(…)

  Dawn on April 27th found the airfields around Savenay wet with dew and crowded with exhausted mechanics working under lanterns. The men of Escadrille MS 26, No. 39 Squadron, and the attached American volunteers moved among their machines with stiff shoulders and bruised faces, each carrying the fatigue of yesterday’s battle in their bones. The area had been recently conquered, and the field they were in, which acted as their new airfield, remained pockmarked in places. A scent of burnt wood and metal hung in the air.

  Garros stood by his Nieuport, bandaged cheek itching under the gauze. An orderly handed him a cup of black coffee; he drank it in three swallows and stared eastward where the first light out of the mist turned the ruins of Saint-Nazaire into dark teeth. “They will come back,” he said. Bonnier ran a cloth over the leading edge of his wing, checking for any hidden cracks. “The Germans?” he asked. Garros nodded. “They have lost their Zeppelins, but not their pride. Their General wants the sky today. Our own wants the same. So we go and argue with machine guns.” On the British side of the field, Robinson climbed into a patched B.E.12. The riggers had worked through the night to replace a torn wing panel and straighten a bent strut. He ran his hand along the freshly doped canvas and murmured, “One more day, old girl.” A French liaison officer quickly briefed them. “…German forces are withdrawing north. Our artillery will harass their columns all day. Your task is to keep enemy fighters off our observation planes and, if possible, to disrupt any organized air cover they attempt to mount. No more Zeppelins are reported, but assume Jasta 11 is in the area.” Lufbery flexed his bandaged arm and tightened the strap of his goggles. “We go without the big targets, then,” he said. “Just us and them.” Garros said, “We have done worse. Mount up.” Engines coughed, spat smoke, then caught. The morning air filled with the deep drone of propellers and the mingled scents of castor oil and exhaust. One by one, the planes bumped down the field and rose into the mist.

  (…)

  From above, the Loire front looked different without the looming silhouettes of the airships. The sky seemed bigger, the horizon less menacing. But the German fighters were there. As the French and British climbed to six thousand feet, Garros saw a dark wedge of Fokker machines rising from the northeast. Richthofen led them; the red fuselage of his triplane was unmistakable even at a distance. Bonnier muttered, “He wasted no time.” Robinson, climbing more slowly, glanced up and saw the converging formations. “Here we go,” he said. “Same dance, different day.” The two sides closed the gap. No one fired at long range. They all understood now that altitude and position were worth more than wasted bullets. At the last moment, the formations dissolved, splintering into pairs and singles. Garros rolled onto his back and let a Dr. I overshoot, firing as it passed. Bonnier found himself chasing a silver-marked German, only to be bounced by a second and forced into a spiraling dive.

  Lufbery flew with cold focus, choosing angles and avoiding the tangle until he saw an opportunity. Below them, two French observation planes tried to cross the German retreat route, escorted by Sopwiths. Richthofen saw them and turned, dark intent in his movements. Robinson saw the same and angled his B.E.12 to intercept. “Not today, Baron,” he growled.

  (…)

  The duel between Richthofen and Robinson began almost by accident and then solidified into something inevitable. Robinson slid his heavier fighter between the Baron and the French two-seaters. He fired a warning burst, forcing a Fokker wingman to break off. Richthofen’s eyes narrowed behind his goggles as he watched the British machine with its single pilot, thick wings, and nose-mounted gun. He had crossed paths with Robinson yesterday over the river, seen him strike at the Zeppelin, and then peel away. “There you are, you little industrious Englander,” he said under his breath. He pulled his triplane into a climb, then dropped in behind the B.E.12 at a shallow angle.

  Robinson saw the flash of red from the corner of his eyes and banked hard. The first pass brought no hits; both men were testing each other. They circled, traded altitude for speed, and back again. Robinson felt the controls strain as he tried to keep his heavier aircraft in tight turns. “He’s lighter than you,” he told himself. “So don’t play his game. Change the script.” He pushed the nose down abruptly, diving toward the ragged clouds over the estuary. Richthofen followed but held a slightly higher line, refusing to squander his energy advantage. Robinson let his machine pick up speed, then pulled into a climbing turn that brought him briefly under the Baron. He squeezed the trigger. Bullets walked up through empty air as the red Dr. I slid sideways with an almost casual grace. Richthofen fired a short, precise reply. Splinters flew from Robinson’s right wing spar. The B.E.12 shuddered. Robinson hissed between his teeth. “Good, but not good enough.” They climbed again, their duel pulling them slightly away from the main melee. Garros, locked in his own fight, glimpsed the pair for an instant, seeing Richtofen’s red streak and a heavier British shape circling like two hawks at war.

