The Red Baron: A World War I Novel

by Richard Fox

  The cameraman set up the flash and camera as Manfred sat behind his desk.

  Gempp adjusted the blinds, causing Manfred to wince as more light flooded the room.

  “All right, let’s get this done.” Gempp moved behind the camera and Manfred did his best to look healthy and serious.

  “Three…two…one.” The bulb flashed and sent lances of pain through Manfred’s skull. He groaned and buried his face in his hands. Manfred bent over in his chair and fought the urge to vomit. His ears rang and mucus seeped from his nose as his skull felt like it meant to squeeze his brains out from the top of his head.

  The pressure faded away, and Manfred sat upright. Gempp was still there, sitting in a chair. The cameraman was gone.

  “I’m sorry,” Gempp said.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know it was so bad for you.” Gempp didn’t look straight at Manfred as he continued. “I didn’t even want to come out here again, give you some peace before you went home on leave, but Berlin wanted photos of you with the bandages, still on the front lines. They thought it would make you look a bit more sympathetic, raise awareness for other wounded soldiers.”

  Gempp’s fingers thrummed atop his gloved hand.

  “You don’t have to come back,” Gempp said. “Your wound is bad enough that—”

  “You didn’t take a discharge after you were wounded. Why should I?”

  “Oh, this?” Gempp twisted the wrist of his glove hand, and pulled the whole thing off his arm with a pop. He tapped the glove against an armrest; it knocked with the sound of wood on wood.

  “The only enemy who could claim credit for this is General Winter. I was with the Austrians in the Alps, covering their push into Italy, and lost it to frostbite. Three thousand Austrian soldiers froze to death that night. Naturally, that detail didn’t make it into the papers. Head wounds are a bit trickier, aren’t they?”

  “It will heal. I will be back and in the air as soon as I can. Let Berlin know they can milk me for more photos and interviews a bit longer,” Manfred said.

  “When I first heard of you, I thought I’d have to make you into a hero. My job is hyperbole and lies, but you are genuine,” Gempp said.

  “Why does it have to be me? There are other men who’d want all this attention more than me.”

  Gempp sighed. “What am I supposed to do? Find some child in the trenches and make his life seem glorious? You’ve seen how it is, no way to romanticize those conditions. The U-boats? Think we can get a photo of them in action?

  “That you fight the English one-on-one is very useful. The English and French can dredge up soldiers from all over the world and feed them into the grinder. Germany must sacrifice its own. But in the air, you prove German superiority over Englishmen every single time.” Gempp massaged the rump of flesh where his hand used to be.

  “But, you’re as much of a liability now as you are an asset,” he said.

  “What, can’t find use for a martyr?” Manfred asked.

  “No one wants that. Berlin floated the idea of pulling you from the Front permanently. Have you tour the empire to build morale in the cities. If that’s something you would like, then–”

  “No!” Manfred winced after the word. He squeezed his temples in a futile attempt to slow another migraine. “I will be fine.” He felt a burning itch begin under his bandages. “I will be fine.” He looked up at Gempp.

  “This war isn’t done, and neither am I. You tell Berlin I will fly again. You understand?”

  Gempp pushed his prosthetic back onto the mount at the end of his arm and stood up. He reached into a pocket and dropped a folded strip of fabric onto the desk.

  “You forgot this at your sixtieth,” Gempp said and left the room.

  Manfred unfolded the strip with the tip of a pen. The serial number of Valley’s Nieuport.

  “How could I forget this,” he said to an empty room. He opened a drawer and found the letter Valley had left for his beloved in a stack of papers. He folded the strip of fabric around the letter and shoved them both into a pocket.

  Chapter 11— “Do Not Ask Anymore”

  Once he’d become accustomed to flying, Manfred found train travel rather dull. One track, one direction, monotony of the trees and fields. He consoled his boredom with the knowledge that, unlike when he was in the air, train travel did not involve anyone trying to shoot him, and gravity was not a mortal peril.

