Hope Takes Flight (26 page)

His flight was followed into the air five minutes after it left by a second flight of five Camels, and five minutes after that by a third flight of five. After the mission was accomplished, Brown waved some of his pilots back and kept eight of them for one more swing. He led them northeast toward the Somme, which was exactly where von Richthofen was headed on his westward patrol, but at a different altitude.

The Germans attacked an observation plane and in doing so, attracted antiaircraft fire which began exploding around them. Brown, alerted by the explosions, turned toward the triplanes and the Camels caught three Fokkers, sending one of them down at once. The controlled attack degenerated into a typical free-for-all with planes kiting all over the sky.

May tried hard to obey Brown's warning. He circled at 12,000 feet while the battle went on under him, and even let a triplane pass close by without chasing it. Then when a second triplane flew by, he could restrain himself no longer. He pushed the stick forward and followed the German right into the thick of the fight, firing all the while and finally hitting his target.

The German turned away and May did not chase him. Instead, he simply fired a long burst at another enemy plane who flew in front of him. Then both guns jammed, and he decided to get out as quickly as he could. Dropping out of the swarm, May leveled off and headed toward home. He did not see the red triplane that was following him.

But Brown saw it. He saw May streak for the aerodrome and he saw the red triplane go into a long dive behind the fleeing Camel.

Hearing the machine gun fire, May glanced back and saw the Fokker. He put his Camel into a shallow dive but could not shake off the red airplane. By that time, Brown was above the German and close enough for a burst of machine gun fire. All three airplanes were now within two hundred feet of the ground and following the Somme above a low ridge a half-mile east of Vaux-sur-Somme.

Brown fired a short burst close behind the triplane and saw its pilot turn as if wondering who had hit him and then slump as bullets ripped maroon linen. After he got off the burst, Brown's dive brought him behind and below the triplane and, when he pulled up, May and the German were gone.

Down below, on the ridge, Australian riflemen and machine gunners fired a volley of bullets at the Fokker as it passed, now a hundred yards behind May and still closing. They could see pieces breaking off as their bullets hit. The Fokker also came under fire from an antiaircraft battery controlled by Sergeant Alfred G. Franklyn.

A cheer went up from the ground crews as the red triplane swerved, seemed to hesitate, and then started down. Staggering and slipping, it glided a few hundred yards before crashing just north of the road, a mile and a half from the ridge.

The Fokker's landing gear was smashed and the gas tank had collapsed. But everything else was intact when the first soldiers reached the aircraft. Inside, they found the pilot, his nose and jaw smashed on impact with the machine gun butts in front of him, and they realized he was dead even before they unstrapped him and laid his body beside the airplane. The body was searched, and the sergeant who pulled out the identification papers stared wildly, then shouted, “We got 'im! We got the bloody Red Baron!”

Germans with telescopes had followed it all, and a telephone message describing the scene was relayed to the command post.

Half an hour later the triplane had been picked almost clean. Patches of maroon linen were distributed throughout the area. And the body of Baron Manfred von Richthofen was tied to a sheet of corrugated steel and dragged, as if on a sled, down the far side of the ridge. Eyes open, he stared up blindly into the sky where overhead, the air war continued. But it was over for him. The Red Baron, the Knight of Germany, was dead.

G
avin caught the gaily painted Albatros in his gun sight, waited until he was less than a hundred feet away, then squeezed the trigger. The tracers reached out and stitched a pattern of holes from the nose of the German aircraft all the way to the tail. The Albatros shuddered, and a trail of white vapor began to pour out of the engine.

He followed closely as the plane nosed downward, but was aware that enemy pilots often pretended to be disabled, only to drop to ground level and slip away. This time, however, Gavin could see the aviator climbing out of the cockpit. Carefully he pulled back on the stick so that the body of the struggling man was in the cross hairs of his sight. His finger touched the trigger.

I can't do it
, he thought suddenly.
What would it prove? He's going out of it
.

The German crawled over the side of the falling Albatros and threw himself into space. At first Gavin thought he was doing what many others had done—leaving a doomed airplane before it burst into flames or destroyed itself by crashing into the ground. Then he saw the envelope of white silk fluttering open and knew that his enemy was wearing a parachute.

Gavin made a graceful turn, glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the rest of the Germans were fleeing for home, pursued by members of his own flight. He was alone in the sky. He made another turn, watching the Albatros as it plummeted downward.

Circling the parachute closely, Gavin could see the pilot's features. He was a young man, Gavin saw, no more than eighteen or so, and terror was written on his face.

He expects me to shoot him as he goes down
, Gavin thought.

