The Great War

by Aleksandar Gatalica

  Like a real bigamist, he went to and fro between the establishments, collecting the takings and checking the health of his protégées, who had to service up to ten johns a day. Almost playfully, he embellished the charade with a different suit for each house, different silken dressing gowns and even a false beard which he added to his black-dyed moustache, but only when introducing himself as father of the more elegant ‘open Serbian house’ in Yevremova Street.

  And the money ‘came in shitloads’ (Gavra’s expression) during the thirteen days of the occupation. All this time, the other unfortunate from the last Belgrade duel hung around in the old hospital in Vrachar. Not that Djoka Velkovich couldn’t have fled from Belgrade along with so many others, nor was he left behind like some of the incurably ill. Djoka decided to stay on at the hospital, which he had got to know well and now hid in, waiting for new doctors to come and heal him of his freakishness. When Colonel Graho and his Austro-Hungarian medical corps entered the hospital in Vrachar, Djoka prudently emerged from the cellar. He thought he’d be caught immediately, but no one noticed him because there were so many patients and so few doctors. He nudged a moaning, wounded man aside and shared the bed with him. His bedmate didn’t complain; after all, it was nothing unusual for two soldiers to share the same bed, so no one paid any attention to the Serbian patient. Djoka was slightly annoyed by the bustle as well as the smell of carbolic acid and congealed blood; nor did he understand German or Hungarian. But in time he got used to everything. No one treated the red-and-white patient, but he was given a little food like all the others. He didn’t think of going into town, so running into Gavra the pimp and challenging him to another duel could be ruled out. He was happy with his situation, which was a rare blessing, considering that virtually no one was satisfied with their circumstances.

  For Sergei Voronin, the Great War began and ended when he thou­ght he could introduce rank-and-file democracy into his platoon, which was manning the defences of Warsaw. This came at a time when the pendulum of war on the Eastern Front had again swung the Russians’ way. The Russian army had defeated the Germans in the Battle of Galicia near Lviv and broken the enemy offensive. The Russians pushed the front forwards by over a hundred kilometres, all the way to the wolfish peaks of the Carpathian Mountains. The Polish city of Przemysl was under siege by the Russian 8th Army far behind the front line, but the German defenders held on valiantly like the Ilians of legend. Przemysl became a name on the lips of every Austrian and German soldier. This was why the Germans tried to shift the Front back to the east and take Warsaw. But the Russians gained the upper hand in the battle on the gleaming River Vistula. After this victory, quarrels re-emerged in the Russian general staff. Their supreme command could not agree how to capitalize on the most recent successes. The ‘Iron Duke’ was in favour of an offensive on the open ground of East Prussia, while Chief of Staff Mikhail Alexeyev proposed an offensive in the wool-carding region of Silesia. Either icy plains or woollen yarn.

  At that time, the Germans intercepted Russian encoded messages about the proposed invasion of Silesia. Hindenburg hoped to repeat the success of the Battle of Tannenberg by striking the Russians in the flank as they moved on Silesia. And so the Battle of Lódz began, and with it the harsh Transcarpathian winter. The troops of General Pavel Plekhava’s Russian 5th Army were force-marched from southern Silesia towards Lódz — students of Petrograd University and peasants from the estates near Staraya Rusa covered a Herculean one hundred and twenty kilometres in two days in temperatures of minus ten. And after those terrible two days they still had the strength to mount a surprise attack on the right flank of General August von Mackensen’s German 9th Army. The Germans retreated, but they continued to threaten Lódz up until December 1914.

  The sky above Lódz was red in those days, and the night seemed never to come due to the constant blaze of heavy guns, but things were different in Warsaw, where General Nikolai Ruzsky commanded the army group charged with the defence of the city. While Russians were dying, like fish caught in a net, near Lódz, Warsaw was behind the lines for several weeks. And it was at this time that one sergeant tried to introduce rank-and-file democracy into his platoon. Sergei Voronin was a socialist. He had a small sterling-silver locket holding Plekhanov’s picture on the left and Lenin’s on the right. The left-hand side was the reason for him being in uniform, because Plekhanov had called on all Mensheviks to respond to the call-up and join the fight against the ‘accursed Krauts’. The right-hand side of the medallion was responsible for the idea which Voronin tried to institute in icy Warsaw in the first days of December — one he claimed would decide the Great War.

