The Red Baron: A World War I Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

rush as the shell exploded outside the trench line. A wave of overpressure popped his eardrums and pounded the air from his lungs. He stumbled against the wooden boards that made up the trench wall and looked for Eisen. More rounds landed, each sending a tremor through the earth.
    Manfred was at an intersection of the trench line, alone. Fear curled unyielding fingers around his chest.
    “Eisen!” he yelled, the cry sounded distant to his battered ears.
    A shell exploded in the trench line with enough force to throw Manfred to the ground. He lay in the mud as chunks of soil rained down on him. He rolled over to his hands and knees and pounded at his chest to force his stunned diaphragm into compliance. He managed a raggedy breath and saw something in the dirt in front of him.
    A severed leg lay before him, adorned with a black boot and a gray trouser leg. It looked natural lying there, as if the owner had simply forgotten about it.
    Manfred turned away from the limb and half-ran, half-stumbled away from it. More shells buffeted him before another near miss sent him into a fetid puddle. A chunk of roots and soil landed in front of him, splashing his face and mouth with horrid-tasting water. The idea of being buried alive suddenly became very real to the young officer.
    Manfred felt himself being pulled from the puddle, then thrust into darkness. He wheezed and coughed as he groped around. Whispers greeted him from the blackness.
    A match flared, illuminating the worn face of a soldier, a line of black stitches tracing their way up from his jawbone to his temple. The match lit a lamp, which cast a jaundiced glow through the dugout.
    “Told you I’d find him,” said the soldier holding the lamp.
    “Richthofen, are you all right?” Eisen asked as he knelt next beside the dirty and stunned officer.
    Manfred nodded and spat out a glob of mud.
    “Is this Lieutenant Weissgerber’s replacement?” asked the man with the lantern.
    “No, he’s on loan from headquarters. Richthofen, this is Sergeant Haas, my ranking noncommissioned officer,” Eisen said. He pulled Manfred to his feet. “Show him around. I need to check on the kids.”
    Haas hung the lantern from a wooden beam and handed Manfred a canteen.
    “Here you are, sir. Nothing like trench mud to spice up a visit, eh?” The sergeant chuckled at his own joke as Manfred cleaned his mouth out with the vaguely cleaner water from the canteen.
    The dugout was full of soldiers. Gaunt men, all too filthy for the parade field with faces that hadn’t seen a razor in days. The room stank of feet and an open privy. A near miss from a shell shook dirt from the ceiling and sent the lantern swaying.
    “Is it always like this?” Manfred asked.
    “No, it’s been worse since the spotters showed up. Too bad there’s only one Boelcke,” Haas’s face twitched as he ran a finger gingerly up and down the row of stitches.
    “Who?”
    “Sir, I thought you knew everything at headquarters. Oswald Boelcke, won an Iron Cross for shooting down a French plane. He got a Pour Le Merite from the Kaiser after the fourth plane he shot out of the sky,” Haas said. As the Kingdom of Prussia’s highest award for merit, and the Kaiser being Prussian, the Pour Le Merite was the highest award a Germany could give a soldier, on par to the English Victoria Cross or American Medal of Honor.
    Haas pulled a dagger from his belt. “Which reminds me,” he said. He walked to the other side of a ceiling support beam and put the blade to the wood. Manfred joined the sergeant, who was carving another notch next to a palm-sized photo of a powerfully built officer smiling for the camera. There were seven notches next to the picture.
    “I saw him shoot down his third a few weeks ago. Damnedest thing watching two planes dancing in the sky like that.” Haas sheathed the blade on his belt, which was covered with a mismatch of buttons and brass insignia.
    “You like this, sir?” Haas said when he caught