War From War

By Richard Lung

A happy childhood in the Paradise of the Banat. A coming of age, thrown out of the services company, to fight in the Hell of the Russian Front. Purgatory in a foreign land. For, war does not end when the immediate fighting is over and everyone still (more or less) alive has left the battle-field. A man may be brought down instantly by his injuries or, just as inevitably, near the end of a long life. There are also lasting injuries invisible and incalculable in their untoward effects.

My father was descended from German emigrants (to escape the Franco-German wars) settling in Austro-Hungary, caught-up in the Great War, and annexed to Romania. He was conscripted in the second world war, and captured, accepting the offer of work in England, where he was, at first, interned and later naturalised. An artisan by trade, a sportsman by inclination, fighting a long rear-guard action against his war injury.

My fathers story is followed by a kaleidoscope of after-thoughts. I outline answers to the problem of turning war into peace.
A supplement includes a long letter in German by a prisoner of war comrade, on returning home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Lung
• Release date: Dec 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370191185

Richard Lung

My later years acknowledge the decisive benefit of the internet and the web in allowing me the possibility of publication, therefore giving the incentive to learn subjects to write about them.While, from my youth, I acknowledge the intellectual debt that I owed a social science degree, while coming to radically disagree, even as a student, with its out-look and aims.Whereas from middle age, I acknowledge how much I owed to the friendship of Dorothy Cowlin, largely the subject of my e-book, Dates and Dorothy. This is the second in a series of five books of my collected verse. Her letters to me, and my comments came out, in: Echoes of a Friend.....Authors have played a big part in my life.Years ago, two women independently asked me: Richard, don't you ever read anything but serious books?But Dorothy was an author who influenced me personally, as well as from the written page. And that makes all the difference.I was the author of the Democracy Science website since 1999. This combined scientific research with democratic reform. It is now mainly used as an archive. Since 2014, I have written e-books.I have only become a book author myself, on retiring age, starting at stopping time!2014, slightly modified 2022.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Paradise.

Chapter 2: Hell.

Chapter 3: Purgatory.

Chapter 4: After-thoughts.

Chapter 5: Envoy.

Chapter 6: Good government.

Chapter 7: The UK referendum on the European Union, 2016.

Chapter 8: Nuclear annihilation.

Supplement: Mein lieber Bela und Franzel! (Brief of a home-coming, in German, by a Prisoner of War); Brief von Franz.

Guide to five volume collected verse by Richard Lung.

Guide to two more book series.

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War from War

On a chain and bucket well.

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Chapter 1:

Paradise.

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The legend of the Fall of Man, from Heaven to Hell, was mirrored in the early years of Bela Lung, a descendant of migrant German Austro-Hungarian Romanian neighbors of the Yugoslavs. From the war, that substantially spoiled his life, and that of untold millions of others, he endured a subsequent Purgatory, which was difficult not only for him.

The childhood of Bela was a blessed isle, in a hostile ocean, to which, he would be cast adrift, like his father and uncle, sent to war, before him.

Family legend had his predecessors moving away from the French and Germans, who were always fighting.

When was this?

He hazarded some 200 years ago.

This seemed a wild guess. But it was about right, as became evident from reading: No Going Back To Moldova, by Anna Robertson, who was of the same diaspora. (This region is not to be confused with the state of Moldova, bordering Romania, and formerly called Moldavia.)

On television, a spokesman, for a French union strike (principally against British holiday-makers), bore the family surname, Lung, with a German-spelt Christian name. So, the Franco-German origins, of the family, were so far borne out.

The anxiety of Belas paternal ancestors, to remove themselves from the French border, so far moved them to settle at the other end of the European expanse of German-speaking peoples. That is to say, near-Balkans Hungary, which was part of the Austrian Empire.

The Balkans, however, are a by-word for instability, giving rise to the political term Balkanisation.

A turn of twentieth century book, by Harry de Windt, Through Savage Europe, is mainly about the Balkan countries that suffered from savage conquest by the Ottoman Empire.

