The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part V
Wherein the Finer Points of Dolomitian Politics & Miltiary Bugletry are Bandied About.
The three of us — Johnny the American, Desotto, and I — went on to exchange bits and bats about this and that. The American was a nice enough lad and seemed strong enough to beat both of us to a pulp in a fight, so we were gentle with him; only the most good-natured of teasings were dispensed. He took them graciously with no turnabouts.
I’d offered up some schnapps from a small flask and we’d all had a nip. We’d soon be off to dinner and then a bout of cards before bed. Some men would depart for home after dinner, the front being within an easy walk for more than a few of us. They would return to their posts after breakfast tomorrow. It left us a bit short-handed at night, but it was only right to let the men walk home for the evening if they could.
(Continued from…)
“So, Johnny,” said Desotto, “you say you are a volunteer, but why have you volunteered? America is not in this war. And why here?”
Johnny raised his eyebrows excitedly, “Why did I volunteer? To liberate the San Sebastianos, of course!”
Desotto and I both scrunched our faces. I expunged some remaining pipe smoke while Desotto stood there, nonplussed.
“Liberate us? From what?!” Desotto sputtered.
“Well, your militaristic, oppressive, Austro-Hungarian overlords, of course! I mean…”
At his Desotto and I could not help but nearly double over from laughter. Liberating San Sebastian! Ha!
“The Austrians!?” Desotto choked.
“The Hungarians!?” I leaned back, slapping my knee.
“Ha! We do not need your liberation, American,” laughed Desotto.
This was truly on par with subjecting Tomasso’s bugle to his most hated misnomer, or even Gabler’s god-sized, spectral, marmot-clubbing shadow-man, in terms of jollity.
“What do you mean?” asked Johnny, taking some offense. “It’s all over the papers how oppressed yourcountryisbytheAustrohungarians.”
“This is ridiculous! San Sebastian has not been under the Habsburg crown for hundreds of years,” I authorized.
“Well, except for two years about twenty years ago,” Desotto rightly interposed.
“Yes, except for then.” Me to Johnny, “There was an ill-advised and short-lived marriage of Viscount Hohenkranz to Lady Grattino,” I frowned.
“Yes. They had no son,” Desotto offered.
“Then he died. The viscount.”
“Some nephew inherited. Of hers. I believe he was a Habsburg. So then…”
“Yes, but then he was murdered.”
“No, typhus.”
“Tuberculosis.”
“Yes, that was it.”
“At any rate, he died horribly.”
“Yes and then things were back to normal.”
“But except for then — ”
“Which was a very short time.”
“Yes, a short time.”
“Yes. Very short.”
“So except for then, San Sebastian has been an independent principality,” I said in settlement of the matter.
“Uh, well — ”
“Duchy,” Desotto grimaced, cutting off Johnny.
The American eyed us back and forth.
“Viscontea,” I pronounced.
“Captain-Regency.”
“Well, now — in executive matters, yes, a Captain-Regency, but in terms of the head of state.”
“Earldom?”
“Marchese.”
“Barony?”
“Ha! A barony? That would be quite a demotion for our proud land, small though she may be, geographically speaking.”
“Grafschaft?”
“Margraviato.”
“Yes, that’s it!”
“Yes, a, as you would say in English, a margravate. It is headed by a marquess, a marchese, a markgraf, a marquis…”
“Like, a nobleman is whatyou’resayingyallareheadedby?” Johnny stammered.
“Yes,” I puffed again. “A high one. Above an earl, below a duke. The Margravate of San Sebastian. Yes, Desotto?”
“Yes, but it is shared in some manner, no?”
“Ah, yes His Honored Lord Franz-Paulo. I’ve forgotten. Forgive me… The Vice-Margravate of San Sebastian. And there you have it. So we are fully independent. A proud nation. We answer to no one except ourselves. And the two Vice-Marcheses, one of whom, I believe, lives in Greece.”
“Malta.”
“Yes, Malta.”
“And the other of whom lives in…”
“Vienna,” I was quick to add, “but that is only because he enjoys the symphony there. His palace in Vienna — ”
“He does have a castle in Hungary as well…”
“Well, yes, of course, the hunting is best there, especially for stags, and hares, and partridges. But the fact of his palace in Vienna, one of our Vice-Markgraf’s, and of the castle in Hungary, also his, do not make us part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.”
“Far from it. He’s not a Vice-Markgraf, though, I should say.”
“What, Desotto?” I clipped, trying to get to the point. “Oh, yes,” I admitted, “We should make clear, there are two Markgrafs — Markgraffen — or Marcheses — Marchesi — of San Sebastian. Thus, we — our country — is a Vice-Margravate, but the marquesses themselves are full marquesses, not ‘vice’ ones in any way.”
“So, we are a fully independent Vice-Margravate. And…”
“Yes, Desotto?”
“We are still a part of the Holy Roman Empire,” Desotto winced. “Technically. …Though her Imperial seat be vacant.”
I sighed. “Yes, of course. As the whole globe should be. That much is a given. And there you have it.”
The American squirmed, “But… aren’t you oppressed insomeway? I mean, I came to fight for freedom, and the newspapers back home, they’re always talking about the oppressed San Sebastianos, and the Austro-Hungarians just, you know, oppressing youall,burningyourvillagesandwhatnot.”
Desotto and I made a uniquely Sebastianan head gesture. Rolling our heads around, grimacing, and looking up to God for the right answer. It means something between Well, and You poor blight on your family’s honor.
“Oppressed?” Desotto moued.
I stepped in, “I don’t know that you would say that. For instance, in most ways the typical Sebastiano is quite richer than his Austrian cousin across the border.”
