The Red Baron: A World War I Novel (10 page)

The orderlies brought out the first course, roasted dove on toast with a brandy gravy, and filled each man’s glass with clear schnapps that smelt of cherries. More wild game dishes, and more schnapps followed.

“Manfred,” Boelcke said, his face flush from drink, “what are we eating tonight that you didn’t hunt down for us?” He held up a bit of boar on his fork.

Manfred, so tipsy that Boelcke’s face blurred in and out of focus, jabbed at his plate twice before he skewered a dumpling. He held it before his commander.

“Sir, I did not shoot these potatoes,” he said, slurring his words. Laughter erupted around the table.

Boelcke signaled to Bodenschatz, who brought three boxes to the table and placed one next to the plates of Voss, Wolff and Manfred. The orderly slid a piece of paper under the commander’s napkin before he left. Boelcke tapped a schnapps glass with a fork and conversation around the table died.

He stood on wobbly legs and kept a hand on the back of his chair before he spoke. “Men, I have the great honor of presenting three of our promising new pilots with a special honor.”

Someone jogged Manfred’s elbow, and he got to his feet with slightly less trouble than Boelcke. Voss and Wolff stood as well, Voss’s arm cocked on top of Wolff’s shoulder.

“The commander of German air forces, Lieutenant General von Hoeppner, gives this gift to each pilot after his first air-to-air victory. Naturally, by the time this arrives, most pilots have more than one kill to their name.”

Orderlies reached on to the table and flipped the boxes open. A silver cup as tall as a beer stein but cylindrical in shape, lay in a bed of satin. Manfred picked up the cup and held it under the dim light of the chandelier. Two eagles, locked in combat, were embossed on the cup. The words “To the Victor in Air Combat” were written in elegant script.

“With typical high command imagination, this is your
Ehrenbecher
, your first cup,” Boelcke said. He raised a class as the rest of the pilots cheered.

Something popped behind Manfred, and an orderly poured champagne into his
Ehrenbecher
until it bubbled over the brim. Wolff and Voss got the same.

“Drink!” said Bohme. Each pilot raised a glass of schnapps and downed it. Boelcke held his empty glass upside down over his head. Manfred took a sip of the champagne and caught himself; the taste could only come from French grapes.

“Bottoms up, you three,” Boelcke said.

Manfred gulped his champagne, determined to empty it before it left his lips. Voss finished first with a smack of his lips.

“We took Champagne away from the French. Don’t spill a drop and spite those bastards in Paris,” Boelcke said.

Manfred finished and held the cup over his head. A burp escaped his lips. Wolff finished a moment later and almost fell over backward before a helpful orderly pushed him upright.

Pilots banged their fists to the table as Boelcke lowered his glass and the rest followed suit.

“Well done, men. Well done,” he said.

Manfred sank back into his chair, his head already pounding from too much alcohol.

A knife tapped against a schnapps glass again.
My God, what’s left?
Manfred thought.

Boelcke sat back in his chair, the bottom buttons of his tunic undone, the piece of paper left by Bodenschatz in hand.

“Gentlemen, I have news. The British ace, Major Lanoe Hawker, is dead.” Silence fell across the table. Hawker had nearly as many kills as Boelcke and was the deadliest British pilot of the war. “He went down two days ago just north of our airfield.” Boelcke looked at Manfred, who was too drunk to make the connection. “The pilot who shot him down is none other than our Lieutenant von Richthofen.”

Manfred’s world shrunk as the news sank in. He focused on the battling eagles on his
Ehrenbecher
as hands shook his shoulders and slapped his back in congratulations. The pilot of the D.H.2, the last owner of the Lewis machine gun hanging over his doorway, was the best pilot the English had to offer, and Manfred killed him.

Manfred and Voss sat outside the barracks. Manfred had his
Ehrenbecher
still in hand. Voss had a cigarette. Scattered raindrops flitted through the lamplight, heralds to the approaching storm.

