A Dorado for the fighter pilot

"In my entire life, I have never known a more beautiful hunting ground than during the days of the Battle of the Somme. In the morning, when you got up, the first Englishmen were already arriving, and the last ones disappeared long after the sun had set. 'A paradise for fighter pilots,' Boelcke once said. That was the time when Boelcke's kills rose from twenty to forty in two months. We beginners did not yet have the experience of our master and were quite satisfied if we did not get burned ourselves. But it was wonderful! No take-off without aerial combat. Often there were large air battles involving forty to sixty Englishmen against, unfortunately, not always as many Germans. For them it was quantity that counted, for us it was quality. But the Englishman is a dashing fellow, you have to give him that. Every now and then he would come in at very low altitude and visit Boelcke in his seat with bombs. He formally challenged him to a fight and always accepted it. I hardly ever met an Englishman who refused to fight, whereas the French prefer to avoid any contact with the enemy in the air at all costs. Those were good times in our fighter squadron. The spirit of the Führer was passed on to his students. We could blindly trust his leadership. There was no possibility of anyone being abandoned. The thought never even crossed our minds. And so we swiftly and cheerfully wiped out our enemies. On the day Boelcke fell, the squadron already had forty. Now it has well over a hundred. Boelcke's spirit lives on among his capable successors."