Hope Takes Flight Page 8

  Lylah turned, not knowing what a beautiful picture she made—eyes shining, hair down around her shoulders, red lips parted in delight. “I haven’t done that in a long time!” she exclaimed.

  “You shoot very well,” Manfred gave an approving smile. “How did you learn?”

  “Oh, my brothers taught me. We grew up on a farm, and everybody hunted. Most of the meat we had on the table we had to shoot—deer, birds of all kinds. My whole family loved to hunt…all the boys, anyway.”

  Manfred walked over, picked up the birds, and shoved them into the game bag at his side. “Come,” he said, “we will try another place.”

  As they walked, he asked about her family and what she was doing in England. “My cousin tells me you are a wonderful actress,” he said. “I’ve known no other actresses besides my cousin. Tell me, how does one get into that world?”

  Continuing over the crystalline white snow, Lylah spoke cautiously of her past life, leaving out parts and editing others. When she was finished, Manfred shook his head. “It is strange for a woman to be on the stage. I am worried about my cousin Helen.”

  Lylah said quickly, “She’s a wonderful girl, Baron. You must not worry about her. Helen is well able to take care of herself.” Then she smiled and changed the subject. “Now, tell me about yourself. You’re in the army?”

  “Yes, of course,” von Richthofen said. He began to tell her of his life, relating how he had gone through school preparing to be a soldier, and how he had joined the Cavalry. “But,” he said, “this war will not be won by horses. It will take more than that. So I put in for a transfer into the aviation branch of our service.”

  “It must be wonderful to fly,” Lylah said wistfully. “I saw my brother go up in an airplane just before I left America. I think I’d be frightened.”

  “No, I think you would not be frightened of anything,” Manfred said seriously. “You are not the kind of woman given to fear.”

  Lylah was curious. “How do you know that?” she asked. “You haven’t spent much time observing women, or so I hear.”

  Manfred smiled. “You heard that from my cousin. Or perhaps from my mother. And it is true enough. I’ve been too busy preparing myself for my destiny.”

  The words sounded pompous to Lylah, but she ignored them saying, “Tell me about it, Baron von Richthofen.”

  “Please,” he said, “call me Manfred. And I may call you Lylah?”

  “Of course. Now, tell me about yourself.”

  As they walked along, Lylah quickly discovered that to Manfred von Richthofen, the game of the hunt was the thing, with the kill the prize of skill and knowledge. Winning and losing. He had spent his life hunting the animals that filled the forest around his home. He had traveled with an uncle to Africa to hunt big game and, for him, the hunt had become a way of life. Finally, as they walked back toward the house, he said simply, “It is my life, Lylah. I am a hunter. There is in me, as there is in many of my people, a pure love of the hunt. Sometimes I think it’s the only emotion I have—the love of conquering some other living thing.”

  Lylah was silent. She had watched his face—a handsome face, yet somehow cold—and had wondered what he was really like on the inside. Now she felt that she knew something about him. “Isn’t that dangerous?” she asked quietly. “I mean, there’s so much more to life than hunting and killing.”

  He listened to her question and seemed to consider it. With eyes constantly scanning the horizon, unconsciously seeking for gain, some movement that would betray an animal or a bird that would fall beneath his gun, he finally replied, “Perhaps you’re right. There is more than hunting. There’s my mother,” he said warmly, turning to face Lylah. She saw that for the first time there was a genuine light in his eyes. “I love my mother very dearly.”

  Lylah thought that a little odd and yet, remembering the stern face of Albrecht von Richthofen, Manfred’s father, she could see how difficult it would be to love such a man. He was no doubt generous and upright, but he was not a man one could easily love. On the other hand, Manfred’s mother was a handsome woman with an unexpected tenderness a boy might admire, failing to find it in his father.

  “Your mother is lovely,” she said. “And I’m glad you do have a love for her. I hope you always will.”

  They continued walking until Manfred said suddenly, “You are a very beautiful woman, Lylah.”

