One evening I notice in front of the General Staff Headquarters some
General Staff officers in conversation with a little officer, two heads
shorter than any of them. The little officer wears a dark hussar's
jacket; his breast is covered with decorations, conspicuous among
them being the Iron Cross. The diminutive but well set-up hussar is
continually being embraced and patted affectionately on the back. He
talks loudly and merrily. I hear that he has visited headquarters in
the interest of one of his fellow hussars.
"You must stay here for supper!"
He stays. I sit opposite him and take a good look at him, for I have
already heard much about him. The Army Corps Hoffmann is very proud
of him; he is our guerilla leader, a legendary hussar type--Clemer
Farkas de Also-Takach. Formerly he was Rittmeister of the 14th Hussars.
Now he is commandant of the cavalry detachment of the army corps, the
"Detachment Farkas." He has as many cavalrymen as an Oberst has in
peace time. Therefore, his hussars call him "Herr Oberst Rittmeister."
He has hussars, uhlans, dragoons, Ukranian volunteers--altogether a
most daring collection of riders and fighters. Nearly all the cavalry
regiments of the monarchy are represented in it. The organization is a
good counterpart of the Hoffmann Army Corps, which has been constructed
in a somewhat similar fashion.
The Rittmeister has a marked resemblance to a peppercorn. He is very
small, very hard and very strong. A handshake with him is an athletic
exercise. His glance is clear and open, like that of a ten-year-old
boy. You can hear him laughing over the next hill. He cannot tell
stories; nor will he. All that he told me was that his veterinary had
saved the life of a little girl, taking twenty-three splinters of a
Russian shell out of her body, and that thirty-six members of his
family were in the field.
Rittmeister Farkas won his fame in Galicia. A Cossack sergeant rushed
at him and tried to spit him with a lance. Farkas broke the lance
under his armpit and then crushed the sergeant's head with the butt
of a revolver. He gave the lance to the Heir Apparent. That was his
first exploit. Then came his first "action." He is posted one day in
Russian Poland with his hussars as support behind the artillery. A
heavy Russian shell explodes in his neighborhood, and as it throws up
the earth it uncovers a telephone wire. Farkas notices the wire, takes
hold of it and follows it. The hussars dig up the ground over it and
find that it leads to a farmhouse. They dig no further and conceal
themselves.
Near the farmhouse is a well. Every few minutes a Russian peasant
comes to the well, works the draw pump and calls something down into
the depths. They seize the peasant and he turns out to be a Russian
soldier in disguise. Farkas takes his favorite sergeant, Galambos, and
three hussars, gets a long, stout rope and slides, with his four men,
down into the well.
A yard above the surface of the water he finds a stone shelving and
under the shelving an opening, which leads into a dark tunnel. Now
everything is cleared up. This region was once an artillery practice
field; no wonder that it is so nicely fitted out. They push into the
tunnel and come to a telephone cell, in which three Russians sit by
candlelight before a modern field telephone. From there the Russian
field artillery is directed according to the information shouted down
the well.
Farkas throws his revolver away. One of the Russians, knife in hand,
hurls himself upon him. Farkas seizes the wrist of the Russian and
breaks it, for he is a master of jiu jitsu; he instructs his men
constantly in Japanese ring methods. Two Russians are killed. The one
with his wrist broken confesses that the telephone cell is a signal
station and that the little detachment is a signal patrol. He also
delivers to Farkas a textbook containing the A B C of more than 300
light signals. Light signals are given with lamp groups, which consist
of two, five or eight lamps. They can send almost any kind of news.
Farkas clambers up out of the well and makes good use of the book.
With his hussars he goes every night on the hunt for light signals.
Whenever at night the combination of two, five or eight lamps is in use
signal patrols are killed or captured. It is plain that the Russians,
before the war, must have instructed 30,000 to 40,000 people for this
service. Many of these people worked in peasant clothes behind our
lines in Russian territory. Farkas hunted down these signal devices
in farm houses, windmills, in the midst of swamps and in the tops of
trees. With ten to fifteen hussars he soon made 140 of them useless. In
this region the Russians lost all interest in signal giving. Farkas had
many times done his work on horseback; oftener he had crawled on his
stomach. To his comrades he said that he had at last got some profit
out of the many pictures of daring adventure which he had seen in the
kino shows.