The Two-Headed Eagle

11 THE SPIDER AND THE BLACK CAT

If the continuing existence of Fliegerkompagnie 19F might have been a matter of some uncertainty in the last week of September 1916, the continuation of the war most certainly was not. The fight­ing had broken out again on the Carso on 17 September, as the Italians once again felt strong enough to continue their blood-soaked, metre-by- metre push towards Trieste. The weather had cleared for a while, so the two remaining serviceable aircraft with Flik 19F were assigned on 25 September to fly a very important photo reconnaissance mission.

The mission involved photographing a wood near Gradisca which was known to be concealing a large naval gun mounted on a railway carriage. This weapon—at least 30cm according to intelligence reports—had been brought up the previous week and was now causing a great deal of grief to our troops on the Carso. Known popularly as “Waldschani”—Viennese dialect for “Johnny-in-the-Wood”—it had been sending shells over at the rate of one every three minutes or so, day and night, to crash down on the trackways behind Fajtji Hrib amid the supply columns of men and mules struggling in the red mud. It was not known how they were aiming the guns—secret wireless messages from spies had been spoken of—but the Italians were certainly finding their targets now with depressing fre­quency. Normally this would not have weighed much in the counsels of the generals: being blown to bits by half-tonne shells wailing down out of the darkness was what common soldiers were for. But the previous day Waldschani had succeeded in dropping a shell alongside the farm­house near the village of Vojscica which served as headquarters for the 9 th Infantry Division. Its commander the Archduke Joseph had not been injured when the roof fell in on him, only shaken and covered in soot from the chimney. But insults of that kind—a direct threat to the safety and well-being of staff officers, no less—could not be tolerated; especially when one of the officers in question was a member of the Imperial House. An order had gone out that all possible measures must be taken immedi­ately to put an end to Waldschani’s destructive career.

A heavy bombing-raid would have to be laid on, since no Austrian gun on the Carso Front had enough range to reach Grandisca. The first requisite for this, though, would be to find out exactly where the gun was firing from, since we had now lost the heights along the rim of the Carso and no kite-balloon could get high enough to peer over the edge. Photo reconnaissance by aeroplane would be called for. But it would not be an easy task. The Italians would be expecting photographers and would cer­tainly have ringed the site with flak batteries as well as detailing fighter aircraft to cover it. The best that we could do was to aim for surprise— after all, even Nieuports could not hover in the air all day long—and provide an escort for the two-seater taking the photographs. However, the mission was of the utmost importance, we were told, so not one but two Brandenburgers would be used—Potocznik’s and mine. It would also mark the operational debut of Austria-Hungary’s first single-seat fighter aeroplane, the Hansa-Brandenburg KD—the “Kampfdoppeldecker” or “fighting biplane.”

The fighter escort had been a last-minute decision on Vienna’s part, made possible by the fact that the first four Brandenburg KDs had been delivered from Berlin to the aircraft park at Marburg the previous day. So you may imagine that we were fairly dancing with anticipation that eve­ning of 24 September as we received the telephone call and rushed out to watch the tiny specks materialise in the distance above the mountains, coming in to land at Caprovizza flying field. Only Meyerhofer remained in the Kanzlei hut, to speak with the Air Liaison Officer at the other end of the line. But we had been promised four aircraft, he said. And now Oberleutnant Potocznik was standing by him to report that only three aeroplanes could be seen. Yes, said Air Liaison; there had been . . . er . . . an unfortunate mishap on take-off from Marburg, so it would now be only three aircraft. However, that should be more than sufficient for our needs tomorrow. Meyerhofer put down the receiver and rushed out to join us on the field just as the aeroplanes were lining up to land.

“Lining up” is scarcely an accurate term for what was going on: the three aeroplanes were swaying and weaving through the air like a flight of drunken gnats. The first two managed untidy, bouncing landings on the field, but the third had no sooner touched its wheels to the ground than it promptly nosed over, seemed to stand still with its wheels like a recalcitrant mule, and stood on its head, then did a sort of forward som­ersault to end up lying on its back with a smashed propeller and a badly bent undercarriage. We all ran over to the wreck to find the pilot alive but badly concussed, hanging upside-down by his seat straps. We got him down and wheeled him to the ambulance on the hand barrow used for the injured. Then we went to look at the aeroplanes that had survived the journey, standing now under camouflage netting in the bora shelters. We all stood gazing for some time in silence.

