9.
WHO KILLED THE RED BARON?
Before the time of jet engines and kevlar, planes were pretty much wood and fabric during
WWI.
Flying technology was pretty new and definitely not easy during wartime.
This was a time when winning twenty aerial dogfights would guarantee a pilot would go
down in history as a legend of the skies.
The Bloody Red Baron of Germany was credited with downing 80 enemy aircraft!
The Baron went down in history as the greatest pilot of all time from either side of the
war.
On April 21, 1918, the Red Baron and his squadron attacked a formation of planes being flown
by British and Canadian pilots in France.
The Baron’s blood red triplane was soon on the tail of Canadian amateur pilot Lieutenant
Wilfred May.
The chase caught the attention of Canadian squadron commander Captain Arthur Roy Brown
who tried to help.
The Red Baron made a mistake and flew too far behind enemy lines.
Brown closed in on him and opened fire.
The planes flew over an Australian machine-gun unit on the ground who also opened fire.
The German Ace swerved to avoid one attack when from another angle a bullet struck him
in the chest, severely damaging his heart and lungs.
Somehow he mustered the courage to land his plane on the side of the road near Sailley-le-sac,
but by the time the Australian troops reached him, the Red Baron was dead- shot by a single
bullet.
Military historians often give Brown credit for shooting down the Red Baron, others argue
it was an Australian rifleman on the ground who delivered the fatal blow.
To this day, nobody knows who killed the Red Baron.
Canadian Captain Arthur “Roy” Brown, admitted that he didn’t see who killed him, and beyond
that never spoke much about the incident.
Various theories have narrowed down the likely shooter to three different Australian gunners,
with many pointing toward Sergeant Cedric Popkin, who was in an appropriate position
to shoot the Red Baron based on the angle of the bullet that hit him.
The Red Baron's unsound state of mind was also called into question.
For such an experienced and skilled pilot, he flew dangerously low over enemy territory
and became overly fixated on his target.
He may have been suffering brain damage from a recent injury, leading to what seemed like
a lack of judgment compared to his usual skill in decision making.
8.
ZEBRINA CREW’S DISAPPEARANCE In October 1917, the British sailing barge
Zebrina left Cornwall for France with a cargo of coal under the command of a man named Captain
Martin.
The trip should have taken around 30 hours, but the vessel failed to arrive at its destination.
French units found it two days later on Rozel Point south of Cherbourg, France, where it
had run aground.
The Zebrina appeared unharmed, and the crew was nowhere to be found.
There were no outward signs of what might have gone wrong.
The lifeboat was still in place, the galley fire was burning, and someone set the dinner
table for five people.
The crew’s clothing and belongings were still on board, along with the ship’s logbook,
which contained no suspicious entries.
There are many theories about what could have happened to the crew, whose disappearance
remains a mystery to this day.
One suggests the sailors went overboard in the storm while trying to secure everything
on deck, but this seems unlikely given the ship’s undamaged condition.
Another theory speculates that a German U-boat crew abducted the men aboard the Zebrina.
This is plausible since World War I was going on and especially since a nearby Allied vessel
had recently reported seeing a U-boat in the area.
Local historians uncovered records revealing that there were 23 people aboard the ship,
compared to the usual six.
This suggests that the British may have used the Zebrina as a Q-ship, which lured unsuspecting
U-boats into combat.
Perhaps this was the true nature of the voyage, and something went horribly wrong, tipping
the victory in the Germans’ favor.
But we may never know what happened to the crew aboard the ill-fated ghost ship.
What do you think happened to the crew of the Zebrina?
Let me know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already.
7.
PHOTOS OF A MYSTERY WOMAN
In 2013, a collection of private photographs dating back to World War I surfaced in northern
France.
A handful of the images show someone in a New Zealand lieutenant’s uniform and hat
standing alongside a fellow officer.
Other pictures feature one man with a woman on his knee.
A closer look reveals that the woman is clearly also the person wearing the lieutenant’s
uniform and hat in the other photos.
The snapshots were taken in the yard of a house roughly 30 miles (48 km) from the battlefront
of the Somme.
