by Джон Биггинс
It appeared also that in 1914 he and a gang of like-minded desperadoes had tried to force the hand of the dithering Italian government by provoking a war with Austria. They had hired a ship and arms and had been about to sail from Rimini to attack the island of Cherso when the carabinieri had arrived and arrested them. Carraciolo had received a sentence of five years, but in the event he had served only a few months, since Italy had declared war on Austria in May 1915. He had then organised a similar expedition against an Adriatic islet off Lissa: an expedition which I myself had unwittingly frustrated the previous July, when my submarine U8 had torpedoed the Italian cruiser leading the force.
All in all, it looked quite an impressive curriculum vitae. Major di Carraciolo was now (he said) ablaze with a passionate desire to clear the Habsburg eagle out of the remnants of Italia irredenta in Trieste and Dalmatia and the South Tyrol. He had no personal animus against us, he assured the Swiss journalist: “The Austrian is a brave and determined fighter,” he said, “but he is also ill-organised and not very well equipped and now outnumbered into the bargain. I think that I can promise him a hot time of it once Squadriglia 64a gets into action.” Some of our younger officers dismissed the article as empty Latin bragging; but for myself I had little doubt that the Major would be as good as his word. I hoped that so long as I was flying a Brandenburger we would never meet him in the air.
We were to meet, though, and a good deal sooner than I had anticipated. 21 September dawned sunny after a week of mist and drizzle, though with some patchy cloud coming from the west. Laden down with fuel and bombs, the four Brandenburgers had squelched across the waterlogged flying field at Caprovizza and lumbered heavily into the air. We were all climbing slowly, the aeroplanes not only heavy-laden but themselves damp-soaked and sluggish after weeks of standing around in the rain and fog on the airfield. It was not until we were almost over the trench lines east of Gorz, still climbing, that we finally got into formation. We would fly in a diamond shape, perhaps fifty metres apart. The leading aeroplane would be flown by Oberleutnant Potocznik, Toth and I would fly on the starboard flank, while a new officer called Leutnant Donhanyi would take the port flank. The rear aeroplane would be flown by Stabsfeldwebel Zwierzkowski with Leutnant Szuborits as observer. The idea of the diamond formation was to guard against aeroplanes wandering off and getting lost. We also hoped that we might be able to give one another supporting fire if the Italians came up after us.
In the event they had no need to come up after us: they were already waiting as we crossed the lines, circling a thousand metres above and positioned to make the best use of the sun. Everything just happened so fast: six or seven black specks hurtling down upon us out of the glare as our shadows skimmed phantom-like across a white field of cloud about five hundred metres below. Outnumbered, our only hope of survival lay inside the cloud. I turned as I cocked the machine gun and saw Potocznik’s aeroplane waggling its wings to tell us to follow, then putting his nose down to head into the white fluff. But the Nieuports were upon us before we could hide ourselves, two of them edging beneath us to shoot us down if we tried to dive. Donhanyi’s aeroplane was the first victim. I swung around and fired a hurriedly aimed burst or two in an attempt to knock out the Nieuport manoeuvring under his tail. Then the Schwarzlose jammed. I opened the breech and fumbled in my thick gloves to clear the blockage. I cleared it, but I was too late to be of any help to Donhanyi: orange flame burst suddenly from behind the Brandenburger’s engine mantle, and there was nothing more to be done except watch helpless as the aeroplane curved away to port and down into the cloud, ablaze and leaving a plume of greasy black smoke floating in the air. But there was no time to stand watching, only swing the gun around to fire at an Italian coming at us from the starboard side. He was firing at us as he came. Somehow Toth managed to flick us sideways and down into the cloud—just as our engine coughed and missed fire.
I suspected a bullet through the fuel pump, but it scarcely mattered as we drifted down through the clinging damp murk with the engine spluttering to a standstill. By the time we emerged from the underside of the cloud a half-minute later, the engine was gone for good, the wind singing eerily in the bracing-wires as the propeller windmilled idly in the slipstream. In the sudden, intense silence I was aware for the first time of the noise of other aeroplane engines and the dry rattle of firing above us.
