The Second Medical Examination

Below are excerpts of Norman Franks' and Alan Bennett's book 'The Red Baron's last flight'. The book contains much more detail than below, and remains the ultimate reference on the subject. "On the morning of Monday 22 April, Colonel Thomas Sinclair, Consulting Surgeon, and Colonel John A Nixon (not Dixon, as sometimes recorded), Consulting Physician, both of the Army Medical Services and accredited to the British Fourth Army, arrived at Poulainville aerodrome... ...Colonel Sinclair and Colonel Nixon's report, dated 22 April 1918, was as follows: We have made a surface examination of the body of Captain Baron von Richthofen and find that there are only the entrance and exit wounds of one rifle bullet on the trunk. The entrance wound is on the right side about the level of the ninth rib, which is fractured, just in front of the posterior axillary line. The bullet appears to have passed obliquely backwards through the chest striking the spinal column, from which it glanced in a forward direction and issued on the left side of the chest at a level about two inches higher than its entrance on the right and about in the anterior axillary line. There was also a compound fracture of the lower jaw on the left side, apparently not caused by a missile - also some minor bruises on the head and face. The body was not opened - these facts were ascertained by probing the surface wounds."