  His traveling companion sat across from him, her attention on a book in her lap. Nurse Otersdorf had met them at the train station with a travel case full of bandages and antiseptic ointment. General von Hoeppner put a condition on Manfred’s convalescent leave; Katy would travel with Manfred and care for his wound.

  Manfred traveled in uniform, but hadn’t worn his awards. He wanted to be just another too-young captain for a while, not a celebrity. He’d kept to himself during the trip, his mind lingering on his squadron.

  “What are you reading?” he asked.

  “He speaks,” Katy said without looking up.

  “He reads too. I might want to borrow that when you’re done. There are only so many pine trees I can see before I get bored.

  Katy smirked and tilted up the book so Manfred could see the cover. It was The Red Battle Flyer, supposedly written by Manfred, his picture embossed on the back cover. Manfred’s face flushed; either a shard of bone had broken loose in his brain or he was about to die from embarrassment.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “‘The French attacking spirit is like bottled lemonade. It lacks tenacity.’”

  “Stop it.”

  Katy flipped to a dog-eared page. “‘During my whole life I have not found a happier hunting ground than in the course of the Somme Battle.’”

  “Stop.” Manfred scowled and turned his attention back to the blur of pine trees.

  “I hear this is a best seller. Maybe you’ve found your calling once the war ends,” Katy said.

  “Why are you reading that nonsense? I’m right here for all your questions,” Manfred said.

  “I wanted to see if this you,” she shook the book slightly, “is the same you I’m traveling with.”

  “And?”

  “Not at all. Your autobiography,” Manfred rolled his eyes at the word, “makes you out as some arrogant fop. Not the compassionate officer I remembered, or know now.”

  “Remember?”

  Katy closed the book and placed it to the side. “You really don’t remember me? Am I so plain? You brought a sergeant into my triage station. I don’t recall his name, but he was missing a boot. You—“

  “Steiner, his name is Steiner,” Manfred pressed his lips together, struggling to recall that terrible day. Katy cocked her head to the side and smiled. The smell of the pooled blood and charcoal came back to Manfred, and he remembered her.

  “Yes, yes, now I remember you. You were…kind to him. I’m sorry, Katy, I should have recognized you sooner.”

  “Don’t be, most people don’t have great memories of trauma like you went through.”

  “Wait, how did you remember me? You must have seen thousands of soldiers since the war began,” Manfred said.

  “You cared about your soldiers. It was so rare to see officers in the hospital. We like to pretend the days of peasants and lords are over, but most officers I’ve met treat the common soldiers like they’re peasants—expendable.” Katy’s features hardened. “So easy for some fat general in a chateau to order boys into the fire. The results of their decisions are a line moved on a map, charts of casualties and bullets. They never come to the hospital to see what they’ve wrought.

  “But you cared. I saw it in your eyes. Imagine my surprise when you became famous. All the nurses wanted to hear about the time I met the great Manfred von Richthofen.”

  “I’m popular with nurses?”

  “Manfred, you’re popular with all the girls.”

  Metzger opened the door, a covered platter in hand.

  “Dinner is s
erved,” Metzger removed the cover, revealing three plates of saurkraut and steamed potatoes.

  “My favorite,” Manfred said drolly.

  Manfred left Berlin’s Anhalter Bahnhof train station and fell in with a mass of travelers at a nearby taxi station. Berlin had changed since his last visit. Buildings went without basic repairs to windows and facades. Streets were bereft of men in civilian clothes. There were no flowers, wreaths, or any public symbols of joy. The city felt hollow.

  A pole-mounted clock gave him less than an hour to return to the station for his next train. He spied an approaching taxi and walked toward it. He brought his Pour Le Merite from behind his collar and waved the taxi down. As much as he hated it, there wasn’t time to stand in line.

  The taxi, wooden wheels clattering against the cobblestone street, stopped well short of the stand and Manfred climbed in.