I looked about us fearfully as we emerged into the sunshine once more. No one was to be seen for the moment. The Italians were presumably off chasing Potocznik and Szuborits. I looked below, trying to get my bearings. The first thing that I saw was the familiar outline of Gorz below me. Well, I thought to myself, if the Italians had jumped upon us as we crossed the lines, this did at least mean that the cripples might have some chance of limping home. I signalled to Toth to turn us around towards our lines, then lugged our two bombs up on to the edge of the cockpit and tipped them overboard. Provided that we could escape the attentions of Italian fighters and flak batteries, we might still make it back. We were still about three thousand metres up and our lines were perhaps five kilometres to the east. The aeroplanes of 1916 might have been primitive, slow, flimsy contraptions, but they could at least glide well.
I stood behind the machine gun, scanning the sky about us. We might just escape unobserved . . . Then I saw the shape swooping on us out of the cloud. I ground my teeth and traversed the gun around—more out of a feeling of honour than from any hope of beating off our attacker. A two- seater would stand little enough chance against a Nieuport even under full power. Gliding along like this, though, we were the most pitiful of sitting targets, incapable of doing anything more than drift gently downwards in a straight line at about half our maximum speed. The Italian came along behind us, manoeuvring for the fatal burst. Then to my surprise the little grey aeroplane turned away to port and throttled back to fly alongside us. As the pilot waved to me I saw that the aeroplane bore the familiar emblem of the pouncing black cat painted on its side. It was the famous Major di Carraciolo in person. As he raised his gauntleted hand and pointed down I grasped that he was signalling us to fly on towards our own side of the lines—with himself as our escort.
Quaint as it might sound now, such chivalrous behaviour was by no means uncommon in those days. By 1916, war in the air had become a fairly murderous business: not at all the gentlemanly jousting of legend. Even so, men had been flying then for something not much over a decade. The very act of taking to the sky was still something only marginally less dangerous than fighting in it, so it is scarcely surprising that we aviators were still bound together in some degree by a fellow-feeling that crossed the battle lines. I believe that even in the last months of 1918 in France, where the air battles had long since turned from duels into vast, ruthless engagements involving hundreds of aircraft on each side, there was still a general disposition to leave obviously broken-down aircraft to their fate rather than simply shoot them out of the sky. In any event, Major di Carraciolo shepherded us down until we were within reach of our lines, and on the way headed off another Nieuport which was moving in to attack us. As we crossed the lines he waved in farewell and turned away, leaving us to glide down and land on a level stretch of pasture near the village of Biglia, suffering nothing worse than a burst tyre in the process. When we got the engine panels off we found that it was not battle damage that had forced us down but a blocked fuel filter.
We sat dolefully in the mess tent that evening back at Caprovizza. Kraliczek’s Verona raid had been a costly fiasco. Toth and I had got back with little more than a few bullet holes, but the others had fared a good deal worse. Potocznik had managed to limp home with a badly shot-up aeroplane and a dying observer. But at least he had sent down one of the attacking Nieuports in the process. As for Szuborits and Zwierzkowski, they had crashed near Ranziano as they tried to get home. Szuborits was all right except for a few cuts and bruises, but Zwierzkowski had a suspected fractured pelvis, while the aeroplane was a wreck. As for y
oung Donhanyi and his pilot, there was no point whatever in speculating about their fate: in 1916 one did not usually survive a fall from four thousand metres in a burning aeroplane. Even in the k.u.k. Armee there were certain limits beyond which incompetence would not be allowed to run, and with the virtual elimination of an entire squadron those limits had been reached. Hauptmann Kraliczek was summoned that same evening to Marburg to explain himself to the 5th Army’s Air Liaison Officer and to General Uzelac himself. He duly set off in the staff car next morning, wearing his best General Staff officer’s salon trousers and shiny dress-shako, and with a thick folder of statistical abstracts under his arm in order to demonstrate how, despite losing nine aircraft and five crew over the past eight weeks for negligible gains, Flik 19F was still the most meticulously administered unit in the entire Imperial and Royal Flying Service. In the mean time the rest of us were left orphan-like at Fliegerfeld Caprovizza, suspended in a sort of administrative limbo while it was decided what to do with us: whether to rebuild the unit with new aircraft and fliers or whether—as Hauptmann Heyrowsky at Flik 19 wanted—to reabsorb us into the parent unit. Among us remaining officers, feelings on the matter were mixed.