He circled again and this time, just to test himself, made a run straight at the pilot. The parachutist held up his hands as if to ward off the bullets he knew were to follow. Unexpectedly, Gavin banked his plane, waved at the young German, and climbed into the sky. In the last moments of his turn, Gavin had time to see the amazed look on the face of the downed pilot and then the wild waving of both hands as the young man signaled his gratitude.

Gavin flew back to the aerodrome, pondering what had just happened, knowing that if this had occurred before the time of prayer he'd had with Heather, he would have killed the pilot without compunction. Ever since that evening in Paris, though, he had known something was different. He still flew, of course, and had downed two more planes since that time. But both times he had seen the pilots crash-land and struggle free. He felt free from the fierce desire to kill that had consumed him before.

As he approached the landing field, another thought came to him.
What if that had been von Richthofen?
he thought.
Would that have been different? Would I have filled him full of bullets for what he did to my sister?
His wheels touched down and he glided to a stop, performing his movements automatically, still lost in his thoughts.

When Gavin got out of the airplane, he saw the mechanics and some of the pilots milling around, talking excitedly among themselves. As he approached, Luf came running toward him. “Gavin! Gavin! He iss down!”

Gavin stared at the stocky pilot. “Who's down?”

“Von Richthofen! He hass been shot down!” Luf exclaimed. “Jus' got da news!”

Gavin felt as he had once when he had fallen into a river of icy water in the dead of winter. The shock of that plunge had taken his breath away. Again the world seemed to stop. His head was filled with confused thoughts and there was a lightness in his chest. “Is he…finished?” He was not aware that he had whispered the question.

“Vat? Oh, yess, he vas dead, vee heerd. No more Ret Baron!”

Gavin knew then that he was a changed man. For there was in his heart no thrill, none of the vicious feelings of revenge that had driven him a few weeks earlier. Now he could think of Baron von Richthofen as merely a human being of great talent whose life had been tragically cut short. True, he had been an enemy, but Gavin could no longer hate the enemy. He had seen too many of their young men die, just as his own friends had died. He had come to understand that it was not their wills, but the wills of generals and politicians and civilizations that pitted men against each other in battle, and wasted lives. Von Richthofen had simply obeyed his country's call and now he was dead like so many others.

“Come on, ve vill go hear all de news,” Luf was saying.

But Gavin shook his head. “No, I've got something to do.” He walked off, ignoring Luf's wondering gaze, and went at once to his superior officer, requesting a leave.

“A leave?” Demond stared at him blankly. “What do you mean, a leave? The Germans are sweeping ahead faster than we can hold them! We need every pilot we can get!”

“I know that, sir. But I have a personal problem. If I don't get some time off, I'm afraid I may have some sort of breakdown.”

Demond still stared blankly, uncertain if Gavin was serious. The flyers were always pulling his leg, although Stuart had never been guilty of such. He considered Gavin and tried to assemble in his mind the number of pilots, the number of planes, the missions, and also tried to assess whether Gavin was telling the truth. He
had
seen men go almost insane under the pressures of combat, and he tried to keep a close watch on his pilots to relieve them when the strain grew too great.

Finally he asked, “How long do you need?”

Gavin sighed, relieved that the lieutenant was willing to grant his request. “I don't know. I need to go to England.”

“England, eh? Well, that might work out,” Demond said, his eyes brightening. “There's a wing of new fighters ready at the factory, and we've worked out an arrangement with the British that they furnish us with some of their planes. Perhaps you could bring one of them back. Could you do that? And would a week be enough?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Fine, sir!” Gavin said quickly.

Demond nodded. “I will make out your orders and give you clearance. One week! Be sure to be back by then.”

The French decided to hold a grand funeral for the Red Baron, and having made plans to honor the dead German flyer, they overdid the thing somewhat. The entire burial was like some ritual scene from a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

The body was shrouded and laid on the back of a military truck bedded deep with flowers. A stiff, correct escort of six officers from the R.A.F.'s 209th Squadron walked in solemn parade step behind the slow-paced lorry. Then the body was removed to a hangar and prepared for burial. The Red Baron lay in state during the day, and hundreds of British officers and rank-and-file ground crews filed past their dead enemy.

He lay untouched, or so it seemed, for the bullet that killed him had not marred his features. A post-mortem showed a slug had entered one chest wall, banged against the spine, gone through the heart, and moved on to the other chest wall.

Actual burial took place in French soil with full military protocol, the coffin carried by six air captains wearing black armbands. Wreaths were piled on the coffin. One was lettered “To Our Gallant And Worthy Foe.”

