Captured!

Ferdinand Huszti Horvath

• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839742798
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Captured!, first published in 1930, is the dramatic World War I account of Ferdinand Huszti Horvath (1891-1973), who served in the Austro-Hungarian army on the eastern front in the bitter fighting against the Russians. Horvath paints a realistic picture of combat and the miserable conditions in the frontlines. Later, Horvath is captured by Russian troops and imprisoned for 2-1/2 years. After escaping from the prison camp and a hazardous journey across Russia (then in the throes of the turbulent Communist revolution), he made his way to freedom in Sweden. The book ends at that point in Hovarth's life, but he would go on to emigrate to America, working as an animator for Disney and other Hollywood studios.

CHAPTER I

The Innsbruck Kaiserjägers were entrained for the Russian front. A soldier was standing on the narrow board atop of the cowcatcher of the locomotive and with chalk wrote on the front of the boiler the words: “On to Moscow!”

For five days we rattled, but we did not get quite so far as Moscow. In Lemberg we got out, with rather stiff joints. Moscow was still eight hundred miles farther. We were still a little enthusiastic, but not much.

Lemberg had just been evacuated with feverish haste. Long trains with wounded stood at the station and the faces behind the windows looked dirty, worn and haggard.

Some of the wounded took Russian bullets out of their pockets and we looked at them. We had never seen a Russian bullet before. They were pointed; ours were blunt, cone shaped.

Large Red Cross marks were painted on the sides of the box cars. Wounded men stood in the open doors. Some had bloody and torn blouses. There was contempt in their eyes, looking down on us, green troops from the hinterland. After our baptism with fire, of course, it would be a different thing; but now we were not much more in their eyes than mere civilians.

“Look out, you snot-noses,” said a dragoon from a car window; “look out for the machine guns. They’ll hide in hollowed out haystacks and let you walk up close. ‘Ra-ta-ta-ta’ and your company is going to hell.”

“Get all the spades you can in Lemberg,” said another swarthy fellow, “and learn to dig. You’ll feel more than you’ll ever see of them.”

Other Red Cross trains rolled in, and still others; there seemed to be no end to them.

We marched out of Lemberg towards the east. As soon as we had left the suburbs, we held our rifle muzzles high and loaded. A strange feeling that was, to load for the first time with the intent to kill. It was noon. When it grew dark, we were still marching. We had to keep to one side of the road to leave passage for retreating troops. They came in an endless stream: infantry, train, artillery.

Now and then the shrill horn of an automobile howled, and we had to crowd into the ditches. Generals and staff officers whizzed by and were gone. Then we got back to the road and marched on.

More wagon trains came and still more troops from the opposite direction. There was no moon, just the stars, but the road was smooth; we could march without lights.

Sometimes, at a cross road we were halted, to let another column pass. We were tired, but those troops coming from the opposite direction seemed to be still more so. A thick candle was burning in a dusty lantern hanging from the rear axle of a train wagon. Very faintly it lit up the legs of the soldiers, standing close together. You could see steel lined rifle butts and sagging knees. The shoes were white with dust and the feet in them were smarting. Then our column moved again and we marched on. After midnight we swerved from the road and halted in a stubble field.

Outposts spread out in all directions, like oil dropped on water. We stacked our rifles in long rows of pyramids. Food came and we ate hastily, in order not to lose any sleep. When the dawn came, we marched on.

So we marched for nine days. It seemed to us that we were led around and around in an endless circle. Most of the time we marched in columns; then one of our battalions branched off here, another there, and for long hours we lay in a ditch, crowded close to one another, expecting something finally to happen.

So far not a shot had been fired, and we were very tired and disillusioned. We really felt inferior to those battered troops, retreating, that we were always meeting. Here we were on the march for over a week and we had not yet seen one of those plate shaped Russian caps!

Newspapers used to print stories about thundering cannons—we wondered what became of them. And this marching was very tiring. Many of the men had blistered feet and there were always more and more stragglers.

Then, on a pitch dark night, a furious shooting began. Well—here were the Russians at last! When the fire stopped, finally, we found out that it was just a mistake. We had been attacked by one of our own battalions. There were polite apologies on both sides and the little incident was settled—eight dead, six wounded, and three men shot blind. Of course this did not count as a regular baptism of fire.

At day we sweltered in a terrible heat on those wide plains, and at night thin ice formed over the pools and icy crystals jingled in the canteens. We froze miserably. One day we advanced twenty miles; next day we retreated just as much. It seemed as if we were getting nowhere.

Long columns of fugitives clogged the roads. Their household goods and furniture were piled on wagons. The poor ones had to do with push-carts—even baby carriages. Little children trotted along weeping, holding on desperately to their mother’s skirts. Women carried babes on their backs, sucklings on their bosoms. They were unkempt and unwashed, muddy and dusty, with a wild look in their eyes. They begged us for bread and we gave it to them. We gave it to ladies, too; they were just as hungry, but were ashamed to beg.

Sometimes, when a woman was close to a breakdown, my men would take the child from her arms and carry it themselves. One would give his rifle to his neighbor in the file and carry the child for a while, then pass it on to his neighbor so that he might smoke. One could not smoke while carrying the child, dropping fiery ashes over its little head. Sometimes the baby would fumble around and grasp one of those drooping moustaches, worn proudly upturned in the garrisons. Then the man would smile and think of his own baby left at home.

One day the fugitives were driven from the highways which were needed for the troops.

At night we marched through Grodek. It was ablaze; the heat was unbearable. From the trees that lined the road corpses dangled, miserable Ruthenians, hanged for treason, with popped out eyes and thick blue tongues.

They dangled till the ropes burned. Now we could hear the rumblings of the guns.

