The Red Baron: A World War I Novel (9 page)

Boelcke’s eyes flashed with happiness. “I expect great things from you,” he said before disappearing into the headquarters.

Manfred relaxed, Boelcke’s words running through his mind. After all the killing, what innocence remained?

“Manfred,” Bohme said from behind. The big man motioned for Manfred to follow him behind the hangar.

Manfred found Bohme next to a crate of ammo, a crowbar in hand. A breeze ruffled through the fields of wheat surrounding the airfield, silent and peaceful compared to the men readying for battle on the other side of the wooden barn.

“What happened?” Bohme said. He’d been with Boelcke since the squadron formed; he was several victories ahead of the blue and the House Order of Hohenzollern medal at his breast, an award on par with the Pour Le Merite—depending on what part of Germany one hailed from—a testament to his skill. Manfred told Bohme everything but the details of what Boelcke said at the cistern. Bohme said nothing as he slammed the crowbar into the crate and pried the top open.

“You never met Schlechter. He was with us until a few days before you arrived. The day before he died, he shot up a Brit but didn’t bring him down. Plane had a golden lion painted on the side, and Schlechter escorted it back to their lines.” Bohme pulled a case of ammo from the crate and handed it to Manfred.

“Next day, a plane with that same golden lion sends Schlechter down in flames. I was there when Boelcke pulled him out of the wreck.” Bohme’s nose wrinkled at the memory. “He hasn’t been the same since.”

“Do you know why the English call us ‘Huns’? Because they think we act without honor,” Manfred said.

“There’s no honor in this war, friend. No honor in the trench and no honor in the air. Just us trying to survive.” Bohme pulled two belt magazines from the crate, each seemed pitifully small in his hands.

“I won’t be like that. Never,” Manfred said.

“Then I hope your sense of honor doesn’t get you killed, or me, or Boelcke.” Bohme tossed another drum of bullets to Manfred.

The clanging of a wrench against a brass bell sounded action for the squadron. The enemy had been spotted.

Manfred tightened his hands around the drum and ran for his plane.

After a fruitless hour in the air, Manfred thought the “action” bell was a misnomer. He checked his fuel gauge, which was closer to empty than he would have liked and gave it a tap with his finger.

He scanned a line of clouds in the distance, hoping the white background would provide a silhouette for the English squadron that was, supposedly, in the area. Nothing. He rapped his fingers on the control pane and regretted not taking the chance to relieve himself between sorties.

A yellow light shone from deep inside a cloud, a hint of the sun that was in a very different part of the sky. The light grew brighter until it fell through the bottom of the cloud. A German Gotha, one of the large bombers, hurtled to the earth aflame.

Manfred wagged his wings and waved to Bohme and Voss flying in formation with him. Voss was looking at Manfred, and pointing frantically toward the air above Manfred. Manfred shook his head—how could Voss miss the Gotha? Manfred pointed to the dying plane. Voss kept pointing, his shouts lost to the wind.

Manfred frowned, and then he looked to the sky. A shadow flickered in the sun. Manfred threw the Albatros on its side and banked so fast he heard the wooden wings groan from the stress. Bullets filled the air he’d just occupied and a D.H.2 roared past him. The D.H.2, resembled a Fee with its rear-mounted propeller, but it was built to win air-to-air combat. Its appearance on the Western Front ended the Germans’ technological superiority that came with the Fokker Eindecker, and was more than a match for Manfred’s Albatros.

Manfred craned his head to follow his foe and turned to meet the attack. The two planes crossed paths too quickly for Manfred to fire; he kept the plane in a turn and his eye on the D.H.2.

The D.H.2 stayed in its turn, equal in its maneuverability to Manfred’s Albatros. Neither plane could turn faster than the other as they circled beyond the reach of each other’s machine guns.

Manfred looked to the ground and spied a copse of trees, their tops swaying in the strong easterly wind. Nature was pushing the two planes farther into Germany territory.

