The following text is taken from The History of the Royal Corps of Engineers, Vol. 10, 1986, Chapter III, Austria and Trieste. The chapter covers the entire period of occupation, not just May 1945.
IN 1948 there were British Troops stationed in Austria and Trieste. To understand their roles it is necessary to recall the recent history of the area.
Until the end of the First World War the Austro-Hungarian Empire included much of what is now Yugoslavia and some of Northern Italy; in 1919, the Empire was split up. Several independent states were created and Italy received some territory. The peninsula of Istria was claimed both by Italy and the new state of Yugoslavia for geographic and ethnic reasons, the main towns were inhabited by Italians and the hinterland by Slavs. The peace conference awarded Trieste and Pola to Italy but Fiume (Rjecka)1 to Yugoslavia, though Italy subsequently occupied the whole peninsula. Austria, deprived of its empire proved unstable and was occupied by Germany in 1936; the so called Anschluss.
In the Second World War, German and Italian armies over-ran Yugoslavia where they were actively opposed by resistance groups and the whole country was eventually liberated by the partisans under Marshal Tito. In May 1945 both the British Eighth Army and the Yugoslav Fourth Army arrived almost simultaneously at Trieste. Marshal Tito was clearly determined to occupy the city and its surroundings as a first step to claiming them for Yugoslavia. However the British and American Governments were unwilling to allow this, or to agree that the future of the area should be prejudiced before the Peace Conference. There followed a confrontation which resulted in the withdrawal of the Yugoslavs in June 1945 from the city of Trieste and the division of the hinterland into a British/US Zone (Zone A) and a Yugoslav Zone (Zone B)2. Austria, at much the same time was divided into British, US and Russian Zones, with Vienna jointly occupied. A French Zone was created later.
The British troops in Austria came to be known as BTA; those in Trieste as the British Element Trieste Force or BETFOR.
AUSTRIA
In the division of Austria the British occupied the southern provinces of Carinthia and Styria, round Klagenfurt and Graz; the French, the Austrian Tyrol round Innsbruck; the Americans, upper Austria round Salzburg and Linz; and the Russians occupied the remainder. Vienna, like Berlin, was under four power control, an enclave in Russian occupied territory with permitted routes of access. Unlike Berlin, however, there was in Vienna throughout the occupation a single Austrian government for the whole country; a Socialist-Conservative Austrian Coalition was able to present a united front to the four occupying powers – a very considerable patriotic achievement. The city was divided into four national and one international sector, and the chairmanship of the Allied Control Council changed each month with a full-dress guard-changing ceremony and a diplomatic cocktail party given by the outgoing chairman. Local relations with the Russians were surprisingly friendly and they used even to bring their ladies to these official functions.
The western end of Austria is mountainous and forested, except where the Glöckner, Tauern and other big ranges lie above the tree line; towards the East, the mountains give way gradually to the Central European Plain. The climate is continental, hot enough for drill uniform in summer; but snow and ice are continuous from December to March, lakes freeze and the double doors and windows fitted to most houses are necessary. It was the most easterly of the “Western” countries and attracted a continuous stream of refugees from Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, who had to be rounded up, screened, interrogated, fed and sent on their way avoiding, if possible, swelling the numbers of displaced persons in Austria, already almost more than the country could manage.
In 1948 Vienna was beginning to emerge from the aftermath of war and to reassert herself as the gay city of the Blue Danube once more in spite of shortages of food, clothing and luxuries. The British High Commissioner, Sir Harold Caccia, lived in Vienna, while the British troops were commanded by a GOC with his HQ at Klagenfurt. V Corps of Eighth Army, with 6 Armoured and 78 Infantry Divisions had occupied the British Zone, but all that remained were three brigades left in Styria, some corps troops and the Eighth Army badge which became the BTA badge. BTA was supplied by rail from Hamburg with troops and mail travelling to and from the UK over the Mediterranean Line of Communication (MEDLOC) route, Harwich-Hook-Cologne-Munich-Villach.
RE Troops in BTA
The rundown of troops had left an engineer element for works services maintenance only, not designed for field training or operations, although it was occasionally required to do both. Initially the two divisional CsRE, with responsibilities for works were left accountable to a staff officer at HQ, junior to both. This did not work, and a single CRE BTA was formed in January 1948, Lieut Colonel JAB Grylls being appointed. His units at that time consisted of 376 Works Section in Vienna, 291 Works Section in Klagenfurt responsible for Carinthia, 373 Works Section in Graz as DCRE Styria; and 980 Engineer Squadron in Villach. There was also an independent stores section in Villach with sub-stores in Vienna and Graz. A Movements Staff under an AQMG consisted of five officers and sixteen other ranks; and the Movement Control Pool (Austria) held a further twenty officers and other ranks. 154 Railway Operating Squadron was located at the key rail junction of Villach, in the northern end of the Tarvis Pass where the lines for Vienna and for Italy djvide. An Army Postal Detachment was responsible for the delivery of mails. Survey units had left Austria in 1946 leaving behind a map store under control of G Operations staff in HQ BTA.
