Lightning visit to Schweidnitz

“On 25 August, Manfred surprised us with his visit on his way from the east to the west. The combat squadron to which he belonged had made the railway stations and bridges on the Stochod unsafe for several months. He was tanned by the Russian sun, was in high spirits and talked animatedly while we sat in the garden under the large walnut trees. He knew how to describe things so vividly that you thought you were looking at the gripping scenes. ‘I liked throwing bombs,’ said Manfred. ‘You always feel like you’ve done something when you fly home.’ ‘But…?’ Manfred stands at the trunk of the walnut tree. There is something very joyful in his voice: ‘Now it’s off to fighter flying, Mum!’ And now I hear how Boelcke, the ‘great man’ with the Pour Le Mérite, appeared one day on the hot sandy airfield of Kowel and recruited him for the new fighter squadron that he was to put together on the Somme according to his own plan. The next day Albrecht and Manfred went hunting in the Nonnenbusch. They shot 15 chickens… …Something happens in the afternoon that I can’t come to terms with so quickly: a lady in deep mourning robes visits us….The lady has gone. We are alone. Manfred looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Mum,’ he says, ‘for once you won’t put yourself through such anguish for me, promise me that.’ Those were his words and I looked at him in astonishment. But Manfred immediately put his arm around me and laughed. A happy, carefree laugh. It chased away the gloomy thoughts.”