One individual featured in them turned out to be an Australian man named Captain Albert
Arthur Chapman, who was serving with the New Zealand military.
They did not identify the woman.
The picture left the historians baffled as they tried to figure out who she was.
At first, they theorized that she may have been one of the first female military officers,
but this was disproven.
There were no female officers in the British or New Zealand militaries during World War
I, whoever the woman was, she was wearing someone else’s uniform in the pictures.
She wore a wedding ring, yet Captain Chapman returned home from the war alone and unmarried.
He was never married.
It’s possible that she was a local Frenchwoman.
And while the relationship between the pair certainly seems romantic in some images, she
may have been the friend, family member, or wife of one of Chapman’s fellow soldiers.
6.
The Missing Serial Killer
Hungarian tinsmith Béla Kiss was well-liked by his neighbors, but they weren’t close.
When he left the village of Cintoka to serve in the war in 1914, his reputation was in
good standing.
That all changed in 1916 when Béla’s landlord heard he had died in the war and went over
to the man’s house to clean it out so that he could start renting it to someone else.
On the property, the landlord found seven large fuel drums.
When he tried to open them, he was met with the unmistakable stench of death.
Not good.
He called the police in Budapest, who came to the scene and found the body of a strangled
woman in one of the barrels.
They found 24 bodies altogether in the barrels and elsewhere throughout the property.
An investigation revealed that Kiss had targeted women through local personal ads that were
published in the newspaper, luring them to his house with promises of love and marriage.
What detectives didn’t realize at the time is that the serial killer was still very much
alive and fighting on the front lines.
Once he learned the authorities were hot on his trail, Kiss did everything he could to
evade capture.
At one point, while recovering from a battle wound at a hospital, he put a dead man’s
body in his bed and slipped away right as investigators were closing in.
Between the chaos of war and conflicting reports of Bela’s whereabouts, he became impossible
to track.
Many people reported seeing him in various places, including as far away as New York,
where someone reported that he was working as a janitor.
By the time the authorities arrived in 1936 to look at the suspect, he had vanished.
Nobody knows what happened to Bela Kiss, including how long he lived or what the rest of his
life was like.
5.
WHO FIRED THE FIRST SHOT?
Many historians widely credit the Austro-Hungarians with firing the shot that officially started
World War I. Someone fired a bullet at the Serbians from the gunboat Bodrog on July 29,
1914.
It was along the Danube River, where the restored vessel still sits today.
But it’s unclear who fired the war’s first shot in the name of the British Empire.
There are at least three contending events for the title.
Military tradition holds that a cavalry drummer named Corporal E. Thomas shot the first bullet
in Belgium on August 22, 1914.
Thomas and his squad encountered four German cavalrymen when he fired his gun.
Nobody was harmed in the skirmish.
Just 10 days earlier, a West African soldier serving in the British military named Alhaji
Grunshi fired at German forces in Togo, where they were protecting a wireless communication
station.
The Australians may also have a valid case for claiming that they fired the first shot
on behalf of the British.
On August 5, 1914, a crew led by artillery sergeant John Purdue shot at the German vessel
SS Pfalz in waters just south of Melbourne.
The ship was trying to slip out of port unnoticed the day after Britain declared war on Germany
when the firing occurred.
It continued trying to sail away even after the Australian battery fired warning shots
and the crew took it back to the bay under the watch of an armed guard.
4.
DISAPPEARANCE OF THE USS CYCLOPS
Built for the U.S. Navy several years before World War I, the navy had the USS Cyclops,
originally designed as a bulk coal carrier called a collier.
At nearly 550 feet (168 m) long, it was the Navy’s largest and fastest fuel ship at
the time.
Outfitted with 50-caliber guns, the Cyclops carried medical staff and supplies to a French
hospital during the war.
After the conflict, it began shuttling cargo back and forth from Brazil.
On February 15, 1918, the ship left Rio de Janeiro with a load of manganese ore.
It was originally heading for Baltimore, but the captain requested a detour to Barbados,
citing engine problems possibly because of too much cargo.
Nobody ever saw or heard from the Cyclops again after leaving Barbados for the U.S.
All 309 people on board vanished along with it, without even sending out an SOS.