The Austrian State Treaty was continually imminent. Works funds were parsimoniously doled out quarterly; no long term works planning was possible, and the state of maintenance of the Army’s accommodation went from bad to worse. The RAF for the most part used the airfields at Schwechat, in the Russian Zone outside Vienna, Zeltweg and Thalterhof (Graz). Maintenance of buildings was carried out for them as an agency service by CRE BTA, and in general sufficient funds for this purpose were forthcoming. The maintenance of Allied Military Government buildings in Vienna was carried out by CRE BTA as an agency service on the Foreign Office vote. The bulk of the agency service work fell on 376 Works Section in Vienna.
There was a very comfortable leave hotel for British officers and their families at Maria Worth on the Worthesee in Austria, available to BETFOR as well as to BTA; it was alongside a golf course and not far from the Kanzel Mountain above Sattendorf. The ascent was in three stages: firstly in a cable-drawn sleigh, then on skis, cable assisted, and finally in buckets on a ski lift, a terrifying contraption which whisked one straight up the steep mountainside three thousand feet in eight minutes. The former SS barracks at Lendorf, just outside Klagenfurt had been converted by the Sappers into a first class base hospital serving both BTA and BETFOR, and did a roaring trade in compound fractures during the skiing seasons.
The closing for financial reasons of the Mountain Warfare School at Mallnitz in 1950 provided an unusual Sapper task, since it became necessary to find a “no cost” alternative school. This was provided by the German Army training centre at Schmelz in the mountains above Judenberg, served by the longest personnel-carrying cable railway in Europe, over five miles long which became a Sapper responsibility; the works services gave it a thorough overhaul, replaced the moving steel cable that hauled the skips, replaced some of the old wooden pylons with steel ones, and arranged double clutches on all personnel skips. The railway consisted of a double line of fixed load-carrying steel wire rope, strung from T-shaped pylons of timber or steel, on which travelled skips slung from double pulleys running on the fixed cable and hauled by the moving power-driven cable to which they were clutched. Passengers travelled in cable cars like the open tray of a matchbox, up hill and down dale, jolting over the cable supports at the pylons and still more over the main cable joints, hoping that the joints were sound, that the pulley would not jump off and that the main steel wire rope would hold together at least for this one ride, particularly when swinging in the biting wind, looking vertically down through half a mile of clear air on to rocks and sharp pines below. If one were privileged to travel with Wilhelm Kuntner (the Garrison Engineer whose toy it was), one was revived with a good stiff shot of “Cable Railway Water” at the top: the ubiquitous slivovitz (Plum Brandy). Over the next five years this Sapper railway carried thousands of troops of both BTA and BETFOR to Schmelz for winter warfare training and field firing with many amusing (and some irritating) incidents but no casualties. Judenberg at the summit was a communist stronghold, and local co-operation was only ensured by permitting the railway to carry beer for the hamlets surrounding the summit station.
All this time the Austrian State Treaty remained on the edge of agreement but without being signed. There was growing impatience and hardship for the Austrian house owners whose property was requisitioned, and for the British families who had to live in houses they knew they could only retain from month to month. It was therefore proposed to use the credits from the sales of military equipment to the Austrian Government at the end of the war, which were blocked until the economic situation should improve, to provide married quarters, thus helping both sides. The quarters were designed to War Office specification, very tight in those years of economy, but also to Austrian building laws and with the help of an Austrian architect; they had double doors, double windows, and parquet flooring, which in Austria, a land of timber, was cheaper than imported linoleum.
In 1950, the allotment of funds for works was changed from a quarterly to a half-yearly basis. It was a step in the right direction but it was scarcely designed to encourage long-term planning, however, advantage was taken to improve the somewhat primitive sanitary facilities in all British troops’ barracks. The Austrian Public Works Department, Bundesgebäudeverwaltung for short, was induced to take a more active share in the maintenance of what had been Austrian Army barracks; but they would not touch German Army property for fear they might lose it under the terms of an eventual peace settlement with Germany. The funds voted by the Austrian Parliament for this purpose were no more than a token, but helped to eke out the inadequate allotments from the War Office. Extensive repairs were carried out by the Sappers to the runway at Schwechat in order to permit its use by civil airlines of the world. The Russians did not entirely approve, and since the airport was in their zone, they were in a position to make trouble, which they frequently did; and it became necessary for the airport bus to be provided with an armed military escort.
