WAR

on the last day of July 1917, the Third Battle of Ypres began, and the RFC,
like the BEF, began another maximum effort. Two-seater squadrons on contact
patrol and observation missions, and single-seater squadrons on ground attack
and high offensive patrols swarmed over the lines.
sorties
On the same day, Kogenluft {Kommandierende General der Luftstreitkrdjte—
the Commanding General of the German air service) authorized the transfer of
Leutnant Werner Voss to Jasta 10 as Fiihrer at the request of Rittmeister Manfred
von Richthofen. It was a good choice by the Circus Leader, who made very few
bad ones, for Werner Voss was a good man—or boy, rather. He was only 20
years old. (At that, he was not the only boy under 21 to command his own
squadron). He had learned to fly at 19, had turned 20 during "Bloody April."
He would never be twenty-one.
Werner Voss was born on April 13, 1897, in Krefeld, on the left bank
of the Lower Rhine, not far from Essen. A member of the local militia company,
the Krefeld Hussars, he was sent with his
unit to Lorraine on Mobilization where,
like many other dismounted cavalrymen, he found the trenches more unpleasant
than the war. He applied for flying service and was accepted in August 1915, by
which time he had won the Iron Cross First Class—at 17 years of age.
His first flying duty was as an observer, after some months of which he
became a pilot, being assigned in May 1916 to Kagohl 1, the old Ostend Carrier
Pigeons. He flew through the Battle of the Somme and saw every single man he
had known on coming into the unit killed. In July 1916 he had gone on leave,
Voss.
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