The Two-Headed Eagle

“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 Bauma

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 Bauma

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 a

“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.