Josef Šrámek

“ Only the lucky ones could join the heroic defenders of the still endangered small homeland of Serbia. And then, at our heels, the terrible typhus epidemic crawled to Serbia. So many Czech heads and hands helped in insufficient hospitals in Serbia to beat this vigorous enemy. And the reason, why hundreds and thousands of our boys died along with those who faced the insidious disease with superhuman zeal but insufficient means, was that they fulfilled their helping duty with true understanding, self-sacrifice and love in the harsh Balkan conditions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 meals of the southern French villagers—beans, pork, poultry, eggs, butter, vegetables, and the good wine, gave us strength. I don't know how the comrades in the factory camps were doing, but we wanted to finish the war working in the country. We got used to farm work, and the inhabitants got used to us; some even liked us. Every time they got on better with us than with the Germans. ”

“ They walk among the sick, selling water for biscuits and robbing them. We set up night watches. We got thirty cans of food for the sick; the wind tore down our tent, and someone stole the cans. I have good times. There is enough coffee and bread. But disease is rising still, and more and more men die day by day.
January 16
We cooked hot meals for the first time today—rice and meat and rice soup in the evening. The meat is frozen, from Argentina. Salomon organizes coffee parties—there are more and more frequenters day by day. Each platoon prepares coffee for its members. ”

“ Someone else heard from the freiwillige [4] that the Italians will bring us to Italy to work in factories as civilians.
A piece of news arrives every day—it's always guaranteed!
March 15
We all write home every day but wait for replies in vain. Only a few lucky ones get money by postal order. We are well provided with underwear, uniforms, and shoes. Each of us has 2 good blankets, a cape, and 2 sets of underwear. There might be a little more food, though, especially bread, and what the boys miss most is money for tobacco and cigarettes. ”

“ Thousands of prisoners are camped here. Every one of us got a can of meat and biscuits. I made soup from the sea water. I met Šalomoun and Hruška. We sleep in one tent. Also Roubík, Černý, and others are here. January 6
It seems like we had a feast today—I am sated once again. The day is beautiful and warm. The worst thing is there is no water. We walk very far to get it from somewhere in the rocks; we have to dig a hole and wait till the water appears and then take it out with a spoon. It's bad and muddy, but what can you do when you're thirsty? We get one meat can and 3 biscuits daily. ”

“ The camp was surrounded by guards with bayonets. We felt like we were in an animal farm. They don't take a single step without bayonets here. They go for water, to the canteen, for meals or bread—always lined up perfectly and with bayonets. The Germans look real good in their brown uniforms and wide straw hats. ”

“ Meals are getting better day by day. Coffee, bread, and butter in the morning, bread soup, beans, bread and butter, and a glass of wine at noon. Bread soup, potato goulash, milk pap, salad, and bread in the evening. We must hand in all money; we can't keep even a penny, maybe so we can't buy a car and flee. ”

“ You have no certitude—at night someone steals your brotsack [24] from under your head, your blanket, your coat—anything you may have. Those who cannot rise up have their coats and boots stolen from them for resale. 400 people from the Radnicka platoon today carried kazans and tools back to Fiera, where Zizkovic sold them.
December 19
It rains all the time. No ferrying—the river is flooding. Italians brought rations: One biscuit is food for 3 days. The second day we each got 2 spoons of rice. We boil it—water is unavailable, dirty. No firewood. God free us! ”

“ My whole lunch was a bit of cheese and bread. We work every day, doing various things. We go to the station, to building sites, to clean, dig, press hay, or build roads. Our jailkeepers drive us out to the courtyard at half past five in the morning. There we stand in the rain and cold for an hour. Most of us are barefoot. Dogič walks by with his stick. Our feldwebels and gendarmes divide us into teams. At last all are divided. But not much work gets done. Those who work on the roads end up searching for lice ”

“ More and more people die every day. Bad food, foul water, and dirt are to blame. They forbid us to drink the water but there is nothing else. The soup is all pepper. The lice proliferate. We cannot wash clothes as there is nowhere to do so, to say nothing about drying. So, instead of picking the lice out, I brush them away. ”

“ It's hot here as it was on Asinara—it's a pity we cannot hide under the trees that are around the camp.
We miss our homes so much. Our memories have always given us comfort, but where do I get a chance? We play cards every day. ”

“ You can see a poor creature in spasms behind every shrub. They are all very thirsty, so they crawl to the sea to drink, and soon they're dead. Drinking water is extremely rare. A few feeble springs in the rocks are besieged by the thirsty all day.
The sick get here, drink the water that kills, then get in the shrubs and die unrecognized and unidentified. Our island is not large; it is near Sardinia, and it's all rocks. Some say Turkish prisoners were here years ago, building wide stonewalls. Our camp is in the middle of the island. ”

“ These are the consequences of Albania—all that strain, suffering, etc. People get as far as here and then die. We sleep under tents without blankets, and it's cold at night. We make campfires; there is an abundance of wood. About 140 people died in our camp last night. It is terrible to look at those thin figures.
January 9
The meals are all the same every day. It is very windy today; the wind tears down our tents. I got a cape today. The disease is identified - it's Asian cholera brought from Albania. People who lie down healthy are stiff in the morning. ”

“ On one end of the island, there is a camp called Real. Ours is called Streti, and then there is Tamborina.
January 11
There are more and more sick and dead every day. Doctors examine us every morning. Everyone must put their pants down and show their shirts. People deny they're sick because otherwise they would be separated immediately. The doctors are our countrymen, but they have no medicine. They promise us all the time that they will cook meals for us, but they keep feeding us from cans. To our surprise we got a loaf of bread each instead of biscuits today. ”

“ More that 200 dead were collected today. Misery reaches its peak. Albanians came and brought broja. If you have good boots they give you about 1 kilogram, but you have to be careful. Our commander left today. Thank God we got rid of that monster!
The number of people is still rising because the Italians ferry only 600 people daily. Serbian soldiers steal publicly. They beat whoever has good boots in order to steal them; they steal your coat, blanket, and anything of value. They steal the rations sent by the Italians and then sell us a biscuit for 3 cereks. ”