An Encounter. By Emil August Glogau
Event ID: 568
30 September 1917
Source ID: 55
“As I was travelling from Frankfurt to Berlin on the morning express train in the last days of September, a young Uhlan officer jumped onto the departing train in Gotha with acrobatic agility, threw his hunting rifle from his shoulder into the luggage rack of my compartment, pulled his coat collar up over his chin, leaned back into the cushions and was fast asleep the next moment. I had just bought the newly published yellow Ullstein book Der rote Kampfflieger (The Red Fighter Pilot) from the ‘flying’ station bookseller, but I had also put it in the luggage rack with my sandwiches because I was more interested in the sleeper opposite me. How could a body that had just been working with lively muscle movements remain in the deepest state of rest without any facial expression, as if struck by lightning hypnosis? Who can train their will to such an extent that the limits of consciousness can be crossed arbitrarily and instantly? The young man must have a strong energy, I said to myself, but his smooth, senior schoolboy face suggests otherwise. Didn’t the blond youth also have good-natured, blue boyish eyes when he entered? How conscious and determined were his movements, how powerful his grip on the rifle? The square skull and strong jaw belonged to an East German Junker. But how did the lines of resignation from his cheekbones to his chin fit into this motionless face? Had the war carved these furrows into this young lieutenant’s face? Only then do I see two stars on his epaulette. Cavalry captain? A cavalry captain at twenty, twenty-four at most? Well, he had boarded at Gotha, wore the insignia of the Thuringian principalities under his coat collar – a prince, then.
Then his eyes opened as suddenly as they had closed before, focused on my luggage rack and lit up as if they had been made happy. The ‘prince’ seems to be hungry, I thought, can you offer him a sausage sandwich? ‘Is there a dining car on this train?’ he asked me. ‘Unfortunately not, but perhaps I can offer you a buttered bread roll. I noticed your longing look and was wondering whether I should speak to you about it.’ Then he laughed like a boisterous rope, blushed like an author seeing his work in print for the first time, bit into my sausage sandwich and replied: Oh no, that’s for the book there. I find it so much fun that every traveller christens one of these things. Look,‘ he said, pointing to the people waiting at the railway crossing at Weimar station, ’they’re all “red fighter pilots”.” A light dawned on me, I picked up the book, opened the title page and now knew that I was sitting opposite the red fighter pilot himself, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen.
‘Have you read that thing yet?’ he asked me. I say no. ‘Well, then you’d better not, because I can’t write, I can only fly and shoot and chat a little bit, as the mood takes me.’ And so he told me, with eloquent lips that are now closed forever, about his adventures in the air until we arrived in Berlin.
What he said about it would fill a book, but that book has been filled by him himself. However, I wish I had the ability to describe the boyish freshness of this famous daredevil, the effervescent mentality of this unspoilt child of nature, and the soldierly simplicity of this Silesian nobleman. ‘I’m just a fighter pilot,’ he said, ‘but Boelcke, he was a hero.’ As he said this, he tucked the Pour le Mérite under his tunic so that people wouldn’t stare at him so much. His hand went into his trouser pocket, from which he pulled out a telegram. See, isn’t that nice of the Kaiser, telegraphing me on my sixtieth kill: ‘Now go and get yourself a little something. Then the Duke of Coburg-Gotha invited me to hunt at Reinhardsbrunn Castle, and now I’m going to meet Lothar (his famous brother) in Berlin for a stroll. Unfortunately, Moritz won’t be there. Moritz? That’s my Great Dane, who has to be everywhere with me. I even take her with me when I fly. Do you know Berlin? Yes? Wonderful! Then you’ll have to show us around Berlin a bit, because we don’t know it and don’t have any other acquaintances there. I visited the Emperor once, but he’s not there now. By the way, something nice happened to me there: I was travelling with a lady, just like I am with you now, and I took her in my pre-booked car during the big car shortage. Of course, I had my shotgun over my arm, as always, because nothing beats hunting, right? The lady had two sons who were volunteers in the field and she made her comments: ‘Yes, the officers can go hunting, but my brave boys have to lie in the trenches.’ I replied: ‘I go hunting all the time, I do nothing else, day and night.’ She replied that it was scandalous that I boasted about it. So I dropped her off at her house and, before I drove away, I called after her: ‘I hope you’ll hear about my hunting spoils again soon. I am Manfred von Richthofen. You should have seen the look on her face.’ We drove to Berlin, and as we parted, he asked me if I could take some time off around Christmas. He would be getting a longer holiday then and could meet me. ‘Oh no,’ he interrupted himself, ‘I can’t promise anything for sure…’ Well, you know, now I’m done for. The English have had a huge bounty on my head for a long time.” He clicked his heels together and waved to me again from the crowd. For me, it was to be his last farewell. Now he has entered Valhalla.”
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