Tail End Charlie

Sad Return from Vacation

Text: Jan Bobek

At the beginning of June, I returned from a short vacation with two friends. We spent a few days in South Tyrol, where both of my friends, newly retired, participated in a marathon that started in Cortina d'Ampezzo and finished in Dobbiaco (Toblach). As the youngest member of our group, I served as the driver during the race, responsible for spare shoes, drinks or chocolate, and other support tasks. Not only am I unable to run the way my older friends can, but from the photos taken during this holiday, I discovered with great horror that I need to lose a lot of weight.

Of course, my friends couldn't escape my aviation history hobby, so I made them pose for a photo as a live painting at Toblach airfield. They imitated a well-known photograph from the early summer of 1915, showing a Pfalz A.I from the Bavarian Feldflieger Abteilung 9 at this aerodrome. The aircraft was painted red and white to give the impression that it was an Austro-Hungarian aircraft. Although the German Empire was not yet at war with Italy at that time, FFA 9b was carrying out bombing raids on Italian targets with such painted aircraft.

I must also mention that, thanks to my friends' foresight, I acquired a publication on the air war over the Dolomites in a shop at Passo di Falzarego.

But to get back to the topic of returning from vacation, we stopped in Munich on our way to Prague. I visited my favourite bookstore, Christian Schmidt Fachbuchhandlung, to pick up the books I had ordered. My order was perfectly prepared, but Uwe, who works there with Gabi Schmidt, gave me a shock. He informed me that at the end of August this year, after more than half a century, their store would be closing. I was left staring at him with my mouth agape, and the information that they were having a discount on books because of it didn't make me feel much better.

After all, Schmidt's bookstore isn't just any bookstore. It specializes in vehicles, military equipment, and military history. For decades, it has been literally a beacon in this field of literature for fans  worldwide. This bookstore is not only a symbol of reliability and honesty, but the books are always packed with extraordinary care for their journey to clients.

I first learned about this bookstore in the late '80s when Rudolf Waniek, the head of our model club, showed me Schmidt's book catalogue. It was filled with titles from all over the world, each with short and very concise descriptions. As soon as the Iron Curtain fell, I went to the bookstore with my friends from the club. We drove a Škoda 120, so you can imagine that it was a long but not very comfortable drive. At one point, we were even overtaken by a deer while driving uphill. It was only then that we realized the engine was running on just three cylinders.

The bookstore made me feel like a kid in a candy store. My heart danced. For the first time, I was able to browse through the Model Art publications and bought a few with the German marks I had saved. By that time, I was already very focused on Japanese aviation history.

Later I went to the bookstore with my friend Vašek Knotek, my classmate from Japanese at the State Language School. We took a small bus from Prague to Munich Central Station. We then walked about 8 kilometers to the bookstore, to save money to invest in books. With the advent of credit cards, which happened quite soon, everything became easier and parcels began to travel from Munich to Prague.

With the introduction of the internet, the Christian Schmidt bookshop website was also launched. Its content was identical to the catalogue, which quite logically stopped being published after a few years. Yet I still have a few of them in my collection. But most importantly, thanks to this bookstore, I have a large number of publications from which I continuously draw information for myself and my colleagues.

For those who have not visited this bookstore, it is now probably obvious  why I will miss it so much. For me, too, it was a beacon in my segment of the book market. To the Schmidt family and the other people who have cared for their clients for more than half a century, thank you very much.

And now I don't know where I'm going to buy books. Sometimes books come to me from Amazon with shoddy packaging and damage that could never happen with the Schmidts.

This bookstore has become a beacon of specialized literature for me.

Honza Kaše (second from left), one of my gurus on World War I topics, visited Schmidt's with me once more in June. Gabi and Uwe took this selfie with us as a memento.

A photo of Toblach Airfield from 1915.

My friends posing for a live picture at the same aerodrome 109 years later.