Bear in mind if you will that in the year 1916 aeroplanes had not been flying for very long. Szuborits was the youngest of us, little more than an adolescent still, but even he had been at junior school in 1903 when the Wright brothers had made their first flight. Since that time every pos­sible layout had been designed, built and (usually) crashed by aspiring designers: tractors, pushers, monoplanes, biplanes, triplanes, sesquiplanes, canards and deltas. There was as yet no settled notion of what an aeroplane ought to look like. Yet even so, standing there that evening, we all realised that there was something not quite right about the Hansa-Brandenburg Kampfdoppeldecker. It was as if the plans for an aeroplane had mistakenly been posted to a manufacturer of agricultural machinery.

True, it was a conventional enough aircraft in layout: a small single- engined tractor biplane with a propeller at one end and a tailplane and rud­der at the other. It was just that compared with the pretty little Nieuport, which was as delightful to look at as it was dangerous to engage, some­thing seemed to have gone badly wrong with the Brandenburg KD’s proportions, as if we were looking at a normal aeroplane in a fairground distorting mirror. It seemed so inordinately high off the ground in relation to its length and wing span. The fuselage was a deep, narrow mahogany trunk of an affair with an Austro-Daimler engine completely blocking the forward vision, so that the pilot had to look along the recessed sides past the cylinder block (as with many of his other designs, Herr Heinkel seemed to consider forward view an unnecessary luxury). The rudder was tiny, a mere comma-shaped flap hung on the knife-edge sternpost of the fuselage. The short wings were squared-off and of equal width, so that the pilot had a badly restricted view downwards. Likewise his upward view was not too good, through a cut-out in the trailing edge of the upper wing. But the most bizarre thing about the whole contraption was the struts holding the wings apart: not pairs of sticks as in a normal aeroplane, but an arrangement of pyramids held together in the middle by a star-shaped metal bracket, rather like the four legs of a canvas field-washbasin.

And to crown all these eccentricities, making an already high aero­plane look higher still, like a dwarf wearing a top hat, was a curious wood- and-aluminium fairing structure atop the upper wing. This, we learnt, housed the aeroplane’s armament of a single Schwarzlose machine gun. It appeared that when he had designed the aeroplane for the k.u.k. Flieger­truppe Heinkel had assumed that he would be able to have a machine gun firing through the propeller arc as in all the latest German machines. Not a bit of it though: the German War Ministry had refused to sell Fokker interrupter gear to Austria and had in fact even refused to license the pat­ent to us. The machine gun on top of the wing was an afterthought, and the fairing—universally known as “the Baby’s Coffin”—was a desperate attempt to reduce the drag. Not only did it do next to nothing to help the aeroplane’s speed, it made it completely impossible—as we would soon find out—to clear a machine-gun stoppage in flight. In the years since, I have heard it said that we used to call the Brandenburg KD “the Flying Coffin.” I cannot say that I remember that nickname being used, even though I suppose looking back on it that it was quite apt, and that the varnished mahogany fuselage did look rather like a burial casket. The only name I ever remember being used for it—and that but seldom—was the “Spinne,” or “Spider.” Nicknames, after all, are usually reserved for people and things for which we feel a glimmer of affection, and certainly no one who flew the KD could ever feel that.

We made our way back to the mess tent in silence. The two delivery pilots were already there, being plied with drinks by the orderlies like two unhurt but still intensely shocked survivors of a train crash. One was a Hungarian called Terszetanyi, if I remember rightly, the other a Pole called Romanowicz. The latter was still chalk-faced as he poured himself yet another schnapps with a trembling hand.

“Holy Mother of God,” he said, “I’m volunteering for the trenches tomorrow. Anything: storm-battalion, flame-thrower company, gas, bury­ing corpses—I don’t care.”

