The Two-Headed Eagle

“I obediently report that I enjoy it well enough, Excellency,” I said, lying in my teeth as prescribed by regulations.

“Splendid, splendid. Well Prohaska, I’ve got a little errand here that’s right up the street of a man of your calibre. Can I rely upon you?”

“You may rely absolutely upon Zugsfuhrer Toth and myself, Excel­lency.” I saw that he looked rather doubtful about that when he saw Toth, but he said nothing.

“Well Prohaska, I have here a despatch-case of documents for you to deliver for me: papers of such importance that they must be flown direct to their destination in conditions of the utmost secrecy by a courier of the greatest courage and integrity. That is why we have chosen you.”

“I obediently report that I am flattered by your confidence in me, Excellency, and I shall guard these documents with my very life. But might I enquire where you wish them delivered?”

“You were flying to Villach, were you not? That is what the Herr Kommandant told us when we asked if there was an aeroplane ready to take off.”

“I obediently report, to Villach.”

“Well, I want you to fly a little further than that: in fact all the way to Imperial and Royal Supreme Headquarters in Teschen.” This was indeed quite a journey: Teschen was on the very northeastern edge of the Monarchy, quite near to my own home town on the borders of Prussian Silesia. “It should take you about four hours, my staff officer assures me, but if you could make it shorter I would be grateful. You are to make your way up to Brixen and then follow the valley to Lienz, where you can cross over into the Mur valley and fly down to Vie

“Perfectly clear, Excellency.”

“Good then, fill up your tanks with petrol and be on your way at once. Austria flies with you.” He turned to leave.

As he did so the base Kommandant bowed and bobbed his way up to him. “Excellency, if you please, your signature will be required upon these petrol requisition forms. Aviation fuel provided for this unit ca

“Damn you and your bureaucratic pettifogging—fill the aeroplane up or you’ll find yourself in the front line before you can draw breath.” As if to underline what he had just said, Conrad took the proffered sheaf of forms and flung them contemptuously over his shoulder to scatter in the mud. “Furthermore, imbecile, I wish you to be aware that this flight is of such secrecy that there must be no record of it whatever in the airfield logbook, is that clear? Try to pay more attention to what your superiors say to you in future.” And with that he turned and got into the car without say­ing a further word to any of us and without giving a single wave or even a backward glance. I supposed that the cares of the supreme direction of the Monarchy’s military effort for two long years must excuse such behaviour, which in anyone else would be considered plain rudeness.

We took off just before 0800. It was not going to be an easy flight by any means, with the weather coming down over the Alps, but it should still not be too arduous. We would by flying along mountain valleys most of the way, and beyond Vie

But quite apart from that it was a marvellous jaunt in itself, a sudden and totally unexpected break from the routine business of wartime flying. The engine was purring like a well-fed cat, the tank was full of petrol and the sun had at last broken through the clouds to reveal the full autumn glory of the Dolomites before us. Even the aeroplane seemed to sense the mood, climbing with us like Pegasus. And of course, not the least of the reasons for a certain high spirits was that when we arrived back at Caprovizza sometime on Monday, a whole two days late, I would be able to confront the odious Kraliczek with a smug smile and say, “Sorry, Herr Kommandant, can’t tell you where we’ve been: secret orders from the High Command and all that. You had better ring up the Commander-in- Chief if you want further details.” Let me see now, if we arrived at Teschen about 1300 hours and waited half an hour to refuel they could not reason­ably expect us to get back to Caprovizza that evening, not in mid-October. Elisabeth was staying with my aunt in Vie

Toth and I had conferred briefly about the route just before we took off from St Jakob. I had indicated the line on the map and he had nodded and grunted his assent. But now I saw that we were deviating from our course, heading more to the south to fly over the northern edge of the Brenta Dolomites and cut off the corner where the Rienz flows into the Eisack, just north of Brixen. No matter, I thought: these mountains were low—about 2,500 metres or so. The aeroplane was maintaining her alti­tude with no trouble and we would save a good few kilometres, picking up the railway line as pla

It was only after we had been flying for twenty minutes or so that I began to have misgivings about Toth’s choice of route. Away to northward an indigo cliff of stormclouds was bearing down on us, its sunlit upper edges that curious orange-brown colour that betokens snow. It was mov­ing fast, blotting out mountain peak after mountain peak of the High Alps to the north of the Rienz valley. I leant out into the rushing wind to look ahead—and saw to my dismay that, while the storm had not yet reached us, it was only because it was advancing in a deep crescent shape, with its two horns cutting off our escape both to west and to east. We could not fly under it because of the mountains, we could certainly not fly over it, and we could no longer avoid it by flying around it. Our only line of retreat now was to turn around and fly due south—straight towards the Italian lines with a pouch of ultra-secret documents on board. No. I swallowed hard; duty left only one course open: we would have to try to fly through it, hoping that it was only a line storm and that we would emerge on the other side before we ran into a mountain-top.

The edge of the storm hit us like a moving brick wall, flicking us and dashing us down again in the violent turbulence at its edge. Toth struggled with the control column to bring us level again as we buried ourselves in the swirling eerie murk inside the cloud. I was right: it was snow, the first of that early and bitter winter. It was wet stuff, but thick and mixed with freezing rain. We had taken a compass bearing before we entered the clouds, but it was hopeless: before long any sense of up and down and sideways had been lost and jumbled, however desperately we checked the spirit-levels to try and judge our angle. Sometimes the curtains of snow were falling down: sometimes they seemed to be falling upwards. Or was it us moving relative to them? I could no longer tell, wiping the snowflakes off my goggles as demon air currents inside the cloud attempted to pull our fragile aeroplane to pieces.