Tape 6 Side 1
I’ll continue speaking into this thing, otherwise I shall never finish.
I think, on the last tape, I finished with Kalksburg and Zita and so on. Now, I’m always beating myself on this because I just cannot listen back to myself for hours.
In Kalksburg, as I may have told you, I never was very happy and I was rather an obstreperous boy – not only I, but all our class was not exactly what I would call a very disciplined one.
We were all princes, counts, and barons. As far as I remember, my colleagues were Ferdinand Liechtenstein, Louis de Bourbon – the brother of the Empress Zita, Max Trautmansdorf, Watzdorf – I think he was the only one who had no title. We also had an American boy called Thompson.
In 1916 I was sacked from there, and I think I told you why and how. [My mother told me that Paul set fire to the pillows in his dormitory and threw them down into the courtyard. His mother was summoned and wept from frustration. CSF.] And when I came back to Siedliska after this sacking, father sent me for the holidays to Moste Wielki which was his second estate.
It was about 40 kilometres away from Siedliska. The manager there was Mr Vogt who lived there with his family and I spent, I think, two months or something helping him with the administration of the place. I had my horse with me and, I must say, it was a very pleasant time. I worked, supervising the harvests and planting and so on, riding wherever I had to go, and after these two months, I came back to Siedliska and was then sent to Kraków to the gymnasium.
I had a room at the Archbishop’s palace, and had my meals with him and one or two priests who always ate at his table and every afternoon, I used to go with him on his different visits.
The Sanguszko family, who had a big Arab stud, always put four Arab horses at the Archbishop’s disposal – so, I used to drive these horses off the Victoria in which we used to do these different visits out in the country. He used to visit all his parish priests, one after another. He had also a property right near Kraków – so, these afternoons were extremely pleasant.
It was the Fifth Gymnasium in Kraków to which I went. Besides going there, Father had arranged with the stallion station of the Austrian government in Kraków so that I could take riding lessons there and twice, or three times a week, I would go there and be trained by a sergeant and, I must say, that I believe that that was where I learned a really good seat on a horse.
The End of the War, 1918, and the Ukrainian Occupation
Having finished school by January 1918, I was called up and was supposed to join the Second Lancers of the Austrian army. Being the only son (as my brother had been killed), after three weeks, I was released and could go back to school.
That year was quiet. Work on the estate went on; my studies went on until that fateful first of November.
The parents were in Siedliska and I was there too, and all at once we found ourselves surrounded by the Ukrainians. That part of Galicia was mainly inhabited by Ukrainians who wanted their independence and started a revolution against the Poles. In Siedliska, and Rawa-Ruska, things were pretty quiet. The Starost, or governor of the area, was the son of Remiszewski, and he remained at his post and had many difficulties. From time to time, we had all sorts of Ukrainian bands coming through, but they were rather all so innocent.
I used to go and shoot wild boar, and so, it was a very normal life, actually, that we led, except that, of course, we had no communication with the rest of the world.
That lasted until about Christmas of 1918, when a Polish division came through there and – well, let’s call it that way – liberated us. They arranged for a railroad car into which we packed everything that we could lay our hands on, and then, for four days, we travelled from Rawa-Ruska to Lublin, and from Lublin to Kraków.
The Polish-Soviet War, 1920
In May of 1919, I went through my baccalaureate, and immediately volunteered for the Polish army. I joined the Eighth Polish Lancers, and was sent to a cavalry school near Warsaw where I spent two months.
After we got through that, we had to go to an infantry school in Warsaw proper – a cadet school – where, of course, the infantry sergeants and non-coms took it out on us because the cavalry was then an aristocratic body which, of course, any infantry man would hate.
This infantry training was not easy because we weren’t trained to walk, and weren’t trained to march. We had to very quickly adapt ourselves and make marches of forty kilometres a night and so on.
We went fighting. There’s a very good book on that whole campaign by Kornel Krzeczunowicz who was my commander of the Fourth Squadron, and then, when a regimental commander was wounded, Krzeczunowicz became regimental commander and I remained Second Officer of the Fourth Squadron, and we fought here and there, and we fought on horseback; we fought off horseback; until the so-called victory under Warsaw which was on the 15th of August when the Soviet troops were beaten, and we chased them again back to Zamość from under Lwów.