“Was it that bad? ”

“Bad? Jesus Christ I’ve never flown anything like it. Not even the Aviatik Rocking-Chair. The thing’s a disaster. The first time I took it up was yesterday afternoon, and it got me into a spin at two thousand me­tres. I managed to pull out just above the ground, God alone knows how. It wanders from side to side like a snake, while as for landing the thing, I don’t know how I managed not to tip over on my head like poor old Belounek. We took off from Marburg well enough—the pig climbs quite decently if nothing else—but we were hardly out of sight of the airfield when Metzger’s plane went into a spin for no reason at all.”

“I suppose that must have been Air Liaison’s ‘problems on take-off’?” Romanowicz smiled grimly and gulped his drink. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that. Only for Metzger it’s the end of his problems for ever. The poor bugger dived straight into the ground and went up like a fire­work: ‘strengthened the ranks of the angels,’ as we say back home.” “Why didn’t you turn back?”

“No choice, old man: orders and all that. Terszetanyi and I were with Flik 14 in the Ukraine, you see. We had some trouble there earlier this year over another flying abortion, the Aviatik BIII of blessed memory, commonly known as ‘the Rocking-Chair’ or ‘the Fairground Swingboat.’ The thing killed so many of our chaps that in the end we had a little mutiny—‘mass refusal of duty’ is the polite term among officers, I be­lieve—and said that we weren’t going to fly it any more. So they broke up the unit and moved us all to other Fliks. We were officers and not rankers so they couldn’t shoot us all or stick us into a penal battalion. But I tell you, we’re marked men. One more refusal of duty and we’re for the high jump and no mistake.”

“What do you think the KD will be like as a fighting machine?” asked Potocznik. Romanowicz found this immensely amusing.

“A machine that will rapidly carve for itself a lasting niche in the brief annals of aerial warfare, if you ask me: the Italians will either think we’ve all gone mad and stop fighting or crash into the ground following us down. Here . . .” he rummaged inside his tunic. “Here’s my will, made out ready and signed. Be a good chap and leave it in the Kanzlei safe, will you? As for my personal effects, you can auction them here among yourselves to save you the bother of sending them back to Marburg.”

The mist was clearing from the valley the next morning as the remnants of Flik 19F took off from Caprovizza airfield, accompanied by their two ungainly escorts. I was in the leading aeroplane with Toth as pilot, while Potocznik and Leutnant Szuborits followed in the unit’s other service­able Brandenburger. Low cloud lay over the Vippaco Valley, but the Meteorological Officer had assured us by telephone that it was clearing rapidly west of the Isonzo and giving way to bright autumn sunshine: ideal conditions for photography. We droned around in circles to gain height, entering the cloud at about a thousand metres and emerging at two thou­sand to form up with our escorts. We watched the two KDs pop up from the fleecy white carpet, then got into line with them on either side of us and about fifty metres above. I watched them anxiously from my place be­hind the machine gun. They seemed a little unsteady to be sure. I supposed that Terszetanyi and Romanowicz were sitting in the cockpits, knuckles white with gripping the control column and waiting for the first tell-tale lurch that would presage the fatal spin down to disaster. Not for the first time I was glad that, whatever the hazards of front-line aviation, at least the Brandenburg two-seater was an easy and gentle old bus to fly, with no conspicuous vices; sturdily built and tolerant of wayward piloting.

I waved to them, but they did not wave back: mainly (I suppose) be­cause they were too frightened to take a hand off the controls. At least they seemed to be managing the aircraft a little better than on the previ­ous day. Perhaps it was just that the KD took some getting used to for pilots who had previously flown only two-seaters. It certainly seemed to have adequate speed. We were flying at seven-eighths throttle to gain height, but the two KDs seemed to be ambling along at only about three- quarters to judge by the exhaust smoke, which used to turn black at high revs. Perhaps things would not work out so badly after all.

