The Red Baron: A World War I Novel by Richard Fox

and Voss walked toward the wreckage and called to Wolff, who, by the distant sound of snapping branches, had moved deeper into the forest.
    The Fee pilot was suspended from his seat belts, hanging upside down. His arms extended toward the ground, swaying in the breeze like branches. The gunner’s section had torn away in the crash, and there was no sign of the gunner.
    “Shit, where is he?” Voss said as he drew his pistol from his holster. Some British didn’t know when to give up the fight.
    “Don’t be paranoid,” Manfred said. He took a few steps into a tall spot of grass and looked around.
    “There.” Manfred pointed to the head and shoulders of a dead British soldier lying in the grass.
    Voss joined Manfred and holstered his weapon. “Wait…” Voss stepped closer to the body. He gagged and covered his mouth with the back of a sleeve. Voss pointed to the tail end with his other hand.
    The gunner’s upper half was near where Manfred stood; the rest of his body lay next to wreckage on the ground.
    Wolff crashed through the forest. “Ah ha!” he yelled. Wolff had cut the red and white rings around the blue dot that served as British insignia for their planes from one of the dismembered wings and held it in the air in triumph.
    “Kurt. Wait!” Manfred said.
    Wolff came around the tail, a puzzled look on his face. He stopped when his boots stepped onto a part of the forest that made an uncharacteristic squish.
    Wolff looked down and found himself standing in the gunner’s entrails.
    Wolff’s jaw dropped, a low moan escaping his slack jaw. Manfred pulled him from the remains and led him toward Voss. Wolff’s mouth snapped shut as he groaned.
    “No, please don’t—” Voss said, his eyes widening in panic.
    Wolff vomited all over Voss’s boots. Voss let loose a stream of expletives as he jumped away. Wolff heaved again as Manfred gave the man a few reassuring pats on the back.
    “I’m so sorry, Werner,” Wolff said with a small voice.
    Voss kept grumbling as he kicked his boots through the high grass, doing his best to clean them off.
    Wolff spat into the grass, still hunched over.
    “Can we go, please?” he said in a small voice.
    Manfred pulled Wolff upright and helped the slight man back to the waiting staff car. Wolff tried to look back over his shoulder, but Manfred’s hand forced his head back toward the car.
    “That’s enough,” Manfred said.
    Voss threw his boots in the trunk and sat in the front next to the driver. Manfred and a pale Wolff sat in the back. The return trip to the airfield was silent while Voss smoked one cigarette after another.
    Voss twisted around and nudged Wolff’s knee with the back of his hand.
    “First time?”
    Wolff, who’d been staring at the English colors, jerked up as if waking from a nap. “What?” Wolff said.
    “Were they your first kills?” Voss asked.
    Wolff nodded.
    “It gets easier,” Voss said before looking to Manfred. “Right?”
    Manfred considered the Frenchman he’d shot in the trenches, the pilot of the Farman and the two men he killed earlier that day. The deaths had stayed at the edge of his mind, phantasms that promised to visit in the future.
    “It does,” he said. Manfred wasn’t convinced that what he said was true, but Wolff needed to hear differently.
    “Better them than you, right Kurt?” Voss said.
    Wolff nodded. A smile spread across his face. “Captain Boelcke will want to see this.” He gave the colors a pat.
     
     
    Manfred opened the throttle on his Albatros D.II as it sped over the English trenches. Scattered cloud tops like thick dandelions floated between him and the antiaircraft artillery that sent rounds into the sky to meet him. Shells burst with a snap audible over his taxed engine, puffs of black smoke creeping closer and closer as the distant gunners reached for him.
    Boelcke was several hundred yards ahead, on the tail of a smoking Nieuport, a French-designed plane flown by the English. Manfred scanned