company. My platoon consisted of fifty-five men, two buglers, and
an ambulance patrol of four.

In Leoben my wife and I remained a week, which was spent in
organizing, equipping, requisitioning, recruiting, and preliminary
drilling. These were happy days, as we officers met for the first
time, friendships and bonds being sealed which subsequently were
tested in common danger and amidst privation and stress. Many of
the officers had brought their wives and soon delightful intercourse,
utterly free from formality, developed, without any regard or
reference to rank, wealth, or station in private life. Among the
reserve officers of my battalion were a famous sculptor, a
well-known philologist, two university professors (one of mathematics,
the other of natural science), a prince, and a civil engineer at the
head of one of the largest Austrian steel corporations. The surgeon
of our battalion was the head of a great medical institution and a
man of international fame. Among my men in the platoon were a
painter, two college professors, a singer of repute, a banker, and a
post official of high rank. But nobody cared and in fact I myself did
not know until much later what distinguished men were in my
platoon. A great cloak of brotherhood seemed to have enveloped
everybody and everything, even differences in military rank not
being so obvious at this time, for the officers made friends of their
men, and in turn were worshipped by them.

My wife volunteered her services as Red Cross nurse, insisting
upon being sent to the front, in order to be as near me as could be,
but it developed later that no nurse was allowed to go farther than
the large troop hospitals far in the rear of the actual operations.
Upon my urgent appeal she desisted and remained in Vienna after I