Page - 322 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

322 Under Surveillance over 16 per cent by the Imperial-Royal Landwehr (Austrian standing army), over 8 per cent by the Royal Hungarian Landwehr (Hungarian standing army), around 5.5 per cent by the Imperial-Royal Landsturm (Austrian reserve forces) and 3 per cent by the Royal Hungarian Landsturm (Hungarian reserve forces). One last fact that emerged was that of the total losses among officers and troops, in the spring of 1915, around 95 per cent were among the infantry and riflemen, less than 2 per cent were among the cavalry, around 2 per cent were among the artillery, and the rest were among technical or transport troops and others. Clearly shocked by the figures, the War Ministry worked at correcting them, arguing that the troops and army components also reported people as missing who had been taken to hospitals and sanatoria. Soldiers who had been dispersed would soon return to their troop bodies. On the other hand, an unknown number of prisoners of war would die from their injuries or would have died for other reasons, which again led to a rise in the casualty figures. Certainly, from the start of the war until the end of June 1915, 1,099 officers and around 54,000 men died in the sanatoria. This did not improve the overall figure. In ten months of war, around 181,500 men from the Imperial and Royal Army were killed.752 The statistics continued to be gathered and by 1918 would end in a sea of numbers. At the end of the day, one thing was at any rate clear : even if the war were reduced to a statistical example, the losses amounted to hundreds of thousands, and ultimately, millions of people. However, the statistics also presented an inaccurate picture since they allowed little room for differentiation. They were a type of equation against which objections were made for other reasons. The process of settling the balance began. Regiments that had recruited from one part of the Monarchy or the other were far braver than others, had suffered far greater losses, had far fewer deserters and, even better, were more reliable. This was immediately contradicted by those who had been vilified and who were there- fore at pains to provide evidence of their faultless behaviour and their fully adequate number of sacrifices. Initially, the image left by the soldiers who had been deployed was relatively uniform. The behaviour among the soldiers of different regiments did not vary greatly. First, they were marched out, loaded on to trains and transported to the deployment zones. Then came the shock of the first battles and periods of success, but, above all, periods of fail- ure. Soon, reports were circulating that one regiment or another had failed in its duty, had retreated without it being absolutely necessary to do so, that there had been many cases of self-mutilation and, ultimately, a continuous series of surrenders and desertions. Clearly, these reports were investigated. And it was not entirely by chance that once again, the national stereotypes came to the fore, both in terms of prejudices and with regard to the hard facts.