The Two-Headed Eagle

“What about the Kommandant?”

Rieger smiled wryly. “Herr Kommandant? Oh, not him I’m afraid: he says that flying would get in the way of his duties as commanding officer.”

“What duties? Surely in an air unit the commanding officer’s main duty is in the air? ”

“Perhaps so in most units. But not in ours. I suspect that our man would get dizzy standing on the edge of the kerb. Anyway, you’ll see what I mean when you meet him, so don’t let me prejudice you. But going back to what I said before, I certainly advise you to get some flying time in on your own as soon as ever you can, even if you only intend flying as a passenger. Life’s getting pretty hectic now and more than once we’ve had officer-observers landing their own plane when their pilot’s been knocked out. Oh yes, my dear Prohaska, I assure you that flying over the South-West Front is no easy number these days: we live fast here in the k.u.k. Fliegertruppe.” He rose and picked up his leather flying helmet. “Anyway, can’t sit here all day. I hope that you’ll excuse me but we’ll talk further this evening. The Kommandant presents his compliments and says that he’ll see you at fourteen-fifteen hours when he gets back from Haidenschaft. He’s been at the printers it seems, looking at the proofs of a new form for us to fill in. As for me, I’ve got to go and look at a machine with the Technical Officer. It came back from the repair shops only this morning and I want to see that everything’s as it should be before I sign for it. Auf wiederschauen.”

Rieger went out, and I was left on my own. The mess orderly brought me a cup of that black, bitter infusion of roasted acorns described as “kaffeesurrogat” and I picked up a day-old copy of the Weiner Tagblatt. I felt a good deal happier now than I had done after my oafish reception at Flik 19 a couple of hours before. I had just walked into a tent and had immediately run into someone I already knew, so perhaps this would be a congenial posting—at least for as long as I survived to enjoy it. I glanced at my watch: five-past two. I would go back to my tent and change out of my travel-grimed uniform into field dress for my interview with the commanding officer.

I emerged from the stuffy mess tent into the glaring sunlight to be greeted by the drone of an aero engine. An aeroplane was coming in to land on the field: a Hansa-Brandenburg CI to judge by the characteristic inward-sloping wing struts. It lined up to land, about fifteen metres up and as steady as could be. But as I watched, something went terribly wrong: the aeroplane suddenly lurched over on to one wingtip, which struck the ground with a splintering crash, kicking up a cloud of dust. I thought that the pilot had managed to right the aeroplane, but the thing simply cart­wheeled into the ground before my horrified gaze, nosed over and then skidded crazily across the field to end up in the bushes on the bank of the river. I ran towards the wreck, joined on the way by a number of ground crewmen. But as we neared it, whumpf!—the whole thing went up in a bright orange puffball of flame. We ducked and stooped about the bon­fire, eyebrows singeing from the heat, coming in as close as we dared to peer into the blaze and see whether the pilot might still be dragged clear. In the end we were driven back by the crackle of ammunition going off in the inferno.

By the time a hand-pumped fire engine had been brought up and a thin spray of water was playing on the wreck there was hardly anything left to burn, just a smoking tangle of bracing-wire and steel tubing jumbled up with glowing embers, a blackened engine and the upturned, tyreless bicycle wheels of the undercarriage. Gingerly we approached it, fearful of finding what we knew we must find. In the end I almost tripped over the ghastly thing before I recognised it for what it was. It lay twisted and gri

I left the scene of the crash feeling very weak at the knees. The birds had now resumed their interrupted chirping in the under-growth by the riverbank, and two ground crewmen—both Poles I could hear—were heading towards the wreck with the tarpaulin-shrouded handbarrow re­served for such errands. They did not seem unduly awed by the solem­nity of their gruesome task, which I learnt later they were often called upon to perform. As they neared the site of the crash they met a fellow- countryman coming the other way.

“Carbonised this time, Wojtek?”

“Completely. But never mind—it was only an officer.”

Hauptma

“Herr Linienschiffsleutnant, please refrain from bothering me with such trifles.”

“But Herr Kommandant, your Chief Pilot Oberleutnant Rieger has just been killed . . .” He rolled up his eyes in despair behind his pince-nez. “Oh no, not another one. Rieger, did you say?”

“By your leave, Herr Kommandant, Oberleutnant Rieger.”

“Are you sure? ”

“Perfectly certain, Herr Kommandant: burnt beyond recognition. I saw his remains with my own eyes and removed his identity tag myself.” He got up from his desk and selected a crayon.

“Which aeroplane was it? ”

“A Hansa-Brandenburg just back from repairs. It seemed to go out of control just as he was coming in to land. From what I could see of it . . .” “Be quiet,” he snapped peevishly, turning to face a board which cov­ered the entire back wall of his office and which was itself covered by twenty or so sheets of squared paper with jagged rising and falling lines of various colours and with a rainbow-hued array of bars. He had a red crayon in his hand and seemed to be talking to himself.

“One more officer-pilot down and one aeroplane less. Oh gottver- dammt, it’s really too bad: how can they expect to keep orderly re­turns if they behave like this? Let me see: Effective Against Nominal Establishment for July should have been here . . .” he traced a line on the graph, “. . . and now it’ll have to go here. Why couldn’t the idiot have crashed next month?”

While Hauptma