The Red Baron: A World War I Novel (21 page)

The temptation to force the Bristol to land stayed his hand for a moment, but only a moment. He pressed the triggers and sent fifty rounds into the Bristol. The loss of Voss and Wolff erased any notions of mercy he once had. The Bristol burst into flames within seconds and corkscrewed to the earth.

Manfred watched the Bristol take two more men to their deaths. There was no elation, no sense of accomplishment. His heart was a stone, rimmed with fear from adrenaline and combat.

He remembered the second Bristol when a tracer round zipped past his face, close enough that the burning-hot round left an afterglow across his eyes. Instinct pulled his Fokker into a climb. He found the other Bristol off to his right, the gunner firing at him with his ring mounted Lewis gun.

Where was the rest of his flight? Manfred rolled his Fokker into a dive, trying to get into the threatening gun’s defilade. As he cursed the new pilots, he realized he hadn’t bothered to signal his attack to his flight before he vanished into the cloud overhead.

The gunner slammed a fresh magazine into his gun and took careful aim at Manfred. He was still turning toward the Bristol, and the gunner had him dead to rights for another five seconds, an eternity in combat.

A shadow passed over Manfred. Brauneck’s and Gussman’s Fokkers streaked overhead, their machine guns ripping with fire. Rounds tore through the Bristol, and it keeled over like a stricken ship. Gussman flew over the enemy plane. Brauneck’s red-and-blue-nosed Fokker banked and caught the Bristol as it maneuvered to the ground. He finished it off with a quick burst of gunfire. Brauneck would get the kill.

Manfred turned back to the airfield, and his wingmen joined him. Brauneck clasped his hands together and cheered for himself. Manfred gave him a nod and led them home.

The Oberursel engine of his Fokker wound down as the pain in his head increased. Each heartbeat raised the intensity of his headache by a notch. For years, he hadn’t believed in the air sickness some pilots complained of, but what little he’d eaten for breakfast threatened to return.

He climbed from the cockpit, his arms shaking as they struggled with his weight. His feet hit the ground and he crumpled to his knees.

“Everything OK, sir?” Savage asked. His voice was far away as Manfred struggled to concentrate, as if Savage was trying to talk to him from across a loud party.

“Slipped,” Manfred said.

“Sir, are we brave enough?” Brauneck said. He and Gussman walked over, their faces black from gun smoke and gas fumes. Gussman said something, but it was lost to the ringing in Manfred’s ears.

Savage tapped Manfred’s shoulder. Manfred turned around, his mechanic’s face was pale as milk. He turned back to his pilots and found them transfixed in place, jaws slack. Savage pulled at Manfred’s flight suit and got the down coat off him.

The jacket had a slash from shoulder blade to lower back, goose feathers bled out from the wound. A bullet from the second Bristol came within an inch of ending Manfred’s return to the air. He pawed at the back of the leather jacket he wore under the down coat, it was unblemished. The lucky leather jacket held true.

The ringing died away, and the familiar sounds of an airfield returned.

“Have it mended by morning,” Manfred said.

The airfield started to coalesce around him. Pilots come to congratulate him on his victory, Metzger with his clipboard full of requisitions, his mechanics and the Fokker engineers, Katy stuck her head out of the infirmary.

Manfred retreated from all of them and made straight for his quarters. The pain in his head driving him away from responsibilities and accolades. He locked the door to his quarters and fell onto his bed. He tucked his knees against his chest and buried his head in his arms, counting his breaths as he waited for the pain to subside.

He closed his eyes and saw the unsuspecting Bristol fall to his guns over and over again.

The migraine took away any sense of time’s passage. It could have been minutes or hours before he heard his lock rattle, and the door open. He stayed in the fetal position as someone pulled the overboots from his feet. Gentle hands tested the bandages on his head, then pulled Manfred’s arms away from his face.

Katy looked at him, her eyes full of concern and moist with tears. She lifted Manfred’s upper body with a deft hand, and lowered his head onto her lap. Her arms wrapped around him and held him close.

