There was so much activity surrounding our departure from Ulanow that it was virtually impossible to find a moment alone with Lotte. We snatched conversations here and there. She told me that she couldn’t care less if I became an officer. ‘Just come home alive. And I will marry you anyway,’ she said. Those words were a rare gift, better than any weapon, for during the dark times ahead when death held more promise than life it was those words that kept me alive.
There were thirteen of us who left for war, and the way we were cheered on the day we left you would have thought we had won already. No one expected it to last long. We were going to teach the Serbs a lesson and be home within a month. As we rode out on horseback towards the station at Rudnik the road was lined with people clapping and shouting. At the top of town we passed the Steinberg mansion. Lotte and her family were all standing outside waving us on. Lord knows why, but I felt so proud to be an Austrian soldier going to war. I sat tall in my saddle and doffed my cap as I passed them. Lotte was fighting back her tears. Suddenly she called out, ‘I’ll wait here for you, Moritz, don’t forget to write,’ then she put her hand to her mouth as if to stop the words, for her father was glowering disapprovingly at her side. And as I rode off I could see that he was talking angrily to her.
Jerzy and I were on a train with the Austro-Hungarian Second Army, quite close to Serbia, when we heard that the Russians had declared war against us. Half our troop was ordered back to Galicia but the rail network had come to a standstill under the strain of mobilization and it took us four weeks to get back. By the time we were marching to the front the Germans had declared war on the Russians, the British and French had come out against us and we had missed some ferocious battles already. What had started as a scrap on our southern border had blown up into a full-scale war and Ulanow was right in the middle of it.
So you have the picture now, Fischel: Piotr Baryslaw, me, Jerzy Ingwer and Frantz Király all sitting in a row waiting for Neidlein to tell us what to do. It is almost light and we haven’t been there long. We are exhausted and demoralized, more so than all the others, because we have just returned from a gruelling night of ‘voluntary’ work kindly organized for us by Lieutenant Neidlein and we are haunted by the spectres we have seen through the night. The others at least have slept. Not us. Király blames me for getting us into trouble but the truth is that he is as guilty as I am. The only innocents are Ingwer and Baryslaw, they were punished for laughing.
You see, when at last we got off the train that had brought us back up from the Serb border we still had to walk for three days in the scorching heat to get to the front. It didn’t have to be that way, there were stations closer to the front, but for some reason we were deposited near Przemyśl and told to walk. Have you ever heard people say ‘L’Autriche est toujours en retard d’une armée, d’une année et d’une idée’: Austria is always an army short, a year behind and clueless? Well, it was true, especially then. You can imagine that, after the month we had just spent going up and down the country like idiots, the men were losing faith in those who were leading them. Király was the first to complain.
‘Come on, Lieutenant, can’t we stop for a rest?’ he called out in his heavily accented German.
Lieutenant Neidlein looked back over his shoulder and grimaced.
‘Stop moaning, it’s just a stroll in the country. Enjoy it while you can.’
‘A stroll in the country! We’ve been walking non-stop for days,’ Király groaned.
‘Oh shut up,’ Lieutenant Neidlein hissed, ‘we have to get to the front by sundown. The Third Army need reinforcing. If it’s action you want I’ll make sure you get some soon.’
‘That’s right, and we all know what happened the last time the Great Viennese Sausage said that, don’t we, lads? We twiddled our thumbs for ten days in a field full of cow-pats waiting for a train,’ I shouted out in Polish. There was a roar of laughter from Jerzy and Piotr.
‘What was that?’ Neidlein enquired angrily.
‘Nothing, Lieutenant,’ I replied.