We met with a little ill-directed flak as we crossed the Monte Cosbana ridge north of Gorz. As agreed, we then made a wide circle over the town of Cormons and approached Gradisca from the rear. So far there was no sign of any hostile aircraft. We flew over the target at three thousand metres; Toth and I first, then Potocznik. We were covering the same area with our cameras, but the whole operation was judged so important that it had been decided to have two aeroplanes carry it out in case one failed to return. Try as I might I could see no sign of the railway gun on its carriage in the wood below, only the spur of railway track leading off the main line into the trees. But that was not my affair: my job was to work the camera, get the twenty or so plates back to Haidenschaft and then leave it to the intelligence experts with their magnifying-glasses and stereoscopic viewers to detect where exactly Waldschani was lurking. After about two minutes of ambling over the area as instructed, I fired a green signal rocket to indicate that we were finished. Potocznik waggled his wings in answer, and we all turned to give full throttle and run for home, the two Brandenburgers and their escorts who had been circling overhead. We had got away with it so far, but surely the Italians must be coming up after us by now. Being of a naturally rather suspicious cast of mind, it worried me more than a little that we had been allowed to fly over the target, quite obviously engaged in photography, without attracting so much as a single flak shell from below.

We found out as we crossed the Isonzo that it had indeed all been too good to be true: three Nieuports fell upon us out of a patch of cloud. I abandoned the camera and stood behind the Schwarzlose, ready and hop­ing that the ammunition feed would not seize up like last time. Remember, I thought, don’t fire too soon: rely on Toth to fly the aeroplane and just fire defensively when a target presents itself. Our real hope of salvation lay in getting up enough speed in a shallow dive to outrun the Italians. We were not far from our own lines after all. Weaving and jinking to throw them off their aim before it was absolutely necessary would only lose us speed and make us easier to catch. The Italians needed to close to thirty metres or less to be sure of hitting, and their gun magazines only held about fifty rounds . . . It was with thoughts such as these that I tried to hearten myself as the three familiar shapes closed with us. Yet when all is said and done, no thoughts are really cheering enough to console a man who will shortly be required to stand up full-length with only a thin plywood sheet for protection, three thousand metres above the ground, and face an assailant armed with a machine gun at a range less than the length of most people’s back gardens.

The thing about aerial combat, as opposed to making a U-Boat attack, is that everything happens so fast. I always found it rather like going under anaesthetic for an operation, when the last thought that one takes in is also the first thought as one comes out, the intervening couple of hours having somehow got lost. It was very like that over the Isonzo that morning: a desperate, savage, confused bout of wheeling and shooting which perhaps lasted no more than a minute. Our first concern was to keep formation and support one another as the Italians tried to break us up, seeking to fasten on to an aeroplane and worry it to death, as wolves will detach a stag from the herd and then run it down. A Nieuport flashed past us some way above with a KD—Terszetanyi’s as it turned out—on his tail trying to take aim. I think that I saw Terszetanyi fire a few times, but then I suppose that his gun must have jammed. At any rate, as he wheeled back into view below us I saw that he had broken off the attack and was now kneeling half out of his cockpit, steering with one foot and hammering at the gun fairing with his fist in an effort to pull it off and get at the gun. He did not succeed. Horror-struck, I watched as his aeroplane suddenly slipped sideways into a spin. My last sight of him is still branded into my mind’s eye seventy years later: of his arms and legs flailing wildly as he fell to his death on the Carso rocks three thousand metres below.

There was no time to mourn him, only to try and save ourselves as a Nieuport came at us out of the sun. Blinded by the glare, I swung the gun around and felt it jolt and clatter in my hands as I pressed the thumb triggers. Bullets spacked through the fuselage as he aimed for the black Maltese cross on our side. But we lived; the Nieuport shot past under our tail as I gave him another burst. He came up on the other side and I fired again. He was visible just long enough for me to make out the black-cat emblem on the side of his fuselage. Then it was hidden by a stream of smoke and a sudden bright tail of red and yellow flames. The Nieuport banked away and spun downwards, leaving a curving trail of smoke be­hind it as the fire licked around the wing roots and spread towards the tail. It dawned upon me belatedly that I had just shot down Major Oreste di Carraciolo, the Black Cat of Italy.

All this happened in an instant, though I see it still with the vivid clarity of a dream. But we had not the leisure to congratulate ourselves on our victory. We could only thank our lucky stars and run for home as best we could. In the end Potocznik and I crossed the lines circling around Romanowicz’s KD like lapwings protecting a fledgeling from hawks: a ludicrous state of affairs in which the escorted ended up escort­ing back the aeroplane which was supposed to have been escorting them. The Nieuports only left us in peace after we had reached Dornberg and the protection of our own flak batteries.

