Page - 342 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

342 Under Surveillance people living on the Tisza and Maros Rivers were unimpressed. By contrast, the mili- tary authorities became suspicious when they received notification that the Hungarian Landsturm had occasionally behaved as if it were on enemy territory, and the popula- tion yearned for the Russians to come to put them out of their misery.801 Such com- plaints, which were probably not unfounded, were however not only made in relation to Hungarian troops. To a far greater extent, they could be included among the bitter grievances that were expressed time and again. In December 1914 in the Zemplén and Saros (Šariš) counties close to the front, severe objections were made due to attacks and the theft of food. Polish Uhlans, Ruthenians and Austrian dragoons were found to be guilty. They had, according to the complaints, behaved worse than the Russians.802 One district administrator reported that in Bercsényfalva, members of the Landsturm Sup- ply Convoy Battalion No. 32 had been plundering and breaking into buildings, food had been requisitioned and the horses belonging to the farmers had been taken from their harnesses in the fields. In Berscény, Polish Landsturm soldiers had broken into apartments and stolen everything that they could carry with them, while in Uzhgorod (Ungvár), members of the Austrian Landsturm had been looting. Finally, during the retreat, 17 villages were set on fire by their own troops, and the only justification that could be given by the commanding general responsible, Major General Emil Colerus von Geldern, was that : ‘When one is on the retreat, all objects that could serve as cover for the enemy must be destroyed.’803 Similar accounts and attempts at justification could probably be gathered from a large number of troop bodies and from all theatres of war, and none of the ethnic groups living in the Empire was exempted. War, the risk to life, hunger, indifference and disregard for fellow humans had a levelling effect. The Jews in the Habsburg Monarchy were not regarded as a nationality in them- selves, and were therefore not listed separately in the summaries of national origin among the troop bodies. They were part of the whole. Nevertheless, it was clear that they were under observation. They were distributed among almost all branches of the military and all troop bodies of the Imperial and Royal Army, and ultimately, with an estimated number of soldiers in excess of 300,000, they constituted around four per cent of the Austro-Hungarian forces. Most served in the infantry. The share of Jews among the medical groups and the supply convoys was above average. Not even anti-Semites could accuse the Jews in the Imperial and Royal Army of a tendency to desert, but they did very clearly exhibit a desire to avoid conscription.804 However, the latter did not apply to Jewish reserve officers. Around one fifth of all Austro-Hungar- ian reserve officers was Jewish, which repeatedly led to particularly ugly comments by higher-ranking German officers during the two final years of the war, who ultimately wanted Jewish reserve and professional officers to be excluded from courses in which German and Austro-Hungarian officers jointly took part. It was completely incompre-