Told by Franz Molnar, Celebrated Hungarian Dramatist
The character sketch is from the pen of Franz Molnar, the celebrated Hungarian dramatist and correspondent in the field of the Budapest Az Est and the Vienna Neue Freie Presse. This war has been a war of anonymity. Its vastness has submerged individuals and individualities. It is the more interesting, therefore, to catch now and then some impression of personality and to find some figure standing out clearly and picturesquely from the mass. In Rittmeister Farkas, Molnar has drawn from life a character which epitomizes the romance of the war. This story is translated, and the introduction prepared by William L. McPherson in the New York Tribune.
I—STORY OF THE GUERILLA WARRIOR
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.