On his travels into Russia, the intrusive customs officials even slit open Harrys accordion, searching for prohibited political literature. He is arrested by a policeman, for possessing a Kodak camera. He only escapes an ordeal with the judiciary, because his captor is distracted by an assassination attempt. Such was almost routine. Evidently, the autocracy was losing its monopoly of anarchy, which the Bolsheviks were to reassert more ruthlessly than ever.

In that part of the Balkans, known as the Banat, Grand-father Lung Mihaly or Michael Lung owned a general store. No picture is available, of this fount of the familys fortunes, that might have shed a light on his capable character. A not very good idea of his emporium is given by the odd indistinct foto (even after enhancement) of the shop-front. Its Hungarian provenance can be discerned by the word, Magyar, on the right side (of the picture) below the window.

emporium

The family took on Hungarian, as well as German, first names. Albert (whose story this is) was also Bela, and known as such, all his Hungarian mothers life.

An entertainment program, in the form of an invitation, was posted to Lung Mihaly (Belas grand-father) post-marked: 912 (1912). The program is in Hungarian, featuring the Kecske Quartet. Combined with the name, Schubert, this implies a Schubert quartet was played. The only words, I understand, are the foreign words: Sinfonia, Melodrama, Rhapsodia. A Monolog was delivered by Dr Nagy Hugo.

Grand-father, Michael Lung had four children by his first marriage: Josef, Franciska, Elizabeth and Peter.

Franciska sent her niece, Ferko, who was daughter of Elizabeth, and not yet married, a Fest program invitation for Hungaria 1873 - 1913: Patria, Libertas, Honestas!

Day one: welcoming guests in the pub, at the Hotel Deutches Haus.

Day two: the Roman Catholic Church and Convent were represented; then, Fatherland under Hungary; then, a drinking party.

The third day of the event featured a morning beer or wine.

The triple slogan hints that the influence, of French republican Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, has filtered even into that far corner of Europe.

Henry de Vere Stacpoole, in his thesis, The New Optimism, did not lack intelligence, so much as timing, bringing out his happy philosophy, so unhappily, in 1914.

People were taken by surprise.

An-other of my favorite story-tellers, HG Wells admitted that the out-break of war caught him unawares. That, in itself, is a warning of the horrible turn of events that can befall an improvident mankind. Because, there must be few people who consulted more widely and observed more acutely.

The Lung forebears strategic retreat, from the Franco-German power struggle, had reckoned without the Triple Alliance, by which the empires of Britain and France combined with Russia, to contain German expansionism. This goes back and beyond the monarch, that Thorstein Veblen regarded as Frederick the Great Pickpocket (of Silesia from Austria). So, the Allies were well warned in their apprehensions. The rest is history.

When the German Empire decided, in 1914, after a series of bloody smash and grabs from European neighbors, to test again the efficiency of its war machine, descendants of peace-seeking emigrants, like Belas family, were clawed back into the conflict, by way of Austro-Hungary forming, with Germany, the Central Powers.

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The first-born of Lung Mihaly, Josef is pictured, below, in Hungarian army dress, next to Peter. Franciska is seated on the left. The other two girls (who look like sisters) are friends. Early studio fotografy required absolute stillness, which gives them their statuesque appearance, especially as no-one humanly eyes the camera. The picture is already like a war memorial to Josef. No doubt, this is what millions of such call-up portraits, on either side of the war, comprehended.

Josef in uniform

Another studio foto (not shown) of Josef, flanked by two comrades, has him decorated with the iron cross (Austrian) for bravery of the first order. The above picture is a little too indistinct to be sure he is wearing the award, there. That story is lost, as was its bearer. Such a proud possession would be no consolation worth mentioning by his bereaved family.

The Russian General Brusilov was an early master of shock offensives, on the heels of intense industrial gun bombardments, taking crippling casualties and prisoners, from the Austro-Hungarian army. The dual monarchy was left like a canopy tree ready to topple in the next gale.

