My brother
Event ID: 211
Categories:
05 May 1917
Source ID: 4
‘My brother I hadn’t been on holiday for eight days when I received the telegraphic message: ’Lothar wounded, not life-threatening.” Nothing more. Further enquiries revealed that he had once again been quite reckless. He flew together with Allmenröder against the enemy. Low down, quite far over there, he saw an Englishman crawling around alone. These are the kind of enemy infantry planes that are a particular nuisance to our troops. In any case, they are very worrying. Whether they really achieve anything with their low crawling around is very much the question. My brother was about two thousand metres up, the Englishman a thousand. He brushes up against it, starts to dive and is with him in a few seconds. The Englishman preferred to avoid the fight and also disappeared into the depths in a dive. My brother, not lazy, followed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s over there or with us. Just one thought: he has to get down. That’s the right thing to do, of course. I do it now and again. But if my brother hasn’t done it at least once on every flight, the whole endeavour is no fun for him. It’s only when he’s very close to the ground that he gets a really good shot at him and can [164]shoot the place up. The Englishman crashes vertically into the ground. There’s not much left. After a fight like that, especially at low altitude, when you’ve turned and twisted so often, sometimes flying round to the right and sometimes round to the left, the ordinary mortal has no idea where he is. It was still a little hazy that day, so the weather was particularly unfavourable. He quickly got his bearings and only now realised that he was quite a way behind the front line. He was behind the Vimy Heights. The Vimy Heights are about a hundred metres higher than the other area. My brother had disappeared behind these Vimy Heights – at least that’s what the observers from the ground claim. Flying home until you reach your own position is not one of the most pleasant feelings imaginable. There’s nothing you can do to prevent the enemy from firing at you. They rarely hit you. My brother approached the line. At such a low altitude you can hear every shot, it sounds like chestnuts bursting in the fire when the lone infantryman shoots. Then – all at once he felt a blow, hit. He realised that. He is one of those people who cannot see their own blood. With another [165]it makes no impression on him; at least less. But his own blood disturbs him. He feels it running warmly down his right leg, and at the same time a pain in his hip. There is still banging below. So he’s still over there. Finally it stops so gently and he is over our front. But now he has to hurry, because his strength is visibly failing. Then he sees a forest, next to it a meadow. So he heads for the meadow. He quickly takes out the ignition, the engine stops, and at the same moment his strength is gone and he has lost his senses. He was now sitting all alone in his aeroplane, so a second person could not help him. How he came down to earth is actually a miracle. Because no aeroplane takes off and lands on its own. This is only said of an old pigeon in Cologne, which is prepared for take-off by a mechanic and flies off on its own just as the pilot is about to sit down, makes a turn on its own and lands again after five minutes. Many men claim to have seen this. I haven’t seen it – but I’m firmly convinced that it’s true. In any case, my brother didn’t have a pigeon that landed on its own, but he didn’t hurt himself when he touched the ground. It was only in the [166]military hospital that he regained his senses. He was transported to Douai. It is a very strange feeling for a brother to see the other involved in a fight with an Englishman. For example, I once saw Lothar hanging behind the squadron and being attacked by an Englishman. It would have been easy for him to refuse to fight. All he has to do is disappear into the depths. But no, he doesn’t! The thought doesn’t seem to occur to him. He doesn’t know how to escape. Fortunately, I had observed this and was paying attention. Then I saw how the Englishman, who was above him, kept pushing down on him and shooting. My brother tried to reach his height, regardless of whether he was being shot at or not. Then, all of a sudden, the plane flips over and the red-painted aircraft plummets vertically, turning on itself. Not a deliberate movement, but an outright crash. This is not the best of feelings for the brother watching. But I had to get used to it so gently, because my brother used it as a trick. As he had realised that the Englishman was over him, he marked being shot at. The Englishman followed, my brother caught himself and flew over him while looking round. The enemy aeroplane could not get up again so quickly [167]and come to its senses, my brother was breathing down its neck, and a few moments later the flames burst out. Then there’s nothing left to save, the plane crashes and burns. I once stood on the ground next to a petrol tank where a hundred litres exploded and burned at once. I couldn’t stand ten paces away from it, I was so hot. And now you have to imagine that a tank of many fifty litres explodes just a few centimetres in front of you and the propeller wind blows all the embers into your face. I think you’re knocked senseless at first, and it’s the quickest way. But signs and wonders do happen from time to time. For example, I once saw an English aeroplane crash in flames. The flames only burst out at an altitude of five hundred metres. The aircraft was in flames. As we were flying home, we learned that one of the occupants had jumped out from a height of fifty metres. It was the observer. Fifty metres up! You have to think about the height. The tallest church tower in Berlin is just within reach. Just jump down from the top of that tower! I wonder how you would get to the bottom! Most people would break their necks if they jumped from the mezzanine [168]. Anyway, this good ‘Franz’ jumped out of