It was not until then, skimming down towards Caprovizza flying field, that I had time at last for the luxury of thought. The whole of the previous ten minutes or so had been conducted largely by instinct, on spinal cord alone. But now the sun was shining and it was peaceful once more, and apart from that constant throbbing of the air the war might never have existed. Only a smoke-grimed face and bullet holes letting the sunlight shine through the fuselage—and a hot machine-gun barrel burnt blue with excessive firing—served to remind me that the recent events had not been some kind of brief but intense nightmare. I looked down at the camera. Good, it was intact still. We had lost one aeroplane but we had accomplished our mission. Oh yes, and we had also shot down Major di Carraciolo.

I suddenly remembered this with surprise—then with a flooding sense of dismay, as I recalled how I had last seen him, spinning down on fire. War was war, and I had far rather that it had been him than us; but all the same it seemed to me a scurvy thing to repay a chivalrous enemy for his generosity by burning him alive. I hoped that he might already have been dead as the Nieuport began its plunge, perhaps killed by a bullet of mine through the head. But I knew enough of aerial warfare to doubt it. Had he perished with his skin bubbling and sizzling as he struggled to bring the aeroplane down? Or had he managed to release his seat straps and fling himself out, to endure perhaps a minute of stark terror as he plummeted down to burst like a blood bomb on the pitiless rocks? Either way it seemed a wretched end. Death by fire was the secret dread of us all in those days before parachutes. Like most fliers, I carried a pistol; not for defence, but with a view to my own deliverance if I should ever find myself trapped in a burning aeroplane. I hoped that di Carraciolo had been able to use his, if that was what it had come to.

We landed at Caprovizza around midday. The boxes of photographic plates were handed over, we made our verbal reports and I then went straight to my tent to lie down. It never ceased to amaze me how fight­ing in the air, though it usually lasted only a few seconds, seemed to drain reserves of nervous energy that would normally suffice for several months. As I was taking off my flying overalls Petrescu stuck his head around the tent flap and respectfully reported that there was a telephone call for me in the Kanzlei hut. I got up wearily from my camp-bed. What on earth did they want now? Couldn’t the idiots leave me in peace for an hour at least? When I picked up the receiver from the Adjutant’s desk I found that it was a staff officer from 7th Corps Headquarters at Oppachiasella.

“I say, are you the fellow who shot down that Italian single-seater over Fajtji Hrib about an hour ago?” I answered that so far as I knew I had that melancholy honour. I was expecting to be told where the aero­plane had come down and to be offered some fire-blackened fragment as a souvenir—a trophy for which I must say I had no desire whatever. What came next was a complete surprise. “Well, the pilot’s here with us at Corps Headquarters: chap called Major Carraciolo or something—quite famous, I understand.”

“I’m sorry . . . I just don’t understand. The aeroplane was ablaze when I saw it go down . . .”

“Quite so. I understand that your Major Whatshisname climbed out of his cockpit and stood on the wing, steering the thing by leaning over the edge. Apparently he managed to slide it sideways to blow the flames away from the petrol tank, then brought the thing down in a field next to one of our batteries. Our fellows said they’d never seen flying like it—the Italian ought to be a circus performer.”

“Is he badly hurt?”

“Not in the least: dislocated shoulder and a few bruises and a bit singed, but that’s about it. The Medical Officer’s patching him up at the moment and when he’s finished we’ll send him over to you. I believe that he’s Flik 19F’s prisoner. You can have the aeroplane too, for what it’s worth. We’ve posted a sentry by the wreck to keep the village brats away, but frankly there’s not a lot of it left except ashes.”

Major Oreste di Carraciolo arrived in some state at Caprovizza flying field about an hour later, seated in the back of a large drab-coloured staff car. A sentry with rifle and fixed bayonet sat on each side of him and in the front seat was a staff colonel. The door was opened and he stepped down from the running-board to meet us. He wore a bandage about his head and had his left arm in a sling, but otherwise seemed undamaged except that his eyebrows and moustache and neat pointed beard were a little scorched. He wore the grey-green uniform of the Italian Air Corps and a leather flying coat, unbuttoned in the afternoon heat; also a pair of smart, and evidently very expensive, high lace-up boots.

