Karl Allmenroeder

‘Manfred got his fighter squadron, consisting of four squadrons. In the meantime, he shot down his 54th, 55th and 56th generals. The newspapers report the death of Lieutenant Karl Allmenroeder. One piece of bad news after another. You have to hold on to your inner strength if you don't want it to wear you down. The unhappy mother. The handsome, fresh face of the twenty-one-year-old, who used to combine masculine seriousness with youthful freshness, is always before my eyes. The young German Eagle, leading 30 brave enemy airmen, crashed into an old German soldiers' cemetery, which lay between the lines and had been opened up by drumfire. The dead heroes picked up their brother. Manfred, who was unable to fly to Allmenroeder's funeral, wrote a letter to the dead man's father in which he described the end of his master student: ‘An English plane, which was at least 800 metres away, fired very few shots at this enormous distance (the usual combat distance is 100 or 50 metres or only the length of an aircraft). Karl's plane immediately made a left turn towards our lines. A sign that there was still a will in the aircraft. His comrades recognised that he had closed the petrol tap and entered a glide. This glide turned into a dive that never stopped... I couldn't wish for a better death than falling in aerial combat; it's a comfort to know that Karl didn't realise his end..."’