The Albatros and D.H.2 circled closer as they lost altitude. Manfred ached to pull out of the turn and change up the fight, but the terrain was on his side. All he had to do was wait.

At a mere hundred yards above the ground, the D.H.2 pulled out and made a beeline for the English lines to the west. The pilot gave Manfred a quick wave as he passed by.

Manfred came about and lined up behind the D.H.2’s tail. He opened the throttle without a care for how much gas he had left; he could land in safety, and his opponent couldn’t. Manfred came to within fifty meters of his target, pressed his thumbs against the Spandau machine gun’s trigger, and fired.

The bolt on the Spandau shot forward with a metallic thump and didn’t move again. The bolt had jammed. Manfred let loose a stream of expletives that would have shamed his mother and took a hammer from a pocket inside cockpit. He struck the bolt handle with the hammer and nearly flew into an oak tree as he took his attention from flying.

After the fifth strike, the bolt slid home. Manfred reset the bolt and grasped the trigger. The D.H.2 was still ahead of him. He fired a quick burst, with no other effect than a quick jink from the D.H.2. The D.H.2 started to swerve in the hope of fouling Manfred’s aim. A German trench line appeared on the horizon.

Manfred smiled at his good fortune. The D.H.2’s maneuvers robbed it of airspeed, allowing Manfred to get closer. Manfred fired; the vibration of the firing machine gun gripped the Albatros in a seizure before it clicked empty.

Manfred watched on, dismayed to see the D.H.2 continue on.

Then, the D.H.2 dipped to the ground, as if to land, and then it hit the ground hard enough to bounce into the air. It landed again, fishtailing wildly as it rolled across a field. It continued on before crashing into the gnarled trunk of a blasted tree.

Manfred laughed in triumph and looked to the skies. No one was there to witness his victory.

Manfred regained altitude and looked to the crashed D.H.2. What of the pilot? Was he wounded? About to run across no-man’s-land and take to the air tomorrow? He landed near the D.H.2, rolling to a stop. Boelcke would understand.

The D.H.2’s engine had broken loose from its moorings in the crash, falling to the ground in its side. The nubs of the shattered propellers twisted slowly as Manfred approached. The Lewis machine gun dangled in front of the cockpit. Spilled fuel mixed with oil under the wreck, as if the machine had bled out.

The pilot lay slumped against the control panel, the top of his head and shoulders visible to Manfred as he approached.

Manfred stepped onto the engine and steadied himself against the plane. There was no reaction from the pilot. Manfred put his hand on the man’s shoulder and gave him a gentle push.

The body flopped back against the cockpit. The head hinged back, casting sightless eye to the sky. His throat had been blown out; a red and black ruin the size of a baby’s fist oozed blood down the man’s chest. Blood soaked the front of his clothing and the glove of his left hand.

He’d been in his mid-twenties, a typically pale Englishman with light-green eyes. A rank pip marking him as a major peeked from under the collar of his flight suit.

Manfred reached out and closed the dead man’s eyes. If the situation were reversed, he hoped the Englishman would have done the same.

The tricolor circle on the tail and the serial number were intact, but taking those as a trophy didn’t interest Manfred. He pulled the retaining pin holding the Lewis gun to its mount and let it fall to the ground.

He picked the machine gun out of the mud and carried it back to his plane, looking over the foreign weapon. How many Germans had fallen to it? He slid it into his seat and pulled himself into the plane.

He looked at the dead pilot while he readied for takeoff. It was wrong to blame the weapon, he decided. The pilot was the crux of the Royal Flying Corps. Their empire could produce endless weapons, bullets, and planes, but all of them were useless without a trained man in the air.

His Uhlan cavalry uniform was immaculate in the hallway mirror. Manfred hadn’t worn it since the Kaiser’s birthday parade, held just before the war started. The observer’s and pilot’s badge were strange ornamentation for a unit that lived and died by its horses. Manfred ran a thumb over the Iron Cross medal he’d received the week before.