A massive search effort ensued, but the vessel remains missing to this day.
No evidence of what might have happened to it was ever found, including no debris or
oil slick.
The disappearance of the people aboard is the greatest non-combat loss of lives in U.S.
Navy history.
There are many long-held theories about what may have caused the Cyclops to vanish into
thin air, including ideas pointing toward the Bermuda Triangle, German spies, aliens
from outer space, and sea monsters as possible culprits.
People were also quick to blame the captain, George W. Worley, who was allegedly a drunk
and in no suitable position to command a ship.
It’s also possible that the crew encountered mechanical failures, that they were unfamiliar
with how to handle the ship with its heavy load of manganese ore, a material used in
steel production that the vessel rarely transports.
To this day, the disappearance of the USS Cyclops is considered one of the most baffling
military mysteries of all time.
3.
WHO WAS THE ARTIST JM?
Throughout 1917 and 1918, a British soldier created sketches and watercolor images of
the heartbreaking and brutal scenes he encountered on the battlefield in France and Belgium.
He wrote a note dedicating his sketchbook to his daughter, Adèle, on the first page
and used the initials “J.M.”
The depictions are quite moving.
One black-and-white sketch, entitled “Gas in the Lines,” shows the devastating effects
that gas attacks had on horses along the front lines.
Others feature destroyed towns filled with freshly dug graves and exhausted nurses surrounded
by smoke and rubble.
The sketchbook contains a piece of art dating from 1920, showing that J.M.
survived the war.
At some point, most likely during the 1960s, the man’s artwork ended up at the University
of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.
But nobody knows how it got there, who brought it there, or who J.M.
even was.
A records search yielded no results connecting anyone to the sketchbooks.
One hundred years after the war started, researchers were still trying to figure out who created
the images.
The university posted the talented soldier’s renderings online and dedicated an on-site
exhibit to them in 2014.
They hoped that someone would recognize the artwork and offer information about J.M.’s
life.
Obtaining some biographical information would help to better understand the stories behind
the images and bring them even more to life.
But the mystery has yet to be solved.
2.
NURSE MARGARET MAULE
In 2013, staff members at Abertay University in Scotland discovered an old suitcase inside
a cupboard in the college’s psychology department.
It was filled with World War I memorabilia belonging to a nurse named Margaret Maule,
including photos, letters, newspaper articles, syringes, and other medical equipment.
Based on the items inside and what records are available, it appears as though she tended
to badly wounded German soldiers in Kent and British soldiers in Glasgow.
Margaret received letters from British, German, and French soldiers thanking her for saving
their lives and lifting their spirits.
Her compassion shows that she saw these injured men as humans above all, regardless of which
country they served in the war.
She retired in 1969 at the age of 82, after working as a nurse for 52 years.
Aside from all this, nobody seems to know who Margaret was, or how her suitcase ended
up at Abertay University.
Researchers appealed to the public for information about the woman hoping someone comes forward
and can tell them more about her fascinating life.
1.
WHO KILLED JOHN PARR?
John Parr was 14 years old when he joined the British Army in 1912, claiming that he
was 18 to meet the minimum age requirement.
It seems that at that time nobody was looking too closely!
The enemy shot the young man and killed him near the Belgian city of Mons in 1914 while
scouting for the advancing Germans on his bicycle.
He was just 16 years old and experts agree he was likely to be the first British soldier
killed in World War I.
At first, Parr’s fellow troops didn’t notice the Germans had shot him.
He had simply gone missing.
To make things even weirder, the British military claimed that Parr was still alive for several
months before finally conceding that he was dead.
One of the young man’s companions claimed the pair had encountered a German unit that
had opened fire on them.
The Germans supposedly retrieved and buried Parr’s body.
But the story just doesn’t add up, especially since the Germans were still outside the area.
There are also no known records of the skirmish, showing that it never happened.
Friendly fire may have killed Parr in a case of mistaken identity, but his manner of death
is a mystery that nobody will probably ever solve.
The fallen soldier’s mother appealed to the military for answers several times, but
she never got the closure she was looking for.
What mysterious WW I event do you find the most interesting?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
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