The Destruction of Von Richthofen

By C.C. Gaylord

Baron Manfred Von Richthofen, otherwise known as the Red Baron, was killed April 21st, 1918 in a dogfight over Sailly-le-Sec, near Corbie. He was attempting to shoot down an Australian pilot, Lieutenant May, when Canadian pilot Roy Brown attacked him from the rear. He was killed instantly from a bullet in the chest and came down in no-man’s-land in front of the trenches of the 33rd Australian Field Battery of the 5th Division. This poem commemorates his last flight.

Richthofen came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his triplane was gleaming in scarlet and gold,
And the sheen of his shells was like burning debris
Where the U-boat lurks nightly beneath the North Sea.

Like the leaves of the forest when summer appears,
So thick fell his shots `round Lieutenant May’s ears;
Like the leaves when before the mad tempest they fly,
So the son of Australia was swept from the sky.

For the Angel of Death seemed to be on his tail
And the Maxim guns pelted his biplane like hail;
And the heart of the victim waxed deadly and chill,
And Richthofen prepared for his 81st kill.

Then upon him falls Brown, to the aid of his friend,
And upon the Red Baron his bullets descend,
And the red Fokker falters, and slowly glides down
To land, unopposed, on the shell-battered ground.

And there sat the pilot, distorted and dead,
With the dew on his brow and his chest full of lead,
And the engine was silent, the Spandaus were still,
And the hand on the joystick bereft of its skill.

And the Huns from their lines are forced back like a tide,
And the Kaiser has run into Holland to hide,
And the long-boasted might of the Teutonic horde
Has melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.