The Red Baron: A World War I Novel (8 page)

Manfred returned to his plane, his pride growing as he imagined showing Boelcke proof of his bravery. He cast a last glance to the British Fee and something new twisted around his heart, something he never thought he’d feel. Regret.

Manfred found Boelcke, Voss, and Wolff in discussion at the tail of Boelcke’s Albatros. He marched up to the group, his chest puffed with pride, and handed his commander the fabric serial number from his victory.

“Very good, Manfred, well done,” Boelcke said.

“I had a victory as well,” said Wolff.

“Me too,” said Voss.

Boelcke pointed to his chin, black from gun smoke.

Manfred’s sense of élan melted away. At least he managed to hold his own among the best Germany had to offer.

“Now that Richthofen has joined us, Mr. Voss, please tell us how you shot down your target and what you learned from the battle,” Boelcke said. The commander had each pilot explain, in laborious detail, how each pilot shot down the enemy and what tactics could be used in future dogfights. Manfred learned more in the following half hour about air combat than he’d learned in all his time training in Berlin.

Boelcke excused his pupils and stripped off his flight jacket.

“Manfred, a moment,” Boelcke said. Manfred stayed put.

“You landed after your target crashed,” Boelcke said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“I…I needed proof,” Manfred said. He suddenly felt very hot under his flight jacket.

“You abandoned the fight. Your presence could have been the difference between life and death for me, Wolff, or Voss,” Boelcke said. His tone even and low.

Manfred’s head bowed in shame for a moment. Boelcke was right. Manfred’s ego overrode his duty. This was something no officer could accept. He straightened up to the position of attention.

“Sir, you’re right.” Manfred opened his jacket and removed his pilot’s badge from his uniform tunic. He held it out to Boelcke.

Boelcke laughed and pushed the hand holding Manfred’s badge back into his coat.

“Did I tell you to stay with the fight? No, and that’s my own fault.” He held out his hand, his finger straight. “What would happen if I jammed my hand into your chest right now?”

“You’d probably break a finger,” Manfred said.

Boelcke curled his hand into a fist. “And now?”

“You’d knock me over.”

“Precisely. If we fly as individuals, we are weak. Fly as a unit, and we are unstoppable. Understand?” Boelcke said.

“Yes, sir,” Manfred said, still ashamed.

“Don’t be so morose, Manfred. You did very well today and I expect more of the same from you every time we fly,” Boelcke slapped a meaty hand against Manfred’s shoulder.

A staff car pulled up beside the duo. Voss and Wolff in the backseat.

“Manfred! Come with us, we need proof of our victories too,” Wolff said. The slight man wore a sleeping cap on his head, the tail draped over a shoulder.

Manfred looked to Boelcke for approval.

“Go,” Boelcke said with a nod.

Manfred hurried after Wolff, the tassel of his sleeping cap bouncing in the air as he ran for a waiting car.

“Kurt, what on earth are you wearing?” Manfred asked.

“Huh? Oh,” Wolff snatched the cap from his head and shoved it into his tunic. “It’s for luck in the air. What do you take up?”

“I’m sorry, for luck?” Manfred asked.

Voss walked over and dangled a pocket watch from a gold chain. “It was my grandfather’s; he had it with him in the war with the Austrians. Four battles and not a scratch.”

The three officers piled into the car as their driver opened the hood to double-check the engine’s oil.

“Manfred, do you not have a lucky talisman?” Wolff looked at him like he was already a dead man. “Even Boelcke has that walking stick of his.”

“My jacket.” Manfred slapped at the leather jacket he’d bought after his first training flight. The fur coat he’d worn hadn’t been proof against the cold air of the skies. “Yes, this jacket.”

“I flew with one guy who took a stuffed bear up with him,” Voss said.

“I heard about some Gotha pilot that flew with a dachshund,” Wolff added.

“Now you’re just making stuff up,” Voss said.