He craned his chin up to check that his neck was properly shaved. The bare spot on the center of the collar would look much better with a Blue Max, he decided. With eleven victories, he had surpassed Boelcke and Immelmann when they received their Blue Maxes, and beyond the ten that was rumored to be the new threshold for the award.

A gentle tug straightened out the tunic. He looked up at the Lewis gun hanging over his doorway, the trophy from his last victory from a few days earlier, and went into the hallway and knocked on Wolff’s door. No response. He knocked again. A muffled voice bade him entry.

Wolff sat at a small writing desk, the kind administrative soldiers used to process paperwork while in the field. A blank sheet of paper lay before the slight man; crumpled sheets littered the ground around the desk. Wolff had his arms crossed as he kept up the staring contest with the paper.

“You have to use the pen to get words on there,” Manfred said.

Wolff touched the pen, then pulled his hand back.

“She wants to know what it’s like,” he said. “Maria, my girlfriend. Every letter she wants details about shooting and the flying…all that.” He tipped his head toward a picture frame on the nightstand next to Wolff’s bed. Wolff and a rather tall and buxom blond woman dressed in a noble’s finery smiled for a camera.

“So what’s the problem?”

“I’ve been in the dispatches for my six kills.” Wolff took to using Boelcke’s word for “victories,” the bureaucrat-preferred and newspaper-friendly term. “Those get sent back to my mother who shares them with Maria. She wants details.” Wolff frowned and kept up his vigil against the blank paper.

“Why don’t you just tell her? Give a few details that aren’t in the dispatches, and that should be enough.”

“My dear Manfred, I am a poet. I once sent her a three-page letter describing how the sun shone through her hair. A few platitudes simply won’t do,” Wolff said.

“I don’t think that’s what she really wants to know. Being mentioned in dispatches means you’re in combat, you’re in danger. She’s just worried about you,” Manfred said.

“Then what do I tell her?”

“Tell her how lucky you are to fly with Boelcke. Mention the dashing and handsome Prussian pilot who was with you on your first victory.”

Wolff groaned and fiddled with the pen. “What do you tell your family?”

“The bare details. I’ll share a bit more with my brother, Lothar. He’s with the infantry near Verdun,” Manfred said. “By the way, does Maria have any sisters?”

“She has three sisters,” Wolff said with a sideways glance at Manfred.

“Who has three sisters?” Voss asked from the doorway.

“No one!” Wolff said as he snapped to his feet.

Wolff scooped up his uniform from the bed and pushed past Voss.

“Come on, can’t be late to our own party,” Wolff said.

A bright white flash left Manfred blind. He blinked away the effects from the camera and tried to smile toward where he thought the photographer was standing. Wolff and Bohme, their arms intertwined with his, swayed in similar discomfort.

“Was that bright enough? You know we need our eyes to fly,” Boelcke said from farther down the line of pilots.

The photographer answered by packing up his camera.

Boelcke unraveled himself from Voss and Bohme. He’d insisted all five pilots stand arm in arm for the photo, part of the tradition for the night’s ceremony. Boelcke looked up at bruised clouds filling the sky before saying, “Inside, I’ve got something special waiting for the three of you.”

One of the chateau’s three dining rooms served as the officers’ mess. A long table sat the fourteen pilots and the rest of the officers. White tablecloths, bleached so bright that they nearly reflected the lights from the chandelier, bore fine china and proper silverware. The owner of the chateau had donated the table set without his knowledge. Boelcke sat at the head, Wolff, Voss, and Manfred sat nearest to him, backward from the normal seating order that followed a strict rank and seniority protocol.

Boelcke led the men in prayer, then signaled to the orderlies to start dinner service. The pilots remained silent, their eyes on the commander.

Boelcke, decked out with his Blue Max and a whole host of medals from the many kingdoms that made up the German Empire, looked out a window as thunder rumbled in the distance. He turned back to his men and sighed.

“I doubt we’ll fly in the morning. Bodenschatz,” he said to his orderly. “Schnapps.” Men cheered and banged fists to the table. Flying with a hangover was hazardous, and Boelcke rarely allowed alcohol with meals.