WAR

so became enthusiastic about flying. Max lmmelmann resigned from the army to
enter the Technical College in Dresden, since he had decided he wanted to be an
engineer.
At the beginning of 1915 Ehrhardt got his wish and was transferred to the
Fliegertruppen, taking his air observer's training at Elsenmuhle. He was assigned
to a new field squadron, Fliegerabteilung 62, then in the process of forming up at
Berlin-Doberitz. In March 1915 Fl. Abt. 62 went to the Front, to Douai in
northern France. In May Max lmmelmann joined Oswald Boelcke and Ehrhardt
von Teubern there.
When Max lmmelmann joined Fl. Abt. 62 the morale of some German air
service men was low. The victories of Garros had inspired some extravagant
rumors, so that before he had been up to the lines once lmmelmann had heard
all manner of "horror tales." But young Max was indifferent to rumor. He knew
lmmelmann. Any landing
you can walk away
from is a good landing.
lmmelmann and von
Teubern
in an L.V.G. BIl prepare for
a mission armed with the
French machine gun.
that in the army you believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see.
He was sensible, confident . . . and inexperienced. Certainly, until he had seen
the war for himself, nobody else's
stories were going to worry him.
lmmelmann had been born in Dresden, September 21, 1890. At outbreak
of war he had reported to his regiment but had been disappointed to learn that
his unit was not scheduled to be moved immediately to the Front, so had applied
for aviation duty because aeroplanes appealed to his mechanical proclivities.
He was accepted for pilot training in late 1914, and passed his flight tests
in early 1915. When he reported to Douai and Fl. Abt. 62 he was still an under
officer, his promotion to Leutnant coming through at the end of July.
For their first operational flights together, lmmelmann and von Teubern
flew as pilot and observer in a general-purpose aeroplane of pre-war design. In
the spring of 1915 there was still little specialization in aeroplane design and
the machines of the first year of the war were not much different from the
machines of the years immediately preceding it. Garros and Fokker (and the men
who worked with them) changed all that, of course, and lmmelmann, as one of
the innovators of air fighting, made his contribution as well.
During June and July lmmelmann and von Teubern flew the usual variety
of observation missions. The first armament they received was a carbine, later
a machine pistol for Ehrhardt. Later still, they were given a French machine gun
from a captured aeroplane. This gun was rigged up on an improvised mounting
on the observer's seat (the front seat), but the benefit derived from it, if any,
was largely psychological. It seemed possible, in principle at least, to defend
oneself in the air in case one were attacked. The two young men felt themselves
to be rulers of the Front and presumably immune to harm. They flew high
(a mile) and fast (about 65 miles per hour). What else does it require to be
a ruler
In the evenings Boelcke, lmmelmann and von Teubern would join their
comrades at the Kasino and share a bottle of Burgundy. lmmelmann and von
Teubern, who did not smoke, would clear out before the air turned blue around
the card table. Boelcke was a quiet fellow, but a dangerous man at cards and,
according to
30
von Teubern, he always won.