Event Narrative
‘The next morning at the crack of dawn, a field grey car left Cambrai in the direction of Kortryk and around noon that day, 2 July 1917, the new adjutant of Fighter Squadron I arrived at Marckebeeke airfield near Courtrai in Flanders. He found his commander standing next to his aircraft, accompanied by a few gentlemen. And the officer who warmly shook hands with First Lieutenant Bodenschatz was no longer the little-known Uhlan lieutenant of old, but Rittmeister von Richthofen, winner of 56 air battles, commander of the squadron, Knight of the Order Pour le mérite and the most famous aviator in the German army.
It was after ten o'clock in the morning and a wonderful summer's day. And this beautiful day seemed to have found its reflection in the red aeroplane standing there, in the faces of the officers and in the clear features of the commander himself, all of whom were in high spirits, in the best of moods. The Rittmeister, holding the stick with the thick knob, called the ‘squadron stick’, surrounded by the always exuberant Great Dane Moritz, made a short arm movement into the sky towards the front. ‘A paradise for airmen!’ he told the adjutant. And one of the gentlemen standing behind the commander said: ‘Fifty-seven!’. Richthofen had just returned from his 57th aerial victory.
Bodenschatz secretly scrutinised the baron's face. Actually, it had hardly changed since he had last seen him. Perhaps it had become a little harder. It was the face of a man who was clean to the last corner of his soul. There was a resilient energy in it, an energy without detention, without nervousness, the marvellous energy of youth, under the amiable mouth sat the firm chin, and the look from the clear, loud eyes was the look of a man who is at peace with himself, with the world and with everything that could stand behind it.’