his burning aeroplane from a height of fifty metres, which had already been burning for at least a minute, and did nothing more than break his lower leg. He even made statements immediately after all this happened to him, so his mental state hadn’t even suffered. Another time I shot down an Englishman. The pilot was fatally shot in the head and the plane crashed into the ground, rudderless, vertically, without catching, from a height of three thousand metres. It was quite a while later that I came gliding after it and saw nothing below but a desolate heap. To my astonishment, I learnt that the observer only had a fractured skull and that his condition was not life-threatening. A person has to be lucky. Once again Boelcke shot down a Nieuport. I saw it myself. The plane crashed like a stone. We went there and found the plane half buried in the clay. The occupant, a fighter pilot, was knocked unconscious by a shot to the stomach and had only dislocated an arm when he hit the ground. He did not die. On the other hand, I had another experience where a good friend of mine landed [169]with a wheel in a carnelian hole. The plane had no speed at all and very slowly turned upside down, thought about which side it should tip over to, fell on its back – and the poor chap had his neck broken. * My brother Lothar is a lieutenant in the Fourth Dragoons, was at war school before the war, became an officer right at the beginning and, like me, started the war as a cavalryman. I don’t know what heroic deeds he did there, as he never talks about himself. I was only told the following story: It was the winter of 1914, his regiment was on the Warta, the Russians on the other side. Nobody knew whether they were moving or staying. The banks were partly frozen, so it was difficult to ride across. Of course there were no bridges, the Russians had torn them down. So my brother swam through, realised where the Russians were and swam back. All this in the harsh Russian winter at so many degrees below zero. His clothes froze up after a few minutes and underneath, he claimed, it was really warm. He rode like this all day until he reached his quarters in the evening. He did not catch a cold. [170]In the winter of 1915, at my insistence, he took up flying and, like me, became an observer. Only a year later he became an aeroplane pilot. The school as an observer is certainly not bad, especially for a fighter pilot. He took his third exam in March 1917 and immediately joined my fighter squadron. He was still a very, very young and unsuspecting aeroplane pilot who didn’t yet think about looping and similar jokes, but was satisfied if he could land and take off properly. After a fortnight, I took him up against the enemy for the first time and asked him to fly close behind me to have a closer look. After the third flight with him, I suddenly saw him break away from me and also swoop down on an Englishman and kill him. My heart leapt for joy when I saw this. It was proof to me once again how little shooting is an art. It’s just the personality or, to put it another way, the grit of the person concerned that does the trick. So I’m not a Pégoud, nor do I want to be, I’m just a soldier doing my duty. Four weeks later, my brother had already shot down twenty Englishmen. This is probably unique in all aviation, that an aeroplane pilot has shot down the first enemy a fortnight after his [171]third examination, and twenty enemies four weeks after the first. His twenty-second opponent was the famous Captain Ball, by far the best English aviator. I had already taken on Major Hawker, who was just as famous at the time, a few months ago. I was particularly pleased that it was now my brother who took on England’s second champion. Captain Ball flew a triplane and met my brother one by one at the front. Each tried to catch the other. No-one gave himself any quarter. It remained a brief encounter. Always flying towards each other. One never managed to get behind the other. Then suddenly, in the brief moment of flying towards each other, they both decided to fire a few well-aimed shots. Both fly towards each other. Both shoot. Each has a motor in front of them. The chances of hitting each other are very low, the speed twice as high as normal. It is actually unlikely that either of them will hit. My brother, who was a little lower, had overpowered his machine and rolled over, lost his balance and his machine became rudderless for a few moments. He soon caught it again, but found that his opponent had shot up both petrol tanks [172]. So land! Quickly switch off the ignition, otherwise the plane would burn. But the next thought was: Where is my opponent? At the moment he rolled over, he had seen his opponent also rearing up and rolling over. So he couldn’t be too far away from him. The thought dominates: Is he above me or below me? He was no longer above him, but he could see the triplane below him constantly rolling over and plunging even lower. He tumbled and tumbled, without catching himself, all the way to the ground. There it crashed. It was on our territory. Both opponents had hit each other with their fixed machine guns in the brief moment of the encounter. My brother’s two petrol tanks were shot to pieces, and at the same moment Captain Ball was shot in the head. He was carrying some photographs and newspaper cuttings of his home provinces, in which he was much celebrated. He seemed to have been on holiday a short time before. In Boelcke’s time Captain Ball had destroyed thirty-six German machines. He too had found a master. Or was it a coincidence that a great man like him also had to die the normal hero’s death? Captain Ball was certainly the leader of the anti-Richthofen squadron, and I think the Englishman will now prefer to give up trying to catch [173]me. We would be sorry for that, for it would deprive us of many a fine opportunity to get a good rap on the English. If my brother had not been wounded on the 5th of May, I believe he would have been sent on leave with fifty-two after my return from leave.”
Comments (0)