“It always was a stupid idea,” said Potocznik in the mess that evening, downing a double schnapps to steady hands that were still trembling after the morning’s battle. “Long-range bombing in daylight’s a complete waste of time. If you’re going to drop bombs on cities, then do it at night and do it unexpectedly with everything you’ve got instead of sending out four aeroplanes with a couple of jam-tin bombs each.”
“I agree,” I said, “but the trouble with night bombing is that if they can’t see you, you can’t see them either. Showering bombs about at random means that innocent civilians are liable to get hurt. Bomb-aiming’s an uncertain enough business in daylight.”
He looked at me steadily, turning the destroyed side of his face away from me as was his custom. A curious look had come into his normally rather dreamy eyes.
“There’s no such thing as an innocent civilian. This is war, not a game of croquet. The civilian behind the lines is every bit as much our enemy as the soldier in the trenches, and just as legitimate a target.”
“But that’s monstrous . . . The Hague Convention clearly lays down . . .” “To hell with the Hague Convention and all the rest of the laws imposed on us by the Latins and the Anglo-Saxons. This is a twentieth- century war we’re fighting, not one of Louis XIV’s little summer campaigns in Flanders where the ladies come out to watch the battle from a grandstand. And we’re not civilised fighters but Germanic warriors, descendants of the tribesmen who wiped out a Roman legion in the Teuto- berger Wald and then sacrificed every last survivor to their gods. I only wish that I could convince our suet-brained generals of that, what with their permitted targets and their laws of war. Just look at the way we handed Gorz over to the Wellischers: a whole town given to them intact ‘so as to spare it from further damage.’ I tell you, the German Army wouldn’t have stood for it: the Italians might have taken the site of Gorz, but not one stone would have been standing on another when they got there. Every house would have been blown up, every tree sawn down, every well poisoned and every cellar booby-trapped.”
“For heaven’s sake Potocznik, why are we fighting then? If we had to win the war by such means then frankly I’d rather we lost it a hundred times over.”
“And we will lose it too, I know that in my bones. There are too many against us already and the Americans are going to come in before long. But I promise you this, Germany will lose this war only to rise next time and win. That’s the war I’m planning for now, not this miserable abortion: the war when we’ll have got rid of the Kaisers and the Kraliczeks and the rest of the desk-warriors and be able to fight it according to our own rules.”
“Do you mean then that you’re fighting this war now without any hope of our winning?”
He smiled: the old, agreeable Potocznik smile. “Between ourselves, quite without any hope, my dear Prohaska. I realised back in the winter of 1914 when I was lying in hospital that Germany had already lost. The mistakes we made at the beginning were simply too great for us to overcome them. It may take us two years, perhaps even three to lose, but for the time being our enemies are too strong for us. The German High Command tries everything a little; flame-throwers, poison gas, U-Boats and so forth. But it always fails.”
“From my experience of poison gas, we deserve to lose for having used such filthy stuff.”
