The Red Baron: A World War I Novel (14 page)

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 still 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.

“Have them push the plane clear,” Manfred said to his father. Then he and Lothar ran toward their waiting fighters.

“Manfred, what are you doing?” Albrecht called after them. It was the only time Manfred had ever heard fear in his father’s voice.

“Our duty!” Lothar said over his shoulder.

The brothers found Voss next to his plane, filling his own gas tank as the mechanics scrambled to get the planes combat ready. They were airborne minutes later.

They found the Sopwiths before they could slip over the lines. Voss flew well above the brothers, who were below the Sopwiths, and fired at the English well beyond the range Boelcke had taught him. The seemingly premature attack triggered the expected maneuver; the Sopwiths dived and turned into the attack, right into the Richthofens’ guns.

Lothar pummeled his target with machine gun fire as it banked around. Bullets riddled the pilot, and the Sopwith reared up and over before plummeting to the ground.

Manfred raked fire across his Sopwith, and smiled as the engine burst into flames. He flipped around and came up on the Sopwith’s tail. The enemy pilot was slapping at his burning engine, his arms alight with flaming oil. The Sopwith lost altitude and began its sure and deadly descent.

Manfred kept his hand on the trigger, watching the pilot burn to death. He was tempted to let him burn all the way down; let it be the enemy’s penance for killing the German on Manfred’s doorstep.

Manfred fired, bullets sparking against the Sopwith’s engine. The pilot sunk into the cockpit, and the Sopwith tumbled end over end to the earth.

The red D.III taxied next to the veranda where Albrecht said. Manfred killed the engine, removed his goggles, and smiled at his father.

“Father! I have shot down an Englishman,” Manfred said.

Lothar, his mouth and jaws darkened, walked up on the veranda with Voss in tow. “Father! I have shot down an Englishman,” Lothar said.

Albrecht let out a deep breath, and he pulled his shoulders back as if a great weight had been lifted. The older Richthofen waved his hand at the table, where their breakfast waited. “Well done, boys. Come eat, before your food gets cold,” he said.

The latest dictate from von Hoeppner directed all squadron commanders to have their pilots cycle back on leave at least once every six months. Manfred scoffed at the idea, as if the English would synchronize the war with anyone’s plans. Leaving the front in the middle of a battle was anathema to Manfred and anyone he flew with.

The door to his office burst open, and an old friend hobbled into the room. Zeumer walked with a cane, his gait hunched and uneven. The great coat covering his shoulders looked like it belonged to a much larger man.

“I’m sorry, sir; he wouldn’t wait,” Metzger said over Zeumer’s shoulder.

Zeumer almost fell into the chair in front of Manfred’s desk.

“It’s fine, Metzger,” Manfred said as his orderly closed the door to the office.

“Manfred, you’ve done well for yourself,” Zeumer said with a low voice. He reached into his coat and pulled out a handkerchief, stained pink from blood, and dabbed at his lips.

“You look…” His friend has wasted away to almost nothing since the last time he’d seen him, just before he’d joined Boelcke’s squadron.

“I’ve been better, yes. I got shot down, banged up my leg pretty good.” Zeumer leaned back in the chair and moved a lock of greasy black hair away from his face. His hand was missing two fingers.

“Then my ambulance took a detour into a ditch, and it got worse from there,” Zeumer said. “Let me get to the point before your little Prussian waiting outside the door has an episode. The bastard in charge of my squadron doesn’t think I can fly anymore. Wants me out. I need you to transfer me to your squadron.”

“Zeumer, we fly single-seat fighters in this squadron, not bombers and the like.”

Zeumer slammed a fist on Manfred’s desk, the wadded up handkerchief peeking from beneath skeletal fingers. “I need to die in the air.” Zeumer’s words stank of dying tissue. His words came between shallow breaths; the tuberculosis must have advanced since the last time they were together.

“If I go back, I’ll waste away in some asylum. My family will remember me as an invalid, not as a soldier,” Zeumer said. “Please, let me die like a man. I can take a bullet for someone else. Maybe…” he trailed off into a wet cough.

Manfred crossed his arms across his chest.

“George, my squadron flies as a unit, with a purpose to protect the trenches and each other. Never for our own desires.” It broke Manfred’s heart to deny his old friend.

Zeumer’s coughs ceased, and his shoulders sank even farther than Manfred thought possible. Zeumer looked up, his eyes huge in his sunken face. Every soldier Manfred had fought beside had wanted to live, wanted it so bad that the lives of other men were forfeited. Here sat a man that wanted to die.