  (…)

  Higher and higher they went, the air thinning, engines beginning to labor. Robinson could feel the strain in every vibration of his machine. The Baron maintained position above and behind, waiting. That patience unnerved Robinson more than any wild attack could have. He tried a feint, rolling right and then snapping left, but Richthofen mirrored him with uncanny timing. For several long seconds, they flew in parallel, the German slightly above, both pilots staring at each other across a slant of sky. Robinson lifted his hand off the stick for a heartbeat and wagged his wings once in acknowledgment.

  He did not know if the Baron understood, but he felt compelled to do it. This was not a skirmish anymore; it was a reckoning. Richthofen tipped his own wings in reply. Then he dove. The first burst tore through the B.E.12’s tailplane, shredding fabric. Robinson rolled, feeling the controls go mushy. He pushed the nose down to regain control, then pulled into a shallow climbing turn and fired back. His rounds grazed the Fokker’s lower wing; a small piece of fabric fluttered away.

  However, it was not enough to unnerve the German ace. They passed head-on, each firing in a brief blaze. Robinson felt something slam into his chest like a hammer. He didn’t realize he’d been hit until his hand slipped on the stick and his vision narrowed. The cockpit seemed to tilt. A cold wind rushed through the new holes in the fuselage, carrying the smell of burnt powder and blood. “So this is it,” he thought. The B.E.12 dipped. He tried to correct, but his strength flowed away with the warmth in his jacket. Below, the Loire gleamed, silver and indifferent. Richthofen banked around for another pass, saw the British machine wobbling, its propeller windmilling as the engine coughed.

  But the man did not fire, since there was no need. The duel was decided. He flew past at a respectful distance. For a heartbeat, Robinson saw the red triplane gliding alongside him, the pilot’s face pale and expressionless behind goggles. He raised his hand weakly from the cockpit rim. The Baron lifted one gloved hand in return, a small, grim salute between enemies. Then gravity claimed the British machine fully. The B.E.12 rolled onto its back, nose dropping. Robinson’s last sensation was not fear but an odd, detached sorrow that he would not see England again, nor the lines he had defended from the air. The ground rushed up. The impact sent a dull boom across the fields north of the estuary.

  (…)

  On the French side of the lines, a group of infantrymen saw a British aircraft fall from the dogfight like a wounded bird. One of them, namely an American from the Big Red One attached temporarily to a liaison unit, shaded his eyes. “He’s not pulling out of that,” he said quietly. The plane hit in a plume of dirt near a hedgerow. No parachute, no sign of movement. “Poor bastard,” another muttered. Overhead, the fight continued, but something in it had shifted.

  The British and French pilots, hearing Robinson had not returned when the recall flares went up, felt the loss like a physical ache. Garros saw the empty slot in the landing pattern as he brought his Nieuport in, and knew before anyone said a word. Lufbery sat on an overturned crate after landing, hands stained with oil and blood, and stared at the horizon. “Here goes our Zeppelin killer,” he said. A dispatch rider arrived from corps headquarters, breathless, to report that the German retreat north degenerated into a stumbling withdrawal under heavy artillery harassment. Without Zeppelins to guide them, the German guns had overshot, undershot, and wasted shells on empty fields.

  The Entente airmen had paid a price for that blindness, and Robinson (along with other, lesser-known pilots) had paid the highest. That evening, as the sun dipped behind the shattered skeletons of the shipyards, the remaining pilots gathered briefly by the edge of the field. Someone produced a bottle of rough wine. They drank in silence, then poured a measure onto the earth. Garros said, “To William Leefe Robinson. He made the sky expensive today.” Lufbery added, “And to the others who did not come back. May tomorrow’s sky be no easier for the enemy than it was for us.” The conversation drifted onto engines, bullet supply, and repairs because it had to. Planes would fly again in the morning. Somewhere to the north, at his own field, Richthofen wrote a brief report noting an enemy machine downed in honorable combat, then folded it with the rest. The war rolled forward, indifferent to the names it consumed. Above the Loire, the wind carried away the smoke of war.