You see, Neidlein couldn’t speak Polish, nor could Király for that matter. Some bright spark had had the idea that every regiment should contain a smattering of all the nationalities for social cohesion and to prevent rebellion from hostile minorities like the Czechs and Romanians. A recipe for disaster. The officers who were mostly Austrian couldn’t understand half their men and we couldn’t understand each other. I think Neidlein wanted to assert his authority over us after that but he got the actual idea for our punishment a little later. As we got nearer to the front we heard the rumbling sound of lorries in the distance. We watched as an ambulance truck rolled by in the opposite direction on its way back from the front. It was overflowing with wounded men. We could just make out their vacant faces squashed up against the mud-spattered windows.
The first ambulance was followed by another and another and then all manner of military vehicles carrying men prostrate in the back with their limbs mangled or missing, their faces burnt and peeling. Soon there was a constant flow of traffic coming the other way. I felt sick, what had happened? No one said a word. Up ahead was a forest and I could see now a trickle of foot soldiers emerging from the trees.
‘Oh my God,’ Jerzy gasped as they drew closer, ‘look at them.’
These were the walking wounded, their uniforms covered in filth and blood, their weary heads lolling forwards, their eyes wide open, intent on the horizon, determined to escape whatever was behind them. I wondered where they were going. Why weren’t they being tended to in the field hospitals?
‘Perhaps they are full. Maybe they’re going to the nearest base station. Where would that be?’ Jerzy asked.
I thought it would probably be in Lemberg but some of the men wouldn’t make it that far, they were in a state of near collapse, sprawled along the roadside. They bled copiously from open wounds to their arms, stomachs and heads. Their retreat was over.
The nearer we got to the forest the thicker the stream of injured men that gushed out of it. It worried me that none of these men had been bandaged. If their wounds were dressed properly nearly all of them would live. I could not understand why we weren’t stopping to help. Eventually I became so irritated that I broke ranks to help a man who was lying face down in the mud. But Neidlein screamed at me to get back in line. And that’s when he got the idea about what to do to us.
Later that afternoon, after we had pitched camp in the woods and cleaned out our rifles, Neidlein summoned us to his tent. He was sitting behind a small fold-out table covered in maps.
‘Ah, come in boys,’ he smiled, then he looked me in the eye. ‘I must say, Daniecki, I was deeply touched by the concern you showed for your fellows today, so I have decided to give you all an opportunity to volunteer your services to the field hospital at Rohatyn for the night. They are desperately short-staffed and can’t cope with the numbers. They’ve made a specific request for assistance and I immediately thought of you. I want you to know that this is not a punishment but a worthy and important task. My only concern is that it will exhaust you ahead of tomorrow’s battle, but you are all spirited lads, you’ll be all right.’
The forest was swarming with retreating soldiers as we made our way to Rohatyn. No one seemed to know where to go or what to do; they were just running. This was my first taste of war and I had never seen such pandemonium. Then from behind us a cavalry captain surged forward on his horse and shouted at the men to stop running and to regroup by the river. There were some who ignored the order and the captain took out his rifle and shot one of them in the back. It was enough to halt the rest. The words ‘Hold your ground’ echoed through the trees as soldier called to soldier. The tide was stopped and the men sank to the ground exhausted, awaiting their next order. We came across a soldier sitting forlornly at the foot of a hornbeam tree and asked him what was happening.
‘There’s been a massacre at the Zlota Lipa twenty kilometres east of here,’ he explained. Apparently they’d been advancing in c
lose order over the hills and rivers, making good progress, when quite unexpectedly they met the Russians coming the other way; it was, he said, like running into a steamroller. Our men had held their ground for two days but the Russians were better armed and at least double in number. The soldier had a stray look in his eye; I’d seen it in some of the wounded men we had passed earlier in the day. It was as if his eyes had seen something that his mind could not comprehend. We wanted to know what the battlefield was like.
‘The shells fell like rain on our heads,’ he said, ‘I saw whole regiments wiped out in a matter of minutes. No matter how many Russians we killed there were always more of them advancing. In the end we were crushed like flies. We fled for our lives. It was horrific. The battlefield was stained red and covered with bits of body and brains. But worse were the desperate pleas from the dying who we left howling in the wind as we retreated. That was dreadful.’
