Page - 281 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Belgrade and the Failure in the Balkans 281 weaponry alone had become the key element of the war, but aspects that no-one had considered before. There was the infernal noise generated by the guns and exploding shells. Thousands of people were shouting, the wounded were screaming, and injured and dying horses were bellowing. Soldiers who were brought to the front marched into this cacophony, aware that they could be hit at any moment and join the choir of suffer- ers.679 At some point, the noise of war died down, and there was quiet, which played no less a part in testing the psychological resilience of every individual to its limits. Every- one was robbed of his individuality, and was to be merely part of what was described as a ‘well-oiled war machine’. Now, this ‘machine’ had shuddered to a halt. From the start of the war until the end of 1914, 189,000 officers and soldiers had fallen, over 490,000 had been wounded and almost 278,000 had been taken prisoner or were missing. This added up to around a million people in total. If only the irreplaceable losses of the dead, prisoners of war and the missing are taken, and the number of those wounded added who remained invalids, then the vast scale of the bloodletting is clearly evident. The number of officers among the overall number of those killed, wounded and sick came to 26,500.680 A further severe blow was the fact that they were above all pro- fessional officers. Their loss became magnified to a certain extent, since this, more than any other factor, affected the capacity of the troops to be led. What was not reflected in the bare figures could be most clearly derived from the reactions of the Imperial and Royal War Ministry : War Minister Krobatin made direct threats that officers who shirked frontline duties on the home front and who did not immediately report again to their troop bodies after convalescing would be rigorously called to account. No delay in returning to the army in the field by recovered officers and aspiring officers would be ‘tolerated under any circumstance, and the harshest measures shall be used against marauding and front-shy officers and aspiring officers’.681 Since even this was clearly insufficient, the War Ministry threatened in December 1914 ‘that such elements who […] must be forced to fulfil their duty, or who shirk their duty entirely, are unworthy of bearing the status of officer ; they should therefore be stripped of their post with- out exception’. Similarly, military doctors who were not rigorous enough in producing doctor’s certificates and evaluations were threatened that they were in breach of the obligations associated with their profession and rank, and that they were unworthy of their officer’s status. ‘According to the stipulations of military criminal law, they too are also subject to the most stringent measures.’ Krobatin also ensured in his own area of responsibility that measures would be taken that reflected the gravity of the situation, and made 140 officers in the ministry ‘eligible to enlist’. By the end of December, a third of the wounded or sick officers then returned to the army in the field. The training periods for reserve officers in particular were shortened, so that they were already given a command after approximately half a year’s training. The fact that professional officers who were unsuitable for troop service, together with (reserve) officers who had received