The Two-Headed Eagle

It was all getting to be too much, and had become extremely disrup­tive of the form-filling and statistical compilation that was Kraliczek’s reason for military existence. Something bold had to be done. Drastic measures were called for. Leadership must be asserted in the strongest possible terms. So Hauptma

There were two main obstacles to this scheme. The first and lesser of the two was that for our Hansa-Brandenburg CIs to carry any worth­while bombload such a distance we would have to fly to Venice with the prevailing east wind of autumn, then turn north to try and reach the near­est Austrian flying field, in the foothills of the Alps. The second—and by far the greater—of the objections was that in the whole embattled continent of Europe in the year 1916 it is doubtful if there was another city more formidably protected against air attack than Venice. A major naval port and the site of several munitions factories, the island city was protected against air-raids by layer after layer of defences: first a line of watch vessels and patrolling airships out in the Gulf of Venice, then the fighter airfield “La Serenissima” at the Lido and the powerful flak bat­teries at Forts Alberone, Malamocco and Sabbioni, then further belts of flak artillery mounted on barges, then lines of tethered kite-balloons. The flying-boats of the Imperial and Royal Navy had been carrying out bombing-raids against Venice practically each day since the war with Italy began, but the defences forced them now to attack at night and flying above three thousand metres, which—given the primitive bomb-sights of those days—meant that most of their bombs had no other effect than flinging up spouts of muddy water in the lagoons.

In Hauptma

Normally, in all such missions conceived on paper by Hauptma

Once again we checked our maps and made our preparations. The two aeroplanes would head out over the Gulf of Trieste just after dawn on the morning of 13 October, and, if they avoided the flak batteries and fighter aircraft off Sdobba, would make landfall some way west of the former Austrian seaside resort of Grado, then head inland and follow the railway line through Portogruaro and San Dona di Piave until they reached Mestre. We would then fly across the lagoons to attack the bridge from the east, hoping in this way to get in between the defences that protected Venice to seaward and the balloon lines and anti-aircraft batteries that guarded it against attack from the north.

It would be a hazardous business, the crossing of the Gulf of Trieste nearly as dangerous in its way as the attempt to penetrate the defences of Venice. But in between those two danger zones I did not expect too much trouble. In those days before radar, aircraft in ones and twos usually had little trouble in wandering about over open countryside. Biplanes look much alike from the ground, telephones were few in the Italian countryside in those days, and anyway, people’s vision had not yet become adjusted to looking up into the sky all the time. For this reason, and in order to save weight, we decided to do without the forward-firing machine guns. On this flight we would have only the observer’s Schwarz- lose to protect us.

Toth and I made our final checks that October evening by the light of the petrol lamps in our hangar. Flying suits, maps, compasses, pistols, emergency rations; also razors, towels, soap and two blankets, since we expected to be away overnight and knew that such things were now in so short a supply that host flying fields expected visitors to bring their own with them. We completed our preparations and while I had a few final words with Feldwebel Prokesch and the mechanics—the ignition had been giving trouble lately—Toth went down to the village to see Magdalena.

Quite a number of our men had taken up with village girls of late. Only the day before, Kraliczek had received his first formal request for permission to marry a local girl—and had promptly set to work devis­ing a suitable wad of printed application forms. There had already been a number of paternity suits filed against enlisted men. It astonished me how quickly our men—drawn from every province of our vast empire and totally ignorant of either Italian or Slovene—had managed to put down roots in the locality. Not for the first time it occurred to me that one of the few good things to be said about war is that it does at least do something to prevent inbreeding, which must once have been a serious problem in an out-of-the-way place like the Vippaco Valley. On the contrary, to judge by the noises I had heard among the haycocks on evening walks that sum­mer, the men were doing everything in their power to make breeding an outdoor activity.

I went for a walk as dusk fell, and met Toth and his belle walking up the lane arm-in-arm and chatting in the curious modified Latin that they used to exchange endearments. Magdalena bade me good-evening as graciously as always; really a quite extraordinarily confident and poised young woman, I thought, considering that she was only a village girl and only nineteen years old.