  He resolved to break the chain of command. The goal of this minor military reform was for his platoon of forty men to issue its own commands and reach decisions in the style of an ideal grass-roots council. But this state, which Sergei termed ‘consummate soldierly conscience’, could not be attained overnight. The transition from the ‘imperialist-hierarchical’ form of command to a ‘collectivist’ one (Sergei’s expressions) lasted a week. That week saw both the rise and the shameful fall of that idea, but it was far from the mind of the socialist sergeant that everything would take place so quickly. First of all, he spoke of his intentions with his deputy platoon commander. Once he had won him over, he tried hard to persuade the group commanders. On the third day, he set up the original rotating-system of command in which it fell to each soldier to be the platoon’s commanding officer for one hour. He didn’t reserve any privileges for himself: in forty-two hours he was sergeant for one hour, and not one minute longer. Everything went smoothly at first, but then Sergei noticed that his forty or so Russians included a few blockheads who shouldn’t be entrusted with command for even one hour, so he developed a two-tiered, and afterwards an even more complicated three-tiered rotating system of command.

  In Warsaw, where there was no fighting, all this remained a game and went unnoticed for surprisingly long — six whole days. But then soldiers of the other platoons started to pick up on a strange thing: Sergei’s men not only strutted around their sector like peacocks but also soon came to enjoy commanding and kept giving each other orders which there was no one to carry out. Ultimately they upgraded the three-tiered system and instituted ‘order exchanges’: I order you to do this and you carry it out; you order me to do that and I carry it out in return. Commanding thus became a kind of swap; Sergei vehemently opposed this at party meetings of the platoon on the second-last day of his reform, but to no avail. The most enterprising soldiers found a way of imposing their will amidst that chaos. They began remembering each other’s orders, and in the end they were trading them like shares. A lop-eared mathematics student came off best: he swiftly converted these fluctuations to figures and soon became the proprietor of the greatest number of orders owed to him by the others. On the last day he thus became the informal leader of the detachment of forty-two presumptious commanders.

  Who knows where all this would have led had Sergei not been arrested, brought before a court-martial, summarily sentenced and shot. His soldiers escaped the firing squad, but they were now given the most inveterate old sergeant as platoon commander, a man of fifty-four, steeled back in the Russian-Turkish War of 1878. He alone gave orders, and everyone else had to obey. Half the men received bruises from his blows, and three of the most persistent had their arms broken by the old sergeant. Thus the necessary ‘imperialist discipline’ was restored in the 2nd Platoon, 3rd Company, 5th Battalion of the army group defending Warsaw just before the fighting began, and everyone soon forgot Sergei.

  But unforgettable events occurred at the railway station in Nish, Serbia, and were publicized in Politika on 18 November by the Julian calendar. This news, delivered to the paper’s offices in Belgrade by special mail, was from a lady fondly known as Mrs Danica, the founder of the ‘Serbian Blue Cross’, an organization for the welfare of draught animals at the front, and the first woman from Shabac to learn English. Mrs Danica wrote:

  I
found the little railway station in Nish full to overflowing with troops, villagers and women. They had all been sitting on the ground for hours and waiting for the hospital train. Then the whistle of an engine was heard and everyone headed to the main platform. To our surprise, smart and tidy-looking prisoners-of-war started to emerge from the train, and we lost heart. They were Austrian soldiers, and everyone would have looked at them with contempt if one of them had not suddenly leaned out the window and shouted excitedly: ’Djuro, Djuro!’ a Serbian soldier on the platform wheeled around, ran up to the soldier in the blue Austrian uniform, who had now hopped out of the train, and embraced him. They were Yanko and Djuro Tankosich, brothers from the same village in Syrmia, where the Great War had begun with both the Austrian and Serbian armies mobilizing able-bodied men. Brother Djuro was able to escape the Austrian’s mobilizers in August 1914 but they caught Yanko, and consequently the brothers fought against one another up until the moment when the ’Austrian’ seized the opportunity to surrender. Now he was willing to change into a Serbian uniform and wear our Shaykacha cap.