The driver shut the engine hood and drove them away from the airfield.

Manfred followed Wolff as he bounded through a forest.

“He went down over here. I’m sure of it!” Wolff said.

“That’s the third time he’s said that,” Voss said. He and Manfred didn’t share Wolff’s enthusiasm for traipsing through undergrowth. They stayed near the edge of the woods while Wolff continued his search.

“You and Boelcke saw it happen; he’ll get credit for the victory,” Manfred said. The lessening light from the setting sun reflected Manfred’s level of enthusiasm for the search.

Voss lit a match and brought the flame to a cigarette in his mouth. He inhaled deeply and lifted his head to exhale the smoke away from Manfred’s face.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Voss said. He pointed to a plane’s tail and rudder suspended in the upper branches of an oak tree. The rest of the plane was hanging from the lower and thicker branches, both wings missing.

“Finally,” Manfred said.

He and Voss walked toward the wreckage and called to Wolff, who, by the distant sound of snapping branches, had moved deeper into the forest.

The Fee pilot was suspended from his seat belts, hanging upside down. His arms extended toward the ground, swaying in the breeze like branches. The gunner’s section had torn away in the crash, and there was no sign of the gunner.

“Shit, where is he?” Voss said as he drew his pistol from his holster. Some British didn’t know when to give up the fight.

“Don’t be paranoid,” Manfred said. He took a few steps into a tall spot of grass and looked around.

“There.” Manfred pointed to the head and shoulders of a dead British soldier lying in the grass.

Voss joined Manfred and holstered his weapon. “Wait…” Voss stepped closer to the body. He gagged and covered his mouth with the back of a sleeve. Voss pointed to the tail end with his other hand.

The gunner’s upper half was near where Manfred stood; the rest of his body lay next to wreckage on the ground.

Wolff crashed through the forest. “Ah ha!” he yelled. Wolff had cut the red and white rings around the blue dot that served as British insignia for their planes from one of the dismembered wings and held it in the air in triumph.

“Kurt. Wait!” Manfred said.

Wolff came around the tail, a puzzled look on his face. He stopped when his boots stepped onto a part of the forest that made an uncharacteristic squish.

Wolff looked down and found himself standing in the gunner’s entrails.

Wolff’s jaw dropped, a low moan escaping his slack jaw. Manfred pulled him from the remains and led him toward Voss. Wolff’s mouth snapped shut as he groaned.

“No, please don’t—” Voss said, his eyes widening in panic.

Wolff vomited all over Voss’s boots. Voss let loose a stream of expletives as he jumped away. Wolff heaved again as Manfred gave the man a few reassuring pats on the back.

“I’m so sorry, Werner,” Wolff said with a small voice.

Voss kept grumbling as he kicked his boots through the high grass, doing his best to clean them off.

Wolff spat into the grass, still hunched over.

“Can we go, please?” he said in a small voice.

Manfred pulled Wolff upright and helped the slight man back to the waiting staff car. Wolff tried to look back over his shoulder, but Manfred’s hand forced his head back toward the car.

“That’s enough,” Manfred said.

Voss threw his boots in the trunk and sat in the front next to the driver. Manfred and a pale Wolff sat in the back. The return trip to the airfield was silent while Voss smoked one cigarette after another.

Voss twisted around and nudged Wolff’s knee with the back of his hand.

“First time?”

Wolff, who’d been staring at the English colors, jerked up as if waking from a nap. “What?” Wolff said.

“Were they your first kills?” Voss asked.

Wolff nodded.

“It gets easier,” Voss said before looking to Manfred. “Right?”

Manfred considered the Frenchman he’d shot in the trenches, the pilot of the Farman and the two men he killed earlier that day. The deaths had stayed at the edge of his mind, phantasms that promised to visit in the future.

“It does,” he said. Manfred wasn’t convinced that what he said was true, but Wolff needed to hear differently.

“Better them than you, right Kurt?” Voss said.

