Читать книгу The Red Knight of Germany - Gibbons Floyd Phillips - Страница 6

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"With a bullet through his head, he fell from an altitude of 9,000 feet—a beautiful death."

Baron Manfred van Richthofen employed this sentence in a letter to his mother to describe the end of his closest friend and oldest flying comrade, the young Count van Holck with whom he had had his first air adventures in Russia.

Flying almost two miles above the battle lines in front of Verdun, Richthofen, from a distance, saw his old friend battling for his life with a number of French fighting planes. A contrary wind, a slow engine, and the intervening distance between him and the scene of the fatal combat prevented him from going to Holck's assistance, and he was forced to stand off helplessly when the latter started on his fatal plunge.

The spectacle occurred May 1, 1916, just four days after Richthofen himself had shot down a French flyer in the same sector. The German war machine was still pounding away at Verdun, and a violent drum fire was playing on the battered, shell-pocked ruins of Fort Douaumont, still valiantly held by the French. A strong wind was blowing from the west.

The Flying Uhlan, from the pilot's cockpit of his biplane, saw three French Caudrons savagely attacking a Fokker single-seater machine which he suspected was Holck's, although he hoped that it was not. The Caudrons dived repeatedly, but always managed to maintain a position between the Fokker and the German lines.

Gradually, the fight circled over the French position in the town of Verdun. Richthofen and his observer, still too far away to get into the mêlée, watched the unequal combat with frequent exclamations of admiration for the hard-pressed German pilot who, although outnumbered three to one, was giving an excellent account of himself.

It soon became apparent, however, that Holck was on the defensive. Other French machines were between him and the German lines, and his numerous adversaries dived on him relentlessly, spraying lead from all angles. Holck lost altitude with every manoeuvre, and Richthofen and his observer both knew that this was fatal. It's the man on top who wins in the air.

They could not fly to Holck's assistance. Their two-seater machine was too heavy and its motor too weak to make headway against the wind and arrive on the scene of the fight in time to be of use.

Holck plunged downward through some small clouds, and Richthofen's heart beat faster in the belief that his old friend had evaded his adversaries by this move. But it was not a ruse. It was Holck's last dive. One of the French bullets had gone through his head. The German pilot's lifeless body was strapped in the seat when the Fokker nosed downward and plunged almost two miles to the earth.

Two days later—the day after his twenty-third birthday— Richthofen had recovered from the effects of his friend's death and was able to report in a different vein to his mother in the following letter:

Verdun, May 3d.

Liebe Mamma:

Many hearty thanks for your congratulations on my birthday, which I spent most enjoyably here. In the morning I had three nerve-tingling air fights, and in the evening I sat with Zeumer until 1 A.M. under a blossoming apple tree drinking Bowle [mixed wines].

I love my new occupation as pilot. I don't think anything else can attract me in this war. I fly a Fokker—a plane with which Boelcke and Immelmann have had great success. I was very much grieved about Holck's death.

Three days before he was killed, he visited me and we were very gay together. He told me of his imprisonment in Montenegro. One really can't imagine that this fine, healthy, and strong fellow doesn't exist any more.

I witnessed his last air fight. First, he shot down a Frenchman in the midst of a hostile squadron. Then he evidently had a jam in his machine gun and wanted to return to the air above our lines. A whole swarm of Frenchmen were on him. With a bullet through his bead, he fell from an altitude of 9,000 feet—a beautiful death. One cannot imagine Holck crippled, with one arm or one leg. Today I am going to fly at his funeral.

Manfred.

It was no time for regrets. Air activity in the Verdun sector increased steadily during that summer of 1916, and the French Nieuports were exacting regular toll from the German flyers who dared to meet them. Death was a frequent visitor to Richthofen's squadron. Under date of June 22d, he wrote to his mother:

What did you say about Immelmann's death? In time, death comes to us all—also to Boelcke. The leader of Lothar's fighting squadron also did not return from the bombing flight. The day before, the leader of my old fighting squadron No. 1 was also shot down. He was the Baron von Gerstoff, one of the most efficient squadron leaders. I liked him very much.

