The Two-Headed Eagle

“Well, Herr Leutnant, I hear that you’re off tomorrow on another long-distance flight.”

“Indeed? I hope that Zugsfuhrer Toth here has not been compromis­ing field security by telling you where?”

“No, Zolli here is being tighter-lipped than usual and won’t tell me a thing; but I hope that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be somewhere dangerous?”

“No, my dear young lady, nowhere in the least bit dangerous,” I said, hoping that my patent insincerity would not show through the smile. “Please don’t worry yourself in the slightest on our account. I expect in fact that it will all be rather tedious. But we shall be gone for two days at least.”

“Oh all right then. But make sure that he behaves himself and doesn’t get into any scrapes. We’re pla

I made my way back to my tent to turn in. It was autumn now and getting too cold to sleep under canvas in the blustering Carso wind. Still the promised wooden barrack huts had not arrived. “If the war’s over by then . . .” Some hopes: the war had been going to be over in three months ever since August 1914; but now it had been going on for so long that it was getting to seem as though it had always been with us and always would be. It was about that autumn, I remember, that the first signs became vis­ible of that war-weariness which would eventually bring our venerable Monarchy tottering to its final collapse. The harvest had been wretched that year, as old Josef the forester had predicted. But that I suppose was at least bearable, the common lot of populations under siege. What was more disturbing was the way in which the shortages were now begi

But far worse was the shortage of rubber. Our German allies were commandeering every last scrap of the rubber smuggled in through the blockade via Holland. So the Austro-Hungarian aircraft factories were left to make do with a loathsome substitute called “gummiregenerat”—more usually known as “gummi-degenerat”—confected from old motor tyres, galoshes and ladies’ mackintoshes shredded and dissolved in ether to form an evil-smelling, sticky substance that tore like paper and would not vul­canise. This was used for engine hoses and i

But even when we had retrieved our tyres from the Kanzlei safe, dis­carded our skids and got airborne, things were not much better. The sup­ply of aviation petrol had lately been “rationalised,” which in k.u.k. terms meant that it still came from the same refineries, but that a thousand- strong supply agency had been set up to administer its distribution—with the inevitable result that it became much harder to get and was now of poorer quality, so that aeroplanes could rarely reach their stated speeds or service ceilings. Things were in a mess.

Still the war went on, and showed no signs whatever of ending. They said that some of the more elaborate dug-outs up on the Carso already had electric light and stoves and armchairs; even wallpaper, according to some sources. We were still due for wooden barrack huts at Caprovizza, but Flik 19 at Haidenschaft had received theirs some weeks before. Perhaps the war had now become such a fixed feature of the national economies of Europe, and the fronts so immobile, that in a few years we would be liv­ing in permanent bases behind the lines, complete with married quarters, and travelling to the trenches each day by tram.

During the summer my own ground crew had laid down a vegetable garden behind the main hangar and were now spending a large part of their off-duty hours hoeing, weeding and watering. I was quite content that they should do so: it augmented their increasingly miserable rations and even gave them a surplus to sell for tobacco-money in Haidenschaft market. I was begi

The next morning was overcast, with a light north-east wind. It was still dark as Toth and I made our way out on to the field and climbed into the cockpit of our aeroplane. We made the regulation pre-flight checks, and when everything was in order called, “Ready!” to Potocznik, seated in the cockpit of his Brandenburger parked alongside us. Potocznik called back, “Ready!” in reply, and the process of starting the engines began, Toth cranking the starter magneto as the mechanic swung the propeller. The two engines snorted into life almost at the same instant, pouring out grey smoke and occasional gouts of blue and yellow flame as they warmed up. At last Potocznik waved to me to signal that they were about to move off. The mechanics pulled the wheel chocks away and the aeroplane began to trundle forward, lumbering heavily under the weight of two 100kg bombs slung beneath its belly. I watched apprehensively as the machine waddled slowly to the far end of the field. With two of the heaviest bombs available, plus two men and a full load of fuel, a Brandenburger was dangerously near its maximum permissible load—in fact well over it, if one took the most prudent view of that rather hypothetical figure. In order to get into the air we were going to need the longest possible takeoff run, and even so I was still far from certain that the airframe would not collapse under the strain as we lifted off. Selfish as it might sound, I was more than happy to let Potocznik and Maybauer try it first.

In the event they did manage to stagger into the air, engine roaring at full throttle and the whole airframe wobbling most alarmingly under the load. Then it was our turn. We went about into the breeze at the end of the airfield. With my heart fluttering wildly I slapped Toth on the shoul­der and called “Ite nunc—celere!” Toth pushed the throttle lever forward through its gate latch and black smoke belched from the stub-exhausts as we began to creak and lurch forward. I thought that we had had it as the wheels left the ground: the wings gave a tortured groan and bounced visibly as they took the weight. But Toth was a good pilot. Somehow he managed to sweat and coax our protesting lattice of wood and piano wire up into the air, climbing ponderously to join Potocznik, who was making a circuit of the airfield—with the sedateness of an old lady in a bath chair, for fear that the strain of banking too tightly would leave the wings be­hind. We formed up in line ahead, Potocznik leading, and then began the slow, tedious business of climbing as we flew south-east up the Vippaco Valley, gaining height at barely ten metres per thousand, a rate of climb that would have been unimpressive in a goods train.