“But, Boelcke’s squadron still allows for solo hunting flights. I can arrange a transfer if that suits you,” Manfred said.

Zeumer nodded, and ran his sleeve across his eye to take away a tear.

Manfred escorted his old friend to the door, and hugged him, certain this would be their last meeting. Zeumer, who felt like nothing but skin and bones beneath his great coat, could barely return the hug.

The roar of the first D.III’s engine signaled the rest of the squadron to come to life. Manfred led the way down the runway, his plane hopping into the air like a fawn as it gained speed. Just as the plane slipped away from the earth, the engine froze solid with a clang. Manfred waited for the plane to drift back to the ground, and slammed on the rudder to turn out of the path of the rest of his pilots.

The engine hissed like an angry cat and the radiator cap popped off, forced free by a geyser of antifreeze.

Manfred grumbled; he’d have to take an old D.II up today.

The D.II was practically an antique at the rate the Allies and Central Powers fielded newer, faster, and more maneuverable aircraft. Despite its lackluster comparison to the B.E.2 Manfred was firing at, it was still an adequate war machine.

Manfred danced around the rudder of the B.E.2, snapping off shots before the rear gunner could draw a bead on him. The B.E.2 was flying just over the treetops, dipping below the windbreaks to try to throw off Manfred’s pursuit.

Manfred took his plane up and over an unfriendly looking oak tree and found the B.E.2 right in his sights, but the English plane found him as well. The two planes joined in fire and Manfred swore he saw a flash as two bullets collided between the planes, and the B.E.2 landed in a fallow field moments later.

The pride of taking down a plane in an old D.II was replaced with fear when the engine belched gray smoke into his face. He killed the engine and glided on, unable to see where he’d land. The plane hit the ground and jerked as something caught a wheel, ripping it away. Manfred sunk into his cockpit to escape the smoke and to avoid slamming face first into his machine gun if the plane hit a tree.

He braced himself against the walls of his cockpit, praying that if he died it would at least be somewhat dignified.

He heard the propeller snap into pieces, and he felt the plane upend, flip over, and slam into the ground. He looked up and saw a muddy patch of ground above him. Holding against gravity didn’t last long, and he fell against his straps, which held him a finger’s width above the ground.

Blood rushed to his head as he struggled with his buckles, the warmth of the flaming engine pressed against his legs. He looked over and saw the B.E.2, stopped against a tree. The pilot and gunner pointed at him and ran over. Both had pistols holstered on their chests.

If they shoot me, at least I won’t burn to death
, Manfred thought.

He heard the crackle of the fire and beat at his belt buckle in frustration. Two pairs of boots kicked up dust as they came to a stop next to his wreck. One of the men knelt down, and Manfred wondered if the barrel of a pistol would be the last thing he’d ever see.

A wide and freckled face smiled at Manfred with crooked teeth. “’Ello, guvna! You’re a dog’s meat from a loaf of brown bread, eh?” Manfred didn’t understand a word of what the man just said, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to kill him.

Manfred sat at the head of the table, his officers on the flanks of the long tables shoved end to end so all the pilots could share a meal together. Two chairs to Manfred’s left were vacant. Pilots traded jokes and kept a low level of roughhousing going, as if they were schoolboys out of sight of the proctor. Manfred excused their lack of decorum for a few more minutes; the mood was always jovial after a day without the loss of one of their own.

The service door creaked open. Metzger, his forehead glistening with sweat and his face pale, nodded to his commander.

“I am Pierre ze French fighter pilot. If I’m going down, I’m going down in flames!” Shafer’s overly loud punch line elicited guffaws from the far end of the table. Manfred shook his head slightly. He hadn’t caught the rest of the joke, which was probably a good thing given Schafer’s penchant for crass humor.

Manfred clinked his glass with the edge of a knife and the laughter died away.

“Gentlemen, we have guests,” Manfred said as he stood. His men followed suit.

Metzger opened the service door and two English pilots entered the dining room. They wore dark tan uniforms with winged aviator patches stitched over their left breast pocket, empty holsters on wide leather belts. An angry grumble seethed from Allmenroder, which ended the instant Manfred looked at him. Allmenroder had picked up his dinner knife and held it in a white-knuckled grasp.

“Karl,” Manfred said. Allmenroder looked down at his hand, frowned, and set the knife against his plate.

“Captain Oscar Grieg and Second Lieutenant John MacLennon of His Majesty’s Royal Flying Corps,” said the taller of the two Englishmen. He had a long face and a perfectly manicured moustache. The other man, the freckled man who first helped Manfred from his wreck, clicked his heels.

“Please,” Manfred motioned to the empty seats.