  “Hello, sir.” The cabbie twisted around to speak. His bloodshot eyes lingered on the medal at Manfred’s neck. He was in his early sixties; a bulbous nose on his wide face hinted at an affinity for alcohol. “Where to?”

  Manfred read off the address on Valley’s letter.

  “Not a good part of the city for officers—plenty of communists and such there. You still want to go?”

  “I’m in a rush,” Manfred said. The cabbie shrugged and drove on.

  There were lines outside every store that wasn’t shuttered closed. Close to a hundred people waited outside the entrance to a bakery.

  “My wife says the bread lines are only four hours long this week. Things that bad for you boys?” He watched as a woman, clad in the black of a mourning dress, left a store holding a single loaf of bread no larger than her forearm. Two skinny children trailed behind her.

  Manfred shook his head.

  A crowd of a few dozen people gathered around a kiosk as a man hung up a notice next to pages of the newspaper. Manfred caught the word “casualties” across the top of the notice as onlookers squeezed around the kiosk.

  A woman, already wearing mourning black, tore away from the crowd and fell to her knees. Sobs wracked her body as the taxi turned a corner.

  They continued in silence until the cab stopped in front of a two-story brick building. Banners with crude lettering extolling the virtues of the proletariat hung from the roof. A pile of rotting garbage sat next to the main entrance.

  “Should be a side door,” the driver said.

  Manfred left the cab and stepped over a dead rat on his way around the building. The alleyway smelled of a broken sewer pipe and wet wood as he found the right door.

  Something stirred in a second-story window. Manfred raised a hand to knock at the door, then stopped. He heard thumping noise from behind the door, and knelt down to slide the letter under the sill. This wasn’t good news he was delivering. The thumping grew louder as he tried to stuff the letter between the cracks.

  A lock clicked and the door opened.

  Manfred looked up into a pale face with a single blue eye, the other eye was milky white, surrounded by a mass of scarred-over tissue. The man’s nose was nothing more than a pair of slits.

  “Hell you, suh?” paralyzed lips hindered the man’s speech.

  “Magdelena Trautmann? Is she here?” Manfred said as he stood. Maybe he had the wrong place. Maybe she was in line for bread somewhere else, anywhere else.

  The crippled man nodded and rapped a crutch against the floor.

  “‘Aga!”

  Magdelena came to the door a moment later. She’d lost a good deal of weight since the photo she’d taken with Valley. She smiled kindly at Manfred and stepped out onto the porch. The man watched on from the open doorway.

  “Is this about my brother’s pension? I was just at the office the other day and they need something about his medical discharge,” she continued, her words fast and nervous. “But they wanted it by the end of the month. Do you need something now?”

  Her eyes squinted at his Pour Le Merite then at Manfred’s face. She brought fingers up to cover her mouth.

  “I know you! I read your book; you’re in all the papers,” she said. Her mouth dropped into a frown. “You’re not from the pension office.”

  “I have…” Manfred handed over the letter and the photo of Magdelena and Valley.

  Magdelena stared at the two items for a moment, then her hands started to shake.

  “I don’t understand. James, he…” she licked her lips, “he always talked about flying.” Her brow furrowed as Manfred watched her piece it together.

  “Is he dead?” her breathing went shallow as panic crept into her.

  “I’m sorry. I should…I should go.”

  “Oh God, James,” her eyes blazed with anger. “Was it you? Did you kill James?”

  Manfred took a step back as Magdelena’s body shuddered with a cry.

  “It was you! You monster! You goddamned monster!” a wail followed the accusation, as she collapsed to her knees. She buried her head into her hands and took a ragged breath. Her brother hobbled from the doorway and knelt beside her, a scarred hand wrapped around her waist as her lament continued. The man’s remaining eye pleaded for Manfred to leave.

  Manfred turned away, and walked back to the waiting cab. Magdelena’s cries dogging his steps.

  The cabbie drove off before Manfred could finish closing the door.