I have perhaps made the man sound a trifle foppish. It is true that he was trim and not very tall; but his powerful shoulders and hands were clearly those of a sculptor. He stepped up grim-faced and saluted with his good hand, giving us a glare of intense hatred as he did so. I stepped forward and saluted in return, then held out my hand. Any remaining doubts about the Major’s powerful build were immediately dispelled as the bones in my hand were crushed against one another. Trying not to betray my pain I welcomed him to Fliegerfeld Caprovizza in Italian, rearranging the bones of my hand as I did so. He glowered at me, his intense black eyes boring into mine—then broke into a radiant smile.

“Ah, Herr Leutnant, was it then you who . . . ? ”

“Yes,” I answered, “I have the honour to be the one who shot you down this morning. But believe me, my dear Major, it gives me a thousand times more pleasure to see that you are alive and unharmed. I apologise. But you will understand, I hope, that war is a ruthless business.”

“Ah, my dear Tenente, please do not reproach yourself, I beg you. You were only doing your duty—and you may comfort yourself with the fact that you will be able one day to tell your grandchildren that it was you who brought to an end the career of Major di Carraciolo . . .” He smiled, “. . . Or perhaps I should rather say, caused a temporary interruption in the career of Major di Carraciolo, until such time as he escapes from prison and returns to fight again for his country.”

“Your confinement need not be close, Major, if you gave your word not to escape. You are now in your forties, I understand, and might easily be repatriated on parole.”

“I would never give it. In an ordinary war such things might be per­missible, but a patriot fighting for the final liberation of his people has a sacred duty to escape and fight once more, so long as there is breath left in his body.”

“Very well. But you must at least be the guest of honour in our mess this evening. I and my brother-officers insist upon it. Surely you can give your word not to try to escape just for these few hours.”

He smiled broadly. “Then you may consider it given, and I shall be delighted to accept your hospitality. I have always considered myself to be fighting against the Austrian Monarchy and not against the Austrians, whom I regard as an intelligent and artistic people like ourselves.”

“Splendid. But tell me one thing if you will, Major. How exactly did I manage to shoot you down? The sun was in my eyes and I was quite unable to take aim, and I fired only a few shots anyway. You had us in your sights and could hardly have missed, yet you veered away at the last moment. What went wrong? I ask as one aviator to another.”

“It is the fortunes of war, my dear . . . er . . . ?”

“Prohaska. Otto Prohaska. Lieutenant of the Imperial and Royal Navy.”

“Ah yes, Prohaska. Well, as I attacked I knew that you could not aim at me because of the sun, and also that your Schwarzlose gun is as much use as a garden syringe. But there, even random shots sometimes find their mark. One of your bullets severed an oil-feed pipe and hot oil sprayed back in my face. By the time I had regained my sight I was flying past your tail and you were shooting at me again. Then I saw fire coming at me from the engine cowling—and after that I lost all interest in you, as I think you will understand. But the rest of the story I believe you already know?”

“Yes, the Intelligence Officer at Oppachiasella told me all about it. You are to be congratulated by all accounts on a magnificent piece of flying. But, dear Major, I am doubly glad to meet you because it was you who escorted us back across the lines a few days ago when our engine failed.”

He looked puzzled for a moment—then laughed loudly and slapped my shoulder.

“So it was you? I remember now: your Brandenburg Zoska if my mem­ory serves me right? Then we are acquaintances already. My sergeant wanted to shoot you down but I headed him away from you. ‘Why did you let the Austrian pigs escape, Maggiore?’ he asked me later. ‘No,’ I said, ‘to spare the life of an enemy in distress will bring us luck. And who knows? he may well do the same for us one day.’ Well, you certainly brought me luck.”

