So di Carraciolo’s blindfold was removed and, with me as interpreter, he was politely asked to indicate exactly where he had lived a quarter- century before, so that it could be decided whether Austrian or Hungarian troops would have the honour of shooting him. This delighted him.
“Tenente,” he gasped, “please tell these buffoons to hurry up and shoot me, because if they don’t I think that I’m going to choke myself to death with laughing.”
In the end no decision was reached as to the precise nationality of the condemned man. Baumann thereupon settled the matter in his usual manner.
“Herr Oberleutnant, clear these greasy Magyar reptiles out of the way and shoot this man.”
“Herr Major, I must protest . . . My government will take a very serious . . .”
“Stuff your protests up your arse, you Levantine gyppo. Firing party— make ready . . . !”
But the firing party was otherwise occupied. The Honveds had moved up to the white line and attempted to elbow them out of the way. A scuffle had broken out and rifle butts were being used by the time the two officers restored some semblance of order. In the end an agreement of sorts was reached: the ten-man firing party would be made up of five Austrian and five Hungarian soldiers. However, the problem then arose of who would give the order to fire, and in what language. It was finally agreed that both officers would stand with raised sabres, and that the fatal order would be given in French. Thus it came about that the k.u.k. Militarexezierplatz above Trieste early one autumn morning in the year
1916 witnessed the bizarre spectacle of ten Austro-Hungarian soldiers standing for several minutes chanting, “Tirez bedeutet Feuer, Tirez bedeutet Feuer . . .”
They were still busy sorting themselves out when I heard it: the first droning in the distance. Meyerhofer and I turned to gaze into the sky to north-west. There were five of them. As they drew closer we could make out four Nieuports and a two-seater which looked like a Savoia-Pomilio. As for Baumann and the international execution squad, they were too preoccupied with French imperative verbs to notice anything amiss, almost until the first bullets were whining off the rocks as the leading single- seaters dived to attack. A few men tried to stand and return the fire, but most just scrambled for cover behind the lorries and among the boulders, contenting themselves with only the odd snap-shot as the two-seater came in to land on the other side of the exercise ground.
Meyerhofer and I scrambled from cover and ran to where di Carraciolo was standing, bound to the post, still blindfolded and (I should imagine) extremely bewildered by the sudden turn of events. When we were being questioned later we said that he had already cut himself free and that we grappled with him as he was about to make his escape. The reality though was rather different. Meyerhofer tore off the blindfold as I hacked at the cords with my pocket-knife. Bullets were singing about us in all directions now that the exchange between the soldiers and the circling fighters had been joined by the pilot of the Italian two-seater, who was firing bursts from his machine gun above our heads to harass the soldiers behind the lorries. I fear that even when he was free Major di Carraciolo was a troublesome customer. He had evidently been working himself up for martyrdom for several days past and was now finding it difficult to accept the sudden and dramatic change in his fortunes. I had judged at our first meeting that he was a powerfully built man, and I now had the opportunity to test that observation as he landed me a thump which knocked me clean over. In the end Meyerhofer and I had to overpower him between us, then practically frog-march him over to the aeroplane and fling him bodily into the cockpit before lying down flat as the pilot pushed the throttle forward and the aircraft began to bounce away across the stony field, followed by a spatter of farewell shots from behind the lorries. The last we saw of them they were climbing away into the autumn sky above the Gulf of Trieste, surrounded by their escorts. It was all over—at least, as far as Major di Carraciolo was concerned. The rest of us would now have to clear up the mess as best we could.
As you might expect, there was the devil’s own row about it: a condemned political prisoner impudently snatched in broad daylight from under the very noses of his executioners on the outskirts of one of the principal cities of the Dual Monarchy. Meyerhofer and I both underwent prolonged and detailed questioning by the Military Procurator’s department, who plainly detected a strong smell of rodents. We perjured ourselves energetically, and since we had all agreed our story beforehand they were not able—for the time being at any rate—to garner sufficient evidence to prosecute: even though Major di Carraciolo was found to have severed the ropes that bound him with an Austrian-made pocket-knife picked up on the scene afterwards and clearly marked with the initials o.p. My story that he must have picked this from my pocket before being bound to the stake sounded lame in the extreme and I knew it. I was dismissed for the moment, but was left in no doubt that investigations would continue.
As for Major Oreste di Carraciolo, he returned home to find himself a national hero. The Italians had little enough to celebrate that autumn, after a summer of appalling carnage on the Isonzo for minimal gains, so here was a wonderful opportunity for whipping up the flagging enthusiasm of the public. He was promoted to Colonel, given a new squadron of the most modern aircraft to lead, sent to tour the United States and generally lionised wherever he went. He also wrote a book about his adventures. This came out early in 1917 and a copy was procured via Switzerland and sent to me at Cattaro, where I was back commanding a U-Boat. It was all highly entertaining, I have to admit—grand opera rendered into prose— but quite marvellously inaccurate on a number of points: notably on how the Major had smuggled a message to his squadron from his dungeon in the Trieste Citadel—conveyed, needless to say, by a jailer’s daughter who had fallen in love with him—and on how his oration from the scaffold (in his version they had been going to hang him) had so moved the Hungarian soldiery present that they had turned their rifles upon their Austrian oppressors with a cry of “Viva la liberta d’Ungheria! A basso la tiranneria Austriaca!” then set him free. I got only a walk-on part in all this I am afraid: as an Austrian naval officer of Polish extraction called Brodaski whose slumbering national conscience had been so pricked by the Major’s call to freedom that he had finally cast off the yoke of an Old Austria and thrown himself upon his own sword by way of expiation. Major di Carraciolo averred with complete confidence that it was his escape that had finally broken the heart of our old Emperor, whose dying words (it was reliably reported) had been: “O Carraciolo, questo diavolo incarnato!”
There was also the condemned man’s last letter to be disposed of, handed to the official of the Military Procurator’s department, on the morning of the execution. Normally this would have been forwarded unopened to the dead man’s relatives: even in 1916 Austria still had enough decency left to observe the proprieties in these matters. But now, since the condemned man had not been shot after all, it was felt proper to open the fat, triple-sealed envelope. It was found to contain detailed drawings for Carraciolo’s memorial, to be erected after the war on the site of his execution on the ridge above Trieste. Meticulously drawn during his last days in prison, it would certainly have been a most impressive sight if it had ever been built: a sort of wedding-cake structure of naked figures— mostly young women—in white marble with the top tier bearing a statue of the man himself in his death agony, radiant as Our Lord arising from the tomb, while his Austrian tormentors fell back blinded and confounded on every side. The inscription was to have read “Giovenezza, Giovanezza, Sacra Primavera di Bellezza!”—“Youth, Youth, Sacred Springtime of Beauty!”—which I thought frankly was a bit thick, coming from a man who was nearing forty-five at the time of these events.