Viktor Kempf, my Great Grandfather
actually starts with this man, Viktor Kempf, my Great Grandfather, who fought in
this conflict, and survived.
This page is dedicated to his
memory, and tells his story.
This
is my Great Grandfather Viktor Kemp. He was born in 1896, in a small town called
Trautendorf in Austria. The photo was probably taken shortly after
he was called up to join the war, probably early 1915.
His unit was the Gebirgs Artillerie Regiment 14. He actually didn't start in that unit, but I understand that he was transferred to them pretty soon after his mobilization, and he fought in that unit during the whole war - except, of course, for the period when he was in Russian captivity.
His original assignment was Aufklärerfeuerwerker, which I actually don't know what it was, in detail, other than that he was an NCO involved in the communications and spotting for the guns in the Battery. (I don't know what gun equipment they had, but guessing from the badge he kept, it should have been 7.5cm Skoda Gebirgshaubitze M.15, at least during the later years.)
The Gebirgs Artillerie Regiment 14 first fought on the Eastern Front, against the Russians in Galizia. His initial war experiences seems to have been pretty standard, even routine, with periods of fighting and/or movement mixed with periods of waiting and/or recuperating. No big drama.
One of the few mementos surviving from this early period was a photo, that my Great Grandfather took from a fallen Russian soldier. I understand that they in their march came upon a batch of unburied Russian casualties, that had been killed just one or two days ago. It was the first war dead he saw in situ, laying on the spot where they had been killed. And the corpses had already been plundered (my Great Grandfather actually thinks that it was done, not by soldiers, but by civilians) but around the fallen was laying all sorts of letters, papers and other seemingly worthless trinkets. And he took some of these things as souvenirs, among them this photo below.
This not overly dramatic war went on until the summer of 1916, when the big Russian Offensive suddenly started. His unit was then entangled in the desperate fighting to keep the russians back.
In the course of one of the battles in the mid-august, his unit was forced into a night retreat, and in the darkness and confusion he, and some other men from the same unit, was separated from the main body of men. And in the early morning they realised that they had lost their way, and actually turned around and moved towards the russians. They were soon spotted and captured by advancing russian troops, without any drama, and marched off into captivity.
He spent most of his time in a camp at Ivanov Bor, in the vincinty of Novgorod. His experience of being a POW was of course not positive, but they seemed to have been pretty fairly treated. (Much better than German and German-speaking POW's were treated by the Russians during WW2.)
After returning from captivity after the peace agreement had been settled with Russia (now under new, Bolshevik management) he, like a lot of other Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war, was repatriated back to Austria in the early spring of 1918.
But the war wasn't over, not for Austria-Hungary, and not for him.
Hurridly, and with I understand was very mixed feelings, he was first put through some kind of strange retraining course (which I also believe was for vetting the returnees, to spot any that had caught the bolshevik bug) and then returned to his old unit again, the Gebirgs Artillerie Regiment 14. (He was of course glad to meet some of his old buddies, and he was still "determined to do his pflicht", but he had still hoped that he could have been allowed to return home after that pretty long time in captivity. In the meanwhile, the unit had continued to fight on the Eastern Front, participating in the invasion of Rumania.) His unit then fought on the Italian front until the end of the war, where they were employed in support of the last Austro-Hungarian offensive of the war: the push over the Piave in June 1918. According to my Great Grandfather, these weeks on the Piave were the worst in his whole War experience, and his only real taste of what we now see as synonymous with Word War One: static trench warfare, massive artillery barrages and costly frontal assaults - in the distance. (On the Eastern Front, there were of course trenches and such, but warfare was in general more mobile.)
During the Piave Battles many Artillery Batteries was pushed up very close to the front, in order to support the Infantry units that had crossed river. This of course also made them vulnerable. His battery also suffered quite substantial losses there, both in materiel and men. One of them was an old friend, who was killed close to him by a large calibre mortar round that landed on top of him during the fighting in early July. (My Great Grandfather never gave any more details than that, but the scene must of course have been horrible.)