  Bridge of dreadnought battlecruiser Seydlitz

  Celebes Sea, April 26th, 1916

  The sound of the engine rumbled through the hull as the ship steamed ahead at full speed. Outside, the sun shone bright, and the ship’s prow slashed the waves, splashing sea and foam to the side as it sped northward.

  The lone German battlecruiser sailed through the Macassar Strait, trying to escape a fate that led to oblivion. Its commander, the now-famous (or infamous if you spoke to the British) was Admiral Franz von Hipper, the very man who had sunk several Entente battleships, and fought his way to the Panama Canal and then back to German Southwest Africa, German East Africa, the Indian Ocean, and now the Pacific.

  The man was lost in thought, as his people around him buzzed about. The raider was approaching an enemy collier, flying an American flag. “Sir, the ship’s name is Yorktown’s Pride,” said Seydlitz Captain Moritz von Egidy (also acting as his second in command). “They have accepted to surrender as per our signals and our shot across their bow.” “Very well, Captain. Send the assault party and the prize crew on a motorboat, and then, when the marines have control of the ship.”

  Running across Yorktown’s Pride was finally a little bit of luck, after weeks and months of fleeing, desperation, and being stuck in Batavia. Seydlitz’s coal was still at a decent level, but the German vessel didn’t have enough fuel to do what Hipper planned , and thus, the collier came in very handy. His idea was to repeat Spee’s odyssey across the Pacific and attempt to reach neutral Chile, one of the last countries in South America still sympathetic to the Reich.

  The road to freedom and escape wasn’t going to be easy, apart from the very real problem of coal. Once the Makassar Strait was behind them, the Germans would have to sail across the Celebes Sea, then South of Mindanao, the Philippine Sea, the Central Pacific, and then South America. All the while, it would have to keep clear of the British squadron of Admiral David Beatty and the American squadron of Admiral Fulham pursuing it close behind, as well as a rumored Japanese battleship squadron near the Philippines.

  There was just no way around it. Seydlitz was out of position, lost in the immensity of the Pacific Southwest, and in dire need of true luck to hope to survive. The Entente wasn’t stupid and had learned from von Spee’s epic a year earlier. First and foremost, the Japanese and the Australians had occupied every remaining German territory in the Pacific, removing any possibility for Hipper to try and make for a coaling base. The distance involved in making this work was immense, and the sea between the Makassar Strait and Chile was fraught with dangers.

  “Yes, Admiral. The Seebataillon Marines detachment is already departing,” answered von Egidy, while Hipper saw the six motorboats speed through the calm sea toward the American vessel.

  The Seebataillon detachment aboard SMS Seydlitz numbered roughly eighty hardened naval infantrymen, drawn from the elite III. Seebataillon in Wilhelmshaven. Led by a Marineoffizier, with a pair of seasoned Feldwebel maintaining iron discipline, they formed a compact landing company divided into rifle and machine-gun sections. Their appearance set them apart from the ship’s bluejackets: dark-blue working jackets, canvas trousers, and the soft naval cap bearing the gold-stitched tally “SMS SEYDLITZ”. In action, they traded parade elegance for practicality, with rolled sleeves, leather boots, ammunition pouches, and anti-flash hoods. Each Marine carried a Gewehr 98 rifle and bayonet, while NCOs were armed with P08 Lugers. Two MG08/15 teams provided suppressive fire during boarding or landing operations. On board, they guarded magazines, manned exposed machine-guns, and served as the ship’s internal security force. Ashore, they could seize coal depots, wireless stations, or collier crews (like in this case) with professional, disciplined precision.

  (…) Bridge of dreadnought battleship Neptune, 200 nautical miles to the south (…)

  “Sir,” said the communication officer, walking out of the telegraph room with a message that he handed to Admiral David Beatty, the commander of Task Force B, the fleet he commanded in pursuit of the elusive German raider Seydlitz. Beaty unfolded the piece of paper and read it. “German battlecruiser stopped us … SOS… Makassar Strait, coordinate…” He stopped reading and handed the paper to his second in command, the Captain of the Neptune. “Captain, let’s head for those coordinates.” “Yes, Admiral.”

