By the Blood of Heroes Read online

  Freeman had been involved in the war from the very beginning of America’s support, when the 94th had been activated at Villeneuve in March of 1918. It seemed like a long time ago now.

  He jammed a cigarette into his mouth and then removed a battered silver lighter from his pocket. It’d been a present from Rickenbacker, back before the invention of the gas, when this war had only been a war and not a struggle for the survival of the human race. He turned the lighter over in his hands and held it up so that he could read the inscription in the thin morning light. “A Gentleman and a Flier” it read.

  Instead of cheering him, the sight of it made the airman shake his head in near despair. Rickenbacker was gone now and Marr with him. At least they had perished in fires on the ground instead of rising to fight against their own men like so many of the others. Facing off in the air against his longtime friend would have been unthinkable.

  A glance at the weathometer on his wrist told him that it was just after seven, with the air pressure holding steady in the green zone. Another hour and the wind would disperse the clouds enough to fly. Then the real day’s work would begin.

  Might as well use the time to get some breakfast, he thought.

  The mess hall was set up in the old farmhouse. His squadron mates—Samuels, James, and Walton—were already there, waiting for the day’s briefing.

  Not that today’s mission would be any different from the hundreds of others they’d already flown.

  The aerodrome at Toul was only twelve miles from the front. Nancy lay fifteen miles to the east, Lunéville ten miles beyond that. The highway from Toul to Nancy to Lunéville ran parallel to enemy lines and was within easy shelling distance of their guns, making it difficult for the Allies to move troops and supplies up to the front in support of the men holding the line there. The 94th’s job was to patrol that long stretch of highway and do what they could to keep it clear so that the infantry wouldn’t be cut off.

  Freeman joined his men as they were sitting down to a breakfast of syntheggs and ham. They both tasted like paste, making it hard to tell them apart once they were in your mouth, but he was glad to have them; all the men were. Real food was growing scarcer than a pig in Berlin.

  As happened most every morning, the men in the squadron were discussing the enemy, and the argument went round and round without really getting anywhere. There were far more questions than answers. Why did the shamblers crave human flesh? What caused their ravenous hunger? Why did a small percentage of the dead come back as revenants, their physical dexterity, their mental acuity, and perhaps even more important, their memories, all perfectly intact? Understanding the answers to these and other questions was an issue of the highest priority. Solving them could bring an end to the war, but there was no way this group of farm boys was going to manage that. Freeman kept quiet throughout the discourse, just nodding noncommittally over his coffee, for he had nothing new to share on the topic.

  After breakfast, while the men were still enjoying their coffee, a runner arrived with news that a wireless call had just come in from Nancy. Several enemy aircraft had been spotted heading in the direction of the aerodrome.

  “Time to earn our pay, boys,” Freeman said as he led the way out of the mess hall and to the field.

  The entire squadron now flew Spad XIIIs, and while Freeman missed his old Nieuport 28, he had to admit that the Spad was a nice substitute. Introduced in the fall of 1917, it had a maximum range of two hours’ flying time and a ceiling of just under twenty-two thousand feet. Armed with two synchronized Vickers machine guns mounted in front of the pilot, it had quickly become a favorite among the fliers attached to the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). Rickenbacker had flown one until his death, and Freeman had decided to switch to the Spad in tribute to his old friend.

  Mitchell, Freeman’s mechanic, had the major’s bird in the lead position and wasted no time getting the propeller spinning when Freeman climbed aboard. Being the careful type, Freeman took a few extra moments to be certain everything was in proper condition.

  He checked the tachometer first, watching it as he opened the throttle and then closed it back down again to an idle, making sure the engine was running normally. His gaze swept over the fuel pump and quantity gauges. Next he moved to the physical controls. Waggling the control column, he tested the aileron and elevator movements, taking them through their full range of movement. The rudder was a bit stiff, but he attributed that to the cold morning air and didn’t give it another thought. A quick tap of a finger on the altimeter, a brush of his hands over the petrol cocks and magneto switches, and he was ready to go.