Also in 1950, 980 Engineer Squadron in Villach was redesignated 110 Army Troops Squadron. One of their last tasks as an engineer squadron was to build an observatory on the top of the Gerlitzen Mountain near Villach. It was designed by two RE officers and provided excellent training for all ranks; unfortunately one Sapper driving a D8 bulldozer up the mountain was caught in a blizzard and drove off the path to his death. The completed observatory was handed over to the Austrians in the presence of the British High Commissioner and C-in-C, and of Dr Atkinson from Greenwich Observatory.
Two transportation events were of much interest: first, the military rail link from Austria to Trieste was replaced by a road coach and trailer; the second concerned the rolling stock which made up the MEDLOC train to the Hook of Holland and back (about 1,500 miles). Forty coaches were adapted as sleepers for the troops, who were fed enroute in dining cars attached to the train – and fed very well. For the average old soldier, accustomed to the rigours of military travel by rail, the MEDLOC route became equivalent to crossing the Atlantic in RMS Queen Mary, he arrived Austria or Trieste prepared to go on enjoying himself – a good frame of mind in which to arrive. Conditions had not always been so Rolls-Royce; early in 1948, according to Lieut Colonel H E M Cotton, “there were no dining cars at that time but there were two stops between the Hook of Holland and Villach which were known as bath and meal halts. One of these was in the middle of the night. We leapt out to warm showers installed at the station, had a meal, and entrained again with a haversack ration to last till the next “B and M halt”. Special MEDLOCs were run for the boarding school children coming out to join their parents in Austria, Trieste and Belgrade. The coaches which bore the BTA badge, the old Eighth Army Shield, carried well over a million passengers in their time without a single casualty. Some of the MEDLOC sleepers originally reached the Continent as hospital coaches for the British Liberation Army in Normandy, most of them were subsequently running on British railways in 1959 as cafeteria cars.
The MEDLOC route proper terminated at Villach, Vienna was served by a military night sleeper. Sleep was broken at the Russian checkpoint on the Sammering Pass where the train was boarded by Russian frontier guards armed with tommy guns. This discomfort ceased later on when the passengers obtained “grey cards” from Movement Control and these were shown to the Russians by the Austrian guards without disturbing the passengers. The GOC BTA had a special train which used to belong to King Peter of Yugoslavia. It was well appointed and he made much use of it to get round his extensive command. Major General Sir T John W Winterton (GOC BTA) handed over to Major General M M Alston-Roberts-West in 1951, and became the C-in-C in Trieste.
In April 1951, the field and works troops of 342 Army Troops Squadron from Trieste came to BTA for watermanship training with the better BTA equipment. A bridging camp was established on the shores of the Ossiachersee, a large lake near Villach, but since there was insufficient equipment to bridge right across the lake, training was limited to rowing, rafting and pier construction. 110 Army Troops Squadron at Villach was reduced and redesignated, yet again, Workshop and Park Troop (Austria). It became outstanding at all sports and games in spite of its small size and its ski team was particularly noteworthy. 11 Field Squadron arrived by sea from Hong Kong via UK in June 1951, in response to repeated appeals for a Sapper field unit in the face of the worsening international situation. Having been detached from a regiment, it lacked a park troop and 110 Army Troops Squadron provided the missing element with evident consideration for athletic ability as well as for trade qualifications. The squadron was located at Zeltweg and at once began operational training. The remnant of Workshop and Park Troop (Austria) was yet again redesignated as Engineer Workshop and Stores (Austria).
Lieut Colonel H L Chesshyre relieved Lieut Colonel J A B Grylls as CRE Austria in 1951 and almost simultaneously for the first time, works funds were allotted annually, a practice that was to continue until the end of the occupation. This enabled a longer view to be taken of the works programme, and although funds remained inadequate to the end, better use could be made of them as planning works was not done under pressure. In addition to the normal worksvote in sterling, there were agency services for the RAF and for the Foreign Office to be accounted for annually by 31 March. There was also a “schilling budget” covering the new housing; and a British Government Vote for maintenance of Austrian-owned barracks to be accounted for annually by 31 December. A fluctuating exchange rate would have been the last straw; but the Army was spared this and all transactions involving exchange were carried out at seventy-two schillings to the pound sterling.
On the eve of Remembrance Sunday 1951, an unprecedented storm hit Southern Europe, snow blocked the roads, telegraph wires were broken and the railways of Austria were brought to a standstill. SOS messages went out from many districts, often by means of the railway telegraph system, the other lines being down, asking HQ BTA for help. Remembrance Sunday services and ceremonies were cancelled and for three days troops of all arms were out with shovels and snow ploughs working to reopen communications; much of this work was under R E direction.