Once seated, Manfred’s pilots craned their necks to examine their dinner guests. Whispers skittered across the table as the squadron prepared to share a meal with the enemy they faced in the skies. Allmenroder stayed silent, the corners of his lips twitching in disgust as he stared down the two men sitting across from him.

“These men helped me from the final resting place of our last D.II. The least I could do was invite them to dinner,” Manfred announced.

“Well, when a chap’s in trouble, we do what we can,” MacLennon, of the freckled face, said as he snatched a slice of black bread from the table. “Especially if we’re going to be a long-term guest of his,” he lifted a small plate holding two whitish-yellow lumps to his nose. “Blimey, this is real butter?”

“We’re fortunate to have such a luxury. Our families, thanks to your blockade, have to stand in line for an entire day to buy bread made from potatoes and ground beans,” Wolff said from the seat next to Allmenroder.

“At least they don’t have to stand in line while waiting for a zeppelin to drop a bomb on their heads, eh?” MacLennon said. He put his bread and butter down and laid his hands on the table, fingers splayed out. Grieg jammed an elbow into his countryman, and MacLennon pulled his hands from the table.

“Is it true that all English pilots are nobles?” Schafer asked from the end of the table. The sudden change in topic drained some of the tension from the table as stewards brought out the first course, sauerkraut and asparagus.

“Captain Grieg here is the third Earl of Wessex,” MacLennon said.

Grieg rolled his eyes before answering. “We’ve heard the same rumor about German pilots. But, the most important prerequisite for a pilot’s badge is a lack of good sense.” Chuckles rumbled over the table.

“How about you, guv, are you the Kaiser’s eighth cousin or some such?” MacLennon asked as he bit off a lump of black bread.

“No, my father is a preacher. I earned my commission on the battlefield,” Allmenroder said. “Lieutenant von Richthofen is a baron.”

Manfred shrugged at the mention of his title.

“What do you know about the German pilot who flies an all-red plane?” Manfred asked. Grieg and MacLennon only knew him from the dull-colored plane he’d crashed earlier that day.

“We call it the little red devil; all our pilots know of it,” Grieg said. “Tell me, is it true a woman flies that plane?”

Silverware clattered to table.

“I’m sorry…what?” Manfred said. Someone choked down a laugh at the end of the table. Manfred would have bet a month’s pay it was Lothar.

“Such a garish crate, only a girl would fly something like that. A German Joan of Arc, if you will,” Grieg said.

Manfred’s jaw clenched as he thought of an answer. Lothar was biting hard on his knuckles, his body shaking with suppressed laughter.

“Or one of those Valkyries,” MacLennon said.

Lothar had turned a shade of purple and slapped a hand on the table.

“No, gentlemen, I am the pilot of the all-red plane,” Manfred said. He vowed to send a telegram to Gempp at the Propaganda and Intelligence Department, urging them to publish an English-language version of his memoir.

“A red baron,” Grieg said. “I’ll send a letter to my comrades and correct the misconception.”

Lothar took several deep breaths, high-pitched giggles escaping every other exhalation.

“Is your man all right? A touch of consumption, maybe?” MacLennon asked.

“He’s fine…for now,” Manfred said.

The English left under armed guard following dessert, but before the stewards poured the after-dinner coffee. Metzger stood at the opposite end of the table from Manfred and began the post dinner ritual.

“Sir, the mail,” he said.

Udet, the newest addition to the squadron rubbed his hands together and reached for the first letter. Taking a deep whiff from the letter, Udet shook his head as he placed it on the table. He sniffed the next letter and held it over his head.

“Richthofen!” He passed it up the table before Lothar could snatch it away from him. As the letter made its way to Manfred, each pilot smelled it and nodded his approval. The letter smelled of roses with a hint of lilacs, expensive perfume. Manfred sliced open the short end of the envelope and shook out a letter and photograph.

As per the game, Manfred turned his head away from the picture and held it out for his men to see. They hooted and rumbled the table with their fists before Manfred looked at the photo—a woman in her late teens with a parasol over her shoulder, blonde hair, and dark lips smiling for the camera.

Manfred nodded his approval and slipped the picture back into the envelope. Someday he would have the time to answer letters like this.

“Wolff! Wolff…and Wolff!” Udet announced, passing the regular tranche of letters from Maria across the table.

“Richthofen! Lothar?” Udet frowned at the addressee and sniffed the envelope again.

“Yes, such things can happen.” Lothar snatched the letter away.

“I have a Pour Le Merite
and twenty-two victories. What do I have to do to get a letter like that?” Schafer asked.