Beside a narrow road Vaux-sur-Somme, France, is a modest memorial to the most well-known fighter pilot in history: Baron Manfred Friedrich Freiherr von Richtofen, the Red Baron.
Richtofen scored 80 victories in air-to-air combat before being killed in his last dogfight over France. Even in his last moments, fatally wounded, he landed his plane before dying in his cockpit of a chest wound on April 21, 1918. The previous April, von Richtofen scored 22 victories in air-to-air combat.
The single-engine, three-winged plane had a top speed of just over 100 mph. It was built on a steel-tube frame covered with canvas.
The memorial is a series of four monochrome metal panels at reveal the image above only when the viewer stands directly in front of them.
The Ace of Aces of World War I was born on May 2, 1892. We share a birthdate. His remains were finally interred in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1975, a year before I began a three-year tour in that Germany city with the American Army. I was 26 years old when I left Germany in 1979. The Red Baron was 26 years old when he died in his Fokker Dr1 fighter plane in France.
There are only 365 days in a year, so I know that coincidences are simply what happens when one lives a lot of years, but I love coincidences anyway.
Posts about traveling in France and neighboring countries in February 2022:
My favorite restaurant is a victim of COVID.
The Waterloo Battlefield.
The Red Baron Memorial.
High Performance Cars in a garage in Versailles.
Talking about Fathers and Careers at lunch.