It was as convivial an evening in the mess as our increasingly mea­gre rations would allow. The food might have been poor, but the local wine flowed freely and we were entertained by Flik 19F’s gypsy orches­tra, drawn from its Hungarian ground crewmen; also by Potocznik, who played a good deal of Schubert very well indeed on the mess piano. Even Hauptmann Kraliczek was there, looking as unhappy as an owl forced into daylight, and only present because Meyerhofer and Potocznik and I had arm-locked him into attending. As for Major di Carraciolo, he provided us with magnificent entertainment of his own. He spoke German tolerably well, and I was able to help him out in Italian when needed, so the evening was one long succession of anecdotes about his days in Africa. His time there, it appeared, when he was not discovering lakes or being mauled by lionesses, had been spent mostly in the arms of a succession of Eritrean mistresses who had their teeth filed to points and who chewed qhat leaves. And when the African reminiscences failed there was always his career as a sculptor, adulterer, duellist and racing driver to fall back upon. All in all he seemed to have lived enough lives for a roomful of people. He was a flamboyant and theatrical character it is true, but I found myself not at all irritated by it. The Major loved to entertain people, while as to the truth of his stories I had not the slightest doubt that most of them had really happened—or at least almost happened. Only Potocznik made a rather disapproving face. I asked him afterwards what was the matter.

“That insufferable Wellischer and his greasy lies. And a lot of Hun­garian gypsies scraping fiddles. And that Levantine Meyerhofer into the bargain. It’s enough to make anyone sick. This is supposed to be a German­speaking empire, not some filthy bazaar in Constantinople.”

“Oh come on: Carraciolo’s a bit of a boaster but I don’t doubt most of it’s true.”

“A typical degenerate Latin—would laugh in your face while he’s sticking a knife in your back. I tell you the bastard uses scent like a woman! We should have shot him when he landed and had done with it.”

Apart from this drop of acid, all went splendidly until about 2300, when I heard a motor lorry draw up outside and the noise of soldiers, boots crunching on the cinder pathway. Thinking that it was the liberty-lorry bringing the drunkards back from Haidenschaft I went out to tell them to quieten down—and found myself confronting a Provost major and a squad of soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets. From their grim faces it was clear at first glance that they were here on official business.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but I think that there must be some mistake. This is a k.u.k. Fliegertruppe flying field and this tent is the officers’ mess.” “I know that. Kindly stand aside.”

“What do you mean . . . ? ”

“What I said. We’re here to make an arrest.” He shouldered me aside to enter the mess tent, followed by his men. I heard the sudden silence inside, and made my way in. Everyone had frozen in his place and was staring at the intruders, some swaying slightly.

No one spoke. Di Carraciolo still sat between Meyerhofer and Potocz­nik behind the long trestle table, one hand raised with a glass in it. In the pale, flaring light and deep shadows of the petrol lamps the scene put me irresistibly in mind of the Caravaggio “Last Supper”: distant memories perhaps of all those Easter Thursday masses when I was a child. Kraliczek was the first to recover from his surprise.

“Herr Major, might I enquire what is the meaning of this intrusion?” “Herr Kommandant, do you have here an Italian prisoner by the name of . . .” he examined the slip of paper in his hand, “by the name of Oreste Carlo Borromeo di Carraciolo, currently serving as a major in the Italian Air Corps?”

“We do. But he is our guest for this evening and will be transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp tomorrow morning. This is the custom . . .” He looked around him, suddenly uncertain. “Er . . . at any rate, my officers here inform me that this is the custom in the Fliegertruppe.”

“I couldn’t give a farthing about your customs.” He turned to address di Carraciolo. “Are you Oreste Carlo Borromeo di Carraciolo?”

Our prisoner answered calmly, in German, “I am.”

“I have here a warrant for your arrest on a charge of high treason and desertion from the armed forces of His Imperial Majesty. You will come with us. Feldwebel—put the handcuffs on him.”

“But this is monstrous,” Meyerhofer spluttered as we moved to close ranks about our guest. “This man is a major in the Italian Air Corps and a prisoner of war, shot down this morning by one of our aeroplanes . . .” “For all I care he could be a Chinese station master. As far as the k.u.k. Armee is concerned the man is an Austrian subject who has evaded military service to fight against his Emperor in the armed forces of a hostile state. If you don’t believe me you can examine the warrant. Come with us if you please now, my Signor di Carraciolo. We’ll give you a nice cell of your own in the Caserne Grande and an interview tomorrow with Heir Major Baumann. I don’t envy you one bit. Take him to the lorry, Corporal.”