Wolff nodded. A smile spread across his face. “Captain Boelcke will want to see this.” He gave the colors a pat.

Manfred opened the throttle on his Albatros D.II as it sped over the English trenches. Scattered cloud tops like thick dandelions floated between him and the antiaircraft artillery that sent rounds into the sky to meet him. Shells burst with a snap audible over his taxed engine, puffs of black smoke creeping closer and closer as the distant gunners reached for him.

Boelcke was several hundred yards ahead, on the tail of a smoking Nieuport, a French-designed plane flown by the English. Manfred scanned the air for threats to his commander as he closed. Crossing over the lines wasn’t something Boelcke was fond of; part of his mantra to his pilots was to always have a line of retreat ready. In the weeks that Manfred had flown with the squadron, they’d crossed over only twice, each time with detailed planning and with the wind blowing to the east.

The blast from a near miss kicked Manfred’s Albatros up and over, like a plate flipped from a table. His body strained against the belts that kept him from ejecting into the air. His plane still responded to the controls, quelling the panic that he might be on a one-way trip to the ground in a dead plane. Manfred rode out the blast and waited for gravity to pull the heavy metal engine earthward. He pulled out of the unforced dive before the airspeed could rip the wings off.

At some point the gunners would run out of shells, he hoped.

Boelcke was a few dozen yards from the Nieuport. A tracer round careened off the propeller and into the sky. The Nieuport made a desperate dive and landed hard on a dirt road running parallel to a line of telegraph poles.

The pilot unstrapped, jumped from the smoking plane, and ran a dozen yards down the road. The pilot found Boelcke in the air and thrust his arms over his head toward Boelcke, brandishing that particular British gesture of holding two fingers up in a V. Boelcke didn’t pull back from his attack dive as Manfred watched on.

The pilot froze for a second, and then took off running down the road.

Boelcke fired; a line of bullets stitched the dirt road and overtook the pilot, who tumbled to the ground in a cloud of dirt. He laid still, arms and legs contorted.

Manfred looked on in shock. Boelcke killed that pilot after he was out of the fight, helpless. This wasn’t what he thought Boelcke, knight of the air and hero of Germany, would do.

Boelcke pulled into a loop and twisted into an Immelmann turn. He pointed to the east and toward safety as he passed Manfred. Manfred came about and followed. He took another glance at the pilot, who lay in the road.

Manfred remained silent during the after-action review, answering Boelcke’s direct questions and providing nothing else of the morning’s flight. Lieutenant Bohme, his black hair slicked against his Neanderthal-like skull from sweat, detailed his successful duel with another Nieuport, the equally unfortunate wingman of Boelcke’s victim.

“The air is thick with Englishmen today, boys. Have your planes refueled and rearmed immediately and stay suited up,” Boelcke said. The knot of pilots unraveled at Boelcke’s command.

“Sir,” Manfred said, “a moment, if you please.”

Boelcke motioned to Manfred and walked to a water cistern aside the headquarters. Boelcke lifted a tin ladle to his mouth to drink, he cocked up an eyebrow to the waiting Manfred.

“Sir, that pilot—he was out of the fight. His plane a wreck and—”

Boelcke slammed the ladle into the cistern with a bang. He took a step toward Manfred, hands balled in fists and his mouth twisted in a snarl.

“And what? Let him live? Hope his aristocratic sense of fair play made sure I got the same treatment if our situation were reversed?” Manfred didn’t answer. The airfield bustled around them as the standoff continued.

Boelcke took a deep breath and ran a trembling hand through his hair.

“How many do you have now, Manfred?”

“Six victories, sir,” he said. Fair weather and Boelcke’s instruction made the last month productive.

“Yes, that’s right,” Boelcke said. “That was my thirty-seventh. This isn’t a game, Manfred. It is life and death every single time,” Boelcke nodded his head slowly as if he’d found the answer to some old question. “We can’t afford to be innocent about these things.”