  Freeman lowered his goggles, made sure that the lenses were adjusted to the same polarization by nudging the selector on either side of the goggles with the tip of his finger, and then gave Mitchell the thumbs-up.

  When the same signal was received from the rest of the pilots manning the aircraft strung out in a line behind Freeman, the mechanic turned to him and swept his arm forward in a wide arc.

  Freeman advanced the throttle, watching as the propeller’s flickering dissolved into a darkened haze. The Spad came to life, awkward at first as it tentatively moved onto the grassy field. As the engine surged into a throaty roar the machine picked up speed and its forward motion smoothed out, though the creaking and groaning of the undercarriage didn’t cease until the Spad eased itself off the ground and into the chilly air above. Just a few short minutes later the entire flight of four aircraft was up and headed east, following the roadway.

  Freeman flew low over the Allied lines, knowing the Jack of Spades painted across the underside of his wings would be visible from his current height to the men on the ground. As America’s top ace, he felt it was his duty to encourage the men every chance he could, and the sight of his distinctive plane was sure to give a lift to those in the trenches below. A dark cloud of smoke was already spiraling upward from an area a hundred yards behind the Allied positions, the stench of burning flesh wafting through the air along with it, and he steered slightly to the east to get away from the stink of the corpse fires.

  He couldn’t imagine the horror this infantry had to face on a daily basis. How the Germans had gone so horribly wrong in creating that hideous gas was anyone’s guess. It was bad enough up in the air, fighting aircraft flown by pilots who were long dead. How much worse it must be to sit there, mere yards from the newly risen opposition forces, knowing that the other side saw you as nothing more than that evening’s meal. Once when he was laid up in the hospital at Reims, he listened to the survivors of the Battle of Soissons recount their experiences. The opposition made assault after assault, charging out of that venomous green gas and through no-man’s-land as fast as their rotting forms could carry them. The long miles of barbed wire became heavy with bodies and still they came, stepping over the still-moving carcasses of their comrades to rush the trenches, dragging off those Allied soldiers unlucky enough to be near the break in the lines. The Allied troops fell back to the secondary and then the tertiary trenches before the attack had been repelled.

  While that was bad enough, the descriptions of the Allied dead waking up later the same night in the abandoned trenches and crawling under the wire to assault their former comrades was far worse. Freeman remembered vividly the look on one private’s face as he talked about the horror he felt bayoneting the man who he’d just spent the last forty-five days huddled with in a foxhole and of his shame at then having to burn the body in the bonfires to keep his friend from rising a second time.

  Remembering it now made Freeman shudder in his seat.

  Thank God the gas only worked on inert tissue. If it had the same impact on the living as it had on the dead, this war would have been over years ago.

  As they neared the outskirts of town, Freeman began to climb higher, the possibility of being jumped at so low an altitude by the opposition’s pilots outweighing his desire to boost the morale of the soldiers on the ground. The haze was thick, the cloud cover fairly low, and
Freeman wanted some clear sky beneath their wings before they were forced to engage the enemy.

  Fifteen minutes later they crossed into enemy territory and ended up getting lucky right away. The observation balloon first appeared as a small dark smudge against the blue-green earth below. Reaching up with one hand, Freeman pushed the magnification lenses into place over the left eye of his goggles and took a good, long look at the aircraft ahead of them.

  The balloon was one of the Caquot styles, a long teardrop-shaped cylinder with three stabilizing fins. There was a symbol painted on the rear fin, but it was too far away to see clearly with the goggles’ current settings. Reaching up with his left hand, he flicked through the magnification selections until the black German cross painted on the dirigible’s rudder swam into view.

  They had the enemy in sight; all they needed now was an attack plan.

  Freeman had the flight in formation at six thousand feet with his plane in the lead, followed by Samuels and James flying parallel. Walton brought up the rear, forming an aerial diamond. He didn’t give the signal to attack, at least not yet.