With the enormous tallies of casualties all-round, similar fates awaited the bankrupt and broken militaristic pretensions of Russian Tsar and German Kaiser.

Whereas, the British branch of the European royal family got away with changing their name from Goth Saxa-Coburg to Windsor.

Writing an affectionate, if a touch reproving, letter to his English relatives, in the midst of the mechanised butchery of their respective subjects, Kaiser Wilhelm wittily remarked that he trusted that the Shakespear play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, would now be called: The Merry Wives of Goth Saxa-Coburg.

Meanwhile, the slavish war-worship of German militarism enslaved the peoples of occupied territories to its all-devouring death industry, as well as dragging enemies down to their own level of primitive aggression, and anticipating much of the shocking barbarism of world war two.

On the western side of the continent, and the war, your typical British subject, while on leave with his new wife, was also kitted out. Both sides were literally dressed to kill by order of their governments. In Britain, conscription came after incitements, to murderous revenge, could not keep their mincing machine from running out of volunteers, before the enemy folded.

The British naval blockade was starving Germany. The German submarine offensive was starving Britain. (Shooting parties were held to exterminate the English sparrow.) Even a tenant farmer was conscripted, tho doing vital war work. The war hung so finely in the balance.

One such English farmer was wounded by schrapnel, that exposed his jaw-bone. It was more than a close shave! His life hung in the balance, and his parents expected he would be sent home, after so critical an injury. Instead, he was sent right back to the Front, like an automaton, as soon as his wound healed. The automaton, in peace-time, would have nightmares.

After JB Priestley was buried alive by an explosion, his rehabilitation lasted long enough that, in the event, he did not have to go back to war.

Below is a more informal snap of a uniformed Josef, turned to look at the camera, from brother Peter, and Franciska, holding a lap-dog.

brothers and sister

Peter was invalided out of the Army, with frost-bite to his feet, which had to be amputated. The next foto shows him smiling over the bandaged remains. A nurse, with a Red Cross arm-band, is stagily reading to him. The nursing sister, next to him, is his real sister, Franciska. The visiting soldier is unknown. It would be fair to say that the fotos, informing this narrative, amount to a gallery of strangers.

Peter convalescing

Franciska qualified as a nurse, in 1916, according to her legitimation document, partly shown in the foto below.

This shows how she spells her own Christian name. As a boy, Bela collected stamps, and thus old envelopes, which addressed her, by the German spelling, as: Franziska. This is an intimation, that the orthografy, in Austro-Hungary, varies from that of Germany.

The bow, on her identity picture, where she looks scarcely out of adolescence, gives her an appearance, as juvenile as animal life itself -- when it still had non-primate ears!

nurse legitimation

After the Great War, later demoted to World War One, the Versailles settlement ceded the familys part of Hungary, the Banat, to Romania, as a reward for their (somewhat disastrous) siding with the Allies. The national transfer of territory had not been accomplished by the martial arts or with the support of the indigenous population.

The Versailles practice, of putting territorial acquisition, above the ethnic interests of inhabitants, shows how much the imperialist mentality still held sway over the victorious Allies, as well as defeated Imperial Germany. This insensitivity only renewed the German militarist excuse, of claiming ethnic German territories, when Germany was taken-over by a gang of mad-men, the party. In the 1930s, they took one more reckless gamble at world domination.

Romanias Roman origins go back to its survival as an outpost of the Roman Empire, considerably after its dissolution. Its language has strong Italian affinities. And it was the fashion to follow French phrase and care-free manner. Bucharest, the city of pleasure, was known as little Paris (with more justification than most).

Its Hohenzollern King, Carol I, was not loved, unlike his wife. The kindly Queen Elizabeth made an informal contrast to her husband. He appears to have brought Germanic primacy and efficiency to its army. (Not much in evidence, when Bela flourished.) His next main policy was to give small-holdings to the peasantry. This was resisted by the so-called aristocracy but ensured the loyalty of the people, given a stake in the country.

