The Good Soldier Schweik

Veteran’s Day came by with the Concert For Valor.  I watched it on HBO instead of fighting the crowds.  I’m not a big Springsteen fan, nor a big fan of Dave Grohl (though I think he’s pretty cool) or the Zac Brown band.  And I’m definitely not a fan of Rihanna or Eminem.  What I liked was John Oliver’s humorous account of inter-service trash talk – why does the Air Force have nicer things?  Because they’re smarter – and Jack Black’s reference to Donington 1985: I was there!  As it is, my own special tribute to the holiday will come from left field, and here it is!

Based on the 1923 book by Jaroslav Hasek, this pair of movies came out in the late 1950s, in color.  They feature the Beetle Bailey type misadventures of a simple-minded, good-natured common soldier, Joseph Szwejk, of the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I.  

Joseph Schweik is a Czech living in Prague in 1914.  WWI breaks out and he volunteers for the Austro-Hungarian army despite being previously discharged in 1910 as “feeble-minded” and having a bad knee – the crowd rolls his wheelchair to the recruiting office while chanting “on to Belgrade!”.  He’s extremely good-natured and honest, so much so that officers tend to write him off as stupid, though he clearly isn’t.  In fact, those who encounter him for any appreciable length of time begin to wonder if he’s just sandbagging - feigning idiocy - to evade the greater responsibility or expectations which might be foisted upon him should he show any discernable competence or intelligence. 

           

            By the end of the first movie, he’s been a “batman” (valet/personal assistant) first to a drunken, corrupt chaplain (Army priest), and then to an officer who is somewhat of an easy-living ladies’ man, Lt. Lukas.  Too bad for both of them, Lukas pissed off his superior officer and the two will soon be seeing action against Ivan.     

           Part II picks up with Schweik stranded in some town in Bohemia, it seems, en route to the front.  A prank with a train worker gets him thrown off the train with his papers still on the train with Lt. Lukas.  He drinks his train ticket money in beer – bonding with language difficulties with a Hungarian soldier who doesn’t speak Czech, and he doesn’t speak Hungarian - so he has to walk (!) to the front.  Along the way he meets sympathetic Czech civilians who attempt to assist him in deserting, AND buffoonish local police looking for Russian spies who speak fluent Czech, so naturally he becomes a suspect.  Although he does meet up with Lt. Lukas and reaches the front, there is no combat.  For some reason he puts on the uniform of a Russian soldier who took a bath in the lake, is taken prisoner by his own side, and is only saved from summary execution by finally being identified as belonging to his unit, the 91^st Infantry Regiment (Hasek’s unit). 

            While it’s not particularly exciting or thrilling, the main attraction – to me at least – is coverage of the Austrian Army in WWI (which no one seems to care about) especially from the point of view of a Czech.  Austrians come off as arrogant assholes, Hungarians as neutrals, and Czechs as unwilling subjects in an empire they have no interest in supporting.  One character mentions an entire division – apparently of Czechs – which deserted en masse to the Russians, from the lowliest private to the commanding officer; thus the Czech Legion gets an oblique reference.   Schweik’s own personality becomes a clever microcosm of the army he serves in.