The Chev went out of commission for a few days after the Rome Ceremony, and the CO returned with his wife to Milan in another car. I waited for a day or two before going back by air. A short time afterwards, I received a phone call at 8.45 a.m., when I was just preparing to leave for the office after breakfast. The call was from the major then in charge of the Milan Section, and he told me I was to be ready to leave for Vienna that afternoon! A few hectic hours of getting ready followed, and we eventually left at about four o’clock and spent some hours in the Verona Section. I remember being rather tired that evening and the CO made me have a whisky – for the first and last but one time in my life. I heard him ordering three whiskies and assumed that this included myself, as there were three of us; I interjected meekly that I never drank whisky, but the only answer was a gruff, ‘Well, it’ll do you good!’ So I drank it and perhaps it did do me good.
We left first thing next morning, on the road for Vienna, of which I had read in those happy pre-war days, but which would doubtless now be overcast with the same grey, hopeless and rather sullen atmosphere which had impressed me when I had visited Austria the year before. But tunes of Strauss waltzes hummed pleasantly through my mind and I thought, ‘Surely there will be something left of the spirit of the city – it can’t all have been destroyed by war and Occupation.’ Soon we were bounding through the endless green fields, straddled with vines on posts reaching one to another in an almost human gesture, and then we were in the mountains, shut in among valleys and ravines, and crossing roaring glacial torrents over which the road passed and re-passed at frequent intervals.
When we came to the frontier, I was badly caught out – and in fact found very much wanting. The previous year things had been fairly easy there, as Italy and Austria had been under one command. Now, however, a separate Austrian command had been established – British Troops in Austria, it was called (or BTA), and of course the frontier regulations had been tightened up. The year before, no movement order had been necessary and in the haste of departure, although this trip had been mooted for some time, I had forgotten that a movement order might be required. Now, too late, I found out how stupid it was to assume that things would be the same. An MP corporal stopped the car at the frontier (the Chev once more), and asked us for a movement order. My tongue positively swelled in my mouth, as the CO looked at me and said sternly, ‘Where is it?’ I had to confess my failure and the corporal said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t let you through without a movement order – where do you come from?’ But the CO was quite equal to handling the situation. His commission, though its HQ was situated in the Rome Area Command, from where a movement order would normally have been obtained for a trip of this sort, came directly from the War Office Intelligence Branch, and so he did not actually need to seek permission from Rome Command to enter Austria – he could go in his own right, though perhaps the Rome authorities would have looked on this with disapproval. Despite that, he offered to make out a movement order for the MP corporal on the spot. ‘Any number of them if you like,’ he said with grim humour. ‘We have a typewriter in the car and you can type them now for me to sign, can’t you?’ he added, turning to me. ‘Certainly, sir,’ I replied, ‘It wouldn’t take a minute.’ The MPs gave up and let us through, though they doubtless put a quick call through to their colleagues at the Movement HQ – but no ill came of it and we heard no more, but for subsequent journeys I was always well supplied with movement orders.
At Klagenfurt, there were various sections to be visited and staff officers to be called upon and liaised with, for it had been ascertained that a substantial number of Austrian claimants existed, though it is not generally known that a large number of our people were assisted and sheltered by anti-Nazi Austrians.
The intention had been to motor right on to Vienna, but to do so one would have had to cross the Russian zone; and at that time the Russians were beginning slowing-down tactics, placing impediments in the way of Allied traffic other than their own. We were therefore strongly advised to travel by train, and the arrangements for this were made by ‘Q’ movements. We had to leave that night at 10.15 p.m. for Vienna, and were due to reach the city early next morning. I was very disappointed that the journey had to be made in this way under cover of darkness, and more than a little dismayed over my baggage, which had been packed to go by car and was in far too many pieces to make train-travelling straightforward. The colonel was very sporting about it and assisted me in carrying it over the line at the almost deserted station, even hoisting a couple of haversacks on to his walking stick, which somewhat amazed me. Besides those, I had a suitcase of clothes, a typewriter and a case of papers, shorthand notebooks and other office materials.
We reached Vienna station about seven o’clock the next morning after a very uneventful journey, with no excitements provided by Russian troops as I had half expected. The CO decided it would be necessary to spend one night in Vienna, in order to pay the HQ two visits, and so we put up at the famous Sacher’s Hotel, then an officers’ transit mess. It was typically Austrian, and of course Viennese, with thick carpets, panelled rooms, comfortable solid furniture and double windows everywhere. The dining room was partitioned off into alcoves, rather like a Viennese coffee-house. We had some breakfast, and afterwards set out on foot for Schönbrunn Palace, then the headquarters of ACA, or Allied Commission Austria. Among other things, it was necessary to arrange berths back on the train for the following night. The appropriate officers were seen at the HQ, so that plans could henceforth be formulated for a section of our commission in Austria to deal with the large number of claims there. Both in Vienna and Klagenfurt there was plenty of concrete evidence that this was necessary, and arrangements were made with GSI to publish the announcements in the local papers that claims would be settled at a future date, after presentation, as had already been done in Italy, but much earlier. By the time the section had been established, it was reckoned, the knowledge would be propagated that helpers were to be rewarded and where possible compensated.
