Page - 346 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

346 Under Surveillance solution, Mecenseffy proposed, for example, ‘the broadest possible interspersing of the infantry regiments and light infantry battalions of the 10th Infantry Division with German and possibly also Hungarian elements […] so that the Czechs no longer with- draw’. On 21 March, the 3rd Army Command reported that during fighting on the previous day near the village of Sukov, only around two (of 16) companies of Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 8 (‘Prag’) could be mustered. The Army Commander, General Boroević, wanted, as he wrote, only to make more precise enquiries, ‘on the basis of which I shall disband this abysmal regiment’. On 11 March, the 4th Army Command reported that Light Infantry Battalion No. 12 had been attacked on 10 March by ‘an enemy division wearing our uniforms’. A man in the uniform of Infantry Regiment No. 36 had been captured. He declared himself to be a deserter who had changed sides and had fought for the Russian Army. And on 11 March at Smolník, and finally in the so-called ‘Easter Battle’ in the Carpathians, the Pisek Infantry Regiment No. 11, which was part of the 29th Infantry Division, failed in its objectives. The divisional com- mander, Major General Zanantoni, who felt a strong connection to the regiment, noted on 7 April, more or less in a state of bewilderment, that as at Smolník, the regiment ‘today also [failed] miserably. The largest share of the replenished regiment went over to the enemy’. There was talk of punishable decimation, although Zanantoni claimed that this would only affect those ‘who had done their duty, albeit only passively’. Instead of administering punishment, the commander was replaced and an appeal was made to the sense of honour of the troops. ‘From that day onwards, it was, and still remained, the old and courageous regiment that it had been at the outbreak of the war.’810 However, it was evidently not only any one regiment or division that repeatedly gave cause for alarming reports, but many. And it was not only the Army High Command that was busily collecting information about the behaviour of the Czechs in the war. This was naturally also of interest to the allies. One of the first reports of the French Deuxième Bureau, the foreign intelligence service, which dealt with Austria-Hungary, ascertained in December 1914 that the Czechs were less heroic and had a greater ten- dency to surrender than was the case with other troop bodies.811 In mid-March 1915, complaints were received by the commands of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Armies regarding the failure of Czech troop bodies. These were joined by reports of incidents among the replacement troops of Landwehr Infantry Regiments No. 7 (‘Pils- en-Beraun-Pisek’), 13 (‘Olmütz’) and 8 (‘Prag-Beraun’), as well as those of Landsturm Regiment No. 12 (‘Czaslau’). On 26 March, Prime Minister Tisza wrote a letter to the Army High Command in which he complained about the Czechs, who had caused de- struction during their march through Hungary, and proposing that they should be used for fieldwork and road construction rather than being sent to the front.812 These were therefore variations on the same theme. However, since the Army High Command was anyway unsure of how the increasingly large holes in the front should be filled, it was