If this were not enough to rob us of our youthful bravado then what we were about to see would finish us off completely. There can be nothing more demoralizing for those about to face the enemy for the first time than to see at close quarters what a shell can do to a man. Of course I would grow accustomed to such sights but I cannot overemphasize the impact it had on me at first.
A makeshift field hospital had been set up inside the Roman Catholic Church of St Peter and Paul in the village of Rohatyn and our assignment was to bring in the wounded and throw out the dead. They came in their hundreds from every direction, like a swarm of locusts converging on the little church, traipsing down from the uplands or tramping through forests. It was as if the graves had opened and spilled their contents into the street. Men with half their faces missing, men with limbs mashed to a pulp, some dragging their legless rumps along the road trailing blood behind them, others, more hopeless still, being carried in the arms of their friends. A few of these last were so severely burnt that they were barely recognizable as human at all. Gristle in uniform, and yet miraculously they were still alive.
At first we tried to help them all but the nurses quickly reprimanded us. If they could walk we were to send them on. Only those who needed urgent attention and could be saved were treated. Those who were beyond hope were ignored. It was dreadful, but choices had to be made because there was neither the time nor the resources to tend to them all. Once they had succumbed we carried them out on stretchers to the graveyard where they were dropped into a mass grave that the villagers had dug. The priest stood in constant prayer over the grave. Occasionally a hospital transport would arrive to take some of the wounded back to Lemberg, and we were able to carry some new arrivals into the church.
Inside, the pews had been moved to one side. There were only a dozen beds so most of the wounded lay shoulder to shoulder on the floor and there was barely any room to walk. It was dark but for a sharp ray of sunlight that pierced the western window and created a glowing halo of light over a particular soldier, such that whenever I walked in my eye would immediately fall upon that soldier, as if he were somehow special. And as the sun set, the solitary ray shifted from soldier to soldier and lifted each one in turn out of the obscurity, as if God himself were scrutinizing them and choosing who should live or die.
After a few hours I became accustomed to the grim stench of pulverized flesh and the groans of the wounded. They were to be my unwanted companions throughout the war. At dusk we lit candles, and the nurses carried on tirelessly cleaning and bandaging long into the night. We did not notice that the guns had gone quiet until there was a sudden barrage much closer than before. The approach of the Russians only served to hasten our activities. My arms and back ached from the carrying and I was parched. My canteen was empty; I had given every last drop to the dying, upon whose lips it was wasted. Frantz Király was the only one who had kept his water for himself. If anyone asked him for a drop he told them to go to hell. He was out for himself. Like all peasant labourers he knew the pace that he could sustain, and would not surpass it even when all others around him were in a frenzy.
We were in a rush now to load up the wounded as quickly as possible and send them west. Baryslaw and I were helping a soldier, who had lost a leg, on to a transport wagon, when there was a terrific explosion that shook the ground and caused a few tiles to drop from the roof of the church. I instinctively ducked behind the wagon, as did Baryslaw, but the soldier panicked and began to shout ‘retreat’; he pushed us aside and with newfound strength hopped away down the street. When we returned to the church, we found that half the stretchers were empty: fear had driven the men scraping and crawling into the night. Men who we thought were incapable of moving had vanished. What had these men experienced in only two weeks of war that drove them to blind panic every time they heard a bomb drop?
Within twenty-four hours I would understand, for at that very moment somewhere safe and warm 150 kilometres away Field-Marshal Conrad von Hötzendorf was issuing an order for the Austro-Hungarian Third Army led by General Brudermann, supported by reinforcements from the Second Army recently arrived from the Serbian Front, to attack the Russians at the Gnila Lipa River. General Brudermann, who was keen to avenge the humiliation suffered at the Zlota Lipa where he had lost half his men, was only too happy to oblige.
