English bombing raid on our airport
Event ID: 194
07 April 1917
Source ID: 4
‘English bombing raid on our airport The nights of the full moon are the most favourable for night flying. On the nights of the full moon in April, our dear Englishmen were particularly busy. Of course, it was linked to the Battle of Arras. They must have discovered that we had made ourselves at home on a very, very beautiful, large airfield in Douai. One night, we were sitting in the casino when the phone rang and we were told: ‘The English are coming.’ A big hello, of course. We had shelters, of course; the hard-working Simon had seen to that. Simon is our site manager. So everything rushes into the shelters and you can actually hear the sound of an aircraft engine – very quietly at first, but definitely. The anti-aircraft guns and searchlights also seem to have just received the message, because you can see them gently coming to life. But the first enemy was still far too far away to be attacked. It was great fun for us. We just kept worrying that the English wouldn’t be able to find our position, because it’s not that easy at night, especially as we weren’t on a major road, a waterway or a railway, which are the best points of reference at night. The Englishman seemed to be flying very high. First of all he flew all round the place. We already thought he had looked for another target. All of a sudden, however, he switches off the engine and comes down. ‘Now it’s getting serious,’ said Wolff. We had grabbed two carbines and started shooting at the Englishman. We couldn’t see him yet. But the bang alone calmed our nerves. Now he comes into the searchlight. There’s a big hello all over the airfield. It’s a really old box. We can recognise the guy exactly. It’s no more than a kilometre away from us. He’s heading straight for our spot. He’s getting lower and lower. Now he can’t be more than a hundred metres up. Then he switches on the engine again and flies straight towards us. Wolff says: ‘Thank God he chose the other side of the airfield.’ But it wasn’t long before the first one came, and then it rained a few fireworks. It was a marvellous firework display that the brother showed us. He even managed to impress a scaredy-cat. I think throwing bombs at night is only of moral importance. If someone has their trousers full, it’s very embarrassing for them, but not for the others. We had a lot of fun and thought the English might come quite often. So, my good grattail dropped his bombs from a height of fifty metres. That’s pretty cheeky, because at fifty metres I’m prepared to give a wild boar a decent leaf shot, even at night under a full moon. Why shouldn’t I also hit an Englishman? It would have been something different to shoot such a brother from below. We had already done the honours from above, but I hadn’t tried it from below. Once the Englishman had gone, we went back to the mess and discussed how we were going to welcome the brothers the next night. The next day you could see the lads etc. working very hard. They were busy ramming posts near the mess and the officers’ barracks, which were to be used as machine-gun emplacements in the coming night. We shot ourselves up with captured English aeroplane machine guns, put a night sight on them and were very excited to see what would happen. I don’t want to reveal the number of machine guns, but it should be enough. Each of my gentlemen was armed with one of these. We’re sitting in the casino again. The topic of conversation is, of course, the night planes. A chap comes rushing in and just shouts: ‘They’re coming, they’re coming!’ and disappears, somewhat scantily clad, into the next dugout. Each of us rushes to the machine guns. Some of the able-bodied men who are good marksmen are also armed with them. All the others have carbines. In any case, the hunting squadron is armed to the teeth and ready to receive the gentlemen. The first one came, just like the night before, at a higher altitude, then goes down to fifty metres, and to our great delight, this time he’s aimed straight at our side of the barracks. He’s in the headlights. Now he’s no more than three hundred metres away from us. The first one starts firing, and at the same time all the others join in. There could be no better defence against an assault than this attack by the single cheeky customer at a height of fifty metres. He is greeted by raging fire. He couldn’t hear the machine-gun fire, his engine prevented him from doing so, but he saw the muzzle flashes of everyone, and that’s why I think it was very dashing of the brother this time, too, that he didn’t turn away, but carried out his mission rigidly. He flew right over us. The moment he was over us, of course, we jumped quickly into the dugout, because to be killed by such a stupid bomb would be a rarely stupid heroic death for a fighter pilot. As soon as he’s over us, we get back to our guns and fire hard after him. Schäfer of course claimed: ‘I hit him.’ The guy shoots quite well. But in this case I didn’t believe him after all, and besides, everyone else had just as good a chance. At least we had managed to get the enemy to throw his bombs around rather haphazardly. One, however, burst a few metres from the ‘petit rouge’, but didn’t hurt him. This fun was repeated several more times during the night. I was already in bed and fast asleep when I heard balloon defence fire in my dream, woke up and could only realise that the dream was true. A customer flew so low over my room that I was so scared I pulled the duvet over my head. The next moment there was an insane bang, very close to my window, and my windows were a victim of the bomb. I quickly rushed out in my shirt and fired a few more shots after him. Outside he was already being shot at. Unfortunately, I had overslept this gentleman. The next morning we were very surprised and delighted when we realised that we had shot down no less than three Englishmen from the ground. They had landed not far from our airport and had been captured. We had mostly hit the engines and forced them to go down on our side. So maybe Schäfer hadn’t been wrong after all. In any case, we were very pleased with our success. The English were a little less so, as they preferred not to attack our position. It’s a shame really, because they made it a lot of fun for us. Maybe they’ll come back next month.’
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