  His observation startled her, and she stopped on the path, turning to face him. She could not resist flirting a little. “Will you make me the object of one of your hunts?” Her smile softened her features, and there was a dimple in her right cheek that intrigued him.

  “If I did,” he said, “I would catch you. I always get my quarry.”

  Lylah laughed and, without thinking, reached up and touched his cheek. “I’m afraid you might at that,” she said, “so I’d better go in at once, lest I be brought down by your Teutonic charm.”

  The days passed quickly. Christmas came and went, and still Lylah lingered. Several times Helen had mentioned going home, and once she had even said, “I think you’re paying too much attention to Manfred.”

  “Oh, he’s just a boy,” Lylah had quickly replied. “But I do so enjoy the hunting. Let’s stay one more day.”

  And so they had stayed. Each day Manfred took Lylah out, and each day they brought back proof of their hunting prowess. If the senior von Richthofens noticed anything strange about their companionship, they kept it to themselves.

  Finally the day came when Lylah knew she must return to England, and she mentioned it to Manfred as they were getting ready for a hunt.

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, “That will be a sad day, but I, too, must return to my unit, so we will both be busy.”

  They went into the woods once again, and this time he took her farther than ever before. Another heavy snow had fallen. The trees were draped with heavy loads and sparkled like diamonds under the sun. They walked quietly, and Lylah realized that Manfred had taught her much about stalking animals. They spoke in normal tones until they got close to a small creek, where he said, “Quiet now. A stag may come to drink.”

  They waited silently under the trees, under the blue sky that scrolled over them, dotted now and then by flights of wild geese. The only sound was the sound of the branches as they groaned beneath their loads and the far-off cry of some sort of animal—a wolf, perhaps.

  “It’s been wonderful to be here,” she whispered. “I’ll remember it always.”

  He started to answer her, then suddenly froze. Slowly he nodded, and Lylah followed his line of vision to see a beautiful doe stepping out of the woods and approaching the creek. The animal was nervous, sensing their presence, perhaps, yet unable to see them from its vantage point. The doe continued to the creek, delicately bent over and pawed at the thin skim of ice, breaking it, then taking a look around before dipping its head to drink.

  As the deer’s head lowered, Lylah felt Manfred’s elbow nudging her. Slowly she turned her eyes toward him and saw him urging her to take the shot. She lifted her rifle and drew a bead on the animal, but she could not do it.

  Manfred looked at her with surprise, and then with a shrug, swept his rifle to his shoulder and the shot rang out. The deer leapt into the air, took two staggering steps, and fell dead.

  “Come!” Manfred shouted.

  “No,” she replied, “I’ll wait here.”

  Lylah watched as he put his gun down, ran along the side of the creek until he got to the deer and then pulled out a knife and slit the animal’s throat.

  He returned to Lylah with blood on his hands, wiping it off with his handkerchief. His eyes were bright, and he was alive with the excitement of the kill. “A fine specimen.” He nodded in satisfaction. Then he asked curiously, “Why didn’t you shoot?”

  Lylah shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. She was so beautiful.”

  The thought seemed to trouble von Richthofen. “Yes, she is beautiful. But deer are put here by God for us to use, are t
hey not? Man has always hunted for his food.”

  Lylah, half ashamed of her squeamishness, laughed. “Yes, you’re right, of course. I’m just too fainthearted, I suppose.”

  “Well, let’s go home now,” he said. “I’ll send a servant out to bring the animal in.”

  They turned and walked back beside the creek for a long time. Finally Manfred said, “Let’s stop and rest. You must be tired.”

  They stood beside a huge fir tree, savoring the silence. Then Manfred began to speak. Lylah could tell he was troubled. Finally he came out with it. “What about the war? Do you hate all of us Germans?”

  Lylah was startled. “No, of course not! Why would you say that?”

  “It’s a terrible war. Men on both sides are going to get killed.”

  “I am afraid,” she confessed. “I have a brother in the French army and other brothers at home. They will probably enlist if America enters the war.”