Hungarian is not related to any other European language. Multi-lingual travelers, who can make themselves understood in remotest corners of the continent, hit a brick wall with Hungarian. The reverse was also true for Hungarians having to understand Romanian, a little inconvenience, beyond the consideration or comprehension of the new-world builders, at the peace of Versailles.

Belas mother, Ida had to go into shops, where they only spoke Romanian, a language she did not understand. Such Versailles treaty provisions sound like a spell that punished defeated nations, by putting them under an evil enchantment.

Michael Lung married again, after his first wife died. In late life, Bela only remembered the first name of his grand-fathers second wife, Julisch, previously Michaels house-keeper. She had a son, Josef. The name may owe to the fact that the first marriage produced a Josef, killed in the Great War.

The second Josef was a clear-eyed clear-complexioned young man. In 1936, he would be dressed in a multi-striped light suit with folded handkerchief in front pocket and a rose in the lapel. Some contrast, in physique and out-fit, to his name-sake half-brother, pictured in austere uniform.

Michaels daughter, Franciska married Hanse Koch. As of the period, he was soberly dressed and sober of expression, an aspect which his wife shares, when she is in the picture with him. Franciskas husband came to an unhappy end. In the harsh continental winter, he attended a funeral, with hats off, as a mark of respect. And he himself died from the severe cold to his head.

One does not realise how the body loses resilience with age, til it unexpectedly punishes you for over-taxing it. Nothing is known of his life, only his death.

If Mr Koch was punctilious to a fault - to a fatality - Franciska was said to be finikety about her second husband, Ocsko Janas. Apparently, he didn't come up to her expectations, in some way.

A foto displays a portly middle-aged man in shirt and braces. This deportment hints he was more relaxed about convention than his predecessor.

Actually, that previous sentence is pretty much nonsense. Happening-on the foto again, the braces had disappeared. Janas, tho solid, was not portly. And Franciska stands close to him with a happy smile (or so it seems).

The little-known Franciska had no children, to remember her by. In old age, she was domiciled with brother Peter and family.

Franciska and Elizabeth

Aunts Franciska and Elizabeth

Franciska and Elizabeth, the two daughters of Michael, were Belas aunts, pictured above, in matching blouses. The studio high-lights the art of a hair-stylist. Their portraits are aligned and enhanced into a composite foto. They look two gentle-natured young ladies.

More often than in fotos of Franciska, the eyes of Elizabeth meet the viewer, and, as she ages, take on more of a warm smile. One picture of her, with greying hair, in a plain rain-coat, shows her give a moderately friendly look towards the camera.

She is walking with one of her grown-up daughters, Ferko, dressed in the latest hedonist Western style, emphasising her femininity, from high heels and close-fitting dress to slick hair style.

The daughter heeds not the camera. Her inward-tilting eye-brows suggest a suspended crossness, biding her time, while being buzzed by a snapper, she cannot swat!

Or perhaps it is just the effect of strong sun-light.

The direction of mother and daughter is away from the likes of a typical kinema front, in the back-ground.

This must have been the kinema of Belas delights, for a thousand and one nights. For, Bela had the fabled favorite uncle, because he owned a picture house, that little Bela attended free, with great frequency.

A childhood Bela is fotoed looking into the camera, and looking young, in long trousers. A chink of sunshine, round a narrow paved street, catches his face. He is at the end of a queue of shadowed youngsters.

The youth, in suit and striped tie, at the front of the queue is Belas best friend, Daniel, perhaps expecting a door to open, upon which moment, he will look-up. He has been exchanging words with the next in line, to pass the time.

What did this scene mean? It must be the children waiting for the kinema doors to open on the Saturday matinee, a world-wide feature of the nineteen thirties.

Bela may have been purposely at the back, because his uncle would not want other children to see him going in free.

Just stumbling on that foto again, memory has got me wrong again. It does not look at all like a kinema entrance, even a side entrance. Only four youths are waiting. Who knows? Perhaps they are waiting for a dancing class. They are formally dressed for such an event. Another foto shows Daniel and Bela, at a tender age, with their girl-friends, at a dance. But then, where are the girls, here? Perhaps the engagement contrives to keep the boys waiting. In any event, it is an appointment of some sort, which Bela could not recall, in old age.

