The Funeral of the Red Corsair
Event ID: 655
25 April 1918
Source ID: 55
“Report from the Matin newspaper dated 25 April 1918
The Death of Richthofen
THE FUNERAL OF THE RED CORSAIR
In Santerre, 23 April
…One of those Picardy highways, dusty with flint, that look like a ribbon of the Milky Way fallen from the sky onto the plain. The north wind gallops along it breathlessly. As if stripped bare by its bite, the lines of the horizon and the silhouettes of the trees stand out more sharply against the cold blue of the air. Its sharp gusts shake the brownish canvas gables of an aviation camp that has pitched its wigwams off the road. It was to one of these that the body of the German ace of aces, the rittmeister of the four red squadrons, Captain Baron Manfred von Richthofen, was transported after his fall.
A bed of honour was made for him out of engine crates draped with regulation blankets. A gloomy day, slipping through the single opening of the entrance, dilutes its pale reflections in the twilight. A surgeon, leaning over the corpse, whose torso is exposed, scrutinises and assesses the wounds. He has found six, all from machine gun bullets. One is visible on the right side. Another bleeds just below the heart. The face, though intact, remains contorted from the agony of the fall, Germain’s blond, heavy face with its pronounced jaw and heavy lines, where any spirituality, if there was any, has died with the gaze. I have seen a hundred of these expressionless faces among the shuffling mass of prisoners. His plane is there, on the bank of a low road. The dark red of the shredded wings bathes the grass in a stain
of blood. Its small size is disconcerting. It looks like an extremely fragile toy. There were seven machine gun discs on board, twice as many as are usually carried by fighter planes. How did he die? The most likely version is this. I got it from one of the six who are amicably disputing the honour of having shot him down. He engaged in combat with four of his own against three of ours on Sunday around noon above Sailly-le-Sec. According to tradition among the red corsairs, he let his companions strike the first blows and drive down their prey until the decisive moment when, diving in a straight line, he was to charge like a matador to deliver the final blow. But this time, our men managed to isolate him. A first bullet hit him. Wounded but not defeated, he let himself fall like a dead leaf, thinking that, twenty metres above the ground, he could recover and escape. But struck by flying machine guns and caught in the nets of those waiting for him on the ground, he fell, struck down.
…Five o’clock, the time set for the funeral: a funeral with no pomp and circumstance other than the spartan and bare honours of war. The coffin, painted black, closed over the remains. An aluminium plaque bears this simple inscription in two languages:
Cavalry Captain
Manfred, Baron von Richthofen
25 years old
Killed in action in aerial combat
on 21 April 1918.
Six officers, all pilots, carried the coffin on their shoulders to the funeral carriage, which was an aircraft trailer. Twelve soldiers form a double guard of honour. They carry their rifles slanted under their arms, butts forward, according to ceremony, and march at the traditional pace of one step per second. The Anglican military chaplain, in a sidecar, his surplice slung across his chest in a soldier’s bag, precedes the procession. Four French airmen, who have arrived by air, and around fifty soldiers, lined up in rows of four, bring up the rear. In front of the grave dug in a reserved corner of the humble Picardy cemetery, the padre has donned his black and white surplice and stola, punctuated by the double red and blue spots of the D.S.O. ribbon. As he chanted the words of farewell and mercy, three volleys of gunfire rent the air, while a
slow circle of aircraft, in the haughty wind, spread the impressive largo of their organs. The ceremony was over. The glory of the man whose impetuous pride carried him to the heavens, as his followers seek to extend it across the horizon, is now nothing more than a handful of ashes beneath the earth. Is this not, sooner or later, the symbolic fate of German presumptions, which rose so high and so far only to fall from a greater height? No doubt a day will come when we, in turn, will give them simple and quiet funerals.”
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