During the late autumn there was more heavy fighting, as the Italians started counter-attacking. (And not only Italians: My Great Grandfather actually saw some British POW's at the Piave.) And then suddenly the Hungarian units started pulling back, and then... the collapse. My Great Grandfather simply walked away, as did many in his unit. And he did that in actuality as well: he walked quite a distance, before he could find a place on the roof of a train. When he at last knocked on the door of his parents house, he was on the verge of starvation. He was a bit ashamed of all this, technically speaking being some sort of deserter, that is, but he explained that if he had stayed, he would surely had been made a POW once again. ("And I already too well knew how that was like", he used to say.)
Not much remains after all these years: his medal, some papers and letters, a short written account, and some simple left-overs that he brought back with him when demobilized. (I understand that originally there were more things, but they have been dispersed through the family over the years, or simply thrown away, as they didn't seem to important, or to worn or eaten by moths. (I am constantly hassling my relatives to search for any more left-overs.)
Below you can find pictures of his medals, of his water canteen and of what I believe was some sort of cap badge worn in his unit. On the right is a shot of a collection of his wartime memorabilia, including his special trench lighter, which he treasured, as it once helped him avoid freezing to death, or at least avoid really serious frost-bite. (His frost-bite injuries was, beside a slight deafness, actually the only tangible injury he suffered during WW1: My father remember him often complaining when it got really cold, showing how the fingers on his hands then got all red and swollen. I believe it was the same thing with his feet.) On the top, with the leather strap, you can see his ID capsule (Legitimationsblattkapsel), of the kind all Austro-Hungarian troops were issued with - it was their type of "dogtag", but doubling both as an ID papers holder and as a means of identification after death.
The left bronze medal isn't too fancy. It's the the "War Commemorative Medal" which was instituted after the war in 1932 as an award for all service personell who had served in the Great War. The right, dark metal one is a bit finer, it's the Karl Truppenkreuz, instituted in 1916 by the new emperor Karl, and given to troops that had served at least 12 months against the enemy and participated in one battle. (Thanks to Stirling Lowery for helping me sort this out.) The Inscription reads Vitam et Sangvinem, meaning "(with) Life and Blood". I could mention that I believe that one of his lieutenants was given the Golden Medal for Bravery, which was one of the highest awards that you could win in the Austro-Hungarian Army, which also goes to prove that his unit really was in the thick of it, at least during periods. (The guy that was killed next to my Great Grandfather was awarded that medal, in silver, post-humously.)
The irony of it all, that despite that he fought for almost three years, and on two different fronts (and despite the fact that, at least according to himself, he was quite a good shot) he never fired his rifle once in anger! (The only thing he shot during the whole war was a dog! And sometimes he regretted that.) He often mentioned this fact, bemusedly. (And I think that this actually goes for the majority of War Veterans, not least in modern wars, where the people engaged in the actual fighting is often less than the number of people involved in the support and supply of those at the fighting front.)
Many of those he knew that died, did'nt die of wounds, but from disease. Two of his friends, Franz Potscher and Matthias Auinger both died from sickness. A third friend, Alois Sailer, was actually killed in combat: he was the one hit by that mortar round on the Italian front on July 5th 1918. (As mentioned, I understand that my great grandfather was actually on the spot where Sailer was killed, and that he was deeply shaken by the event. He never talked much of it, but if he had one REALLY traumatic war experience, this was probably it.)
The family left Austria in 1939, after the Anschluss, the German annexion of Austria. One of the things my Great Grandfather could not take when it came to the Nazis, was the fact that they harassed and attacked a lot of people that had fought bravely for Austria in the war, including, of course, Jews. So although the family was catholic and my Great Grandfathers political sympathies by all accounts was pretty conservative, he got in conflict with them, and consequently saw no future in "Greater Germany". (This is despite the fact that most people he knew, including even socialists, actually approved of the Anschluss.) And, sadly, he proved right.
Although he was through some really bad experiences, he never turned pacifist. And although you could sometimes detect some bitterness in him, because, well, even though they kept the enemy from Austrian soil, they still lost, and they returned without a cheer, "sneaking home as whipped dogs", as he said, he never ceased to be proud that he did his bit in WW1.
He died in September 1986.