The death that Richthofen predicted almost came to him two weeks after writing that letter. To the satisfaction of his great ambition, he had obtained permission to make some test flights in a single-seater Fokker, in which he believed he could duplicate the easy and multiple air victories of Immelmann and Boelcke.

But air equipment was not plentiful, and he had to share the new machine with a fellow pilot, who was equally ambitious to get away from the heavy two-seater planes and cruise the air lanes as an individual fighting unit. An element of security was not entirely foreign to this mutual ambition.

Richthofen and his comrade both knew that by far the largest number of victims in the air were amongst those who flew the heavy two-seater planes. They were the prey of the speedy little one-seaters. The fighting capacities of the two types measured up like a comparison between butterfly and a wasp. Richthofen was sick of butterflies. The wasps got too many of them. He wanted to be a wasp and hunt butterflies.

The joint ownership of the new Fokker was unsatisfactory to both Richthofen and his comrade. Each feared that the other one would smash the plane. One flew it in the morning and the other flew it in the afternoon.

Richthofen made his first trip without encountering a single enemy plane, and, returning to the airdrome, made a difficult but safe landing. His comrade flew off with the prize Fokker that afternoon, and that was the last Richthofen ever saw of it. It crashed in No Man's Land, but the pilot escaped uninjured and managed to return to the German lines after lying in a shell crater until darkness.

The young Uhlan became the sole owner of the next single- seater that was issued to the squadron. Just as he left the ground on his third flight, the motor stopped and he had to make a forced landing in a near-by field. All that remained of the machine was a scrap pile, but the flying Baron again escaped death without a scratch. He wrote about it to his mother:

A few days ago I fell with my Fokker, head first. The onlookers were much surprised when I crept unwounded from the wreckage. My dear friend, Zeumer, is improving. First, he was shot down by a Frenchman but only received a few flesh wounds from glancing bullets. Three days later, he broke his thigh bone in quite a silly affair. I intend to go to Boelcke and be one of his disciples. I always need change. This would be something new and would mean advancement.

Advancement he craved, but it came hard for him. The failures that marked his efforts to progress from observer to pilot still plagued his attempts to advance from the two-seater to the single-seater types. Although only responsible for one, he was really charged with crashing two Fokker single-seaters, and this record was taken into consideration when he was once more definitely assigned to the heavy two-seaters and suddenly transferred from the Verdun front back to the eastern theatre of war, the scene of his martial début in the air.

The fighting squadron functioned as bombers and travelled as a "circus." It had special trains for the flyers, the mechanics, and the planes. They were equipped with dining and sleeping cars and repair shops. Everyone's baggage and personal effects remained on board, so there were none of the delays and troubles of breaking camp whenever the squadron changed its base of operations.

Richthofen and two fellow primitives, the pilots Gerstenberg and Scheele, left their effects on the train, but the heat of August nights and the call of the wild drove them into the forests on each side of the railroad. They built shakedown huts of timbers, roofed with tenting, and spent merry nights around the camp fire in the open.

As a relief from their frequent excursions over the line they roamed the forest at night in search of game. Richthofen loved it. Killing beasts by night and men by day brought a sense of completion and well-being to the combative spirit that ran through his veins.

Bombing ground troops from above gave him a "tremendous pleasure." His enthusiasm was tireless. There were times when, after dropping one load of bombs on a camp or a troop train, he would fly back to his airdrome, load up with explosives and fuel, and return to the last scene of carnage with another delivery of death.

It was more fruitful from the stand point of results than seeking victims in the air. So often the fighting pilot had to return with an empty bag from a hunt in the sky. Maybe he didn't find the quarry, or it was too wary for him, but not so with the bombing expeditions. There was always something that could be done with bombs, and one need never return with a feeling of unrewarded efforts.

The Russian army in the field, almost defenceless from the air, constituted an excellent target. Anyone who could throw a missile out of a boat and hit the surrounding water, was almost equally capable of registering a hit if he dropped a bomb from the air anywhere immediately behind the Russian front lines.

Sweating under the heat of the August midday sun, Russian troops were being massed for an attack in front of a rail centre in the town of Manjewicze, twenty miles back of the lines. Under orders to disrupt the Russian communications, demoralize their reserves, and thereby weaken the force of their attack, the bombing squadron left its airdrome at noon.