  The meeting of the brothers was a touching event. They both cried and hugged each other as if they were two bodies with the same soul. Those standing closest to them heard them promise each other that they’d never be separated again, in life or death. We applauded them as they embraced, and an elderly man with a long, grey beard instructed that the brothers’ wish be respected. The gentleman spoke with such authority that those around him immediately obeyed. When I took a second glance, I realized he was none other than the Prime Minister, Mr Pashich, who was waiting for the train along with everyone else.

  The train for the Prime Minister didn’t arrive, and Yanko and Djuro soon went off into town, arm in arm. Their song resounded through the streets and was picked up first of all by gypsy brass bands, then successively by merry fellows in the cafés and debauchees of every variety, finally to be sung by the whole town, and the Tankosich brothers from Syrmia were its luminaries.

  Thus wrote the first member of the Serbian Blue Cross. The same lady was also a correspondent for the first issue of Politika to come out after the victory in the Battle of Kolubara on 8 December by the old calendar. If the previous story had been penned to song and celebration, this one was awash with tears. It read:

  I recently reported in Politika on the meeting of two brothers. Now I owe readers the end of the story. I concluded my previous letter about Yanko and Djuro Tankosich with the song which all of Nish was soon singing. But a new sun rose — a bleak, winter sun — and Sunday 19 November was a very different day. The two brothers went to army headquarters to request that they both be enlisted in the 1st Company, 4th Battalion of the 7th Reserve Regiment of the Serbian army, which was Djuro’s unit. This time, too, they set off arm in arm, with a smile on their lips and convinced that their sufferings were over. But things turned out differently.

  The recruitment service viewed Yanko with suspicion.

  ’Why didn’t you desert straight away, like Djuro did? Instead, you fought at the Drina and killed who knows how many Serbs, and now you want to wash your hands clean,’ they challenged him.

  Young Yanko swore in vain that he had been in the medical corps, served under a certain Dr Mehmed Graho in Zvornik, and never fired a shot at his Serb compatriots. They detained him at the army supply office, and his brother Djuro fell into despondency. The officers responsible said to Djuro:

  ’It’s only for a few days, and he’s not under arrest. We’re just detaining him because there are all sorts of Czech and Slovak riff-raff around who speak our language and claim to be Serbs, when in fact they’re Austrian spies.’

  ’But . . . but that’s my little brother Yanko. I’ve known him since he was just this big. Why a security check when you have my word?’

  Djuro pleaded and swore by his wounds received at the River Yadar, but the officers were bureaucratically intransigent.

  ’No, no, he’s to stay in for a little longer. But we need every man who can hold a rifle, now that the decisive battle is brewing, so you can rest assured that we’ll release him when the twelfth hour comes.’

  And the twelfth hour arrived. Djuro’s 7th Reserve Regiment had rested and now received orders to set off from Nish for the decisive battle on the slopes of Mount Suvobor. Djuro requested permission to leave the unit for an hour and went back to the army supply office’s lock-up.

  ’The twelfth hour has come! We’re going to the battle on Mount Suvobor. Please let my brother free so we can fight and die for Serbia together,’ he begged, but the officers remained hard-hearted.

  ’The information on Yanko still hasn’t arrived,’ they said. Then Djuro requested to see his brother one more time before they were separated. His wish was granted. Downcast and gloomy, he entered the cell. It stank of his brother’s urine because there was no toilet. He felt sick, and he saw red. Hugging his brother, he turned him the other way and took out a hand grenade: ’The documents on Yanko have now arrived . . . release my brother!’

  When they saw the grenade, everyone took cover. Djuro and Yanko now set off for the station, where the troop trains were leaving for the front, along the same streets where they had sung with the assembled populace two weeks earlier. Our tireless Prime Minister was no longer on the platform, and if he had been I’m sure he would have resolved the whole matter immediately. Yanko and Djuro arrived at the station with an armed squad of military police hot on their heels and just itching to kill them as deserters.They would have been executed right there and then, had not Major Djuro Sharac and his Chetniks happened to be on the same platform; and they sided with the brothers. Impetuous as they always were, these staunch fighters had heard of the two brothers from Syrmia, immediately recognized them and formed a ring around them. ’If you want the Tankosichs, you’ll have to kill us first!’ they shouted at the military police. Armed though they were, the MPs realized they’d have to make a ruckus in the middle of the station, and in view of all the civilians standing nearby they decided to back off.