  Instead, he craned his head around from side to side, huddled against the rushing wind, searching the sky below for the fighter cover that he knew had to be present. The opposition never sent the balloons aloft without the fighters.

  They had to be here.

  And they were.

  Both aircraft, Pfalz D.XIIs by the look of them, were approximately a few hundred feet below and to the south of the balloon, drifting lazily along as though they didn’t have a care in the world.

  Freeman waggled his wings, getting the attention of his fellow pilots. He pointed downward at the balloon and then tapped the side of his head with two fingers. He then pointed at the escort aircraft circling below and then at his men.

  They understood. It would be their job to take on the opposition’s aircraft while Freeman went after the balloon.

  They all circled back around, staying in the cloud cover until they could bring their planes into position with the sun at their backs. Then as a group they fell into a rushing power-glide designed to bring them up on the enemy as swiftly as possible.

  Freeman watched the balloon grow larger and larger in his field of vision, his comrades forgotten as he focused on his attack. He covered more than half the distance to the other craft before its crew noticed his presence. He could see them floating beneath the wide bulk of the balloon in their wicker basket, frantically calling the ground crew on the field phone. Those on the ground were equally desperate, rushing to the mechanical winch in the hopes of getting the balloon and its crew pulled out of the sky before Freeman could reach it.

  With his Vickers guns thundering in his ears, Freeman closed in. Even in the weak sunlight he could see the incendiary tracers arcing away from his aircraft and slashing into the fabric of the balloon. Before he got too close he pushed hard on the stick and banked his Spad, sending it around the edge of the balloon just as a bright arc of color danced along its surface. Seconds later the sky around him was filled with the glare and heat of an explosion as the gas inside the balloon ignited.

  He looked back to see the observers jump out of the now falling basket, taking their chances of surviving the fall rather than burning up with their craft. He roared in exultation as he watched the flaming balloon crash to the ground atop the moving forms of the ground crew, trapping them in the blaze.

  That’s four more of the bastards that won’t rise again, by God!

  For the first time since he began his dive, Freeman noted the whine and crack of the machine-gun bullets coming from the troops below. He pulled back on the stick, taking his Spad up and out of reach of the weapons that were trying to claim his body for their masters.

  When he was safely at altitude, he surveyed his chariot, finding a good number of holes in the fabric of his wings and several splinters gouged out of the leather-wrapped wood surrounding his cockpit area, but nothing that would suggest he needed to return to the airfield.

  Satisfied, Freeman looked down once more. Now only one German biplane occupied the sky, and even he wouldn’t be up for long. A thick stream of black smoke was pouring out of the engine and Samuels was hanging doggedly on the Pfalz’s tail, firing as he chased it around the sky. As Freeman watched, the enemy aircraft suddenly collapsed on itself, falling away in pieces to the ground in a graceless ballet of destruction.

  The flight regrouped, smiles on the faces of the younger pilots. Even the veteran, Freeman, couldn’t help but feel that this was going to be a good day. Both the balloon and the two Pfalzs had been downed in full view of the other pilots in the squadron, so there should be no quibbling with headquarters about credit for the kills. That made for an auspicious beginning.

  They spent the next forty-five minutes edging their way farther into opposition territory without sign of another aircraft. The cloud cover had retreated a few thousand feet but was still pretty thick so the squadron took advantage of it, hiding their aircraft up among its lowest reaches.

  It was from this lofty position that they first spotted the damaged aircraft making its unsteady way across the sky below them.

  It was a lone Fokker Dr.1 triplane, painted a bright red, the black Iron Crosses easy to see. A thin stream of black smoke was pouring out of the engine and the pilot seemed to be engrossed in maintaining control of his aircraft as he fought to keep it moving along a straight path.

  Freeman knew that only one man in the entire German air force flew a red Fokker triplane; it could be none other than Baron Manfred von Richthofen himself.

  Flush from their earlier victories and excited at the chance to down the legendary ace, the less-experienced pilots reacted without thinking things over. As if of one mind, they banked over and swept downward at the opposition aircraft.