He was too tired, too pained, to protest. He stayed there even after the headache subsided.

The action bell rang. Manfred heard men scrambling through the mansion to their waiting planes. Feet stomping across wood floors, shifting planks above his head.

He sat up and put his overboots back on.

“Manfred, let this one go,” Katy said.

He grabbed a spare overcoat from a rack and opened his door.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Manfred looked at her over his shoulder. “All this time together, and you still don’t understand.”

He left her there, and answered the call to fight.

He was in a cloud, in his cockpit, but there was no sound. The engine dead, his propeller made a languid rotation before stopping.

Manfred removed his goggles and looked around. A gray abyss surrounded him, sunlight diffused evenly through the bleak sky. There was wet grass beneath his plane, a frame of reference that extended only a few feet.

He leapt from the plane, his breathing the only sound.

A yellow smudge appeared in the fog, undulating of its own accord. The grass field beneath him seemed to expand as the fog pulled away. More yellow spots, joined by red lights and columns of black smoke emerged in the distance.

“Hello?” he said.

The fog retreated from the closest light, revealing an F.E.2b, the engine crackling with flames. The upper wings and struts had surrendered to the flames. The body of a pilot lay next to the wreck, squashed from the impact with the ground. A gunner in the rear seat lay slumped against the fuselage.

More wrecks appeared in the distance, bloody bodies scattered about in impossible contortions.

Manfred ran to the nearest wreck, a Fee, and around the body lying parallel to the crash. He touched the ice-cold shoulder of the man in the gunner’s seat and shook it. The gunner’s head swiveled from side to side. No response, no sign of breathing.

The body sat up, slowly and smoothly. It turned its head to Manfred, a slack face with a day’s stubble, eyes still closed. The eyes opened, pale blue and devoid of life. A hand raised over the lip of the rear seat, holding a small silver cup.

The corpse held the cup, one of the sixty he had for each victory, toward Manfred.

“Take it.” The voice was calm, composed.

A low and terrified moan spilled from Manfred as he backed away.

A chill grasp wrapped around his ankle with the strength of a steel trap. The pilot he’d stepped over held him with one hand; the other offered a silver cup. No words came from the ruined face.

Manfred kicked himself free and looked for an escape. Dead men approached from every direction. Men burnt to a crisp, their pale bones shone bright through gaps in blackened skin. Bloody men, their steps sloshing in red-soaked boots. More crushed men with their skulls misshapen, as if a sculptor had erred in their final moments of creation.

“Take it,” came from the dead, repeated by dozens of voices. Each held a cup out to Manfred as they approached.

“No…get away from me.” Manfred spun around, finding only dead men in every direction. He knew his heart was beating only because each pound in his chest brought more pain to his head.

Valley was there, a gash down the side of his face and blood spread in a delta over the shoulder of his tweed jacket.

“Take it,” he said, proffering a cup to Manfred.

“No, I don’t want it!”

He pictured and there was Hawker, his greatest victory, holding his
Ehrenbecher
. Hawker’s words sputtered from the throat blown apart by Manfred’s bullet.

“Take it!”

Manfred opened his eyes. His fists gripped a pillow with white-knuckle strength. The dread and terror didn’t fade away. It turned his core to ice and stayed with him as the sun rose over the horizon.

Lothar walked with a limp, his wide-armed walking hobbled by a wrapped ankle and bandages around his thigh. By some miracle, he hadn’t broken any bones in his crash, yet bruises and strained tendons ran deep.

“Look at that beauty!” Lothar shouted as he saw his red-and-yellow Fokker. The taller Richthofen hugged his plane and babbled to it like he was speaking to a baby.

“Lothar, how hard did you hit your head?” Manfred asked from his cockpit.

“Don’t listen to him, darling, he’s just jealous,” Lothar said to his plane.

Katy sprung from the infirmary and trotted toward the Richthofen brothers’ Fokkers. She’d stayed on in the weeks since Manfred returned to the squadron, longer than expected, as Manfred’s wound had finally healed over. There were a few minor wounds and scrapes to keep her occupied, and no one in the squadron complained about her presence.