  Beatty then walked to the bridge’s viewport, crossing his arms behind his back. “Lieutenant Gatsby,” he said to the communication officer, still standing on the bridge, as he expected Beatty to give him more instructions. “Yes, Admiral?” “Contact Japanese Admiral Tanin of the Imperial South Seas Squadron to let him know that he might have a fish to catch.” “Indeed, Sir.”

  Admiral Yamaya Tanin was one of the most senior Japanese commanders in the Imperial Navy and also commanded a large Japanese task force patrolling the South Seas and the newly conquered Japanese territories in the Marshalls, the Marianas, and beyond, which were taken from Germany in 1914 to 1915.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE WAR IN THE EAST

  “The conflict no longer has fronts but has only demands. And those demands never cease.”

  Erich von Falkenhayn, German Minister of War, 1916

  The Dardanelles, Part 1, April 24th, 1916

  (…) Entrance of the Dardanelles Strait, dawn (…)

  “Give the order to fire, and signal Settsu to do the same,” said Japanese Admiral Heihachiro Togo, having just received the wireless telegraph message from the combined fleet’s flagship, battleship Dreadnought, commanded by Admiral Sackville-Hamilton Carden, who was further north with his Mediterranean Squadron. “Yes, Admiral.”

  The same order was given along the Allied battle line, and the French, British, Japanese, and American battlewagons opened up in all their fury. Dawn came slowly over the Aegean, a thin gray band melting into the night horizon, when the sea itself seemed to tremble under the weight of the assembled armada. Never had the Entente mustered such a fleet in these waters. Row upon row of battleships, including Japanese, British, French, and American, had formed an iron crescent stretching from Cape Helles to the open sea, their silhouettes rising like floating fortresses beneath the pale morning light.

  At the center, the 1st Japanese Fleet (battleships Settsu and Kawachi) held their positions with rigid precision, their rising-sun ensigns snapping sharply in the wind. To their port, the British Mediterranean Squadron unfurled across the waves: Benbow, Conqueror, Audacious, and the new Orion, each escorted by their clusters of older pre-dreadnoughts. Funnels spat dense columns of coal smoke skyward until the fleet seemed wreathed in its own gathering storm.

  French tricolors fluttered above France and Paris, their heavy guns already trained on the Asian shore. Further south, the American battle line (Texas, Michigan, and their escorts) advanced with slow, regal purpose, their hulls carving smooth paths through the morning swell.

  The first broadside that erupted from the armada was not a sound but a convulsion. Dozens of 12, 13.5, and 14-inch guns recoiled in echeloned synchronization, hurling incandescent shells across the narrow strait. From the Japanese center to the American right flank, the line of dreadnoughts lit up in a sweeping arc of flame as if the sunrise sped horizontally across the sea.

  The air shook. The sea buckled. The bombardment was so intense that destroyers rolling in the lee of the big ships felt shockwaves slam into their plating as if they were being struck by surf.

  Across the strait, the forts of Sedd-ül Bahr and Kumkale, which were rebuilt by German engineers, reinforced with new Krupp steel turrets, buried magazines, and thick latticework concrete in late 1915 and early 1916, received the full fury of the attack. The first salvoes struck the outer parapets in great geysers of dust and flame, tearing away stones the size of oxen. Shells from Settsu landed directly atop the upper battery of Sedd-ül Bahr, smashing a gunhouse into twisted metal and heaving its 240-mm gun into the air like a child’s toy.

  Yet when the smoke cleared, the full truth emerged: these were no longer the crumbling forts of 1915. The new armored casemates, braced against plunging fire and reinforced with German-designed concrete layers, did not collapse. They shuddered, cracked, and spat out broken masonry, but their thickened embrasures opened again moments later. Hidden steel doors slid aside. Renewed muzzle flashes erupted from inside like the glow of volcanic vents.

  At Kumkale, on the other side of the Strait, the curtain of fire tore apart the old Ottoman barracks and gouged deep scars into the cliffside, but the rebuilt batteries, which were lowered, sunken, and shielded, survived. Shell after shell detonated uselessly against angled armor plates embedded in concrete. The new German 150-mm quick-firing line, untouched by the first volleys, sprang to life at once, sending streaks of counterfire toward the nearest British destroyers.