The Red Baron: A World War I Novel (24 page)
Read The Red Baron: A World War I Novel Online
Authors: Richard Fox
“Plane on approach!” someone shouted from outside.
“Manfred?” Lothar shot to his feet and out the door.
He ran to the airfield and spotted a double-winged plane in the air. He’d shot down enough Sopwith Camels to know one when he saw it. The Camel flew over the airfield and tossed something over the side.
Lothar and the rest of the pilots ran to where the object landed. They poked around the grass until Wolfram shouted.
Lothar snatched the letter, tied to a hunk of brick, out of Wolfram’s hands and ripped the letter open.
The Flying Circus crowded around Lothar, waiting for him to speak.
Lothar looked up from the letter, tears pouring from his eyes.
“He’s gone.”
Katy was no one. One of tens of thousands who came to see the funeral. Just another woman in mourning black. She didn’t mind the veil; it hid her tears.
A proper funeral had to wait. Germany couldn’t rush something so important, something that had to be done right. After the years of revolution, counterrevolution, the flu that killed as many as the Front, the embargo and starvation that continued long after the armistice so the English could secure their position at Versailles, the turmoil of Germany ripped apart and humiliated by that treaty—after all had passed, this funeral could happen.
Manfred’s remains had been disinterred from a military cemetery in France and taken a long, winding route through the country. The German nation bade farewell to its hero city by city until the coffin made it to Berlin
Katy waited for hours along the road leading to the Gnadenkirche cathedral where Manfred would lay in state. The procession passed slowly, an honor guard of eight Pour Le Merite winners escorted Manfred’s coffin carried by a horse-drawn artillery caisson. An officer in an Uhlan uniform carried the
Ordenskissen
, a black pillow bearing all of Manfred’s medals and awards.
Behind the coffin walked von Hindenburg, president of the Weimar Republic. Kunigunde von Richthofen walked beside him, alone but for a son and daughter that Katy hadn’t had the chance to meet. Manfred’s father died of pneumonia in 1920, Lothar in a plane crash two years after that.
Planes flew overhead, trailing black pennants.
The crowd was stone silent as the coffin passed. The soft pad of boots and clink of horseshoes marked the passing.
After the procession delivered the coffin to the cathedral, a choir sang the “Song of Good Comrades,” the final hymn for the fallen hero.
After, most of the crowd broke away. Katy found her way to the line to view the casket, and stayed in line for hours, shuffling forward a few feet at a time until she finally made it inside, the sun setting over the Berlin skyline.
Manfred’s pallbearers stayed on as an honor guard around the coffin. A pile of wreathes laid before the lacquered wood. A simple wooden cross with Manfred’s name and a burial serial number lay atop the coffin, the original grave marker from his burial in France, where he’d lain surrounded by fallen Germans. Katy thought Manfred would have preferred to stay there, with the soldiers he died for.
She took a thin diary from her pocket and flipped it open. A single red poppy, the one Manfred gave her the day he fell in the rose garden, lay pressed between the pages. She dropped the poppy onto a growing pile of flowers, and continued past the coffin.
She stepped out of the church and into the early evening air, the scent of coal and burning wood replacing the fragrance of flowers around Manfred’s coffin. She pulled her veil over her face and struggled with where to go next.
Seeing Manfred one last time brought no solace. Some wounds were too deep to heal.
THE END
FROM THE AUTHOR
Thank you for reading The Red Baron. I want my next book to be better than the last, and for that, I need your help. Please leave an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads and let me know which parts you liked, and where I could improve.
This telling of Manfred’s story is fiction, and parts of his historical record were compressed, omitted and otherwise jumbled for the sake of telling the story. If you, dear and gentle reader, came across a technical error or inaccuracy (How many wings on the Sopwith Pup?), please drop me a note at
[email protected]
and those errors will be corrected in future editions.
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