Their "C" type planes of the two-seat reconnaissance variety were heavily loaded with bombs to the limit of their capacity, which was about three hundred pounds of explosive each, in addition to the extra fuel, ammunition for two machine guns, and the weight of the pilot and the observer.

They rose heavily in the light hot air of midday, and reeled perilously as they left the ground. Once in the upper air, beyond the danger of sudden sinkings from low air pockets, pilot and observer breathed freer. The anticipation of a ground crash with three hundred pounds of explosive suspended under one is not without a tingle to the dullest imagination.

Richthofen had a fat observer, whose extra weight he begrudged because it meant that he must carry less bombs. With his 150- horsepower motor turning over under a full throttle, he managed to get the plane off the ground. The engine hummed regularly during the several preliminary circles that he made up above his own airdrome. This was a precaution taken by all flyers, especially those on the east front, because all of them knew that a descent behind the Russian lines on account of a motor failure meant death. Owing to the almost complete absence of Russia aircraft and the scarcity and inaccuracy of Russian anti-aircraft artillery, "dead motors" represented the principal risk.

They flew over Manjewicze, easily recognizable from its web of hurriedly constructed side tracks, and the hundreds of tents and wooden barracks which had been erected around it. Houses and barracks were smoking, and one end of the railroad station was wrecked, all indicating that some of Richthofen's comrades had already reached the target and "laid their eggs."

They dropped bomb after bomb on the railroad station, and damaged the one remaining line, so that a locomotive which happened to be moving out slowly at the time was forced to stop at the place where the bombs had torn up the rails and made a large hole in the right of way. They flew so low that they could see the engineer and fireman hurriedly abandon the engine and dive into a ditch beside the track.

It was all quite easy. No enemy airplanes to watch out for; no intensive fire from the ground to fear. Richthofen thought that flying on the east front was joy-riding as compared to the difficulties encountered on the west front. He was right, because at that time, which was immediately after the beginning of the 1916 battle of the Somme, the British Flying Corps had swept the German air force from the air and made their flyers the butt of stinging jokes on the part of the undefended German infantry.

Many German flyers paid with their lives for the British air offensive on the Somme, and Richthofen's happy assignment during that period to the eastern front may be looked upon as one of the reasons for his survival throughout that year.

That season on the Russian front was a carnival of unimpeded daily slaughter for the young sky Uhlan. Computation of the lives he took on the ground is obviously not possible, but it is quite possible that he killed many more men in this manner than he did in his entire career of combat in the air. It was wholesale. He liked that. It fed the killing hunger, but his spirit of combat starved. It was all killing and no fighting. Richthofen preferred a mixture of the two.

Returning from bombing expeditions, he would seek out camps or marching columns to dive on and spray with machine-gun lead. He wrote afterward:

It was particularly amusing to pepper the gentlemen down below with machine guns. Half-savage tribes from Asia are much more startled when fired upon from above than are educated Englishmen.

It is particularly interesting and comical to shoot at hostile cavalry. An aerial attack upsets them completely. Suddenly, all of them rush away in all directions of the compass. I should not like to be the commander of a squadron of Cossacks which has been fired upon with machine guns from airplanes.

Once the squadron was sent to break up a concentration of Russian troops which were crossing the Stokhod River in preparation for an attack. A long column of Cossacks were riding four abreast over the single bridge when Richthofen arrived above the spot with a plane heavily laden with bombs and machine-gun munitions. He circled low over the target, and the Cossack column went into a gallop.

Depressing the nose of the plane, he dived and swooped low over the crowded bridge. He and his observer could see the bearded Cossacks bending low over their horses' necks and urging them to greater speed upon the appearance of this new enemy from a quarter in which they could not defend themselves. Richthofen's observer, with his eye glued to the bomb sights, pulled the lever that released the first missile.

It missed the bridge, but landed beside the crowded approach on one bank. A cloud of dust and smoke, a terrific detonation, and the galloping column was cut in half by the appearance of a large white half circle of roadway dotted with the prone figures of men and horses.

Some horses on the bridge leaped the stone side parapets and landed with their riders in the stream below. Others on the shore edge of the circle bolted. But the column closed up again, and the charge across the bridge continued.