  They talked about the war, and Lylah could see that Manfred felt differently. And yet, he was not what she had expected a typical German soldier to be. She had seen the propaganda of the bull-throated Prussians with their bayonets drawn on women and children. But the days she had spent with him had revealed a side of Manfred von Richthofen that most people never saw. Deep down, in the heart of this hunter was a gentle spirit. She saw this in his obvious affection for his mother and for his brother, Lothar.

  “I don’t hate you,” she said. “How could I ever hate you?”

  Manfred did not know what to say. During her visit, he had gone through some strange and traumatic experience. He was tremendously drawn to this woman, although she was older than he. He had never seen a woman so beautiful, yet so dynamic. She was not like German women, who were totally submissive and obedient to their husbands. This woman would be herself. She would maintain that flamelike spirit he admired in her. But he was confused.

  Finally he said, “We cannot be lovers. We are on different sides.”

  At his words, Lylah was shocked to find that she had even considered taking Manfred as a lover. Impulsively, she put her arms around him and kissed him passionately. He responded at once. Her hands clasped behind his head and the softness of her lips seemed to stir him, more than he had ever been stirred. He held her even closer, inhaling the sweet scent of her hair.

  Finally he lifted his lips, and she drew back, whispering, “Love isn’t a matter of politics, Manfred.”

  He had not been drawn to the young women who swarmed around him from time to time. But there was something of his mother in this woman that moved him. He knew he would never find another like this one.

  He put his arms around her once again and simply held her. Finally he said, “I have a feeling for things, Lylah. I always have. One thing I’ve always known is that I would be a great soldier. I know that, but I don’t know how I know it.”

  They clung to each other, and Lylah felt herself filled with a longing she had seldom known.

  “Lylah, we’re making a mistake to let ourselves be drawn together,” he whispered hoarsely.

  Lylah drew back and gazed up into his eyes, tears gathering in her own. She had seen the yearning beneath the proud military bearing. “I know, my dear.” And then, with a shake of her head, she said, “I’ve been making mistakes all my life…and I just can’t seem to help it.” She drew his head down and pressed her lips to his.

  As they kissed, a hawk flew over, surveying the scene before swooping down forty yards away to sink his talons into the quivering flesh of a small rabbit. But the German soldier and the American actress did not hear. They clung to one another, oblivious to the world about them, knowing only that something had come to them, and they would never be the same again.

  Part 2

  THE LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE

  7

  A YANK IN THE MUD

  Almost at the same instant his sister was embracing Manfred von Richthofen in Germany, Gavin Stuart was standing in a trench somewhere in France, up to his ankles in thick yellow mud. The shrimpy smell of the sea was in the air. It was raining again, a soft rain that tapped on his helmet, looking for a chance to trickle down inside his poncho. The duck boards along the bottom of the trench were awash in the fetid, mustard-colored water, and all but one of the men in the Third Platoon section of the Zig-Zag had pulled their boots up onto the fire step.

  The only one who didn’t mind was a rather plump farm boy from Nancy that somebody had nicknamed ‘Girly.’ His smooth, girlish face wasn’t really as pretty as all that. Sitting on the fire step with his feet in the water, his eyes fixed blearily on the other side of the trench, his mouth hanging open, he bore little resemblance to any girl or anyone else—alive.

  He’d been dead for some time, and the smell would have been noticeable by now if the water lapping at his puttees hadn’t smelled far worse. Besides, Gavin and the others had learned to deaden their nostrils to all smells—all except the warning odors of scorched garlic, crushed uranium leaves, or a sickeningly sweet version of the smell of new-mown hay. All this was very much like the poison gas the other side kept sending their way.

  A star shell hissed into the rain-swept sky and became a brilliant ball of frozen lightning, dangling from a little paper parachute.

  Down the line, a British infield cleared its throat nervously and was answered by the irritated woodpecker rattle of a German machine gun. As the gun fell silent, Gavin stood up straighter and gingerly raised the brim of his helmet about an inch above the sandbags of the parapet.

  “See anything, Yank?” Sergeant Albert Moritz demanded. He was a thick man, in body and in face, almost like a cave man. “The Neanderthal,” they called him behind his back. Tough and crude, he’d been a dockworker in civilian life, and, some suspected, a petty criminal. Since Gavin had come to the Legion, Moritz had been the bane of his existence.