“The trouble, Prohaska, is not that we used such filthy stuff but that we used it half-heartedly. Just like aerial bombing: we do it too little, and piecemeal, without any sort of plan.” He leant across to stare into my eyes. “Personally I couldn’t give a hoot about poison gas, or about bombing hospitals or orphanages. In fact if it were left to me I’d aim for them specially, and use poison-gas bombs on cities too, if it did the job more efficiently. Terror is a weapon like any other, and civilians are as fit a target for it as anyone else. Only, if we’re going to use it, we must use it for maximum effect; not pinpricks with four or five aircraft against cities of a hundred thousand people, but raids with a hundred or even a thousand aircraft against towns of ten thousand people: arrive out of a blue sky and fly away five minutes later leaving the place a blazing cemetery. And leave them guessing which town will be on the menu for tomorrow. That’s war as I understand it: strike ruthlessly and hard, at random, without warning. If thine enemy offend thee—then go one night and blow his house up and cut the throats of his wife and children and poison his dog. That way he’ll leave you alone in future.”
I was silent for some time. I had always considered Potocznik to be slightly odd, a dreaming German poet-philosopher perhaps with some rather strange opinions, but at base a decent enough person. But now here he was preaching this murderous lunacy with the conviction of a dogmatic vegetarian or a convert to Christian Science. It was rather as if next door’s pedigree spaniel, always so playful and gentle, should suddenly appear in front of you with a crazed light in its eyes and a child’s torn-off arm dripping in its mouth. I suddenly understood Elisabeth’s remark (which I had previously taken to be flippant) about calling for help when he started questioning her about the shade of her nipples.
“I see,” I said, “so you are an enthusiast for long-range bombing after all. Are you planning to use it on a large scale in your second world war?” “Not in the least. I consider that strategic bombing may have some place in modern warfare, but not a major one except as a terror weapon.
Do it regularly, night after night, and the enemy will have time to build up defences and get used to it, like our famous preparatory barrages which last for weeks and merely serve to let the enemy move up his reserves in readiness. No, the sort of air power I’m interested in is completely different: massive and overwhelming air power, but used as close to the Front as possible in direct support of the armies—battlefield flying carried out by an air force specially designed for that purpose; fleets of aircraft in contact with the ground troops by wireless and used to smash any strong points ahead of an advance.”
“The wireless sets are going to be rather heavy for the ground troops to carry, don’t you think?”
“Not in my German army of the future. The British have been using armoured caterpillar tractors on the Ancre, I read in this week’s ‘Corps Intelligence Summary.’ Only the complacent idiots who write it are dismissing them as ‘mechanical toys of no lasting signficance.’ Not if I know anything about it they won’t be. That’s the war of the future: columns of armoured motor cars with wireless and with fleets of aeroplanes to call up as flying artillery. No more of your nine-day bombardments and twenty thousand lives to capture a square kilometre. We’ll win by speed and ruthlessness—and we’ll keep what we’ve conquered by the same means. It’s Latin, but it’s still a good motto: ‘Let them hate us so long as they fear us.’ ”
“Are you going to lead Germany in person in this war of your
s, then?” “No, not me. Nor Ludendorff nor Kaiser Wilhelm nor the House of Hohenzollern. No: in ten, twenty, even thirty years a kaiser will arise from among the German people to lead us to our final victory. But I’ll tell you something: I think that he won’t be a German from the fat, complacent beer-swilling heart of Germany, but someone from the borderlands like myself, where we know what it really means to be a German.”
I returned to my tent that evening feeling rather depressed. Was the entire world going mad? Terror bombing and women’s nipple-colour and Volkskaisers—it was as if everyone had mild shell-shock now. As I reached the door of my tent I met Leutnant Szuborits, who had just been brought back by staff car. He had a bandaged hand, but otherwise seemed very pleased with himself. I congratulated him on his escape and asked how Zwierzkowski was doing. He smiled that fat, rather self-satisfied little smile of his.
“Oh, he’s fine. They took him to a civilian hospital in Trieste. I went in the ambulance with him to see him in. Here . . .” he rummaged in a paper bag, “here, I had a couple of hours to spare afterwards before they could get a car to bring me back here. I went into a music shop and found this. It was the last one in stock.”
The record gleamed black in the twilight. I looked at the label with sinking heart. It was Mizzi Gunther and Hubert Marischka singing the duet “Sport und immer Sport” from the operetta Endlich Allein by Franz Lehar.
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.