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My third Englishman

Ein Heldenleben, Ullstein & Co, 1920 p. 193??

5 October 1916
Lagnicourt

“Dear Mum!

On 30 September, I shot down my third Englishman. He crashed down in flames. Your heart beats a little faster when the enemy, whose face you have just seen, plunges down in flames from four thousand metres. When he hit the ground, of course, there was nothing left, neither of the man nor of the aircraft. I kept a small piece of the wreckage as a souvenir. From my second one, I kept the machine gun as a souvenir. It has one of my bullets in the lock and is unusable. Unfortunately, my Frenchman from Verdun doesn’t count; I forgot to report him at the time. In the past, you used to get the Pour le Mérite after the eighth, but not anymore, even though it’s getting harder and harder to shoot one down. In the last four weeks since the Boelcke fighter squadron was formed, we have already lost five of the ten aircraft.”

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