  The brothers got into a wagon, sullen-faced. Djuro’s trembling hands only just managed to replace the pin of his grenade. His captain of the 1st Company told him that they were going into battle now, but when they returned he was going to have them both tried. The brothers glanced at each other, determined not to go before any court martial. As soon as the first evening came, and with it the first battle in the vale on 3 December, both Djuro and Yanko fell in a frantic charge beneath Mount Suvobor, running and holding each other’s hand like little girls. And that is how the Great War ended for them.

  Now, I don’t know what to say about this story, which I was told just the way it happened, but I do know that I have a moral duty to propose to the High Command, through this article, that the Tankosich brothers be posthumously decorated — not put on trial. May Serbian medals for bravery be sent to their poor mother in Syrmia when the Great War ends.

  But the Tankosichs were never decorated because of the enthusiasm which engulfed people’s souls, and everyone slept just an hour or two so as not to miss the days of victory celebrations after the Battle of Kolubara. Old King Peter hurried to Belgrade to enter the capital together with the first troops. Jubilant crowds tried to stop the royal car, but he didn’t mind. He passed the damaged royal court, and the car drove over the flag of the Dual Monarchy, the first symbolic trophy of the war, as it lay in the mud. Many a strange thing was found in the recaptured city, but the soldiers of the 13th ‘Hayduk Velko’ Regiment were particularly stunned by what they discovered in one elegant house. The Austrians had been preparing to celebrate Christmas by their calendar, and two houses in Strahinyicha Bana and Yevremova Streets were found to have substantial stores of luxury goods: huge quantities of roasted coffee, chocolate, liqueurs, sweets, biscuits, sardines, sultanas and various delicacies which ordinary soldiers had never heard of and the commanders ordered them not to try. But soldiers being soldiers, they started helping themselves to the sweets, until they noticed t
hat frightened eyes were watching them from hiding.

  They found a group of strange women in the house, embracing and intertwined like denizens of a snake-pit, with dishevelled hair, pale thighs and smudged make-up around swollen eyelids. All of them claimed to have been raped several times a day and said they had been driven to whoredom by a certain Gavra Crno­gor­che­vich. He had put on a charade of being their father but in reality he was a cruel brothel boss. When asked where Gavra was now and if he had fled with the Austrian army, the women only said they didn’t know but thought he was probably still in Belgrade.

  That saw the start of a wholesale search for Gavra in lower Dorchol. Houses and deserted flats were peered into, but the ghosts of dead Belgraders could now rest peacefully in their graves and none of them fired on the liberators. In any case, Gavra was caught after just a few houses had been searched.

  At his trial, which was brief because there was neither time nor desire for more, he claimed to have been ‘forced’ and ‘blackmailed by a certain Otto Gelinek’ and to have ‘had no choice’. The High Military Court condemned him to death nevertheless. As the sentence was being pronounced, his dry lips beneath the still well-groomed, black-dyed moustache just murmured, ‘Looks like this is it’. On his last night, he couldn’t sleep. He got up, called the guards and asked for a cigarette. They just gave him a butt, from which he took three passionate drags. As he took the first, he remembered his victory in the duel; as he took the second, the boonful days during the brief occupation of Belgrade appeared before his eyes. As he took the third, he decided to flee to America. He tried to bribe the guards with a pile of the occupier’s banknotes extracted from the lining of his frock coat, which they had been sewn into, but it didn’t work. He fell asleep and didn’t dream anything until morning. They woke him at five o’clock and offered him the last sacrament. He was shot that day together with three other unscrupulous traders imprisoned in the environs of Belgrade and in Smederevo. For Gavra Crno­gor­che­vich, the Great War ended before the firing squad on the sandy river bank below Vishnyica, with thousands of German marks still sewn into the lining of his coat; they became soaked after his body splashed dully into the shallow water of the Sava. ‘If only I had Idealin here to polish my messy shoes,’ was the last thing Gavra Crno­gor­che­vich thought.