We received new orders to return to our posts and be ready for a morning offensive. Meanwhile the divisional surgeon had already decided to pack up and pull back to the next village. A dozen hospital transport wagons had drawn up outside the church and we managed to get most of the wounded hoisted on to them but there wasn’t room for them all. One of my last chores was to lift a dying man from a camp bed on to the floor because the bed had to be packed away. He had a shrapnel wound the size of a tennis ball in his chest, which gurgled strangely at every breath. As I put him down he grasped my hand with uncanny strength. He tried to speak but his lips were unable to form the words. Then he pulled my hand towards his chest. I recoiled but he would not let go. He clasped it firmly over his uniform, the side that had not disappeared into his wound. ‘Pocket,’ he whispered, summoning the last of his will. I reached inside his breast pocket and felt a piece of card. I picked it out carefully and saw that it was a bloodstained photograph. It was a picture of him with his wife and baby girl. Taken against a simple white wall, he was standing with his hands resting on the shoulders of his wife, who was sitting on a chair with the baby on her knee. They were wearing their Sunday best and to my tired eye in that dark church they looked like the most beautiful people in the world. I turned the photograph towards him so that he could take a last look. He stared at it for a moment then closed his eyes. I kept that photograph throughout the war, in fact I still have it now, Fischel. Would you like to see it? It’s over in the drawer in my desk . . . yes that one . . . under the envelopes. That’s it. Have a good look. Beautiful, aren’t they? Here, let me see. Ah yes . . . yes. I love these people.
Have I really drunk all that water? Fischel, please go and fill the jug, and if you don’t mind, clean out the spittoon. There’s a good boy. Hurry back and I’ll tell you the rest.
4
LEO IS LYING IN THE SAME ROOM, ON THE SAME MOBILE BED his girlfriend had lain on a few hours previously. It is late, he is supposed to be asleep. The doctor has told him to rest, but it is the first night in two years that Eleni has not been at his side. He aches for her, rolls over, falls down the crevice where she once lay, tumbles headlong through space and chases her through the ether.
He grapples to fill the empty holes that still plague his memory. He has now been told that the bus crashed into a lorry, that the lorry driver was drunk and swerved across the pan-American highway into their path. The lorry driver had sustained a concussion but nothing serious. Still now this information means nothing to him. If it wasn’t for the devastation the accident had wrought, he wouldn’t know it had anything to do with him.
Eventually he begins to slip in and out of consciousness, his thoughts and his nightmares merging into one. This is not sleep but a relentless wringing of the
spirit as if it were a wet rag that needed to shed its filth. Eleni appears to him, she is dancing with him and he is relieved. ‘I thought you were dead,’ he says, and he holds her tightly. This is the cruellest nightmare of all, a nightmare he is to have night after night for many years. Eleni is alive, she returns to play with him and the nightmare is so real that he actually believes it to be true. His body relaxes and he breathes easily. They talk and kiss and he can feel the warmth of her skin, he softens and opens like a passion flower. But then she begins to dissolve in his arms, her smile fades and she disappears. Now he is screaming for her to come back, he searches for her in the recesses of his dream, trying desperately not to wake up. In his half-waking state he locks his eyes shut and thrusts himself backwards towards his dream, but he has lost the route map. When finally he awakes it feels like he has lost her all over again.
Muerta.
The only evidence of his dream is two lines of salt down his face where he has been crying in his sleep. Morning is moon miles away.
Now irreversibly awake, he replays his first meeting with Eleni, back when they were both students. He was in the final year of his biology degree at University College, London. He had been out clubbing in Camden with some friends. It was three in the morning and he had decided to walk back to his hall of residence in town. As he passed a bus stop a voice called out to him.
‘Excuse me, are you going towards Tottenham Court Road?’
Leo stopped and turned. The first thing he saw was hair. Long, black and curly. Then he saw the girl beneath, short with tight jeans, and no more than eighteen years old.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Do you mind if I walk with you?’ She seemed worried.
‘No, not at all,’ he said.
Random Acts of Heroic Love Page 4