She handed Lothar a pair of bandages.

“I told you I won’t do anything to pop my stitches,” Lothar said.

“What you say and what you do are two different things, Lothar. These are for just in case,” she said.

Lothar bent at the waist and presented a cheek.

“For luck?”

“Oh no, I’m not falling for that Richthofen trick again,” she said.

“‘Again’?” Lothar cast a sly glance to his brother.

Manfred slapped the side of his plane. “You’ve been nagging at me to get back in the air for two weeks. Now you’re dragging your heels?”

Lothar tapped the brass knuckle trench knife at his waist. “Guess I’ll have to make do with this for luck.” Lothar used a stool to ease his way into the cockpit, his days of treating the side of his cockpit like a pommel horse gone until he fully healed. Lothar strapped in and adjusted in the seat.

“Bit cramped, but not that you’d notice, eh?” Lothar said.

“Contact!” Manfred commanded, and Savage swung the propeller to life.

White smoke coughed from the Bristol as it bounded over treetops, fleeing Manfred’s guns. Manfred held the trigger handle down, lifting it as soon as bullets fired. He had maybe twenty rounds left, only a few seconds’ worth of offense.

The top tier of the Bristol’s wings cracked in the headwind, then flapped loose, still attached by the fabric. The plane almost cleared the next tree line; the propeller chewed through the tips of pine trees, sending a spray of needles into the air.

The clearing beyond the trees hosted a length of telegraph poles. Heading straight for a pole, the Bristol pilot jammed his rudder and managed to turn the nose away from the pole. The Bristol flew into the taunt wires, shredding the plane as if it had charged into a phalanx of spear tips.

Manfred flew over the wreck and found Lothar circling over another field. Windbreaks blocked his view of what lay below Lothar.

They’d ambushed a pair of Bristol observer planes ten minutes ago; Lothar must have downed his target.

Manfred crossed over the windbreak and flipped his Fokker on its side to see Lothar’s kill. The muzzle of the Lewis on the rear gunner’s
Scarff ring
was staring right back at him. Shots snapped past his head as he ducked into his cockpit. He knew the fabric surrounding the thin metal of his seat offered no protection, but combat instincts prevailed. A bullet ricocheted off his engine block as the firing ceased.

Anger gave way to rage at the Bristol gunner. He was down behind enemy lines, no option but to be taken prisoner. Manfred pulled his plane into a half turn and bore down on the Bristol. He fired the last of his bullets into the stationary target. Rounds smacked into the dirt around the plane.

Then, his engine ground to a halt. A quick check of his gauges showed an empty fuel tank. One of the Lewis’s bullets got lucky.

Manfred landed smoothly, twenty yards from the still Bristol.

He jumped from his Fokker and backed away quickly. Empty fuel tanks were full of gas vapor and prone to exploding if agitated by sparks and fire.

Birdcalls echoed from the trees. Insects buzzed in the unruly grass of the field. There was no sign of life from the Bristol.

Manfred removed his goggles and gloves and walked over to the Bristol. Patches covering evidence of previous dogfights ran along the fabric, but there were fresh lacerations.

The pilot and gunner were on the far side of the plane. One lay on the ground, his chest and stomach covered in blood. The other knelt next to the departed, his back to Manfred.

“Are you hurt?” Manfred said. The kneeling man stirred, but didn’t reply.

Manfred stepped closer and couldn’t find any obvious wounds on the man.

“
Sind Sie verletzt?
” Manfred repeated himself in German.

The man stood up, then swung a fist into Manfred’s stomach. Manfred bent over double, his breath expelled by the blow. He held out an arm toward his attacker and looked up just in time to see a fist crash into his face. Light exploded behind his eyes and he crumpled to the ground.

“Son of a bitch Kraut,” the Englishman said, his voice nothing but malice.

The blow to the head awakened the pain of Manfred’s old wound. He managed to crawl a few feet away when a boot to the side sent him tumbling.