  Freeman stared after them in shock. What did they think they were doing?!

  Holding the stick steady with his knees, he snatched up the radio mike with his left hand and cranked hard on the handle with his right, but he saw right away that it would be no use. The radios were not designed for emergency use. It took time to build up a sufficient charge and the squadron would come in contact with the enemy aircraft before he’d be able to get a message out.

  He had no choice but to follow them down.

  Freeman watched as the Allied aircraft closed in on the Fokker, their Vickers guns winking in the sunlight. They opened up as soon as they came within range. The opposition pilot continued to ignore them, a large mistake, and it wasn’t long before Freeman’s squadron mates blasted the plane right out of the sky.

  It was at that point that the other side launched its carefully planned surprise.

  From the west, out of the sunlight, came seven Albatros D.III fighters, their guns primed and firing before the others knew they were even there. Samuels was taken down in that first pass. One moment his Spad was there and the next it was not, replaced by a cloud of inky black smoke and small pieces of fluttering debris. James followed suit only moments later, though he did manage to take one of the enemy with him.

  From there it became a tenacious duel in the sky, the opposition forces swarming around the two remaining Allied planes in a choreographed dance of death and destruction. Freeman and Walton managed to give a good accounting of themselves, taking three more of the enemy aircraft out of the fight in a dazzling display of marksmanship.

  Freeman had just begun to think that they might survive this encounter when both of his Vickers guns jammed. One minute they were roaring steadily, the next, nothing. Suddenly furious and more than a little bit frightened, Freeman clawed at the charging handles, trying to clear the mechanisms.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Nothing.

  Knowing he would be no good in the middle of a dogfight without operational guns, Freeman broke away from the fight, climbing in an attempt to find time to fix the problem.

  The opposition let him go, choosing to gang up
on Walton instead.

  From his higher altitude Freeman watched the enemy aircraft make short work of his lone surviving subordinate.

  Walton’s Spad suddenly dipped and headed for the ground in an uncontrolled spin, a clear sign that a well-placed bullet had ended the life of its pilot. Freeman could watch no more.

  When he turned his gaze away from the destruction below, Freeman recoiled in surprise to find a previously unnoticed aircraft sitting directly off his right wing tip!

  It was one of the new Fokker D.VIIIs, the “Flying Razor Blades” as the British pilots were wont to call them. The single-wing aircraft was the current pride of the opposition’s air corps and one of the most deadly aircraft in the skies. It could outmaneuver, outshoot, and outfly anything the Allied powers could put in the air. This aircraft was painted a bright red, like the triplane that had baited the trap, but the Iron Crosses on its wings and fuselage had been replaced with the double-headed eagle and skulls of the Richthofen family seal, the insignia looking stark and menacing against the brightly colored background. The D.VIII was so close that Freeman could see the other pilot clearly, right down to the missing flesh across the lower half of the right side of his face.

  Instantly, Freeman recognized the true nature of the trap to which his squadron had just fallen victim. The triplane his fellow pilots had exuberantly chased had been a decoy, designed to pull the younger pilots into the fray just as it had so brilliantly done. The flight of Albatroses that had dropped out of the clouds to the rear of the Allied planes had been there to whittle down the Allied fliers, leaving Freeman isolated and alone.

  Ripe for picking by the commander of the enemy flight.

  Freeman did not wait around to see how the trap turned out. He stood his aircraft on its beam and whipped around in a turn that came close to pulling the wings off.

  Too good a pilot to be taken in so easily, the other chased Freeman into the tight turn so that the two aircraft were spinning around each other in a vertical helix. Looking directly “up” from his cockpit, Freeman could see straight into the former German’s cockpit, where the other man was looking “down” at him in return. They flew that way for several moments, getting closer to the ground with each revolution as they arced around each other in opposite directions, Freeman sitting hunched against the chill wind while Richthofen ignored both the cold and the centrifugal forces created by their movement.