A communication received by our command during the first days of our retreat to the Piave said, “At Graz, and at Vienna, a trade in Italian products has been begun. Besides the small quantities of rice, oil, and lemons carried by soldiers on leave and bargained for at the stations by Jewish speculators, rice is beginning to arrive at Graz in important quantities. The authorities have been asked to pass measures to prevent speculation with this rice, and to reserve it for the use of the sick and for children.” The children and the sick of the invaded territories were left without these necessary articles of food.
From scattered phrases found in documents, or overheard in conversations with soldiers and officer prisoners, I gathered a general notion of the carefree, corrupt life led by the troops in the invaded regions. A few notes from the diary of the Czech officer who had deserted follow:
“Lieutenant Skebek and an employee got drunk in a villa at Pelos with wine requisitioned at Auronzo and later devastated a villa. At Belluno the gendarmes were supposed to guard the wine cellars; but in a moment there gathered before the house a mob of soldiers with pails, basins, and other vessels.
“The artillery officers have organized nightly orgies in a villa near Feltre; there were more than enough women.
“Almost all the horses have diarrhœa because they have eaten too much.”
The same spectacle of gluttony and drunkenness at the expense of our people, is repeated in the diary of the Austrian lieutenant of the second battalion of the 47th infantry who has already been mentioned.
“December 2.—Visited the Command of the Regiment. Had breakfast with the commander of the battalion. We drank much excellent wine. At three in the afternoon, the officers of the command of the regiment left, hilarious from the wine. The officers of the 16th company and others withdrew singing, and they would have continued their orgy at my house had I not made all the wines and liquors disappear.”
An Italian soldier and an officer, prisoners escaped from the hands of the Austrians, reported the following:
“The German officers in command lead a gay, carefree life. They do not mind being seen in public, driving in open carriages with women of bad repute, brought there from their own country. During the first days of the occupation, the enemy troops, exalted with victory, would parade the streets, shouting joyously. They would enter private houses by forcing doors and windows, and make for storerooms full of provisions, and for wine cellars, with bestial avidity.”
In sharp contrast to this life of gluttony and greed was the life led by the Italian prisoners, both those in the invaded regions and those transported back to German prison camps. The following extract is taken from a report of Lieutenant Massa Antonio, a physician who was sent back to Italy after a term in a prison camp: