Towns, villages, hills and forests were slipping away below me. I did not recognize a thing. I tried in vain to compare the picture beneath my map. Everything was different. I found it impossible to recognize the country. Later on I discovered the impossibility of finding my way for I was flying about sixty miles outside my map.
After having flown for a couple of hours my guide and I resolved to land somewhere in the open. That is always unpleasant. One cannot tell how the surface of the ground is in reality. If one of the wheels gets into a hole one's box is converted into matchwood.
[Illustration: LIEUT. SCHÄFER SPEAKING WITH ANOTHER MEMBER OF THE SQUADRON]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN RICHTHOFEN WITH HIS MASCOT DOG "MORITZ"]
We tried to read the name written upon a station, but of course that was impossible, it was too small. So we had to land. We did it with a heavy heart for nothing else could be done. We looked for a meadow which appeared suitable from above and tried our luck. Close inspection unfortunately showed that the meadow was not as pleasant as it seemed. The fact was obviously proved by the slightly bent frame of our machine. We had made ourselves gloriously ridiculous. We had first lost our way and then smashed the machine. So we had to continue our journey with the commonplace conveyance, by railway train. Slowly but surely, we reached Berlin. We had landed in the neighborhood of Leipzig. If we had not landed so stupidly, we would certainly have reached Berlin. But sometimes you make a mistake whatever you do.
Some days later I arrived in Schweidnitz, my own town. Although I got there at seven o'clock in the morning, there was a large crowd at the station. I was very cordially received. In the afternoon various demonstrations took place to honor me, among others, one of the local Boy Scouts.
It became clear to me that the people at home took a vivid interest in their fighting soldiers after all.
[35] One can find no trace of any deliberate attempt to organize an anti-Richthofen Circus in the R. F. C., and therefore one assumes that these were merely three gallant lads on new type Spads who went out deliberately on their own account to look for trouble, and found more than they expected.