We marched to a great open field and camped there. The rain came down in torrents. We put up small tents, each just large enough to hold two men. Those rhomboidal tent sheets could be buttoned together to construct larger tents, more comfortable, which would accommodate six men; but they were too complicated to make; we never got the sides right.

In those small tents, supported by a rifle with its bayonet fixed, two men could crowd in, but the feet, from the knees down, had to remain outside. We lay down and fell asleep immediately. We were drenched when we pitched the tents; the rain pattered on the tents and also on our shoes and pantaloons; water was streaming in on all sides, but we slept soundly and did not care.

In the morning we were allowed to rest longer than usual. The sun shone bright and warm and we hung our clothes to dry.

In the afternoon, all the officers had to report to the Battalion Commander—a major. We stood in a circle around him and had our maps out. He said we would attack in the evening on both sides of the railroad tracks that led to Lemberg. If anybody started to dig in without his special orders, he would shoot the man with his own hands. The retreat ended right here and now; from now on we would advance again “Thank God!” He said “Thank God,” and it was no empty phrase with him.

In less than twelve hours he was shot to a bloody pulp—without ever seeing a Russian. At that time field officers were not in safe dugouts somewhere in the rear.

Assembly was sounded and we pushed forward. There was some excitement as we approached the front and the cannonade grew stronger. Now we could hear the crackling of the infantry, but we were still advancing in columns.

Now and then we stopped for a long while, then marched on. The sun began to sink. Transports of wounded drifted back, borne on stretchers. Those who could march, came afoot. Some were limping in evident pain, using their rifles as crutches. Ambulance wagons drove past.

We spread out into extended order. It takes some time for a battalion to do it. We advanced again. Suddenly the Russian batteries opened up and shells began to slam among us. They howled above our heads. We ducked nervously whenever we heard a howl. Everybody grew very pale; some were trembling. I was trembling with nervousness and fear. I thought my heart would leap out of my breast, but it kept there, just hammering furiously.

Flames burst out of the ground where the shells hit, spreading black clouds, and dark geysers rushed toward heaven. White, fleecy clouds massed at our backs—shrapnel. It was deafening.

We started to run, panting, and reached a shallow trench. There we lay down for a while and calmed down a little, seeing that we had not suffered any losses yet. Shrill whistles blew and we advanced again.

The ground was littered, with all kinds of material, as if sprayed with junk—coiled Russian mantles, bandoliers, rifles, bayonets, our own furry knapsacks, camp kettles, shoes, boots, bloody rags, tin cans and caps. Ammunition boxes and machine gun belts were lying around, like so many dead snakes; mounds of empty yellow shells were heaped close.

We passed the first dead—Russians, in soft high boots, Austrians in long baggy pantaloons, clasped tight at the ankles, Hungarians in close-fitting trousers. There they lay, rigid and silent, all mixed up. Some clenched their fists; grass protruded among their dead fingers. Others had grown stiff with fingers clawing, like talons of some huge bird. All were pale and waxen, even more so than we.

Some of my men shuddered; others grew sick. I, too, felt nauseated.

A Russian was lying on his back, his legs and the lower part of his body torn away. With one foot entangled in the Russian’s entrails, an Austrian lay on his face—dead. Before he fell he had dragged this ghastly lasso for five or six yards. It was pulled taut like a string, this horrible, parched human rope.

Farther on lay other dead; one with his legs broken and bent backward, his soles under his armpits, like some contortionist. Then bodies without heads, torn limbs, large black pools of blood.

We jumped into another trench. This was deeper. Dead lay here, too. In some of them rifles were stuck, the bayonets pinning them to earth, like so many strange beetles.

On the bottom of the trench was a thick layer of empty cartridges. It was like a well kept garden path, paved with pebbles. We sank to the ankles in them. Infantry bullets whizzed over our heads like so many invisible wasps. This was far more hideous than the artillery fire.

Another shrill whistle sounded. We climbed out of the trench and started to run. Bullets hissed. Some, we could nearly feel. We ducked and jerked our heads. Some of the men fell, groaning and screaming. We came into a little grove and passed it quickly. Bullets smacked and crackled with a hideous sound among the stems, it rained small twigs. When we emerged from that grove, we opened fire.

“Fire, five hundred!” I yelled. According to regulations, I should have specified where to fire, but I could not see anything. The distance might have been well over five hundred meters or much less than that.

Now our rifles cracked briskly. We had no targets to shoot at; they were so completely hidden by the camouflaged deep trench that we did not see a thing. We just shot at random in the direction from which the bullets came.

We officers, commanding platoons, were not supposed to lie down, but to kneel and observe with our field glasses the effect of our fire. I did it for a while, but bullets came so thick that I lay down. Suddenly, the major was standing right behind me, kicking frantically at my soles.

“Get up, Cadet!” he yelled and was gone again. I knelt upright. As soon as he was gone, I flattened out again—there was nothing to be observed here. None of those infernal marksmen showed as much as the top of a cap.

Slowly it grew dark. We did not advance any farther. The fire kept up furiously. Gradually it became so dark that we could not see what was happening ten yards away.

An order came to fall back slowly, man by man. Slowly we got out of the range of the bullets. In the dark we stumbled over dead and all kinds of littered, rattling equipment. There was a wild mix-up among the units. Somehow we reached the railroad. By now all order was gone; we streamed back for a few miles, all muddled ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I
• CHAPTER II
• CHAPTER III
• CHAPTER IV
• CHAPTER V
• CHAPTER VI
• CHAPTER VII
• CHAPTER VIII
• CHAPTER IX
• CHAPTER X
• CHAPTER XI
• CHAPTER XII
• CHAPTER XIII
• CHAPTER XIV
• MAPS