At the cemetery gate, riflemen formed two lines facing each other, and the captains carried the flower-draped coffin past the riflemen standing at salute position. The entire procession was led by a well-fed, neatly-robed chaplain of the Church of England, prayer book in hand. An orderly crowd of soldiers and a few townspeople gathered around the best surviving hemlock tree, where the chaplain recited the Church of England ritual for the dead. A eulogy was said. Then the coffin was lowered into the fresh grave. A crisp officer's bark stiffened the firing party into position and three times, in paced order, volleys were pressed off. Finally, a bugler stepped forward, wet his lips, and blew “The Last Post.”

A cross cut from a four-bladed propeller was banged into the soil above von Richthofen's head. At the center of the propeller was a round plate, with the inscription: CAVALRY CAPTAIN MANFRED BARON VON RICHTHOFEN, AGE 26, KILLED IN ACTION, AERIAL COMBAT, 21ST APRIL 1918.

On the evening of April 22, a Royal Air Force pilot risked being shot down to drop a photograph of von Richthofen's grave into the German aerodrome at Capi. Accompanying the photograph was this note:

The Richthofen wing felt an overwhelming loss at the death of their leader. When the letter he had given to his adjutant weeks before was opened, it turned out to be, as expected, his aeronautical Last Will and Testament:

Rhinehart was killed not too long afterward, and the new commander of the von Richthofen wing was a pilot named Goering. He was a mediocre pilot, to be sure, but one who was a gifted orator. This would not be the last Germany, or the world, would hear of Hermann Goering.

The tap at the door was so light that Lylah scarcely heard it. She had been dozing in her chair, the book she had been reading having dropped to the floor. The tap came again, louder, more insistent, and she gave a start, blinked her eyes, then rose heavily from her chair. Even beneath the loose-fitting blue dressing gown, her pregnancy was evident as she moved awkwardly across the floor. She put her hand on the knob and hesitated, wondering who could be coming at this time of night. It was after midnight, she saw by the clock. “Yes? Who is it?”

“It's me…Gavin.”

“Gavin!” Lylah slipped the bolt and opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

Gavin put his arms around his sister, hugging her carefully. “I came to see
you,
of course.” Holding her at arm's length, he studied Lylah's face, seeing the circles under her eyes, the lines of fatigue bracketing her mouth. “Aren't you going to invite me in?”

“Of course, come on in,” she said. “I was just so surprised.” She pulled him inside, shut the door, then went over to turn on the lamp. “Can I get you something to eat?”

“No, I just got off the ship and came here as soon as I could. I could use some coffee, though.” He didn't really want anything, but he did hope to break the stiffness that existed between them.

He sat down on a chair in the small kitchen and watched while she measured the coffee and put the water on to boil. As she did so, he said, “I came over to take a plane back. We've ordered a whole flight of new English fighter planes and somebody has to fly them over. The last bunch was flown by amateurs, and two of them landed in the drink.”

“I'm so glad you came,” Lylah said. She set out two cups, a bowl of sugar, and some fresh cream, and then poured the steaming coffee into the cups and sat down across from him.

Gavin stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee and a large dollop of cream. Lifting the cup to his lips, he took a sip of the steaming brew. “This is really good. The French don't know how to make coffee, not like we do.”

For a few moments, they sat in companionable silence.

“I have several letters from home,” Lylah said at last. “You'll want to read them.”

“Are things all right?”

“It seems so. Logan got married.” She allowed a slight smile to curve her full lips. “A widow with three children.”

Gavin blinked, then laughed out loud and slapped the table. “What's he going to do with them? Logan never could stand kids! How old are they?”

“Three, six, and eight, I think. Two girls and a boy. And he's wild about them—or so he says in his letter—and I think he got a good wife, too. At least Dad says so.”

She went on, filling him in on news of home, reading him excerpts from letters, and the time went by. But both of them spoke guardedly, with none of the ease they had always known before, and finally Lylah said abruptly, “Just why did you come, Gavin?” Her eyes were filled with apprehension and her lips were drawn tight. She was as beautiful as always, but there was a tense, wary look in her face now. For weeks she had wondered how she would face any of her family, and now one of them was here and she expected a sermon, at the very least, about her wicked ways.

“I came to get an airplane.…” Gavin said, then broke off sharply. “Well, that's part of the reason. But that was just an excuse to come and see you.” He put out his hand and grabbed hers, stroking it tenderly. When he looked up, she could see the care and the concern in his expression. “I'm worried about you, Sis. I just had to come.”

Tears stung Lylah's eyes. She squeezed his hand, then lifted it to her lips and kissed it. He felt her hot tears falling on the back of it. “Oh, Gavin, Gavin!” she whispered brokenly, but she could say no more because her heart was too full. Here was one of her own blood, and he had not come to convict her.