WAR

Stationed in home country near Breslau in Silesia, von Richthofen spent
two years with the Uhlans riding and hunting. In 1913 he entered the Imperial
Cross-Country Race for officers. Galloping across an open stretch of meadow,
his mount put her foot in a rabbit hole and Manfred took a terrific spill. With
agony in one shoulder he remounted and continued the race, which he won. He
then submitted himself to a doctor. The medical examination revealed that he
had a broken collarbone; the race revealed that he had grit.
When the war began he was sent first to Kielce in Poland, 150 miles east
of Breslau, but within two weeks was transferred to the Western Front to be
attached to the Crown Prince's Fifth Army in the Ardennes. There he had his
first brush with the enemy.
The French, wearing their famous pre-war red pantaloons, had advanced
in close order and had been mowed down by the Germans. The Crown Prince
called up the cavalry to reconnoitre the enemy's new positions. This was the
fundamental tactical role of the cavalry and the simplest, most direct way to
execute it was to draw the enemy's fire.
Manfred rode forward with his squadron and scanned the terrain. It was
hilly, rolling country with wooded ravines and naked upland wastes. Not the
kind of country one would ride into without keeping an eye peeled. The eager
young Uhlans made that omission for they ran straight into an ambush. It was
probably a spur-of-the-moment affair else none of them would have survived.
The lead men pulled up short at a barricade on a forest path and took the first
shots from a concealed body of riflemen. Several men and horses fell and Manfred
wheeled his mount around and signaled for his men to close up and follow
him out.
"They certainly had surprised us," he admitted ruefully.
He rode a number of similar missions after that, but the stabilization of
the Front put an end to the tactical use of mounted troops and the cavalry officers
were assigned to new duties. To his disgust Manfred became a supply officer;
he chafed at rear-echelon inactivity. He was afraid that the war would be over
before he could get back into it, and he was envious of his younger brother
Lothar who seemed to be in the thick of it. The war dragged on, however, and
he began to consider transferring to some other branch of the service in the
hope that this would bring him back into action. At the end of May 1915, his
application for transfer into the flying service was approved and he was accepted
as one of 30 officers to be detached for training at Cologne with Fliegerersatzabteilung
Nr. 7.
the aviation firm of Morane-Saulnier, at Villacoublay near Paris, was famous
before the war for a classy series
won for the company by Roland Garros, a well-known pre-war aviator, who had
of sport monoplanes. A number of honors was
established the world altitude record in December 1912, and had been the first
man to fly across the Mediterranean Sea, in September 1913. He was a wealthy,
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