He came to rest on his side and saw the Englishman rip his gloves off, then paw through the inside of his flight jacket. Unable to breathe, his head threatening to split in half from pain, Manfred found himself helpless at the man’s feet.

“Darcy was a good man, you Hun. You think you can kill him and just get on?” He pulled a pistol from his coat and pointed it at Manfred. The darkness within the barrel promised to end Manfred with a flash of gunpowder.

The Englishman pulled the trigger, and the hammer clicked against nothing.

“Bloody thing,” he said. He pulled the slide back and slid a round into the chamber.

A roar took the Englishman’s attention away from murder. He turned his head just in time to see Lothar’s leaping tackle. The impact sent the pistol flying. Lothar and his foe rolled in the dirt before Lothar’s bulk pinned the other man to the ground.

Lothar reared up and smashed a fist across the man’s jaw, teeth ejected from the impact. Lothar wrapped his fists in the man’s loose flight jacket and yanked him higher as Lothar brought his forehead down. The man’s nose exploded in blood, nearly flattened against his skull by the blow.

Lothar dropped the limp man to the ground, and drew the trench knife at his waist.

“Lothar…don’t,” Manfred managed.

Lothar raised the knife over his head, the blade glinting in the sunlight.

“Stop!”

Lothar plunged the knife into the Englishman’s breast. He let out a final, ragged grunt. The Englishman tried to flail against Lothar, who twisted the knife in the wound. The Englishman spasmed…then went still.

Lothar wrenched the blade from the body and wiped the blade clean on the Englishman’s thigh. Lothar spat on the body and sheathed his weapon.

“Manfred? What the hell were you thinking? Walking up to him like that.”

“Why, Lothar? He was beaten.”

Lothar pulled his brother to his feet.

“He was. He was beaten when he fired on you. He was beaten when he knocked the hell out of you, and he was beaten when he was going to kill you.” Lothar pointed to the body. “He was going to
kill
you!”

Manfred clutched at his brother to stay on his feet.

“To hell with him,” Lothar said.

Manfred gave up the argument; concepts of morality and honor would do nothing for the dead. A red stain was spreading across Lothar’s thigh.

“Lothar, don’t look down,” Manfred said.

“What? Why?” Lothar looked down and touched his thigh. One glance at his bloody fingertips, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Lothar went slack and Manfred got his arms under Lothar in time to ease him to the ground.

A truck stopped on a road running alongside the field. German soldiers dismounted and ran toward them. Manfred tapped a welt growing over his eye and felt his ribs for a break.

“Damn this war,” he said.

Katy took a needle from a pan of alcohol and ran a thread through the eye.

“This will sting,” she said.

“I don’t care if it hurts; just don’t let me see anything,” Lothar said, his words edged in panic. He was on a bed in the infirmary, pillows propped on his chest to block the line of sight to his thigh.

Katy eased the needle into the flesh along the remaining stitches of Lothar’s almost-healed wound. Lothar responded to the discomfort with choice profanities.

“He scored again, didn’t he?” Katy said.

“Manfred? Yes, how did you know?”

“He went back to his room the moment you returned. Locked himself in there, same as always after he shoots down a plane,” Katy completed the stitch, and readied another.

“Huh, I never noticed that before.”

“Lothar, he needs to stop flying.”

Lothar’s chuckle nearly ruined Katy’s work. Blood seeped around the split stitches, and Katy dabbed the blood away, careful to keep the sponge out of Lothar’s sight.

“Katy, he’ll never quit. It’s not in his nature. Besides, his head is healed.”

“I can treat the wounds we can see. Manfred has wounds that run far too deep for me to help. Doctors have been talking about battle fatigue—”

“Manfred is no coward.”

“I’m not saying that. There are limits to what any man can withstand, and I think Manfred is there.”

“Let me tell you a story about Manfred. He was entered in the 1913 Emperor’s Prize race, one horse, two-hundred-mile distance from start to finish. The horse he’d trained with for months got a hoof infection days before the race, and Manfred went begging for another mount. He found this beautiful animal named Blume, black as midnight, descended from destriers. But Blume wasn’t trained for racing or jumping.