The Red Baron: A World War I Novel Read Online Free

she said to Manfred, “make yourself useful and take him through the back.” She pointed to a dead soldier. “Karl! Help him.”
    A squat, pudgy orderly came away from a basin where he was cleaning surgical instruments and grabbed the litter handles closest to the dead man’s remaining foot. Manfred grabbed the other end and lifted him up. The newly arrived wounded soldier took up the space a moment later.
    Karl led them past the surgery bays. Manfred did his best to focus on the orderly’s back, not wanting to look at the dead man’s vacant eyes.
    Outside the hospital, rows and rows of sheet-wrapped bodies lay in the mud. Karl set the litter down at the end of a row and went about wrapping the body in the sheet. The orderly worked with care, tucking the sheet below the body and tying a knot at the corpse’s foot, despite the driving rain.
    Manfred stared at the row of bodies, the faces of the deceased visible through the wet vails. Some faces were at peace, others had slack jaws and drooping features as though their vacated souls had served as the scaffolding for their countenance.
    Karl moved passed Manfred, giving him a slight nod and a pat on the forearm as he went back inside.
    Manfred stood there, among the rain, the dead, and the cries of pain from the wounded.
            “So this is war.”
    He touched the list in his breast pocket. At least he could remove Steiner’s name from the missing.
     

Chapter 3— “For Another Purpose”
     
    Duty in regimental headquarters was insufferably comfortable. Meals were hot, work hours regular, and the only danger Manfred faced came from staff cars driven by reckless messengers.
    His shift at the field telephone would end soon. The war had boiled down to nothing more than him answering the phone, jotting down whatever message came through, and passing it on to its recipient. On rare occasions, he led a crew of wiremen to repair lines cut by French shelling. He hadn’t ventured near the trenches or heard a shot fired in anger since his one, and only, battle.
    He’d been reassigned to the communications staff after he lost his platoon. The rest of the squadron met a similar fate. Cavalrymen were sent to the infantry, where they suffered the ignominy of walking to and from battle, the war-horses relegated to nothing more than draft animals. Manfred hadn’t kept up with his fellow officers, partly out of shame for his defeat by the French, and partly out of fear to learn they’d found a new and meaningful place in the war.
    The field telephone hadn’t rung in hours, so Manfred used the time to finish up a letter to his father. In the last letter, his father had gone on and on about Lothar receiving the Iron Cross for capturing a French machine gun. His father’s pride begged the question of when Manfred would finally accomplish something of note during the war. He didn’t know how to romanticize copious note-taking or his unblemished driving record.
    The distant thump of artillery broke Manfred’s concentration. His ear, trained by months of exposure, told him it was outgoing German fire, and the phone wouldn’t ring to report another French shelling. He sighed.
    “Another day at war,” Lieutenant Huber said, patting Manfred’s shoulder with a heavy hand. Then again, every part of Huber was heavy. His belly stretched the front of his tunic to the point where his undershirt was clearly visible between the buttons. His double chins and heavy jowls might have been considered jolly anyplace but the army. “At least we’re spending it here and not a few kilometers west, right?”
    Not for the first time, Manfred wondered if launching Huber over French lines would be a war crime.
    “Keep the coffee hot and we’ll both have medals to wear home for Christmas,” Huber said. The portly officer glanced at the dwindling fire under the tent stove. He headed to the exit and the pile of wood outside the tent.
    Huber collided with a massive soldier, the new