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Coudrons whose armor is proof against our ammunition. I myself, attacking a Coudron at close distance on 15.7.18, wasted almost my entire ammunition; the Coudron simply flew on, completely ignoring me. Those well-armed and well-armored machines should be attacked by antiaircraft guns. Flying in close formation they offer good targets for our flak . . . Many [of our] pilots have to take to the air up to five times a day. In the long run, neither the men nor the engines can stand up to such strain. . . . Lack of direct telephone communication between squadron and fighter groups adds to our difficulties. Imperative to have new telephone lines completed.

    On the following day Goering himself secured his twenty-second Allied aircraft, a Spad which he shot down early in the morning. He reported briefly:
    At 8:15 A.M. I attacked several Spads. One of them I forced down and, after some spiraling, shot down. It fell into the woods of Bandy.
    This was Goering’s final personal victory. In spite of the urgency of the times he went on leave (“well-deserved,” says Bodenschatz) on July 26, leaving Lieutenant Lothar von Richthofen, Manfred’s brother, in charge of the squadron. He did not return until August 22.
    The Geschwader, claims Bodenschatz, shot down some five hundred Allied planes during the nine months of its existence, but by the end of September the numbers of officers and men were much reduced: fifty-three officers, including medical and administrative staff, and 473 N.C.O.s and men. The weather was bad. “The features of Lieutenant Goering are getting harder,” noted Bodenschatz. But the end of the war was in sight. On the ground the German armies were in retreat, and as summer turned to autumn the British Air Force shot down many of Goering’s pilots.
    In November, during the last days of the war, the weather was bad and the news grew worse. Rumors circulated that the Kaiser was abdicating, that there was unrest in Berlin, that the Navy was in a state of mutiny; it was said even that soldiers were firing at their officers. On November 9 Goering called his officers together and urged them to be as loyal to each other during these difficult days as they had been in action, and to fight to the last.
    The period November to 9 was one of growing disorder. Goering’s reports as recorded by Bodenschatz show this clearly. On November there was heavy fighting east of the Meuse, and the Allied advance forced Goering to withdraw his men and equipment to an airdrome west of Tellancourt, where the ground conditions were bad for take-off and landing. The rainy weather prevented flying, and Goering’s reports are brief and formal.

    November 8. Settling down at Tellancourt airdrome. Drizzle; deep cloud.
    November 9. Weather unfavorable. Nothing much happened. Preparing for retreat.

    During the three days November 9, 10 and 11 Goering received many contradictory instructions from an irresolute high command. The whole atmosphere of capitulation was hateful to a man of his temperament who had so recently won the supreme award and whose squadron, in spite of bitter losses and half-trained replacements, had been responsible for great acts of courage and considerable successes in the air until they were grounded so unaccountably (as indeed it seemed to this young commander of twenty-five, whose photograph was by now on sale to the German public as a war hero). Varying instructions came in: he was to surrender his planes to the Americans, he was to take his machines and armament to Darmstadt.
    On November 10 the weather still made flying impossible, and the agony of waiting dragged on.

    November 10. By order of the commander, Fifth Army Air Force, aircraft flying to Darmstadt, the more valuable equipment to be sent on by road transport . . . two columns of eight trucks each. Tents and some useless machines and equipment left at Tellancourt. Men moved partly by truck and partly on foot to be entrained. Food