stretch,” Wolff said.
“I think he’d look cute in a dirndl,” Reinhard said.
“One more word and this coffee’s going down your shirt,” Udet snapped at Reinhard.
“I’ve never been to one of those. Think they’ll have it this year?” Lothar asked. He sneered at the smell of the ersatz coffee, and then he took a resigned sip.
“Oktoberfest? No, canceled,” Wolff said. He held a letter from Maria, the edges smudged from repeated readings.
“How are things for her in…Bremen?” Lothar asked.
“Food is scarce. Lines for everything: bread, clothes, pencils. All the paper she can buy is made from bleached newspapers. She had to sell her bicycle for scrap after a tire went flat; there’s no rubber for new tires.” Wolff sighed and turned the letter over.
“I wonder if it’s as bad in Paris or London,” Udet said.
“Maybe we should have asked those Tommys we had over for dinner,” Lothar said.
“That would’ve been pointless. What would you have said if they’d asked us how often our families have jaeger schnitzel and roast goose?” Wolff asked.
“Why, they eat that every Sunday,” Lothar lied.
“Exactly. We can’t depend on the enemy to tell us the truth,” Wolff said.
Allmenroder puffed on his sketch, then turned it around for Manfred to see. The sketch was all hard angles and wide lines, save for the eyes—drawn with as much talent as Allmenroder could muster. Manfred saw a man that looked well beyond his twenty-five years, but with a glint of humor in the eyes and mouth.
“Do I really look so worn down?” Manfred asked.
