Schäfer’s emergency landing between the lines
Event ID: 197
Categories:
20 April 1917
Source ID: 4
‘Schäfer’s emergency landing between the lines On the evening of 20 April we went on a fighter flight, arrived home very late and lost Schäfer on the way. Of course everyone hopes that he will reach the airfield before dark. It turns nine, it turns ten, Schäfer doesn’t turn up. He can’t have any more petrol, so he has made an emergency landing somewhere. They never want to admit that someone has been shot down. Nobody dares to say it, but everyone fears it silently. The telephone network is set in motion to find out where a plane has landed. Nobody can give us any information. No division, no brigade claims to have seen him. An uncomfortable situation. Eventually we go to sleep. We were all convinced that he would turn up. I’m suddenly woken up at two in the morning. The telephone orderly tells me brightly: ‘Schäfer is in village Y and asks to be picked up.’ The next morning at breakfast, the door opens and my good pilot is standing in front of me in a suit as dirty as an infantryman’s after a fortnight in the Battle of Arras. Schäfer is in high spirits and [140]has to tell me all about his experiences. He is ravenously hungry. After he has eaten breakfast, he tells us the following: ‘I’m flying home along the front and apparently see an infantry plane over there at a very low altitude. I attack him, shoot him down and want to fly back again, when the English down in the trenches give me a powerful attack and bang into me in a very scary way. My salvation was, of course, the speed of the aeroplane, because they don’t think about the fact that they have to hold ahead when firing. I was perhaps still two hundred metres up, but I must assure you that I tensed up certain parts of my body, for obvious reasons. All of a sudden there’s a bang and my engine stops. So I land. Will I get over the enemy lines or not? That was very much the question. The English have noticed and start firing like mad. Now I can hear every single shot, because my engine is no longer running and the propeller has stopped. An embarrassing situation. I come down, land, my aircraft is not yet stationary, when I’m bombarded with machine-gun fire from a hedge in the village of Monchy near Arras. The bullets just smashed into my machine. I got out of the [141]box and into the nearest shell hole, that was one. It was there that I first realised where I was. Gradually I realise that I’m over the lines, but still damn close to them. Thank God it’s a bit late in the evening. This is my salvation. It’s not long before the first shells arrive. They’re gas grenades, of course, and of course I didn’t have a mask with me. So my eyes started to water miserably. Before dark, the English also fired machine guns at my landing site, one machine gun apparently at my aeroplane, the other at my shell funnel. The bullets kept hitting the top. To calm my nerves, I lit a cigarette, took off my thick fur and got ready to jump! March, march! ready. Every minute seems like an hour. It was gradually getting dark, but only very gradually. All around me the partridges were calling. As a hunter, I realised that the chickens were quite peaceful and familiar, so there was no danger of me being surprised in my hiding place. Eventually it got darker and darker. Suddenly a pair of partridges went up close to me, followed immediately by a second, and I [142]realised that danger was imminent. Apparently it was a patrol that wanted to say good evening to me. Now it was high time I made my escape. Crawling very carefully on my belly at first, from grenade hole to grenade hole. After about an hour and a half of eager crawling, I come across the first people. Are they English or German? They approach, and I almost jumped around the musketeers’ necks when I recognised them. It was a sneak patrol, prowling around in the neutral interstitial area. One of the men led me to his company commander, and here I learnt that I had landed about fifty paces from the enemy line the night before and that our infantry had already given me up. I first had a proper supper and then set off on the return march. There was much more shooting in the rear than in the front. Every path, every approach trench, every bush, every hollow, everything was under enemy fire. The next morning the English attacked, so they had to start their artillery preparation tonight. So I had chosen an unfavourable day for my operation. It was not until about two o’clock in the morning that I reached the first telephone and was able to get in touch with my squadron.’ [143]We were all happy to have our shepherd back. He went to bed. Anyone else would have given up the pleasure of flying for the next twenty-four hours. But in the afternoon of the same day, my shepherd again attacked a very low-flying B.E. over Monchy.’
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