Three times the air guerilla swooped low, and each time another bomb landed among the massed horsemen, creating terrific havoc. Men and animals were rushing and dragging themselves away in all directions from the centre of the bomb burst. The disorder was complete, with officers urging their men to re-form and proceed, but with every mind intent above anything else on the danger from the air.

With all bombs expended, the two flyers repeated their swoop manoeuvre, spraying the column with machine-gun lead. Men toppled off their horses and were trampled underneath their comrades who were galloping behind them. Horses rolled on the ground, and others fell over them. "We enjoyed it tremendously," Richthofen wrote, "and I imagined that I alone had caused the Russian attack to fail!"

It was an orgy of blood for the Flying Uhlan, and he was in high mood to receive a reward for his efforts. In the space of twenty minutes, he probably killed more men than his air combats would total in his busiest month, but the slaughter did not show on his record, and he loved the trophies of victory—the symbols of his prowess. The prize he received was even greater than he had expected.

On that day, the great Boelcke arrived at the airdrome at Kovel.

Everyone in the squadron knew the purpose of his visit. The great German flyer was selecting flyers for a crack squadron which he would take to the west front to fight under his command against the British. The German air force, driven down on the Somme, left German artillery blind and German infantry defenseless from air attack and subject to terrific punishment from British and French artillery, which was well directed from the air.

General von Bülow, who commanded the German First Army during the battle, described the serious situation as follows:

The state of affairs was aggravated by the enemy's superiority in the air, which at first was incontestable. Not only did the enemy's airmen direct the artillery fire, undisturbed, but by day and by night they harassed our infantry with bombs and machine guns in their trenches and shell holes as well as on the march to and from the trenches.

Although the losses thus caused were comparatively small, their occurrence had an extremely lowering effect on the morale of the troops, who at first were hopeless. The innumerable balloons, hanging like grapes in clusters over the enemy's lines, produced a similar effect, for the troops thought that individual men and machine guns could be picked up and watched by them and subjected to fire under their observation.

The irritation of the German infantry found expression in such remarks as "May God punish England, our artillery, and our air force," or in derisive questions passed from man to man as loud as they dared, "Has anybody seen a German airman?" A German prisoner taken at Delville Wood had recorded in his diary:

During the day, one hardly dares to be seen in the trenches owing to the English airplanes. They fly so low that it is a wonder they do not pull us out of the trenches. Nothing is to be seen of our German hero airmen.

The day after his arrival at Kovel, Boelcke, wearing the star of the order Pour le Mérite, called in person at Richthofen's quarters.

"Would you like to go with me to the Somme and see some real fighting?" Boelcke inquired. Richthofen almost fell on his neck. Three days later, he was speeding across Germany on a train with his greatest wish fulfilled. Boelcke, his god, had chosen him to be one of the great new fighting squadron. "From now on began the finest time of my life," he wrote as he thrilled to the new joy and distinction.

Jagdstaffel No. 2 was the military designation of Boelcke's new combat organization, whose mission was to put the German air force back into the air on the western front. These selected pilots were assigned specially fast and new one-seater planes whose sole use was fighting. Bombing and reconnaissance and artillery direction from now on became the duty of the slower, heavier machines.

The Jagdstaffel reached the Somme basin during the second week of September, and Boelcke began at once to inculcate a new fighting spirit into his cubs, most of whom were young and, although at home in the air, had but little or no experience in the rapidly developing tactics of air fighting. The cubs trained on the ground and in the air hours every day, improving their marksmanship by firing thousands of rounds of machine-gun ammunition into the target butts and, practising fighting evolutions.

Boelcke flew early every morning, returning to the airdrome to take the first meal of the day with his cubs. Three days in succession he reported to them that he had been able to shoot an Englishman for breakfast that morning.

He told them how he killed them, and they leaned anxiously over their plates with their eyes glued on those of the master. With each new tale of death, their fighting spirit and eagerness increased.

Richthofen became impatient for the arrival of the new planes on which they were to make their grand début.

