Preface
Chapter 1 —
My Family
Chapter 2 —
The Outbreak of the
War
Chapter 3 — Boredom
Before Verdun
Chapter 4 — In the Air
Chapter 5 —
My First Solo Flight
Chapter 6
— I Fly in a
Thunderstorm
Chapter 7 — Bombing in Russia
Chapter 8 —
My First English
Victim
Chapter 9 — I Get
the Ordre Pour le Merite
Chapter 10 —
A Flying Man's
Adventure
Chapter 11 — My
Record Day
Chapter 12a — Schäfer Lands Between Lines
Chapter
12b — Schäfer Lands Between
Lines
Chapter 13a — My
Brother
Chapter 13b — My
Brother |
|
This on-line edition
of Manfred von Richthofen's 1917 book Der Rote Kampfflieger is based on
the English language version originally translated by J. Ellis Barker and
published in 1918 under the name The Red Battle Flyer.
The book
was published while World War One still raged and suffered somewhat from the
propaganda and censorship of the time. Unfortunately Captain von Richthofen
– famously known as The Red Baron – did not survive the war, and so
this is the only work of its kind directly attributable to him. His own opinion
of the book was that it was too insolent, and before his death he wrote that he
was no longer that type of person.
The original 1918 English edition
preface is also interesting. It reveals much about attitudes which had changed
little during four bloody years of war. The concept of honorable death at the
hands of a "worthy" opponent was still very strong, even toward the end of the
war. |