Movies, in the Banat, showed subtitles in four languages: Romanian, German, Hungarian and Yugoslav.

Bela had a life-long affection for Laurel and Hardy, who did their talkies in Romanian (and numerous other foreign languages: India regards the duo as part of their cultural heritage). There never was a better way to become fluent in four languages.

A picture of Franciska, with two admirers, looks like a poorly preserved still, from a silent movie of Franciska, in the hands of two comic villains. One looks like a railway official, who might tie her to the tracks, as well as he does, to himself, on the picture. He may be a ticket attendant to her brother-in-laws kinema. He looks too old to be her partner. And unlike him, she is not smiling. This, however, is all conjecture.

The other man, smoking a cigaret, gives a too-knowing look. He wears a top hat, an American movies symbol for the upper-class butt of the comic little man.

Franciska with two admirersGrapes

The second picture, above, was rescued from sepia obscurity by digital enhancement. Peter smiles as Franciska displays a bunch of grapes, under a high Romanian sun, in the summer of their lives.

The harsh lines of sun-light make Franciska look older than she was in the Great War, so the woman in uniform would not be engaged, in first world war work. The uniformed woman is engaged with the grape vines. Is that a supercilious expression, at being caught on camera?

Maybe she was in the employ of their brother-in-laws kinema? The idea came too late to ask Bela about the kinema staff and its dress. Her uniform looks similar to that of the man, coveting Franciska, in the first of the two pictures, just above.

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Belas other aunt, Elizabeth married Miklos Trasser, the kinema owner. The kinema must have been converted from the theatre or opera house that gave the Schubert concert.

England witnessed cinemas, converted from defunct opera houses. These changes, with the times, must have happened thru-out Europe and the world.

Elizabeth and Miklos Trasser had three daughters, Ferko, Dunda, and Kato (short for Katherin). They were all sent to finishing school in Vienna, where they were taught the social graces, as is becoming of ladies.

This includes lessons in deportment. One of the daughters, Ferko and her cousin, Belas sister, named after her aunt Elizabeth, were snapped descending their house steps. You can tell which one went to Vienna.

Ferkos husband adds decorative relief, out of a window, raising a bunch of grapes, to his open mouth.

Ferko Lung married Butse Huszu, an engineer and inventor, in Bucharest, educated in Bath, England. From there, his post-cards, to his future wife, depict the statutory buildings, the hunt by red-coats, and portraits of pretty young women. A well wrapped-up pair are a mother and daughter, who gives a passing glance. A rose-maid, with a basket of roses, knocks on a door.

An anguished-looking young woman, in a flowing cream silk gown and rose-decked bonnet, sits uncomfortably between two rivals, one in tennis out-fit, the other in suit and boater, peering hungrily towards her. This scene is titled: A club~sandwich. (The term is a play on the name for a stock offering of club catering.)

The English cards, dated 1915, are sent with stamps of the Austro-Hungarian enemy, to Fraulein Ferike. (Bertrand Russell commented, to the effect, that nations in conflict, still allowed certain civilities, in those days, before the demonising, required of total war.)

Ferko or Ferike (or Ferika) is greeted affectionately as Ferry: Thanks for writing. Please let us know if you come back or not.

Her suiter tended to flat-line words. Such correspondence, as survives, was not written for the benefit of war-time censors, not to mention archivists.

Of Ferkos two sisters, Dunda married Marko Ispanovich. His surname sounds like a Yugoslav rendering of a Spanish ancestry. Bela visited this branch of the family. They had a daughter, Ingrid.

Kato married Janocs Vefelovsky, a pharmacist in Hungary, and they had children.

Their father, Miklos Trasser is pictured, walking alone thru a thoro-fare. An assortment of folks are scattered about, all oblivious to him, as he goes about his business.

It seems likely that this foto was not the happenstance, it appeared to be, but staged, at a