They came, and the cubs took off with their master on the first test flight. Behind the German lines, they played "follow the leader," Boelcke going through his fighting manoeuvres and then ordering the cubs to perform the same feats. He put them through the stunts one after another, and then flew them in squadron formation and signalled orders to them by movements of the wings of his planes. When they returned to the ground, he congratulated all of them and told them that the squadron would receive its baptism of fire on the following day.

It was the 17th of September and a glorious fine day when the Jagdstaffel, the first of the famous German flying circuses, went into battle for the first time. It was the date on which young Richthofen was to taste blood officially in the air for the first time.

The morning sun shone brightly as the air fighters went aloft. They did not have to go far before sighting the enemy. The British were out early, and as usual were seeking combat with the enemy over the enemy's ground. Boelcke was the first to recognize a hostile squadron of British planes flying far behind the German lines in the direction of Cambrai.

He signalled the intelligence and his intentions to the V formation of his young disciples, and they followed him as he manoeuvred into position between the English planes and the front line. The Germans were between them and their base. The Britishers would have to fight to get back.

Richthofen counted seven planes in the enemy formation which contained units of the Eleventh Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, composed of heavy bombing planes and an escort of two- seater fighting planes of the F.E. type. The English flew steadily on their course, which was a mission of destruction behind the German lines. The German manoeuvre seemed neither to startle them nor to deflect them from the object of their regular flight. They kept on toward their goal.

Boelcke and Richthofen and three more of the Jagdstaffel approached the squadron. The altitude was about ten thousand feet. Richthofen and the other cubs kept their eyes on their leader and hoped for the chance to show their ability under his eyes. They all thirsted for a "kill."

They watched Boelcke in the lead as the master approached the first English machine quite closely, but refrained from firing. Richthofen followed immediately behind the squadron leader. The enemy plane closest to him was a large two-seater F.E. painted in dark colours.

At its controls was Second Lieutenant L.B.F. Morris, and in the observer's seat behind him was Lieutenant T. Rees. Both were youngsters. Morris was the son of A.E. Morris of Merle Bank, Rotherfield Road, Carshalton, Surrey, and Rees came from Cardiff. Rees manned a Lewis machine gun, mounted on a turntable pivot over the observer's seat, and Morris had another Lewis fixed to the fuselage and shooting forward through the propeller arc.

Richthofen's plane was a single-seater and speedier. His two machine guns were fixed to the fuselage and fired only forward through the propeller. He approached within fifty yards of the English plane and opened fire.

At the same instant a stream of lead poured from the rear machine gun on the English plane. Rees was on the job, and his aim was good because Richthofen was forced to change his position immediately. He dived out of range, but zoomed upward again and regained his position above and in the rear of Morris and Rees.

Whenever he approached within range, Rees opened fire and Richthofen would see the English tracer bullets zipping through the air quite close to him. The English plane with its forward and after machine guns could shoot in most all directions, while Richthofen's weapon shot only forward, so that, in order to land a telling shot, he had to get behind the Englishman.

Morris was young but experienced. Every time Richthofen attempted to get behind him, he would swerve into a circle, during which time the German flyer, coming under the muzzle of Rees's movable machine gun, would find himself in danger of being riddled. Morris twisted and turned and flew in zigzag spurts, increasing Richthofen's difficulty in bringing his guns to bear on the plane. Rees met every attack and succeeded in keeping the overeager Uhlan at a healthy distance.

Appearing to accept failure for the time being, Richthofen changed his tactics and dived into a cloud. He made a large circle and returned at a lower altitude. With his speedy machine, he soon had the English plane in view again and noticed that Morris was now flying straight on instead of twisting and turning. From this he presumed that the two English flyers had lost sight of him.

He recalled the instructions of Boelcke. He had studied the model of the F.E., and he knew that directly to the rear and slightly below the English plane was a "blind spot"—a small angle of vision which could be covered neither by the pilot nor the observer nor their guns. He had manoeuvred himself into this safe angle, and Morris and Rees above him were unaware that he was "under their tail."

He pulled up on the stick sharply and, with his motor roaring under a wide-open throttle, zoomed upward under the dark red belly of the English plane. In the flash of a few seconds, he was within thirty yards of his quarry, and his twin machine guns were trained on the bottom of the plane.

