"Captain Austria"

This is the short war story of Captain Heinrich Wilhelm von Briesen, an Austrian soldier who fought in a group of  Austrian volunteers who were hired, funded, and supplied by the British to fight the Germans during what many call World War 1, also called "The Great War" and "The War to End All Wars", but was killed during the Second Battle of Ypres.

 It was May 10, 1915. I am Heinrich Siegfried Friedrich Wolfgang Wilhelm von Briesen. I was commander of 13 fighting men called "Die Osterreichische Freiwillige" (The Austrian Volunteers), and my group was under my order, by they were funded by Field Marshal Sir George Stuart White, a British field commander. I was armed with a Mauser C96 automatic pistol after my right arm was amputated, so I cannot use a saber or rifle. The Germans were advancing across rough terrain. I was in a trench with a well-known fellow British officer named Captain Thomas Wilson Carlisle. There were many "new weapons", including heavy machine guns, poison gas, flamethrowers, tanks, high-caliber pistols and bolt-action rifles, and Maxim and Gatling guns. The newest was a terror to all British forces- poison gas and mustard gas. Used by German stormtroopers, it inflicted horrific wounds on British, Canadian, and other forces. Thomas Carlisle was seen chocking from the poison gas while I ran to the mortars. The battle had just begun.

The British medical aid group was comprised of a medic and his assistant, a surgeon, and two riflemen. They came down the trenches, saving the lives of British and Austrian soldiers while there riflemen snipe enemy German stormtroopers. I saw them come down the trench, and they gave me a gas mask. I saw French infantrymen storm the German trenches, armed with Lebel rifles and bayonets. They perished by German gas. I said: "Alright, Fritz- you get the French, the British, the Canadians...but not the Austrians!" I broke open a fresh box of Stokes mortars. I stormed the German trenches while I threw the mortars at a German general. He said: "Mortars-nein-NEIN! He screamed as my mortars exploded. I saw that he was a brigadier general. I raised my pistol in the air and said: "For Austria!"

Below: A Mauser C96 automatic pistol, used by Captain Heinrich Wilhelm von Briesen.