Page - 58 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

58 Two Million Men for the War The army assumed, indeed had to assume, that the demands were the same everywhere, in Galicia, Bohemia or Bosnia. For the raw recruits, 1 October in the year of their medical examination was the date of enlistment. This was followed by nine months of hard training, not called ‘breaking in’ (Abrichtung) for nothing. These nine months were followed by a month of training as part of a battalion and three weeks in the regimental formation, during which the soldiers were prepared for autumn manoeuvres. Finally, they served actively for two more years (or one year following the curtailment of the period of service in 1912) before being transferred to the reserves. Service continued literally around the clock and was physically and, for many, men- tally demanding in every sense. Almost everything was regimented. The height of the recruits was fixed at a minimum of 155 cm. They had to carry 30 kg and be able to march 40 km per day. Hygiene was a big priority. The recruits’ hair had to be seven centimetres long at the front and three centimetres long at the back. They slept as a rule in halls holding a company of 250 men, on straw mattresses filled with 22.4 kg of straw. Every four months the sacks were refilled. Non-commissioned officers slept in the same room as the enlisted men and were generally separated from them only by curtains. There were often punishments, including corporal punishment such as strokes with a stick or hour-long tethering. Theoretically, the death penalty could be imposed for crimes, though no death sentence was carried out after 1905. Nevertheless, in 1911 the death penalty was handed down nineteen times. However, the military courts repeat- edly came down on the side of the soldiers. A lieutenant was sentenced in 1913 by the garrison court in Kraków (Krakau) to six weeks of provost arrest because he had used terms such as moron, bozo, fool, pig, onanist, cretin and dummy to refer to recruits. He had not, however, become physically violent. One officer received four months’ arrest for pulling a recruit by his ear, choking him and hitting him on the head with his cap. The suicide rate among the soldiers was high. In 1903, there were more than ten suicides for every 10,000 soldiers. In the German army the rate was 2.6 suicides, in the British army by contrast 2.3 suicides. Most of them killed themselves with their firearms. For every 18 soldiers there was one officer. Even the officers slept in anything but a bed of roses and had to deploy their social prestige as compensation for low wages, torturously slow rates of promotion, forfeiture of a normal family life and often unap- pealing garrisons. A lieutenant in 1910 earned around 3,000 kronen a year. From his monthly salary, however, he only received 56 kronen. The rest was withheld in order to cover rations in the officers’ mess, the costs of the officers’ orderlies, contributions to the regimental music, the loan fund and other unavoidable expenditure. As a result, com- plaints were commonplace, as was the running up of debts. 30 per cent of Austria-Hun- gary’s career officers were in debt, 5 per cent of them deeply so. The wage increases were also inconsiderable. A major earned twice as much as a lieutenant. Only from the rank