His finger pressed the trigger button, and the speeded-up Spandaus poured forth a stream of lead which raked the under belly of the Britisher machine from nose to tail. The first part of the stream shattered the crank case of the engine, releasing the compression and destroying the motor. The spray next ripped through the fabric and wooden bracing above which Morris was seated. The last of the stream sewed a long seam of lead under the cockpit in which Rees was sitting.

In describing the fight, Richthofen said:

At that time, I did not have the conviction, as I later had in similar cases—the conviction best described by the sentence "He must fall." In this, my first encounter, I was curious to see if he would fall. There is a great difference between the two feelings. When one has shot down one's first, second, or third opponent, then one begins to find out how the trick is done.

After delivering the burst of lead into the bottom of the English plane, Richthofen found himself so close under the F.E. that he had to swerve suddenly to one side to avoid colliding with it. As he came out from under and swept by, he saw that the propeller of the English plane had stopped; "I nearly yelled with joy," he said afterward.

The English plane reared and side-slipped. Morris at the stick had received some of the bullets from below and was, temporarily at least, out of control of the plane. As the machine fell, Richthofen dived on it and, looking down into the after cockpit, saw Rees crumpled up on his seat. He was either dead or unconscious. The disabled F.E. plunged downward in a mad spiral toward the earth—almost two miles below.

Morris revived sufficiently to bring his shattered plane to a safe landing in a field. Richthofen, his heart pounding and his eyes burning with the excitement and exultation of the moment, had never let the English plane out of his sight. So great was his eagerness that he landed in the same field and almost smashed his own plane, so intent was he upon keeping his eyes on his victim. He wanted to be sure of his prey.

He jumped out of his plane immediately and rushed over to the English machine. The field was behind the German third line, and reserve infantry men were running out from all directions. Morris and Rees were unconscious, their bodies both riddled with bullets. Richthofen's shots had gone home with telling effect. The burst of lead from underneath had shattered the motor and severely wounded both the pilot and the observer.

With the assistance of the soldiers, Richthofen lifted his two victims from the bloodstained cockpits. He laid them as tenderly as possible on the ground, and loosened the leather flying coats and the collars of their tunics.

Rees opened his eyes once with a boyish smile and died.

A medical officer and two stretcher bearers arriving, Morris was placed on the stretcher and carried to a dressing station. He was dead when he arrived there.

Returning to his airdrome, Richthofen found Boelcke and the rest of the Jagdstaffel in the midst of a joyous victory breakfast. He proudly reported his "kill" and learned that Boelcke had "had another Englishman for breakfast," and that the other flyers of the unit had each brought down their first plane. On the following morning he wrote to his mother:

Liebe Mamma:

You will have wondered at my continued silence, but this is the first chance I have had to sit down and take up a pen. I have been busy constantly of late. I had to fly a reserve plane with which I could not do much, being beaten in most encounters; but yesterday my new plane arrived, and, just think, when I was giving it a try-out, I sighted an English squadron right over our lines.

Making for them, I shot one down. Its occupants were an English officer and a petty officer. I was rather proud over my try-out. Naturally, I have been credited with the downed plane.

Boelcke is a mystery to everybody. Almost every flight sees him bring down an enemy. I was with him when he accounted for twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, and twenty-seventh, and took part in the fight.

The battle on the Somme is not quite what you at home think it to be. For four weeks the enemy has been attacking us with superior forces, most notably artillery. And there are always fresh troops thrown into the battle. Our men fight excellently.

During the next few days we will probably move our hangars further back. The whole looks very much like an open battle. I suppose you know that my friend Shweinichen has been killed. I had just made up my mind to visit him because he was stationed near by. That same day they got him.

Manfred.

He posted the letter and walked into Cambrai. He went to the hospital in the of the town and out into the backyard, where there were two fresh graves in a lot set apart from the graves of German dead. The crosses over the two fresh mounds of earth bore the names of Morris and Rees.

He placed a stone on each grave. They were his first official victims in the war. He honoured them and their graves.

Standing silently at the foot of the two graves, Richthofen did not know that, by his own hand, he was to fill many dozen more like these until he himself came to rest in a similar one. It was only the beginning.