  For all his time at war, all the accolades for victory, Manfred never thought of the men he killed beyond the moment of their deaths. Every one of them had a family, loved ones that would mourn just as Magdelena mourned Valley. His kill tally wasn’t a measure of victory anymore; it was a cascade of misery.

  “Good of you to do that, sir,” the cabbie said.

  “Was it?”

  “I lost two nephews in Russia. My sister had to find out at the kiosks. Least you showed some respect for the dead. Least now that lady knows for sure that he’s gone.”

  Manfred kept silent. With his wound, he could stay on the ground and Magdelena would be the last one to suffer for his actions. The cab turned around a corner and he caught his reflection in the glass of the cab’s window. His Pour Le Merite glinted in the sunlight. No, his war wasn’t over. He knew that if he quit, his men would suffer without him in the air to lead them. The suffering of faraway Englishmen and women was better than the loss of his men.

  Maybe she’s right about me, he thought. Maybe I am a monster.

  He woke up in a child’s room. Wood carved horses and tin soldiers from the Napoleonic era crowded windowsills and the top of a wooden dresser. Pictures of Manfred on and around horses from the age of eleven to the moment he left for the western front hung on the walls. His favorite hung next to the door, he atop a leaping Antithesis, sailing over a hurdle during a race. Had it not been for the war, Manfred would have competed for a slot at the 1916 Olympics.

  The headache was back, it crept up on him each morning with the mounting dawn. The pain had diminished in the weeks since his injury, but the band of pain around his skull had loosened in small increments as he healed.

  He opened an eye and saw the single chest against the wall that held all his clothes, a fresh uniform laid out on top. Despite being on convalescent leave, he wore his uniform every day. The academy and the army were all he’d known since before he could shave, he owned hardly any civilian clothes. What clothes his father had in the house were far too big for him, same for what Lothar had left behind. Manfred could barely imagine what he’d look like in tweed or linen.

  A chorus of young and high voices started singing from somewhere outside the house, “Die Wacht am Rhein,” a patriotic song that he’d heard a thousand times since the war began.

  Gentle knocks on his door preceded his mother’s arrival. Kunigunde cracked the door open, saw that Manfred was awake, and opened the door wide.

  “Manfred, you must come outside at once. The Committee for the Establishment,” her eyes looked up and to the left as she tried to remember the rest, “of a War-Reminiscences Collection, or something, is
here with two dozen children and a wonderful wreath in your honor,” she said.

  Manfred groaned and sat up. Blood pounded in his temples, twin bursts of pain with each heartbeat. His bandages itched as always; a gentle touch to the back of his head came away without any blood.

  “I thought every last veteran and youth group had already been to visit. Tell them to come back tomorrow,” he grumbled.

  “They walked here from Hohenfriedeberg in this miserable heat for you, Manfred. Get dressed and be sociable.”

  He squeezed his offending temples with a thumb and forefinger and waited for the pain to subside. The singing continued, now accompanied by a drum. He slipped his feet into a pair of boots.

  The children broke out in twitters of excitement as Manfred opened the door and stood came out onto the porch, his face hard. He shifted from foot to foot as the choir sang a pair of patriotic songs, then finished with the national anthem.

  An inexplicably plump man in a suit boasting coattails, lifted a laurel wreath onto a stand.

  “Captain von Richthofen, on behalf of the CEWRC, please accept this wreath honoring your glorious service to the Empire.” The man opened his arms wide as he continued the speech. “Additionally, let me add that—”

  “Thank you,” Manfred snapped. He picked up the wreath and carried it into the house, closing the door with enough of a slam to dash any hopes of an encore.

  He heard his mother making apologies as he retreated into the house. The walls of his family home had a half dozen wreaths hanging from the walls and doors, each one wrapped in ribbons of black, red, and white, mimicking the German flag. He tossed the newest addition against the doorway leading to the dining room and went into the trophy room.

  An undercurrent of anger filled his mind as he paced across the room. He walked past the collage of fabric serial numbers squeezing and flexing his hands, the muscles of his upper back and arms tense.