After breakfast we washed, shaved and smartened ourselves up, more for reasons of morale than of appearance. It was a good thing that we did, however, for just as we had climbed into the cockpit and were about to signal to Arkady Feodorovich to swing the propeller (a privilege which he had wheedled out of me), we heard the distant honking of a car horn. We turned to see the Herr Kommandant running across the field towards us, followed some way behind by a large, open motor car.
“Stop, stop!” he shouted. “Wait a moment if you please!” He was panting fit to choke by the time he reached us, to a degree where a heart attack looked imminent. “Herleutnanteinmomentbitte!” he gasped, “. . . if you please . . . just wait a moment . . .”
I must say that after our reception the day before I was in no mood to be polite.
“Herr Major,” I replied coldly, “a letter thanking you for the particular warmth of your hospitality will be sent to you when we get back to our base. In the mean time, if you think that we are trying to leave without paying the bill I can show you the receipt.”
“No . . . No . . . There is something most important. Please to wait a moment . . . I shall explain.” The motor car was close enough now for me to see that it was no ordinary army staff car but the very plushest, most sumptuous vehicle that one could hope to find in that category, short of the Emperor’s limousine itself. It was a beautiful sleek Mercedes of the very finest pre-war make, though now painted over in khaki drab. In the back were two very high-ranking officers indeed. Toth and I scrambled out to stand by our aeroplane at the salute. Could it be an archduke? No, there was no black-and-yellow eagle-pennant on the mudguard. An orderly opened the door and the two officers got down. One was a general, the other a full field marshal: a smallish, slim man in his early sixties with grey hair and a moustache in which traces of blond still showed, and with a nervous, rather irritable air about him. This, I realised, was none other than Field Marshal Franz Conrad, Freiherr von Hotzendorf, Commander- in- Chief of the entire Austro-Hungarian armed forces. As he walked up to me I saw that he had a constant faint twitch running from the corner of his mouth to his left eye. He surveyed me for a moment, then smiled. “Stand easy,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Prohaska, Excellency. Ottokar, Ritter von Prohaska, k.u.k. Linien- schiffsleutnant.”
“Aha, a sailor. Of course, you’re the Maria-Theresien Ritter aren’t you? The one who commanded a U-Boat and then got bored with it and took up flying. How are you enjoying it? ”
“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 Vienna before heading across Moravia. You will refuel at Judenburg, and during that stop you are on no account to leave the aeroplane, do you understand? When you arrive at Teschen flying field, for reasons of secrecy a lady will be waiting with a staff officer in a green Graef und Stift motor car to collect the documents. In the event of your being forced down by engine failure or other mishap on the way you will keep the documents with you at all times to prevent them from falling into unauthorised hands. This whole mission, I need hardly stress, is so secret that not even our own people must know about it, except for those who need to know. Is that all clear?”
“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 cannot be supplied without authorisation . . .”
“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 Vienna the country would open out into the plains of Moravia. I thought that it might take about five hours, weather permitting and inclusive of the stop for refuelling at Judenburg. My spirits rose as we climbed away from Bozen. We had been specially selected to undertake a vital mission to deliver despatches—perhaps even plans of attack for a grand war-winning offensive—which might decide the fate of the Monarchy. The gravity of our task and our pride at being chosen for it gave a keen sense of urgency to the proceedings, especially after two miserable days of creeping from depot to depot like vagrants begging cigarette ends.
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 Vienna now. I smiled to myself as I imagined her delighted surprise a few hours hence when the housemaid Franzi would usher me in, still wearing my flying kit, stopping off for an unexpected overnight visit.
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 planned at Bruneck or Toblach. I looked southward to see the great massif of the Marmolada, Queen of the Dolomites, looming on the horizon with her permanent lace cap of snow: so vast that I could make out no sign whatever of the trench lines and belts of barbed wire that now scarred the summit.
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