  Gavin didn’t answer for a moment, but continued to scan the eerily lit landscape between the opposing armies. There were six lines of rusted and badly tangled concertina wire between the sandbags in no-man’s-land. A country inn and a tracked forest had once occupied part of that lunar landscape. The inn had been flattened in the first drum fire, but the stump of a fieldstone chimney still stood above the tortured earth a little to Gavin’s right. Directly in front of his position, standing Pisa-like in defiance, was a single miraculously preserved toilet bowl. Its white porcelain was washed clean by the rain and, like the chimney, the porcelain commode was an important landmark to the Third Platoon. Everything else out there looked pretty much the same.

  “Well!” Moritz demanded, his voice rising. “Do you see anything, you booby, or not?”

  Startled, Gavin shook his head. “Not a thing, Sarge. Not nothing moving out there.”

  He looked back again, peering into the darkness illuminated, from time to time, by shell fire, and by a moon that seemed cleaner in its pristine whiteness than anything Gavin had seen for a long time.

  Mostly the landscaping of no-man’s-land consisted of shell holes, all kinds of shell holes—from the convenient shelters excavated by Allied 75s and German Whiz-Bangs to the dangerously deep water-filled craters left by Howitzers, or the awesome house-swallowing pits torn out of the earth by the occasional big stuff hurled by railroad guns. Most of the area had been hit over and over again. Crater walls overlapped in a bewildering pattern of rain-soaked earth, shattered tree trunks, abandoned packs, rifles, helmets, and all the other trash the war had dropped in the long months since the balmy summer of 1914.

  Then…there were the men. Soggy figures sprawled here and there in the chalky magnesium light. They were scattered across the wet mud like the discarded rag dolls of a very untidy little girl who didn’t like to take care of her toys.

  Gavin felt a movement and turned to see that Sergeant Moritz had stepped up beside him and was also peering into the darkness. “Go get some grub from the kitchen, Yank,” he said. His face looked blunt and lumpy, unlike most of the rest of them who had lost weight during the long si
ege. “And be sure you get something fit to eat. Don’t let that swine of a cook give you any of that garbage like last time.”

  “Right, Sarge,” Gavin said and jumped back into the sucking yellow mud with a squelching sound.

  “Take somebody with you,” Moritz added. “Bring it back hot.”

  “I’ll go.” Marcel DeSpain got to his feet and looked around for a dry spot. Finding none, he placed the butt of his rifle in the middle of the trench. There was no way to keep anything clean in the trenches, and most of them had long ago given up, all except DeSpain and Gavin. “Let’s go,” he said. “Maybe they’ll have something fit to eat this time.”

  DeSpain, a young man of twenty-five, was of medium height and very thin, with high cheekbones and fine gray eyes, sunken deep into his skull. His dark brown hair was lank and uncut, like the rest of them. He would have been a handsome young man if he had not been whittled to the bone by trench warfare.

  “Let’s go,” he shrugged. “Not that we’ll do any good.”

  The two soldiers made their way along the trench. Gavin thought how different war was than what he had imagined. Like most young men, he had envisioned racing across the field with the sun overhead, flags waving, drums beating, bugles blowing. But since the Battle of the Marne and especially since the first Battle of Ypres, the war on the Western Front had settled down to a system of trenches that stretched all the way from the Alps in Switzerland to the North Sea close to Dunkirk.

  Dug into deep ditches four hundred miles long the two armies faced each other. These trenches had become almost like little cities. Each trench line had an alternate fire bay with bulkheads so that it twisted into zig-zag formations. Support trenches, one hundred or more yards back of the front line, were less pretentious.

  Every conveniently sighted knob along the front was made a strong point, usually a thick-walled bunker or a concrete turret, housing weapons. Machine guns replaced the fire diagonally across the front so that one bullet swarm interlocked with another, splintering an attack with crossfire. Outposts were pushed forward into no-man’s land to warn of night attacks or to ambush enemy patrols.