“I know his name,” Manfred said.

Voss exhaled smoke from his nostrils and squinted at Manfred.

“What are you talking about?” Voss asked.

“Hawker, I know who he is. The rest have all just…been there,” he said.

“So? You think he gave a damn who you were when he was shooting at you?”

“No, but what if I’d known it was Hawker? The best of the best and me in the air. Maybe knowing that, things would have gone differently,” Manfred said.

“What do you want? Us and them to exchange names and back off twenty paces before we start killing each other? We’re going to shoot anyone flying a plane that’s a different color than ours. Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be.”

Manfred held his cup in the air. Raindrops spattered against the silver. An idea, stronger than the haze of alcohol, burst into his mind.

“I’ll make a cup for each victory! Details of each one etched on the side. A proper way to remember Hawker and the rest of them…and a larger cup for each tenth victory…” Manfred’s voice trailed off.

“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” Voss said.

“No, Werner, we should honor them,” Manfred said. Hawker’s dead eyes stared at him from memory. “We should honor them.”

“Where is the balloon? The balloon is still in the sky!” Manfred slammed the field telephone and stomped out of the headquarters toward the line of Albatroses waiting for the action bell.

He passed Boelcke, who was posing for yet another series of Sanke postcards, and climbed into his plane. A camera flash popped as he ran his fingers through the hemp ammo belt, checking for rips and tears that might jam his weapon. He cocked the gun and peered into the chamber, muttering under his breath.

“Something wrong, Manfred?” Boelcke asked from aside his plane.

Manfred sat back and crossed his arms. “Fourteen, sir. Fourteen victories for the Fatherland, and Hawker, but no Blue Max,” Manfred looked at the award on Boelcke’s neck. “High command wants to know why I haven’t shot down a balloon,” Manfred shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no sport in shooting down a balloon!”

Boelcke chuckled and unclasped the Blue Max from his neck. He held it out to Manfred, glinting in the morning sun.

“Take it,” he said.

“No, sir, that’s yours,” Manfred said.

“If it will make you fly any better or shoot any straighter, then take it.”

Manfred shook his head and Boelcke pulled the award back.

“Is this why you fly? For baubles?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why do you fly?”

Manfred looked over the flight line, at Voss, Wolff, and Bohme and the rest of the pilots enjoying a last smoke and joking among themselves. The thump of distant artillery in the air.

“For you and for them. For the soldiers in the trenches who need us,” Manfred said.

“That’s what I thought.” He clasped the award around his neck. “The medals come if you want them or not; focus on what you can control.”

“Then why do you wear it all the time?”

“I have it on in all my pictures. How else will anyone recognize me?” Boelcke said, a wide smile on his face.

The action bell clanged from the headquarters. An orderly ran to Boelcke’s plane, holding a sheet of paper bearing their orders in hand. Boelcke gave Manfred a flippant salute and went to his plane. Boelcke patted at his flight suit, searching for something. He knelt next to the plane and looked at the high grass underneath before climbing into the cockpit.

The pilots watched as Boelcke looked over the paper from the orderly. The commander held his hand in the air, and pointed it forward as his plane was the first out of the chocks.

Where is his lucky walking stick?
Manfred thought.

The Albatros dipped its wheels into cloud tops like a stone skipped across a lake. Manfred looked over the side into the abyss below him, the white of Venetian lace deepened to melancholy grays as the cloud deepened.

Manfred spied Bohme and Boelcke above him, Boelcke’s white scarf flapping behind him like a pennant. He lost them in the sunlight and blinked hard as he looked back to the cloud just beneath his plane.

He held out his hand, as if to catch a whiff of cloud. For him, flying was a beautiful thing. Shame that this war is what brought him to it.

Part of the deep darkness moved, a leviathan’s tentacle reaching out for him. Manfred scrambled to load his machine gun as a D.H.2 burst through the cloud layer. Manfred’s plane reared up, missing the rising English plane by a few yards.