376 Works Section in Vienna was disbanded in August 1952. The OC went home, and his 21C became Independent E Vienna, responsible direct to CRE BTA for all works and other engineer matters in the British Sector of Vienna. All works in the remaining British Zone of Austria fell to the lot of DCRE 291 Works Section operating from Klagenfurt. Meanwhile 11 Independent Field Squadron had built the Radkersberg International Bridge connecting Austria with Yugoslavia over the River Mur, formally opened by the Austrian Federal Chancellor, Dr Figl, on 6 September 1952, in the presence of the CIGS, Field Marshal Sir William Slim and Lieut Colonel J M Guyon, who had taken over as CRE, with a guard of honour provided appropriately, by the bridge builders.
In November 1952, 11 Squadron took part in Allied maneuvers with the French and United States forces in the Salzburg area. In seven days there was snow, frost, hail, sleet and much rain. It would be hard to conceive more miserable weather, but the Squadron acquitted itself well under these difficulties and many useful lessons were learned the hard way. On return to Zeltweg the unit had hardly time to turn round before finding itself involved in the BTA winter manoeuvres, where the same lessons were put into effect and some new ones learned. The unit’s performance on this occasion drew rare praise from the GOC at the final conference. In July 1953, 11 Squadron went to bridging camp near Trieste on the River Timavo, a very welcome change, since it had borne the burden of all station administrative and security duties as the only combatant unit in Zeltweg for over a year. On return from bridging camp in September it was told that it was to leave for UK in December. It travelled by a special MEDLOC train on 12 December with a Sapper headboard for the engine. The CRE bet the OC that the squadron would not reach Chatham with the same headboard; he received a signal on 16 December to say that it had.
The Rundown
About this time the Russians suddenly and unpredictably announced that they were reducing their garrison in Austria, and invited the other occupying powers to do likewise. It was a foregone conclusion that they would agree; nevertheless the instructions to do so arrived with a high security grading. The CRE found himself holding a conference with all his GEs to tell them to stop certain works immediately without being allowed to tell them why. The garrison was to be reduced to one battalion at Zeltweg with one company in Vienna and a minimum of supporting arms and services under a small HQ was to remain in Vienna. On 10 December 1953 Engineer Workshops and Stores (Austria) was disbanded, having outloaded something like 20,000 tons of stores to various destinations nominated by the War Ofice, and on 29 December the RE Officers’ Mess in Villach closed,
In January 1954 the opening ceremony took place of the second block of flats to be completed as married quarters in Klagenfurt bringing the total for Styria and Carinthia to 147, of which sixteen in Spittai had already been handed back to the Austrians, and twelve in Villach would shortly follow. In April the garrison was cut down to its final size of one battalion with minimum support. The Sapper component consisted of DCRE (Austria) with three GEs for Carinthia, Styria, and Vienna together with a total of about forty other ranks who had to meet the operational commitment as best they could. The DATn’s duties were assumed by a staff captain in 1954 with a transportation maintenance troop at Villach to maintain the MEDLOC rolling stock; by 1955 the Movements Staff had shrunk to fifteen all ranks and the Movement Control Pool (Austria) to forty all ranks.
In May 1955, the Austrian State Treaty, which everyone had been awaiting for ten long years, was suddenly signed but was not in fact ratified until 31 July – giving until the end of October for the occupation troops to leave. Graz and Zeltweg were cleared first; the Radkersberg Bridge was sold to the Austrians in situ at full “vocab rates”. The last troops left Vienna in September, and the last MEDLOC train with the British remnant left for the Hook on 5 October 1955. The Russians evacuated their Zone faster than the Western Allies and it was possible at the end of the occupation to motor freely in what had been the Russian Zone; it was clear they had wasted no money on the maintenance of buildings in the territory occupied by them. Austria regained her independence and freedom from foreign occupation.
Footnotes to Chapter III
1) The figure of Winged Victory, a fine trophy in the RE Headquarters Mess owes its origin to the dispute over Fiume. It was designed in Italy as a presentation by the Italian government to American President Wilson, but the Italians were so displeased by his attitude over Fiume that they decided not to present it. In 1985 Lieut General Sir Clarence Bird, then aged 100, was asked about his own memory of this affair. He recalled that Major P C S Hobart heard of its availability through the British Military Attaché and bought it as a War Memorial trophy for the RE Mess in Roorkee (India). In 1947, at the time of Indian independence the Indian Sappers very generously presented this piece of silver to the Headquarters Mess at Chatham.
2) The original map showing the “Morgan Line” dividing the allied forces occupation zones is in the RE Museum at Chatham. Lieut Colonel C E Warth RE was largely responsible for its demarcation.