Chapter Eight
Burdens of War
October 1916
Romanian Front, Transylvania
Austro-Hungarian Empire
Rain pattered down against the trees, and dripped down along branches and leaves. The sky was as gray as a German uniform, the atmosphere cold and wet like a Russian rainstorm.
Lieutenant Tamás Horváth took a deep drag on his cigarette before exhaling. He was tired, so very tired. Ever since the Romanians had joined the Entente, his division and several others, both German and Austro-Hungarian, had been transferred southeast from fighting the Russians to combat this new threat.
Weeks of fighting followed, with Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian forces pushed to the brink but eventually the frontline had stabilized and the Romanians pushed back in several places.
An ache behind his eyes, a tired born of weariness of the soul, gave him a haunting look. Walking through his platoon’s encampment, he nodded at his men, those absent a painful reminder of the cost of war.
He did his duty as an Imperial officer, bolstering their spirits as best he could, but he was going through the motions more than fervently believing the hollow words he spoke.
Reaching an officers’ tent, he sat on the small stump of stool, stretched and yawned. The other Common Army officers in the tent all looked similarly tired. Most were Czechs yet they primarily spoke German to the handful of Hungarian, Croatian, and Ruthenian among them, albeit with a significant amount of loan words and ersatz grammar.
One Czech in particular, a Captain Černý, was notably in a foul mood, something that had been common as of late. Horváth had heard that he had lost most of his company in a needless assault several days earlier on an unimportant Romanian position, the medics having to drag the near comatose Czech commander as he had fallen to his knees after the battle, disturbed by the death toll, blood and dirt matting his body, hair and uniform.
“Fuck the Germans,” he muttered. That drew the eyes and frowns of several officers but not many. The Germans were useful allies, many appreciating their contribution and experience though it did come bundled with arrogance and pride.
“Fuck the Slovaks,” he muttered, the Czech enmity to their eastern neighbor well known throughout the Empire.
“Fuck the Austrians and fuck those damn fools in Vienna,” Černý muttered, almost in resign. “We’re killing children out here now. All for a damn emperor no one likes.”
Two officers, a Hungarian and fellow Czech, rose and departed, their anger at the words radiating off them like a furnace. It was luck that a weapon had not been drawn or a fist raised for a scuffle.
“You shouldn't have said that,” Horváth whispered quietly, the room having grown still and awkward.
Černý pulled out a pack of cigarettes, taking one and offering the pack to Horváth who accepted it. The Czech put the thin paper, filled with cheap tobacco, in his mouth and lit it with a match, handing anyone who wanted a match to light their own cigarettes.
“And I shouldn’t have had to shoot children merely because they yell slurs at us.” A deep sadness resided in Černý’s gaze. “We have become the monsters they fear us to be.”
Horváth said nothing, for there was nothing to say but to finish his cigarette and find an excuse to leave the tent and the treason within.
Two days later the military police, the Gendarmerie, arrived yet when they opened the flaps to Černý’s tent they found the man’s wrists slit and a bloodstained letter clutched in his hand, addressed to his wife and children. Some murmured he had been murdered by the Austrians, or by one of the few Germans in the Imperial encampment, but most accepted the official announcement of suicide.
Horváth didn’t care whether it was suicide or murder. He only hoped it had been quick.
To distract himself and the heightened emotions in the camp, he trained his men relentlessly, performing physical exercise to keep the mind and body sharp, spending many hours at the practice range to increase accuracy, reloading and coordination.
The intensive training ironically took his mind off of the war despite that he was improving his platoon in the art of it. Yet the realities of the Great War came for him when he and a squadron of soldiers were chosen by an Austrian major to execute “guerilla fighters and seditious elements.”
These guerilla fighters turned out to be six Romanian soldiers, four old men, two women, three boys and a man who wore a dirtied Common Army uniform with his insignia ripped off or defaced. It was the former Austro-Hungarian soldier who stared at them with the most fiery of hate.
He yelled in Romanian, of which Horváth knew little of, but recognized the words to be “Death to the Hapsburgs, long live Romania!” The Romanian Army soldiers echoed the statement, as did the civilians with various degrees of defiance. One of the small boys began to cry, causing the woman next to him to grab his hand to lend bravery.
Horváth ordered the three squads of soldiers to line up in a straight line like the armies of old with their weapon shouldered, each given a single round to fire. A single blank round was randomly doled out to help comfort the soldiers in thinking their bullet was the one that wouldn’t kill. It was an illusion to ease the reality of what they were doing.
“Load,” he said, breath fogging in the air, his officer’s pistol pulled from its holster to shoot any who survived.
The sound of sliding bolts, rounds being loaded, and the bolts slammed forward echoed for a moment. The world seemed still, it seemed to watch.
“Aim,” his men did so, many stone faced, others resigned, while one looked like he was going to be sick, rifle shaking slightly.
“Fire.” Thirty rifles bucked as they shot and fifteen of the targets fell. Only one stood, the little boy who cried.
Horváth felt his stomach drop and blood freeze as he forced himself to walk over to the small boy, the bullet that had been aimed at him missing when the dead woman holding his hand pulled him out of the way as she died, the bullet missing by a hair and impacting the wall behind them.
Raising his pistol at the so-called saboteur and seeing not anger or defiance but sheer abject fear in those watery eyes made him think of Černý’s words: ‘We have become the monsters they fear us to be.’
Sorrow lined his voice as he raised his pistol.
“I’m sorry.”
The pistol kicked as it fired, the shell casing falling to the ground synchronously with the tears of a soldier who knew that he had become a monster.
