Page - 336 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

336 Under Surveillance In České Budějovice, conflicts had arisen. Severe nationalistic tensions led to the re- location of parts of the Prague ‘House Regiment’, Infantry Regiment No. 28, to Tyrol. During the partial mobilisation that took place in the course of the first Balkan War, reservists in Imperial and Royal Dragoon Regiment No. 8 (‘Pardubice’) and Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 18 (‘Königgrätz’) had refused to board the trains that were to take them to Galicia. In 1914, however, the mobilisation and departure of the predominantly Czech speaking regiments ran almost without incident. Indeed, the first reports of the fighting by regiments from Bohemia appeared to lay all the concerns to rest. Infantry Regiment No. 102 (‘Beneschau’), in which 91 per cent of the troops came from Bohemia, was one of the first troop bodies to be mentioned with praise in the army report following the battle on the Jadar River. Infantry Regiment No. 28 had also distinguished itself as part of the 3rd Infantry Division in the battle at Komarów.787 The XVII Corps finally reported that during the second advance by the Russians across the San River between 18 and 23 October, the Imperial and Royal 19th Infantry Division, which consisted for the most part of Czech soldiers, had been the best in measuring up to expectations of all three corps divisions. Like all troop bodies, those from Bohemia and Moravia also suffered high losses during the initial battles of the war. However, there were also reports of a different nature. For example, the 21st Landwehr Infantry Division, which consisted mainly of Czechs, with Landwehr In- fantry Regiments No. 7, 8 and 9 (‘Eger’, ‘Pilsen’ and ‘Prague’), gained itself a reputation when there were already cases of panic flight, surrender and self-mutilation among its soldiers in the first days of the war in Serbia (see Chapter 7). The result was the impo- sition of martial law twice due to cowardice. At the end of September 1914, the War Surveillance Office was obliged to turn its attention to an account given by one Wenzel Houska, who claimed to have observed 17 cases of soldiers arranging for the comrades to shoot into the soft parts of their hands and feet in order to avoid having to be sent to the front with a march battalion. In order to cover over the traces, the shots were fired through Komissbrot (army bread). The military command in Prague was to investigate the incidents. At the beginning of October 1914, the Imperial-Royal War Ministry asked the gov- ernorship in Prague to report on the apparently critical mood in Bohemia. While no direct pro-Serbian or pro-Russian demonstrations had been called, reports of successes for the enemy had been received with satisfaction. In Tabor, unpleasant incidents had occurred during the conscription of the Landsturm. The cases of disloyalty that had occurred even before the war had increased to an alarming degree, and so it went on. The governorship in Prague immediately presented the requested report, claiming that in no single district of Bohemia could anything negative be observed. Claims made by Russian newspapers in August, which had then been reprinted in the Lon- don Times and the New York Times, according to which there had been an uprising in