“Though the Austrians are not our cousins.”
“My God, no, not cousins. They are Germans after all. I mean only that they live nearby. But we are not oppressed at any rate. We have industries here. Rich farms. Banks.”
“Mills.”
“Yes, mills. Mines. Clockworks. An ironworks.”
“And rights.”
“Yes, many of those. Just as many as you please of rights. Inalienable ones. Just like yours, American. No, I don’t think you could say we are oppressed.”
“Yes, free as marmots,” Desotto concluded.
The American dropped one hand from his rifle pole. “Free? Rich? Marmots? Well, I mean I didn’t come heretofightfornothing. I mean, the fare to get herecostmeeverythingIhad. And, shit, I think I was seventeen when I left andI’mnineteennow!”
It occurred to me then that we did not want to lose such a strapping young soldier who could stand in for a son of San Sebastian.
“You can still fight!” he reassured him.
“Yes, fight! Bang! Buffalo Bill with Austrians as buffaloes!” Desotto cheered.
Johnny sighed. “So you at least fighting theAustro-Hungariansthen?”
Desotto and I ejaculated, “Yes! Of course! The Habsburg, Hun, sub-German shit-bastards! We are fighting them! To the death!”
“Forever fighting them!”
“We will not rest until we burn Vienna to the ground!”
Johnny straightened a bit, his blond locks inching out from under his helmet. “And, they are oppressive right? I mean in general?”
“Oh, most oppressive.”
“Yes, terrible. The monsters. Oppressing everyone, the Slovenes, the Czechs, the Romansch, the Ladins, the Friusians, the gypsies — ”
Desotto shot me a glance. Don’t go down that road…
“The Kosovars, the Slovaks, the Bohemains, the Moravians…Let’s see who else…”
“The Croats.”
“Yes, the Croats! Even the Hungarians. They oppress them all. Even half of themselves, the Austro-Hungarians. You are fighting the oppressors!”
Johnny stood up and I offered him my flask. He took it, but paused before his drink. “And, I mean, the Austro-Hungarians, they are the…”
We leaned in.
“They’re what?”
“I mean, they are the… bad guys? Right?”
Aiche!, I thought. The Americans with their “bad guys.” Every cowboy needs an Indian.
“Yes!!!” Desotto and I slapped Johnny on both shoulders.
“They are the bad guys,” I reassured him.
“The worst.”
“Satan roots for them. The bishop has said!”
“Yes, God is on our side. The side of the San Sebastianos, the French, the English. The… Bulgarians, I believe? Montenegrans? Maybe them? …We are all the good guys!”
“Yes, and Johnny is a good guy too!” I slapped his shoulder.
“Well good, alright then,” Johnny nodded as he took a swig of my elderberry schnapps.
Desotto and I each imbibed ourselves a bit too, to celebrate our understanding.
“To the good guys,” I toasted. We all took another sip from my flask, one after another.
“To San Sebastian, and to freedom,” Johnny earnestly toasted.
We drank again, with grangusto!
“To God and being on the right side of history,” Desotto said solemnly.
“If God be with us, who dare be against us?” I added.
We all nodded for a moment in silent thanksgiving for our fighting a just war for a just cause.
My pipe having burned out, I leaned away and opened my satchel. Desotto and Johnny took another swig of schnapps and shook hands again. Johnny gave Desotto a cigarette. They both lit their smokes. I got my pipe going. We smiled and sighed.
A minute later, our revelry was abruptly interrupted by a gnarped and flarpled reveille of sorts from a warbly bugle that could only be Tomasso’s trumpet.
The San Sebastian army still relied heavily on the bugle for communication, and had, in fact, raised the art and science of bugletry to new heights of development. In the steep mountain valleys of the southeastern Alps, the bugle made a particularly efficient means of communication, as its echoes could carry for miles. Of course, to keep the enemy unawares one had to bugle in code. This meant a lot of time spent in the insulated bugle barracks, learning the various coded bugle calls and what they meant.
The codes would, of course, have to be changed every so often, which meant more time in the bugle barn listening to ear-splitting close-quarters buglery. And then, as you might imagine, when multiple units are bugling at once in battle, it can take years of practice to be able to discern your company’s bugle from the dozens of others blaring out their coded bugle calls in the chaos and cacophony of war. Moreover, there was the problem of a limited and dwindling supply of qualified buglers (as made obvious by Tomasso’s admission into the once-exclusive Margravial Bugle Corps, shit bugler that he was).
Nonetheless, a bugle call can traverse over five hundred leagues per second. Much faster than a horse, a pigeon, or a messenger hound. And it was more reliable than the poor-quality and generally suspicious Marconi-wireless sets that had recently been delivered. And so we Sebastianos remained a bugle-focused soldiery.
I had heard some of the elite units, such as the Regal Halberdiers and the Javelin Corpo, got to learn their bugletry using Mr. Edison’s record-platters, rather than having to spend interminable hours in the deafening purgatory of the bugle-shack, listening to Tomasso and his compatriots split your head with their brass. I envied those units. Perhaps we would soon get a spinning mechanical soundhorn for our humble infantry company. I would mention it to the commandant, once he’d calmed down from the masturbating shadow-giant fiasco.
I continued, “The bugle call. It means there is an announcement. The telegraph is past the mess hall. They will make the announcement there. Only officers, sergenti and their batmen, like me and Desotto here, are admitted, but I will bring you as well, American. Let’s go.”
I dumped out my pipe and smashed its smoldering contents under my heel. We, Desotto, Johnny, and I, dashed along the trenchbaords, west toward the company mess.
Continued…