The D.H.2 pilot glanced over his shoulder, then did a double take when he saw Manfred. Manfred was close enough to see the shock on the pilot’s face. The D.H.2 banked into a turn and Manfred followed suit.

Manfred fired, failing to connect, as their turn took them back toward the clouds. The D.H.2 pulled up and skirted the cloud tops as if they were as solid as the ground below. Manfred fired another burst and gray smoke burst from his target. He closed in for the kill as the D.H.2 lost airspeed.

Bullets zipped past Manfred, a guy line between his wings snapped with the twang of a broken cello string. There was another D.H.2 firing on him from behind, and three more rising from the clouds with it.

Manfred did exactly what training forbade—he dove straight into the clouds. Water drops coalesced on his goggles and rain slicked over his plane. There was nothing but gray around him and in his panicked dive he’d lost track of which way was up. He said a quick prayer and changed direction against the most resistance from his control stick, hoping that would lead him skyward and not into an uncontrolled dive to the ground.

The purgatory gray vanished as Manfred found blue skies. A swirling dogfight just ahead, Manfred opened the throttle and raced to the battle.

Boelcke, two English on his tail, dived into a spiral, and nearly collided with Bohme who was climbing to reach the conflict. Bohme waited until Boelcke crossed out of his line of fire, then lit in to the two pursuers, who hadn’t seen Bohme until they’d dived to follow Germany’s greatest ace.

One of the D.H.2s banked right to avoid the attack, the other banked left. The planes collided, the sound of the crash lost to the wind and roar of engines. The planes disintegrated and fell into the clouds, like a street lamp smashed by a rock.

Manfred found his first target. The smoke had gone black but this wasn’t enough to send the pilot racing for the safety of his own lines. Manfred strafed the top of the English as he crossed over, and the smoke gave way to flames. Manfred admired the man’s courage as the D.H.2 stalled and fell to the earth.

Bohme was on the last D.H.2’s tail. Boelcke followed the pair from a lower elevation. The last D.H.2 pulled straight up, and lost all its airspeed in seconds. It hung in the air for a moment, and then the heavy engine pulled the nose to the ground. The maneuver threw Bohme off its tail, and Bohme’s Albatros jerked about as Bohme tried to reacquire his target.

The D.H.2 recovered from its dive and made for the clouds, Boelcke hot on his heels.

Bohme swooped toward the D.H.2, his course leading him dangerously close to Boelcke.

Manfred screamed a useless warning as Bohme came down and his landing gear collided with Boelcke’s upper wings.

Boelcke’s Albatros continued on for several pregnant seconds, then the spar between his left and right wings collapsed. The wings pulled back, and the Albatros fell like a dove shot in midflight. The wings ripped from the fuselage and fluttered in the air as Boelcke vanished into the clouds.

Squadron 2’s pilots sat in silence around the dinner table, Boelcke’s chair at the head of the table forever empty. Manfred’s gaze crept from his untouched meal, to the empty chair, and to Bohme over and over again.

As second-in-command, Bohme was now the de facto leader of the squadron following Boelcke’s death. High command had demanded to know the circumstances of Boelcke’s accident, and Bohme’s mea culpa of culpability was so forthright that Manfred’s statement to the investigation felt unnecessary.

Bohme had barely spoken a word since the accident, other than to give orders to keep the squadron ready to fly. The man sat at the end of the table, catty-corner to Boelcke’s empty seat. He had his chin to his chest, arms crossed over his stomach.

Low murmurs from the pilots gave the meal the feeling of a wake.

Manfred pushed his potato pancake around the applesauce on his plate, like a child who refuses to eat. The door creaked open and Bodenschatz, the orderly, handed him a folded telegram.

“Your Blue Max?” Voss asked quietly.

Manfred rubbed the telegram between his fingers, as if trying to tease out the message.