We all moved to defend our guest-captive: to all right-thinking front- soldiers in every army on earth the military police are objects of instinc­tive dislike. But in the end there was nothing much that we could do. The arrest warrant was unarguable, bearing as it did the signature of Major Baumann, the Governor of Trieste’s aide in charge of security. Baumann was a functionary of the notorious KUA, the Kriegsuberwachungsamt, which had been set up to govern the Austrian war zones under martial law. He had not been long in Trieste, but he had already acquired a grim reputation for his ungentle ways in dealing with political suspects.

In the end we had to let them lead Major Carraciolo away in handcuffs and bundle him on to the lorry. All that we could do was to assure him as they drove away that we would see to it that he was decently looked after in prison and treated according to international law as a legitimate prisoner of war.

We did not have much success in fulfilling either of these promises. In fact when we saw the Trieste newspapers the next morning we knew beyond a shadow of doubt that it was curtains for our late guest. We read that although he had been resident in Italy since 1891 he had been born and brought up in the city of Fiume and had never renounced Austrian nationality. We also learnt that when called up for military service in that year he had simply done what thousands of other young Austrians would do, one Adolf Hitler among them: that is to say, simply ignored the letter instructing them to report for medical examination and left the country instead. Tens of thousands had done it over the years, and it had been over twenty-five years ago now, but it still made him in theory an army deserter. And now he had been captured in Italian uniform after a series of newspaper articles in which he had proclaimed his undying hostility to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. It was going to be a fair trial and a fair hanging.

The trial four days later before the k.u.k. Militarhofgericht in Trieste was correct enough in the legal sense I suppose: at least the outward forms were preserved throughout the entire fifteen minutes that it lasted. A counsel for the defence was present, and Meyerhofer and I were there for the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe, but otherwise it was Old Austria at its most unappealing: a harsh, crashing military puppet-show in the worst tradi­tions of General Haynau. The verdict had been announced by the Trieste German-language papers the day before. But it could not really have been otherwise. Di Carraciolo did not deny any of the charges against him: only said that he had done what he did for Italy and that he would regard it as a singular honour to die as a martyr for the final redemption of his people. I sensed that he was already assuming the heroic pose of one of his own statues. He had quite plainly not been well treated in prison: his face was bruised, his hair and beard had been savagely cropped and to increase his humiliation he had been stripped of his own clothes and given the worn- out grey fatigues of an Austrian private about twice his own height, so that he had to stand in the dock holding his trousers up while two stone-faced sentries stood behind him with fixed bayonets. He finished his remarks. The bored-looking judge-president looked up from his crossword and enquired, “Is that all?” in a listless voice. It was.

“Very well then. Oreste Carlo Borromeo di Carraciolo, you have been found guilty by this court of high treason and desertion as defined by the Austrian Criminal Code, by the Military Penal Code and by the Articles of War. You are hereby condemned to death by shooting, the sentence to be carried out within twenty-four hours. Next case, please.”

Back at Fliegerfeld Caprovizza that afternoon a hurried officers’ conference took place in the privacy of a stores hut. All of us—even Potocznik, oddly enough—were incensed at this highhanded treatment of a guest of the unit, who was now to be shot next morning, on tenuous moral and legal grounds, as an example to the thousands of other ex- Austrians currently serving the King of Italy. “Judicial murder” was one of the politer phrases used. We decided that something must be done, if for no other reason than to save the honour of Flik 19F and to assert the soli­darity of fliers of every nationality. In the end Meyerhofer and I—the two uncles of the unit—were detailed to make the necessary arrangements. I requisitioned the station motor cycle to go to Trieste while, towards dusk, Oberleutnant Meyerhofer took off into the sunset in a lone Hansa- Brandenburg with a white cloth fluttering from each wingtip. There was not much time. We were all involved now up to the eyebrows in what I suppose, looking back on it, must have been one of the strangest episodes in the entire history of the Habsburg officer corps: a business which, had it come to light, could easily have landed us all in front of a firing squad along with Major di Carraciolo.