Dalton Gang outlaw Emmett Dalton (second from left) with some of his Hollywood Western friends, including the cowboy detective Charlie Siringo (with rifle), 1927. Source: Kansas State Historical Society
The era Emmett had known as a border outlaw was being translated to the screen, its myths largely intact. It was natural that Emmett would come to Los Angeles with his book about his brothers, where he met the lanky, silent film star William S. Hart, known for the authenticity of what he called “horse operas.” Hart happily added Emmett to his group of Western friends.
In the resulting film, “Beyond the Law,” Emmett played himself as a young bandit and appeared across the country, frequently narrating multiple showings at each movie house. But he couldn’t appear everywhere to support the film, which ended up with a disappointing box-office. Emmett also starred as the “Man of the Desert,” in which a mysterious rider on a dark horse appears out of the hills to aid settlers in trouble. With his wife Julia he settled in a modest stucco house in the Hollywood hills, did other acting work, sold scenarios and increasingly involved himself in real estate.
Manfred von Richthofen, better known to the Allied forces as the 'Red Baron', was shot down and killed near Vaux-sur-Somme, France. He was twelve days short of his 26th birthday.
Debate has ranged for the best part of the following century as to who actually shot down the Red Baron.
Credit went initially to a Canadian pilot, Captain Roy Brown, who was engaged in a dogfight with Richthofen at the time, diving after him low over the Somme River.
However, he was also coming under ground fire from the ridge above the river and the popular theory, widely accepted now, is that the fatal shot was fired by Cedric Popkin, an anti-aircraft machine gunner with the Australian Imperial Forces.
Richthofen was able to make a rough but controlled landing in a nearby field along the Bray-Corbie road, but eye witness reports at the time claim he died almost immediately.
Australian stretcher-bearer Sergeant Ted Smout was among the first to reach the downed aircraft and reported that Richthofen's final word was 'kaputt' ('finished'). He later admitted he had to resist the temptation to souvenir the famed pilot's iron cross medal and flying boots.
In 1964, four years before his own death at the age of 77, Popkin admitted to a reporter for the Brisbane Courier-Mail:
"I am fairly certain it was my fire which caused the Baron to crash, but it would be impossible to say definitely that I was responsible ... As to pinpointing without doubt the man who fired the fatal shot, the controversy will never actually be resolved."
Although Smout resisted the temptation, the Australians - soon joined by others - made short work of claiming their own small piece of the historical trophy, cutting sections of the red fabric from Richthofen's Fokker DR1 triplane, and salvaging other mementoes.
Many of these have made their way back to the Australian War Memorial over the decades, which now holds a number of fragments of the aircraft, wood from the propeller, the plane's compass, control column, and Richthofen's left flying boot.
Here, officers of No.3 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps, examine the Spandau machine guns from the wreckage of Richthofen's now largely destroyed triplane, the remnants visible behind them, at Bertangles the day after his downing.
Photographer: Second Lieutenant Thomas Keith Aitken
Images courtesy of the Imperial War Museum London
(Colourised by Benjamin Thomas)
