From The Trunk

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

This is NOT Witchfinder, in case someone wonders.  That’s Friday, even if I posted on Thursday once.  (Avoiding inquiring emails, I am.)

This is something from the trunk.  One of those novels I was forced to pull the plug on.  Because of what it is, it’s not something I can finish in a month, even if it’s almost done, because a) I need to verify the research I did six years ago, because sometimes I make startling mistakes because I believed ONE book.  b)I need to research again, of course.  Enough for the time period to come naturally.

I was reminded of it because #2 son wrote a longish short story set in the period between the wars in Germany and got tons of things wrong.  Not the events, just the texture of daily life, because he apparently has managed to miss my shelves of “daily life in” or maybe just because he is a beginner writer and didn’t realize the need for more extensive research.  (To be honest, he doesn’t write like a beginner, but he’s only just started showing me the stuff.)  Anyway, I told him to set that one in the future because it just didn’t work between the wars unless he wants to ditch one of the main plot points.

Then I woke up and this was awake again…

Time’s Tomorrow

Over The Valley Of The Somme, the 21st of April, 1918.

The wind bit Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen’s exposed face, whipped his white silk scarf into a frenzy.
He didn’t notice.
Hunched forward, Manfred, the Red Baron, held the lever of his airplane in his right hand, while his left pulled the trigger, his square-tipped fingers simultaneously controlling the flight of his plane and firing both of his front-mounted machine guns in a well-practiced way at the fleeing enemy plane.
Far beneath Manfred’s plane, a persistent fog obscured the trenches and the men in them.
Manfred had done his time in the trenches and he would prefer death in the cold, clean air above the clouds to life in the damp mustiness, the sluggish boredom, of the trench.
Despite the cold and the wind that, intensified by the speed of his flight, made the red-painted plywood frame of his plane crackle and groan, Manfred felt warm.
Hot.
His heart beat fast and his pumping blood made his pale-skinned face glow.  His right hand managed the levers, his left thumb squeezed the trigger that fired both machine guns at once.
Tracer bullets flew to the right and left of the enemy plane, leaving glimmering white trails behind.
Right where Manfred wanted them.
Suddenly shots from behind Manfred startled him.  He had a tail.
No matter.  He took a deep breath.  He couldn’t turn and run.  Not now.  Not when he was so close to bringing the enemy down.
Manfred concentrated on the plane ahead, not the one behind.  He thought of what he wanted to happen.  What must happen.
The enemy pilot would land.  He would be forced to land.  And Manfred would claim the credit of having made yet another prisoner for the fatherland.
His sweaty fingers played on the controls, taking his airplane lower and lower, in pursuit of the zigzagging airplane ahead of him.
He savored the inevitable joy of his soon-to-come triumph.  It would be his eighty-first.
The fog had cleared.  Yet, if Manfred glimpsed the mud and trees beneath him — if he saw the hulls of bombed out buildings, destroyed in the years of World War I — it was as an animal sees things, without comprehension or understanding.  He certainly didn’t know where over the valley of the Somme he flew, or when he crossed the lines to the enemy side.
The focus of his icy blue eyes had narrowed to the plane he was pursuing.  Only his prey mattered.
He cared for nothing else
He lost altitude without noticing it, sinking in pursuit of the sinking enemy.  The pounding of blood in his veins, his dry mouth, the excitement before the kill, all of it kept him narrowly aware of the chase.  Only the chase.  He noticed a green hedge ahead of him and jumped it with a tug of his lever, gaining altitude for a moment.
Suddenly, bullets came at him from the front, joining the bullets of his pursuer.  Ground battery bullets.  Futilely, he thought he needed to escape.  Turn tail.  Make for home.
Too late.
He had time to think that he was over enemy lines; that he had been an idiot; that he had violated his own rules, pursuing an enemy into the mouth of danger.  He always told new men in his squadron not to fly too low; not to pursue enemy behind their lines; not to–
Bullets tore into his flesh.
Hot pain ripped his skin and muscles and nerves.  Bullets hit his legs; one shattered his knee.  The convulsion of his pain was cut short by a volley of shots drilling into the soft flesh of his stomach.
A fiery hot bullet pierced his chest.  Unbearable pain blurred his vision as his rib broke under the impact.  His heart trembled, fibrillated, as — stricken — it sought to pump blood to veins it could no longer reach.
He was dead.
He knew he was dead, and yet his head remained clear.  His lungs filled with blood and he felt as though he were being pulled under water — drowned.  His fingers, of their own accord, turned off the engine of the plane.
He didn’t want to go down in flames.  A fiery death had filled all his nightmares for months. Death, yes.  But not in flames.
His body shook uncontrollably, and the mouth he desperately opened couldn’t gather breath into his flooded lungs.
The sharp, salty taste of his own blood, mingled with the lingering sweet traces of the biscuits and marmalade he’d eaten for breakfast.
He thought of his mother and his sister Ilse.  When Germany lost the war — and Manfred had known for some time that Germany would lose — his mother and his sister would be defenseless, at the mercy of the enemy.  If only Lothar— But his younger brother could not be counted on to take responsibility for his family.  Or for himself.
Manfred had known that for some time, too.
He felt cold.  Much too cold.  His body twitched and wrenched spasmodically, in a final, senseless dance.
Why did death take so long?  He couldn’t breathe.  Why did he remain alive?
His plane spiraled towards the ground.
He pulled his goggles off, threw them from him, irrationally trying to remove the red haze that obscured his sight.
His heavy leather flight jacket, his leather coveralls, his fur flight boots, all of those were no obstacle to the cold wind that whipped around and around him as he went down, down.  Blood bubbled out of his mouth.
Lights flashed through his blurred vision and he heard odd voices speaking a language he couldn’t understand.  He caught English words amid the gibberish, “transport” and “time” and “now, now, now, now.”
Hands grabbed him and pulled him.  Celestial beings were unduly rough.  Who would have known the angels spoke English? Manfred tried to remember a prayer, but couldn’t.  And he’d never been taught to pray in English.
Light expanded around him, and yet he fell into darkness.