That evening the CO took me to have dinner at the Kinsky Palace, the Viennese home of Prince Kinsky and a magnificent baroque building, but now the usual officers’ club. (The commissioned ranks did not, however, always get a palace for their clubs – the Royal Palace at Naples was the biggest and best NAAFI/EFI ORs’ Club in Italy, and the Palazzo Colonna in Rome was a very good second-best). The Kinsky Palace had a broad, winding, balustraded staircase, and upstairs a dining room and ballroom. It was all very magnificent, and I felt somewhat overawed eating under such a colossal number of opulent-looking glass and gilded chandeliers, twinkling in the lights like a forest of outsize dewdrops. The small orchestra, mostly composed of strings, was of course specialising in Viennese waltzes that evening, and I greatly enjoyed one or two with the colonel, who turned out to be a good dancer. But it was oppressively hot and sticky, especially in service dress, and I was rather disappointed when the CO said he found it too much and brought the evening to a close by saying that he wished to return to Sacher’s. As I did not know anyone else present, I had of course to go home too, though it would have hardly been etiquette to stay after he had taken me there – but I was sad about the Viennese waltzes. In spite of the uniforms and the military club atmosphere, the NAAFI rations on sale halfway up the majestic stairs and all the usual trappings of organised ‘welfare’, the magnificence of the palace and haunting strains of the musicians seemed to recreate something of the past, which was now, I supposed, dead and gone forever. It was the past of the Empress Maria Theresa and the Emperor Franz Joseph, of the more distant past, when gallant officers danced at the Congress of Vienna, the past of Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and many other famous names in the world of politics and art – most characteristic and evocative of them all, perhaps, the name of Strauss.
Next morning I had an hour or so free to wander round the city, which appeared to be in a sorry state – there was a lot of destruction, either aerial or from bombardment or street fighting. The ren
owned Burgtheater had had a direct hit and was a shambles, the Church of St Stephen had also been hit, and the river area seemed to be devastated as far as the eye could see. I entered into conversation with an elderly workman, idling like me at the parapet. He told me they were desperately short of food, which was clearly evident from the appearance of the population one saw in the streets, and he said that for people living in the Russian zone of the city things were very difficult indeed. The Russians were liable, he said, to abscond with the civilians’ rations, and especially with their cigarettes. Life was completely uncertain. He showed no particular bitterness, only an utter weariness and mental depression in which no spark of energy or hope seemed to light up; I suppose years of semi-starvation and the hopelessness of the present situation had taken their toll, and temporarily at least had numbed the spirit of the once gay and carefree Viennese. As in all great cities there must doubtless have always been some poverty in Vienna, but now poverty and malnutrition seemed to be the rule, rather than the exception. The workman was very friendly and very frank when he found that I could converse with him in his own language, and he gave me a most interesting first-hand account of life in the city. He was touchingly grateful for a few cigarettes. Later, I saw quite a well-dressed man stoop quickly to grab the stub of a cigarette carelessly chucked away by a passing GI. The shops were literally nothing but window-dressing, for there was next to nothing to buy. In each window of a clothes shop there might be one decent-looking article, but if you went in and asked for one like it, you would be told that it was only on display and that there were no materials available for repeating any models. I have never seen such barren shops as those in Vienna, not even in Rome in 1944, soon after liberation. As for food shops, I never saw any. In Sacher’s Hotel the cooking was excellent, but the helpings were small, and there were no welcome additions to the rations like those we were now able to obtain in Italy, such as fresh salad and local cheese. Here, whatever was produced locally was essential to the civilian population, and the Army once more had to make do with its own rations, which from the vitamin point of view were excellent, but were often dull with their frequent repetition of bully beef, dehydrated eggs, tinned milk, baked beans and the usual repertoire, which with the best will in the world and the greatest skill it was not possible to vary greatly.
The colonel was very irate after breakfast that morning as an over-zealous valet, acting as batman, had apparently whitened his webbing belt, so that it was as pure as snow, whereas our CO always wore it un-whitened. As he remarked, it would now have to be continually ‘blancoed’ and he did not like white webbing at all. Personally, I always admired it and usually wore a white belt myself in summer, but I knew it was useless and tactless to say how nice the belt would look, and so I contented myself with remarking that the man should never have done such a thing without first enquiring whether it was desirable or not. The valet in question was a small, wizened Austrian with a friendly, ingenuous face. No doubt he had waited on archduchesses in his time – and it was impossible to be really angry with him. I was, however, detailed to inform him that everyone did not care for their belts whitened, at which he could only say he had been anxious to please the ‘Herr Oberst’. I suspected he had taken a fancy to belt-whitening as there were now no beautiful top-boots to polish till they shone like mirrors.
