Rittmeister Farkas is a little wonder of the war; he is so unique,
original and incredible in his way that I had to examine many documents
and official reports before I was absolutely convinced of the truth
of the stories about him. In November, 1914, he receives from Peter
Hoffmann, who loves him like his own son, a gift especially suited
to his adventurous character--two armored trains. Then he is happy.
Naturally he steams with both behind the enemy's front, lets one run
through a tunnel and stop near its exit, so that nobody can attack it,
and starts back with the other to a certain factory building in which
a Russian regiment is quietly enjoying a midday meal. With his single
cannon he shoots off the factory chimney, which falls into the crowd of
diners below. The regiment is panic-stricken. Then the armored train
fires with four machine guns into the regiment, plants seven shells in
the officers' quarters and creates such a confusion among the Russians
that they arrive at Bereczke a week later than they had planned to
arrive. Then he returns the armored trains to His Excellency with
thanks. A little sadly he looks after them; for they were "as if made
for him."
Meanwhile he constructs machine guns and creates a machine gun section
and a section of mounted pioneers. Now his detachment has machine guns
and pioneers. He looks out for all technical details and understands
them all.
"In geography I know nothing," he says; "I know only thirty kilometres
in front of my nose, but I know those kilometres well."
His pride is that he has never eaten before his men have. Once,
however, he ate nothing after his men had eaten. On the crest of the
Carpathians the Russians shot one of his horses. He let the cook make
goulash out of it for the men, but he ate none of it. "Not because I
couldn't stomach it, but because I loved the horse when he was alive."
He preferred to remain hungry.
I talked with his troopers. They never speak his name without standing
at attention. Out of curiosity I ask:
"Why are you so fond of him?"
They look at me and smile embarrassedly--old Landsturm men, with big
mustaches, fathers with many children.
"We are everlastingly fond of him."
At last one of them gives this explanation:
"He leads the fight well."
So I learn that once in the Carpathians, when everything came to a
standstill because the Russians delivered a terrible fire and there was
no cover, he lay on the ground before them and cried:
"Here I am--as cover for you. Lie on your stomachs and fire from behind
me!"
Complaints, which I sometimes hear, are directed not against him, but
against his business management. At the first he paid twenty-nine
kronen for each Cossack captured and five kronen for each Russian
infantryman. The troopers, whom he has led in almost 200 fights and
skirmishes, brought the Russians in so eagerly that prices fell--and
fell very sharply. A Cossack went down to four kronen and an
infantryman down to one kronen. Not because the Cossack is worth four
times as much, but because he has a horse.
To-day, at noon, Rittmeister Farkas left us. God knows when I shall
see him again. Tiny, clever, good-hearted, brave Rittmeister Farkas,
mathematician, marksman, bridge builder, locomotive driver in one
person, doctor, chaplain, letter writer and brilliant commandant of
lonely, middle-aged soldiers, daring Herr Oberst-Rittmeister Farkas--a
little red hussar's cap which becomes smaller and smaller in the dust
of the road--you give me so many things to think about that at night I
can hardly go to sleep.
Who is able to explain these men to those for whom they have been
fighting for more than a year?