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12 DUE PROCESS OF LAW
The next morning dawned cloudy but calm. The place appointed for the execution was the military Exerzierplatz between Villa Opicina and Trebiciano, up on the arid comb of the karst ridge that towers above the city of Trieste: a bleak, windswept expanse of roughly levelled ground among the thin pine trees, worn bare of vegetation by generations of tramping soldiers’ boots and the bellowing of countless drill sergeants. I was relieved by this: as I had suspected, the original plan had been to shoot di Carraciolo against the wall of the Citadel in the centre of the city, but in the end it had been decided to carry out the grisly ceremony up here on the ridge for fear of unrest and perhaps demonstrations among the city’s Italians. There was a small, overgrown cemetery near by, used once for burying smallpox victims from the city below. After the execution the body would be discreetly interred here in an unmarked grave. Old Austria had centuries of experience at this sort of thing and knew that patriots would be less inclined to keep laying wreaths if they had to trudge all the way up from Trieste to do it.
Meyerhofer and I arrived at first light in the Flik’s staff car. Neither of us spoke much. Inside us our stomachs were already knotted with apprehension. Suppose that someone got nervous and talked? We stood waiting in the early-morning chill of autumn as the sky began to lighten over Lipizza. It had not been easy for us to get permission to attend. Myself, I had had a very trying interview with the Naval District Defence Commander, Rear-Admiral the Freiherr von Koudelka, to explain exactly why I thought that I ought to be present at the execution to represent the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine. In the end I had been reduced to arguing that since Fiume came within Military District No. 72, which was a naval recruitment area, di Carraciolo might technically speaking be a deserter from the Imperial and Royal Fleet. The Admiral had given me a very strange look, perhaps wondering whether I collected leather straps and manacles as a hobby.
“Hmmm. Why are you so anxious to attend this execution, Prohaska? Interested in that sort of thing are you? I’ve always tried to avoid it myself, ever since I was a lieutenant on a torpedo-boat and had to attend as a witness when they hanged one of my crew for stabbing a tram conductor in Zara. Leave that kind of business to the provost’s department if you’ll take my advice: they have a taste for it.”
“I obediently report that I have no interest in executions, Herr Admiral. It’s just that my brother-officers and I are . . . er . . . outraged by this man’s dastardly treachery towards his Emperor and King and his base disloyalty towards the Noble House of Austria.”
“You’re what? ”
“Outraged by his disloyalty, Herr Admiral. We feel strongly that now the swine is getting his just deserts there should be representatives there from both armed services to see justice done.”
“But Prohaska, for God’s sake: from what I can see of it this Italian chap of yours is an Austrian subject only in the most technical sense of the word. Damn it all man, if we shot everyone who’d dodged service in the k.u.k. Armee and left the country these past thirty years we’d have all the ammunition factories working overtime to meet the demand. At a guess I’d say that about two-thirds of the United States Army must be technically Austrian subjects. No: in my official capacity as local naval commander I have to agree that the fellow deserves shooting, but as a sailor and a fighting soldier of the House of Austria I have to say that it stinks. If you ask me the military are looking for victims to frighten the rest, and frankly I’m surprised that you young fellows should wish to have any part in this wretched charade. This cursed war’s destroying everything we used to value. Even the junior officers are turning into prigs and informers now—no better than a bunch of Prussians. Frankly I’d have expected better of a Maria-Theresien Ritter. But there you are . . .” He scribbled something contemptuously on a slip of paper. “There’s your damned permission and may you choke on it. Once you’ve seen some poor devil tied to a post and shot you won’t be so keen for a second showing.”
So we waited there on the exercise ground, fortified only by a swig from Meyerhofer’s hipflask. I looked at my watch: 6:10 a.m. We had said 6:30. Would they arrive late even if they arrived at all? What would happen if they arrived before the execution party? It had always been a dictum in the tactics lectures back at the Marine Academy that in military operations, at least seventy-five per cent should be pla
At last we heard the clashing and grinding of gears as a motor lorry laboured up the last steep stretch of the road that zigzagged up from Trieste. It contained the firing squad: a party of ten young and very sick- looking soldiers led by an Oberleutnant whose face expressed an intense desire to be anywhere else on earth but this particular place on this particular morning. The lorry was followed by a motor car containing the notorious Major Bauma
Finally there arrived a second lorry, some way behind the rest of the procession. It lumbered to a halt and two soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets got out to let down the tailboard. The lorry contained the star performer in this entertainment, handcuffed and escorted by four more soldiers. He was helped down none too gently from the lorry. He looked pale and exhausted: clearly Bauma
The rituals of justice now commenced. I had been present at an execution once before: my own, at a fort in the Arabian desert early in 1915, when the Turks had taken it into their heads to hang me as a spy. But this was the first time I had seen these procedures as a witness, and the whole business only served to reinforce my intense dislike of capital punishment. To kill a man in battle is not much: I had done as much several times already and would do so a number of times again. In those circumstances there is usually no time to think about it or to devise any better reason for doing it than that your victim will undoubtedly kill you if you do not kill him first. What I found obscene about this whole rigmarole as I saw it there that morning was the cold-blooded deliberation of it all: a thousand times more horrible and despicable than the lowest villain who sticks a knife into a cafe landlord in a brawl.
First the firing squad was marched up and sent forward one by one to pick up a loaded rifle from the ten weapons leaning against the lorry. Two of the ten had been loaded with blanks so that the young conscripts might console themselves afterwards by thinking that they had not after all fired a bullet into a defenceless man: a feeble pretence in fact, because anyone who has ever fired an army rifle will at once recognise the difference in recoil between ball-cartridge and blank. That part of the performance completed, the prisoner was led forward and bound to the post. Then, to my surprise, the doctor came up with his black bag and produced a stethoscope as di Carraciolo’s tunic was unbuttoned. He applied the instrument to the condemned man’s chest, then felt his pulse.