16 thoughts on “From The Trunk”

  3. Actually, there’s a good bit of stuff you’d just have to make up. We still don’t know for sure who killed the Red Baron.

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    1. Actually there are three. Now you have to imagine me saying this with a German accent: It requires Discipline! Seriously, it does. I need to finish the stuff under contract. So, the Baron Von Richthofen is looking at March next year, if he’s very lucky

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  6. I like this, but I have a slight problem with it. See I’m a serious airplane fan, and there are things about it that didn’t sit well with my understanding of the Dr-1, the Fokker triplane he was flying that day. Mind you, it could be that I’m just being picky, but if you would like to discuss this more I’d be happy to.

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      1. I can relate. Pilots speak in their own technical language. One can read something like this (http://rwebs.net/avhistory/flight.htm), and not get the finer points unless one is intimate with the subject.

        The main issue I see is that you seemed to have missed that a plane is controlled by the stick (or joystick), AND by the rudder pedals. The Dr-1 was notorious for its maneuverability, meaning it was a flighty as a race horse on ice skates, and twice as tricky. It also had major torque issues from the rotating engine/prop. If you have ever spun a bicycle wheel, and then held it up by the axle, you have an idea. If left unchecked it will slowly rotate to one side. On the Dr-1 multiply that force by 20.

        What this means is the Dr-1 needed constant rudder input with the feet to fly. Especially with the right foot always pushing on the pedal to counteract the rotating force of the engine. The huge torque also meant it could rapidly turn left, but was a dog turning right. Pilots at the time knew these limitations, and tried to work around them. So if a Dr-1 was on your tail, you turned right whenever you could. Also because the Dr-1 was notoriously slow, you could always escape it by diving, or hitting the throttle (or both). Everyone knew if you turned left in front of a Dr-1, especially a red painted one, you might as well pick your plot.

        If Richthofen was hit in the right leg, then the plane was at that point uncontrollable, unless he killed the engine. The Dr-1 also produced a huge amount of drag, so when you cut the power, it flew like well behaved brick. High as he was (I’m guessing based on your story he was maybe 200 feet above ground) he had probably not much more then 6 seconds until the wheels touched the ground.

        Lastly, in English one says they “pulled-up” when talking about making their plane climb. So when Richthofen sees the hedge he would either “pull-up on the stick” (I know, the language is not logical) or “pull back on the stick”. Either one works.

        My apologies for sounding pedantic. I wrote a novel in which the main character loves basketball, but I discovered I had only a limited knowledge of the subject (hey, who has time for sports when there is writing to be done?). Fortunately for me my neighbor happens to love basketball, and was happy to point out where my technical language ran afoul of reality. His knowledge allowed the novel read more authentic, which was a true benefit. I’m hoping this post will have a similar, albeit smaller, benefit to yours.

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        1. You don’t sound pedantic. I’ll try to post here when I’m working on it, and if you get a chance and still remember send me an email then. I’ll shamelessly use you as a resource. The point of being a good writer is to SHAMELESSLY use the experts. BTW I based the sequence of what he did and where he was hit on Dale Titler’s The Day The Red Baron died. But this was written… ten years ago and I’m now too far from it to know the other books I used. I’ll be in touch. TRUST me. The quickest way to my heart is to give me expertise for free I can’t otherwise get and don’t have. :)

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          1. and again I was sure my knowledge was incomplete. This was a proposal chapter. I intended to either research more or find an expert as soon as it sold. It didn’t. Now it will wait till I have time to research again.

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  7. Cool. As long as you understand my knowledge is strictly limited to aerodynamics, and not to things like “What really happened that fateful day”. As far as I know you got the sequence of events right, perhaps even his motivations. I just know the Dr-1 was singular in its design and handling. Singular enough that it will effect your story, albeit slightly.

    Glad to know I’m not the only one who will write first, and error check later.

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    1. Well,when I was doing this I had to get out proposals, sometimes several in a year, about half of which never sold. Because they weren’t paying me crazy amounts per book, I minimized my investment. PARTICULARLY since I might need to kill the novel unborn, as it were. But yeah, um… if you guys want I can talk about my method of research. Since I do heavy-research historicals it’s important to pace/distribute research. Do too much at the beginning and, at least if you’re like me, you might never write the book. Do all of it in the end and you’ll have a mess you can’t fix. So… there are ways around it. And, btw, since this is a time-traveling story and he ends up flying futuristic machines in fighting aliens, aerodynamics are what I need.

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      1. Cool. I figured you were kidnapping Richthofen for exactly that reason, as the guy was by all accounts a natural pilot. It makes sense that you need to him to fly something in the future.
        I appreciate the minimal investment strategy. Its a good one. Your time is one of the only assets in which you have almost complete control. It makes sense that you would manage it well.
        I’ve yet to have a story idea that required much in the way of historical research, but I can see why you would want to keep such an investment to a minimum until you have a better idea if you’re going to get paid for it or not. All ideas are not the same, and some are going to pay you better than others, if for no other reason than because an editor will buy it. You may at times feel charitable, but you are not running a charity.

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