There, during the day of the 31st of August, we had, what probably was, the last big cavalry battle. We were, I believe, three divisions; and the Bolsheviks had seven; and after we had charged them, and they charged us, I don’t know how many times – I was shot off the horse and wounded.
[My mother told me he had been left for dead but was saved by his batman. CSF]
To my shame, I started weeping, so to speak, after they picked me up and put me on a stretcher. It was a sort of nervous reaction to the anticlimax.
I was put with some others on a peasant wagon – horse wagon – and we drove all night to Lubycza which was also quite near Rawa-Ruska to a field hospital, but the head of it, the doctor, was not there when we arrived and I remember getting awfully angry because, here we were, all bleeding; the chap next to me died during the night; and some were really very seriously wounded, and that doctor had gone – I don’t know – shooting hare, or whatnot. So, when he did appear, he had rather a hard time.
From there, I was put on a hospital train and we went to Jarosław. After we arrived there, Mother came down to Jarosław, and I must say I was extremely well taken care of and the doctors and the nurses and everybody was awfully nice. I spent about five days in that hospital in Jarosław, and then was transported to Kraków where I spent, I think, three months.
My wounds healed quickly enough. I had two: one in the front of the leg, and one at the back – but the nerves there, having been cut, I had to be operated on again. The whole thing was opened up and the nerves were tied together. In any case, I had to walk on crutches for about four or five months.
To Grenoble, and Meeting Gilly
Free of the army, after one or two months, it was decided that I should do some agriculture and forestry studying in Lwów. There were accelerated courses for all those, like myself, who’d been in the army and hadn’t been able to continue their studies after school.
After finishing the agricultural courses, it was decided that I should study some economy and law – so, I got myself enrolled in Grenoble at the university there, where I went in 1923.
We left with Mother because we first wanted to go to Brixen which Mother loved and which was very good for her. There was a very good doctor who used the Kneipp method – cold water – which is actually very good for the circulation.
In October, I went to Grenoble and started the work at the university there in the autumn of 1923.
The Congo and Father
One of the things which influenced me a lot in those days was that Leon, and his wife, Catherine, went for the first time to the Belgian Congo to shoot and to see whether they could arrange and organise some sort of a plantation there. After some months of this, they came back and I became so enthusiastic with all that they told about the Congo, about the life there, about the animals, about the jungle, that I decided – already, in 1926 – that I would certainly go down there too.
During the winter of 1926 to 1927, I constantly speculated how I would do this, and slowly I started preparing the parents for the idea that I would like to go to the Congo. I went to see a friend of Father’s, a bank director, Mr Aszkenazi, in Warsaw and asked him whether he would lend me $5,000 for this purpose – and he said yes.
I embarked on a Union Castle liner from Marseille on the last day of November. During my Brussels visit when I was buying all the equipment I needed, Father had been in Paris and we met in Brussels. Being young and stupid (or, maybe not so stupid), I had got very friendly with a girl who danced in the nightclub of the hotel I was staying at.
When Father arrived, I persuaded him to come to this nightclub. He came, and what happened was that the girl came to our table and immediately got onto Father’s lap, put her arm around his neck, and kissed him on both cheeks. You can imagine! Father, who had never been in a nightclub, who had never been kissed by a strange girl – and I started laughing absolutely. I told her, of course, to get off his lap. Father was absolutely flabbergasted, but still, he took it very well. But after a moment he said he was going to go to bed, and he did.
It broke the ice between me and him. Actually, before that, I was always … You know, my relationship with him was father to son, authority, paternal to filial obedience etcetera, and I never actually talked about anything except those things which one discusses quite impersonally. But from that moment on, we became friends. He was a man of a great sense of humour, and also a lot of wisdom.
Phoebe at Oktoberfest
I usually go to Mass here, next door, and on Sundays, at 5:30, there’s a Croat Mass there and this is very much like a village Mass. There’s 75% men; the rest are girls who try and dress like Germans, and they all are employed in this region.
You know that Phoebe comes to meetings and, whenever somebody talks too long and tediously, one hears from under the table a long sigh. She reminds the person that it’s time to end.