My main responsibility that day was to see that transport was laid on to take us to the train in the evening, and that all our papers were in order for the journey back to Klagenfurt. I had great difficulty in arranging transport to the station, for although there was a so-called ‘ACA taxi service’, many of them driven by ATS girls, these were much in demand and there was a considerable run on them. They had to provide all transport for duty in the city for all staff except generals, who had their own cars, and at night only a certain small number were left on to act as duty trucks, and a few for recreational transport. After much frantic phoning, I managed to obtain a share for us in a shooting-brake, which was transporting someone else to the same train. It was to pick up its original passengers and then call for the colonel and me at Sacher’s at about a quarter to nine that evening. I had thought I was supposed to dine with the CO, but at seven o’clock he was nowhere to be seen. I waited half an hour and then decided that if I was to have any food at all I had better go in to dinner alone. Wondering whatever had happened to him, I found my way to the dining room and ate a solitary meal, with little to see as the room was nearly empty and tables were already being laid for breakfast. After the meal I looked into the bar, where the previous evening the Austrian barman had presented me with a small red rosebud, the only flower I saw in Vienna. Tonight I knew no-one present and as there was a crowd of men drinking there, I quickly withdrew. I had the luggage brought down, and still there was no sign of the CO. By this time it was 8.30 p.m. and I was beginning to get seriously worried, as the train was due to leave at 9 p.m. Finally, at 8.45 p.m. or so, our transport arrived in great haste to pick up its passengers and be off, for there was little time to spare. I swore black and blue that I was sure the CO would arrive at any moment – feeling certain that my job depended on that transport not being allowed to go off without us. Just as all seemed lost and the other passengers were probably thinking that I was inventing some mythical person and deciding to wait not an instant longer, my lost commander strode round the corner from the direction of the Kinsky Palace in the company of a tall young guards officer, who addressed him as ‘uncle’.8 Suddenly I realised that he must have been with his nephew who was stationed in Vienna, and that my previous anxious phone calls to locate him had of course been entirely misdirected. He seemed very cheerful and not particularly worried about the train. We got into the truck, waved goodbye to his nephew; the driver accelerated hard and we hurtled through the quiet streets, driving in great style on to the railway platform, almost into the train in fact. But the driver pulled up just in time, our baggage was unloaded, we climbed into the train and the whistle went. We were off – with barely 30 seconds to spare!
I had to share a sleeping berth that night with a lady from UNRRA, who said she felt extremely sick, though whether from too much celebration on account of her departure she did not disclose. She got in down the line from Vienna and promptly placed in the washbasin a bouquet of flowers given her by a crowd of friends who were seeing her off. She soon said she felt ill, but declined offers of help. Sincerely hoping she would recover quickly, I managed to snatch a few hours’ sleep before she was up and dressing in preparation for leaving the train, which she did before me in the early hours of the morning, and was met by another bunch of adherents. Who she was and what she did I never really discovered, except that she originally hailed from ‘Mittel-Europa’ and wore bright red and white UNRRA flashes on her shoulders. Like a lot of the Occupation personnel, I was a trifle suspicious of UNRRA.
In Klagenfurt we picked up the Chev and her lance-corporal driver once more, paid a last visit to the HQ and were soon on our way back to Italy. We stopped for lunch at the club in Udine, a charming old town near the border, rather like Padua, with antique vaulted arcades along many of the narrow streets and delightful views of the Alps from all sorts of angles from its squares and alleys. The club seemed to be built on three sides of a courtyard and was clean and cool, with stone floors covered with coconut matting, plain furniture, sparse but adequate, and freshly distempered walls and white painted woodwork. The Albergo d’Italia was not so frequented by members of the Forces as the Post Hotel at Villach, which was a meeting place for so many people, going to and coming from the UK, on leave, duty and release. The Post Hotel was typically Austrian and the Italia Hotel, Italian. At the latter, one would hear the cheerful hum of Italian voices accompanying the clatter of dishes from the direction of the kitchen, and in the passages one would often meet a dark and comely Italian girl in the inevitable wedge-heeled shoes, a coloured apron protecting her knee-length dress, her hair long and flowing, humming a romantic tune as she went on her way, clean
ing and polishing.
I enjoyed the visit to Austria. From the work point of view it was extremely interesting and a lot was achieved, but as an insight into conditions in the country itself it was very depressing. The people seemed despondent and hopeless, and in Vienna they looked pale and ill; certainly their prospects at that time must have been gloomy, to say the least, occupied as they were by four great powers, divided into quarters and short of all the necessities of life. Luxuries were nonexistent. So much has been spoken and written about the difficulties of the Berlin population that it has been rather forgotten that the Viennese had to contend with an almost identical situation, although there was never actually a blockade imposed on the city in the same way. But out in the hinterland, in the Russian zone, conditions were the same as in Eastern Germany: removal of industrial plant and farming stock and machinery to the Soviet Union, disappearance of suspected or innocent persons, starvation of the inhabitants and a general paralysis of all community life. Perhaps by now things are better and more normal – one can only hope so, for the Austrians’ sake, but their problem is still as unsolved as the German one – both are inextricably involved in the game of power politics. Meanwhile, the men and women of those areas work, suffer and wait – perhaps they also dare to hope.9
My Italian Adventures Page 34