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Headache

Event ID: 416

Categories: 

Jagd in Flanderns Himmel, Karl Bodenschatz, Verlag Knorr & Hirth München, 1935

18 July 1917

50.82958008143341, 3.270851981468829
Lazaret 76 (Sint-Niklaas Hospital)
Kortrijk

Source ID: 58

Jagd in Flanderns Himmel, Karl Bodenschatz, Verlag Knorr & Hirth München, 1935 p.   

“In the St Nicholas military hospital in Kortryk, two officers sit together and listen to the incessant rumble of the front. The cavalry captain with his thickly bandaged head and the impatient wish that the ugly headache would finally subside. And next to him the “delicate little flower”, his left hand in the bandage, with the equally impatient wish that he would soon be able to wrap his healed fingers around the truncheon again. The St Nicholas military hospital is not exactly comparable to a sanatorium and there is no question of peaceful silence. During the day, the columns clatter through the small town and night after night the heavy bombs of the British squadrons thunder into the important staging post. Baron von Richthofen and Lieutenant Wolff don’t care much about these bombs. Instead, they worry incessantly about their squadron. Every day, the adjutant comes rushing in with the reports.

And from these reports it is clear that Jagdgeschwader I has hard days, but also glorious days. The Rittmeister really doesn’t need to write cheering letters to his masters. They know what they have to do. They mount up and fight. They have become accustomed to being confronted by an unrivalled superior force at any hour. They take note of it. They don’t make much of it, but they start when the order comes, they climb up and fight and die. But the reports tell us in brief that before one of the fighter squadron has to die, several others from the opposite side always have to go down and burn in the funnels.”

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