The Two-Headed Eagle

Heyrowsky was the very model of the Old Austrian career officer, one of the few survivors of a species which had been largely destroyed in the autumn of 1914 at Limanowa and Krasnik. A superb fencer, skier and marksman, Heyrowsky—though not especially bright—was a man of exemplary courage, unshakeable loyalty to the House of Habsburg and spotless personal integrity. Although completely without experience in the air, he had insisted on flying as an observer from his first day with Flik 19, and within a month had bagged two Italian aircraft with a Ma

Such a man as this was no more likely than his imperial master to take kindly to the idea of ru

But the fact is that quite apart from his professional dislike of Flik 19F, Heyrowsky nursed an almost homicidal enmity towards the wretched Kraliczek, whom he despised as a desk-soldier of the most abject kind. It was not poor Kraliczek’s fault, I suppose, that his name was a Germanised version of the Czech word for “little rabbit” (a fact of which Heyrowsky was well aware, since he spoke that language fluently along with six or seven others). But it was a pity that the man’s timid, grey, burrowing, noc­turnal nature should have corresponded so exactly with his name. The very sight of such a creature might well be expected to arouse in a war­rior like Heyrowsky feelings—well, feelings like those of a weasel con­fronted with a rabbit. I was told in fact (confidentially, since it had had to be kept quiet at the time for fear of a court martial) that, a few weeks before, there had been a disgraceful scene when Kraliczek had arrived at Fliegerfeld Haidenschaft to visit Heyrowsky on some business or other and had emerged from the Kanzlei hut after a few minutes pursued by Heyrowsky, with his sporting rifle, firing shots around Kraliczek’s boots as the latter scurried towards his staff car and shouting, “Run for your life, bu

Quite apart from its shortcomings as regards supply of aircraft and organisation, the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe when I was seconded to it in July

1916 still suffered from yet another crippling disadvantage imposed on it by the intense conservatism of its superiors. This was the doctrine, still held to by the War Ministry even if it was begi

By 1916 this was frankly a crazy notion: ever since the 1870s the old Imperial aristocracy had been withdrawing from military life and its place had been taken by ordinary people like myself, grandson of a Bohemian peasant. Even before 1914 the k.u.k. officer corps had been a thoroughly bourgeois body, and the terrible losses of that year had made it even more so by bringing in huge numbers of hastily commissioned cadets and one- year volunteers: youths who would have been pharmacists and school­teachers but for the war, and who would certainly go back to dispensing pills and teaching French grammar once it was over. Yet still the War Ministry behaved as if we were all Schwarzenbergs and Khevenhullers, and as if tying on the sacred black-and-yellow silk sword-belt (which large numbers of newly commissioned officers were now not even bothering to buy) was the next best thing to being anointed with consecrated oil by the Pope. Meanwhile men from the ranks—without the all-important Matura certificate which allowed them to apply for a commission—were debarred absolutely from becoming officers, no matter how able and energetic they might be. So far as I know, no ranker-pilot in the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe was ever made an officer, though I believe that as a special mark of esteem the Hungarian ace Josef Kiss was promoted to officer-aspirant in 1918, once he was dead and safely out of the way.

The results of this imbecility were plain enough to see as the war went on. Our fliers invariably fought bravely, but the level of initiative and enterprise, it has to be said, was generally not high: not when compared with the German Flying Corps—which had once been as caste-conscious as our own but had changed its ideas under the pressure of events—and certainly not with the British on the Piave Front in 1918, when our Air Force had rings run around it by a handful of RFC squadrons whose pilots were almost all second lieutenants and whose daring was quite legendary. Certainly the mind-numbing routine of the old pre-war k.u.k. Armee—lots of drill and parades, because they cost less to put on than proper exercises, impressed the populace and required very little mental effort—was no very good preparation for a type of fighting that required the utmost qualities of self-reliance and initiative.

So it was that in the afternoon of my second day with Flik 19F, after re­turning from Oberleutnant Rieger’s funeral, I made the acquaintance of the man who was to be my own personal coachman in whatever desper­ate adventures lay ahead. The Operations Warrant Officer had informed me that I was to make my first operational flight the next morning, to photograph ammunition dumps near the town of Palmanova at the urgent behest of 5th Army Headquarters. So I naturally felt it to be important to prepare for this quite lengthy flight over enemy territory by at least being introduced to the man who was to fly me there and (all being well) back again.

I came upon Feldpilot-Zugsfuhrer Zoltan Toth engaged in playing cards in the shade of a hangar with the ground crew of our machine, a Hansa-Brandenburg two-seater like the one that had incinerated poor Rieger the previous day. It was just after di