Page - 306 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

306 The First Winter of the War use whining about it. What are the consequences ? Should they leave ? Then the Rus- sians will advance to Budapest.’ Days later : ‘Report on the condition of the troops is rather unfavourable ; total exhaustion, apathy. Why are the Russians not debilitated ?’726 A problem that was regarded by the Austrians as well as the Germans as particularly burdensome were the desertions, which were increasing among the Austro-Hungar- ian troops and could be seen especially among the Czechs. It made no sense to deny it ; the desertions were simply too evident and reached dimensions that would have been beyond the tolerance threshold in any army. As early as September 1914, Czechs from the 26th Infantry Division had deserted to the Russians. They all knew that if they sang the well-known song ‘Hey, Slavs !’ they would be recognised by the Russians as deserters and not fired on. On 20 October 1914, six companies of the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 36 (‘Jungbunzlau’) deserted, hence Czechs again.727 This continued until finally during the last Carpathian offensive, parts of the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 28, 1,800 men from the ‘House Regiment’, deserted. Now enough was enough. It was above all German Austrians and Hungarians who nurtured reservations against those whom they regarded as unreliable, first and fore- most the Czechs, and enquiries were made least of all as to how the desertion could be explained (see Chapter 9). It was claimed that the Czechs had marched to the Russians to the sounds of the regimental band, which was a preposterous exaggeration, since this would not have been simply accepted by the troops deployed alongside the deserters.728 The army commander, General of Infantry Boroević, in any case, resorted to the most drastic measure of all, namely the dissolution of the regiment. Only subsequently was the matter investigated more thoroughly and put into perspective, and the measure was not least reversed out of consideration for the mood of the Czechs. The regiment was ultimately resurrected.729 At the beginning of March 1915, the Army High Command still hoped that it would be possible to relieve the fortress on the San River at the last minute. As Con- rad had informed the Military Chancellery of the Emperor, however : ‘Enemy resist- ance, offensive power of our own troops, weather and other contingencies will decide whether we reach our objective  – nothing can be predicted in this respect.’ Conrad con- tinued to plan ahead and gave the heir to the throne Archduke Karl, who was travelling from Cieszyn to Vienna, information for the Emperor, in which the impending fall of Przemyśl was announced. What had to be done after that was also stated : fight on ! Despite radical supply measures, it had already been precisely calculated in Przemyśl how long the fortress could still hold out : until 28 February 1915. Consumption was reduced still further. Since the soldiers were in any case weakened, it made sense in two respects to end the break-out attempts and localised attacks and to confine themselves to purely defensive tasks. The ammunition for certain artillery models had furthermore run out, whilst the other guns had already been used so much that their range was