Page - 166 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

166 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ The transportation of people, weapons and materials was initially interesting for quite another reason, however, since during this process, the de facto decision regarding the military start of the war was made. The fact that the railway office of the General Staff was faced with a not insignificant task is made evident by the sober figures. For the de- ployment of the Austro-Hungarian Army, which was divided into three echelons  – re- gardless of the focus  – around one-and-a-half million men, one million horses, 200,000 tonnes of supplies and, furthermore, all the necessary weaponry had to be transported. What Conrad had not sufficiently taken into account in his ‘relocation to the rear’ of the deployment zones in Galicia, which had been agreed with the railway office, was the fact that suddenly, new detraining stations had to be found, the smaller of which presented a trivial problem : their platforms were too short for the military trains with their standard length of fifty carriages, making it necessary to shunt back and forth. The speed of travel would also prove to be a problem. Due to the lack of uniformity of the existing rolling stock, and the fact that most of the carriages were not equipped with continuous brakes, it could be assumed that the trains could only travel at around 25 km per hour.385 Even in cases where they would certainly have been capable of trav- elling faster, they were unable to do so, since this would have brought the timetables into disarray. However, the problem of the condition of the railways and the logistics was in many ways superimposed by the problems presented by time deadlines. It was not enough to simply send the soldiers to the station and have them driven away. Locomotives and carriages had to be provided, only very few of which were in storage in sheds. They all had to be removed from normal passenger and goods transport. Here, every date had to be precisely calculated, since from that day onwards, civilian passenger and goods transport would have to be reduced or even discontinued. It was therefore not only the timetable that determined the deployment, but also the special features of ‘Kakania’ (an ironic name for the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy) described above. One could be forgiven for assuming that with the initiation of mobilisation, ef- forts would have been made to increase the number of personnel to the level required, provide additional equipment and then to muster and depart. Yet nothing of the kind happened ! The order for mobilisation for the war against Serbia was issued on 25 July, although mobilisation was not officially due to begin until 28 July. The reason for this was that a weekend fell in between. Also, prior to the conscription of the reservists, in- tensified monitoring of the borders and above all transport had to be introduced within what was known as an ‘alarm period’. According to the regulations, such an alarm must be activated at least 24 hours before the mobilisation itself.386 Instead of opting only for the briefest period of time, however, this period was in fact extended. This was exacer- bated by a further factor : the first day of mobilisation was regarded as a free day, during which all soldiers to be mobilised had the opportunity of putting their private affairs in