Page - 143 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The First Shot 143 Colonel Emil Baumgartner, scheduled a short meeting, at which the objectives for 29 July were fixed. Three monitors were to sail just after midnight and secure the bridges over the Sava River from Zemun to Belgrade. Further details would then emerge in due course. The meeting ended an hour before midnight. Monitors and patrol boats were made ready for battle. The tugboats on the Danube delayed, however, the depar- ture of the monitors. And the Serbs evidently had no intention of leaving the Sava bridges to Belgrade intact for the Austro-Hungarian armed forces. They had prepared the destruction of the bridges and, while the monitors of the 1st Group were still ma- noeuvring, Serbian soldiers on the Belgrade side of the Sava River blew up a pile on each of the bridges. Then, twenty minutes after 2 a.m. on 29 July, the monitors Temes, Bodrog and Számos sailing on the Danube down toward the valley had come close enough to Belgrade that from a distance of around 3.5 kilometres and opposite the so-called Great War Island, situated on the Danube at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava, they could fire the first four 12-cm shells of the war across to the Serbian side.338 The commander of the lead ship of the Danube Flotilla, Commander Friedrich Grund, gave the order to fire from the two-turret monitor Temes. The shells were fired in the black of night more or less without aim against the darkened Serbian capital, in a south-easterly direction, as though the intention was for only a few artillery shells to hit their target. Afterwards, the monitors ceased firing, as they could not recognise the impact of the fire in the darkness. At 4 o’clock, the Serbs then shot with rifles from the walls of Belgrade Fortress and from Great War Island at the ships of the Imperial and Royal river flotilla. The monitors responded with shrapnel. They waited to be bom- barded with artillery and, in order to provoke Serbian fire and thus be able to detect the Serbian positions, they reduced the distance to Belgrade Fortress and began to fire once more with 12-cm fused shells. The monitors had been informed of their objective : the radio station in Kalemegdan Park and Topčidersko brdo (meaning ‘cannoneer’s valley’) in the south of the city, where the construction of fortifications had been observed. Once again, however, the effect could not be seen, although it was already light, so after five minutes firing was ceased.339 But the Danube Flotilla had unmistakeably issued its very own declaration of war. The next day monitors and patrol boats carried out ‘a keen reconnaissance along the enemy border as far as Mitrovica’. The campaign against Serbia had begun. The beginning of hostilities possessed considerable symbolism : a war had begun that from the first moment on evaded direct observation and gave no indication of everything that was destroyed. Shooting was done blindfolded. At Great War Island the Great War was unleashed. In contrast with the minor damage caused by the few fused shells and the shrapnel, however, the subsequent millions of projectiles would destroy the old Europe.