Josef Šrámek

“ We stayed in old Turkish barracks, half crumbled. There is one transport of Bulgarians taken prisoner and several Germans. We are hungry, and the Serbs rob us of our last money. It is terrible to be at the mercy of several yokels who can rob you, strip you, and beat you to death whenever they wish. I stick to the fore; those who come late or cannot go are beaten and robbed. I don't know if I'll be strong enough—the sea is still very far, and the misery is growing harder! ”

“ Some 4,000 prisoners are crowded at the port, they push forward, step on one another and fall to the sea. The Italians have fun throwing pieces of biscuits among them and watching the prisoners fight just as dogs fight for bones. ”

“ Like rows of madmen, with eyes staring, themselves close to falling down, walked the fugitives among the dying, everyone looking only after himself. The instinct for survival controlled everyone. "Forward" was the motto, "forward until I fall myself." A son forgot his father, brother forgot his brother, a friend forgot his friend. Often mothers threw away their toddlers to be more free to drag themselves forward. The fallen were immediately robbed by the Albanians of the last things they had on them. ”

“ There is a ferry today, but only for the sick! Indescribable scenes take place at the raft. People rush like mad, push each other, fight. Serbians beat them with sticks and gun butts. Many people are beaten and kicked to death, then thrown into the river.
Everyone is trying to save himself from death by hunger. Our platoon's turn should be tomorrow. We got 3 spoons of flour each today and set out to look for places to sleep in the thorns. We picked some grass and lay down. Around us bullets from Albanian guns fly. ”

“ French soldiers are a strange mixture—65-year-olds with 18-year-old recruits. The uniforms vary—black, blue, brown, white, and green. It pleases the eye to look at all the colors within one unit.
Officers are mostly pensioners or disabled. But they're intelligent and much more polite than the Italians. I must admit they treat us well; it's a pity we don't understand them—everything would be much easier. As it is everywhere, the Serbs are the worst crew here. ”

“ The signs in the coaches are in French, German, and English. Passing through the Toulon suburbs, we saw civilians again after 8 months and the forest green we'd missed so much on Asinara. But, most important, we watched women. Each of us was just gazing at those lush daughters of the French south, and our thoughts were so strange! Small wonder—none of us had even approached a woman in 23 months. None of us had tried the pleasures of love. I must admit that French girls are really pretty!
Just to be free at home—now we feel the full weight of our fate. ”

“ Hundreds of prisoners die daily in the worst dirt. There are so many lice I cannot stand it anymore. I haven't washed my shirt for a month. In hospitals, people die helpless; here we have no doctors, no medicine, no beds, no food.
January 17
More news about peace. The shortage is getting worse. There is no bread; when there is, sometimes it is purple and sometimes it is yellow. We've had no meals for 6 days now—first there was no wood, then there was no water, and now there is no meat. ”

“ The Albanians are not bad people, but they are also hungry.
November 6
We march on and on through barren lands. No sign of a road, only broken shacks here and there. We have to wade through creeks deep up to our knees as there are no bridges. We sleep outside every night in the rain, and we're happy to make a fire in the evening. We look like Gypsies—torn, barefoot, hungry, and full of lice. Last night we walked for ten hours and reached a village called Preshkoplye where there are field bakeries. It takes a whole day before they have bread baked for us. We get bread for 4 days. ”

“ We get less and less food every day. Many dead men were thrown into the sea again today. They think they can stop that dying by giving us less food. The lunch was very poor. They keep giving us biscuits instead of bread. I am looking forward to a piece of bread so much. I am hungry as I haven't been since the Albania days. Lunch is 5 spoons of soup; supper is just coffee. We are completely hopeless. We lie in the hold, many among us sick. ”

“ We sail slowly, the last contours of Asinara and Sardinia disappearing slowly. The sea is calm, and we on the upper deck suffer from heat, but those down below are much worse off. They are crammed in much worse. ”

“ Loyal to the Czech national movement, Šrámek wanted nothing to do with the Austrian cause, but he had no choice. From the day he finished basic training in 1914 through the end of August 1916, he kept a diary, which his grandson Tomáš Svoboda has now translated and published as Diary of a Prisoner in World War I. The book offers an astonishing view of one soldier's tremendously challenging, disheartening, and life-threatening experiences during a war that he and many others never wanted and never understood.
"We are going to kill people who have done us no wrong," Šrámek starts. ”

“ The heat is intolerable. There are no trees. We swim in the sea every day. We are killing our best times here—what I could experience t home if there were not that damned war.
We are well off. We boil potatoes, make potato salad, and buy fruits and various things the Italians bring in from Sardinia. Much wine gets drunk here—one liter costs one lire—and we play cards. The Italians set up one central kitchen for the entire camp; theft is easier that way. Sergeants get extra macaroni and all the bacon. The rank and file get some ugly brew.
Nobody wants rice anymore. It used to sell for 50 cts. ”

“ After the medical test, we moved to the healthy camp, and I went to Sinai, to the tent of Feldwebel Roubík.
March 12
We have nothing to do. The days are long, and so we dwell on politics for a long time. Fresh news arrives every day but no one knows where it's from. We call it latrinenbefehle [3] yet we like listening to it. As we have been left without any news from our home for more than 6 months now and cannot talk to the Italians much, we fabricate, combine, and distribute these rumors! ”

“ There is supper, and then everybody gets ready for the midnight mass. Many of those who have not prayed in a long time are now praying to the one who gave the world peace, asking for peace soon and that they may return happily! ”

“ Our team goes around to all the houses, stack to stack, with the thresher. They have no barns here—the straw stays stacked in the fields. Passing crops up to the machine in heat and dust is real hard work.
Threshing here is a feast when the patron tries to out-feast the neighbor. Soup, 2-3 kinds of roast meat (mostly mutton) , vegetables, salads, eggs, butter, and, on top of it all, snails, oysters, and fish. When they first gave us snails, we did not know what to do with them, and one exceptionally clever Croat wanted to crush them with his fist on the table like walnuts. ”

“ Meals are all the same: beans with a bit of goat's meat for lunch and supper, thickened soup in the morning, and one loaf of bread daily.
June 3
I do not work the rock but go for bread and kitchen stuff every day. I must get up at 4:00 a.m. to bring the meat before 7. They carry it from the slaughterhouse to Glisura on carts. From there we have to drag it on our backs across the rocks for almost one hour's distance.
When there is no rain it is good. But when the rain starts, it goes on for days and days, and you can't get your feet out of the mud. ”

“ The Italians only send us five- and ten-lire bank notes, and nothing in the world can give you change for that here. Changing costs 30 Cts. Here they keep bargaining, mostly with bacon. A man can buy one kilogram of bacon, cut it to pieces, and go from camp to camp and sell it for 20 cts. a piece. The same goes for cigarettes. One can buy's 30 Francs worth of cigarettes and sell them to get the change for his bank notes. Everyone keeps their silver half-lire, and the shortage of change is worse and worse.
The weather's gotten badly windy. Our tent is torn down every now and then. ”