Page - 228 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

228 Adjusting to a Longer War played the Austrian Emperor’s Hymn ; then there was drumming and the blowing of trumpets. Finally, the people could be brought back to their senses. But the day was not yet over. The division still had to swing back to the east. Wodniansky resolved to lead the troops ‘up to the causeway that led across the wide and deep Huczwa swamp’. By the time the entire division had carried out the manoeuvre the next day was dawn- ing. Suddenly, Russian artillery fire began and caused terrible carnage on the causeway. ‘Only a few of those on the causeway reached the southern bank of the Huczwa de- pression unhurt’, wrote Bardolff. ‘From there I saw how the harnesses with pieces of artillery plunged into the swamp, how knots of people in the hope of being able to wade through it, completely sank right in front of me. […] Then an orderly of the divisional command, who had sneaked up across the causeway, arrived with the message that the divisional commander had shot himself before his very eyes. He assumed that the Chief of Staff, Major Count Christallnig, who had absented himself from the staff, had made the same decision.’545 The orderly was right. Away from the 4th Army, the death of General Wodniansky was branded as a glaring example of a grave error of leadership and the heir to the throne Archduke Karl Franz Josef gave considerable space to the death of the divisional commander in a very private annual balance. The Archduke claimed to have heard from Colonel Bardolff that Wod- niansky had been ‘a completely incapable, lethargic person’, ‘who only did what his chief of staff whispered to him to do’. Furthermore, the second infantry brigadier, Colonel Josef Mark, had also been ‘a big wimp’. Bardolff later wrote nothing of the sort in his autobiography. The Archduke, in his version, relocated the event to a hill near the edge of a forest and had the 15th Infantry Division crossing a bridge when the Russians began to shoot.546 The death of Wodniansky was not the first suicide of an Imperial and Royal general. With some delay, rumours were circulating to the effect that the Commander of the 5th Honvéd Cavalry Division, Major General Ernst von Froreich, had also killed himself a few days after the campaign commenced. Following a cavalry attack against a Russian position, which ended in the fire of the Russian machine guns, the Major General shot herself, evidently because he blamed himself for the debacle.547 Only a few more days passed before the Military Chancellery of the Emperor was informed of another inci- dent that appeared to require explanation. The telephone dispatch of the local command in Vienna from 13 September 1914 did not even hint at anything unusual : ‘Major General Franz Paukert, Commander of the 16th Infantry Troop Division, has died. The military funeral will take place on Monday, 14 September.’548 Had Paukert succumbed to a sudden and fatal illness ? By no means. The Commander of the 3rd Army, General Brudermann, had requested on 4 September that he immediately apply for his removal as commander. Paukert did as he was ordered. The chief physician of the division issued him with a medical certifi-