The second youngest

Text: Richard Plos

Illustration: Antonis Karydys

Cat. No. 8483

A man on one of the many hospital beds is breathing rapidly, a worried nurse regularly wipes the beads of sweat on his forehead. The slender young man with delicate features and premature wrinkles around his eyes suffered a gunshot wound to his thigh in an aerial combat a few days ago and lost a lot of blood because of it. But that doesn’t worry the doctors nearly as much as the inflammation that is slowly but surely poisoning his entire body. Just twenty years old, Olivier Freiherr von Beaulieu-Marconnay is losing his fight for life, meanwhile far away in Germany a paper-pusher is now rushing to bestow the highest honour, the Pour le Mérite, on the exceptional young man before his death...

Two months shy of his eighteenth birthday, Olivier was already promoted from cadet to the rank of lieutenant as a member of the Fourth Cavalry Regiment (Dragoner Regiment von Bredow Nr. 4). When he switched from horses to planes, he took the stylized 4D badge as his personal symbol to adorn his planes. The Jasta 18, led by the vigorous Rudolf Berthold, was Olivier’s first air unit from December 1, 1917, and subsequently, after a major reshuffle orchestrated by Berthold as the newly appointed commander of JG II, he and all his comrades became part of Jasta 15.

The young fighter, whom his colleagues called “Bauli”, waited nearly half a year for his first kill. Why? In the spring of 1918, Jasta 15 was flying new Siemens-Schuckert D.III fighters, which were forbidden to fly over the front line into enemy territory, lest the new aircraft fall into enemy hands. This noticeably limited the opportunities for combat, which was reflected in the persistent zero on Olivier's fighter account. But on May 28 a formation of AR.2 reconnaissance Dorands flew over the front line and one of them became Olivier’s prey. His account began to grow rapidly with the arrival of new Fokkers D.VII. During June he added seven victories, with six more in August. With a tally of thirteen victories, he then left his unit to take command of Jasta 19 on September 2, just two weeks before his twentieth birthday.

Olivier Freiherr von Beaulieu-Marconnay was the representative of fighter pilots who no longer knew the “gentlemanly” duels fought by the pre-war aviation pioneers, who in many cases were friends until the outbreak of the war. The air battles of 1918 were fierce, and the fallen old knights were replaced by new energetic men whose zeal and aggressiveness were just what the new D.VII Fokkers needed. Olivier took one of these great aircraft with him when he left Jasta 15. It was a machine powered by a BMW IIIa engine, which made these planes better climbers and also capable of higher speed. No wonder pilots loved them. Beaulieu-Marconnay was given an aircraft that was originally intended for Rudolf Berthold, commander of the entire JG II. Olivier had it repainted to match the color scheme of his new unit, notably a yellow nose instead of red. For more information on this subject, the reader is referred to the kit Cat. No. 8483, the boxart of which is the work of our Greek collaborator Antonis Karydys. It depicts Olivier's D.VII in one of the many battles with American pilots on French Spads XIII. This time the painting is not reflecting any specific action. It is just a scene that represents the character and participants of those battles.

The young commander of Jasta 19 met his destiny on October 18, 1918. On that day, Jasta 19 pilots engaged British fighters in a crossfire and one bullet hit Olivier's thigh. Some sources state that it was a bullet fired by a fellow German fighter, but evidence for this claim is lacking. The heavily bleeding pilot was still able to get his plane to the airfield and land. He lost consciousness shortly afterwards and was taken to hospital in Arlon, Belgium. The wound became inflamed, and his condition continued to deteriorate. The Luftstreitkräfte command was already in process of awarding him the Pour le Mérite after his twentieth victory, but official procedures usually took four to five weeks. Now, three weeks after reaching the threshold required for the award of the highly valued decoration, its prospective recipient was lying in critical condition in hospital. Sources differ as to the events at the end of Olivier’s life. Some state that he learned of the award six hours before his death, others that the information had not reached him alive. However, the “Blue Max” could not have been awarded posthumously, so the official report must have stated the first option ... In any case, Olivier became the second youngest pilot to be awarded this high decoration.