Page - 349 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Prague ‘House Regiment’ 349 taken prisoner or missing, the Czechs were at the top of the list. This made it more difficult to replenish them with the march companies that were arriving every month from the reinforcement districts. And among the replacement reservists who were then brought together to create march formations, a lack of discipline was repeatedly shown and to a greater than usual degree, even to the point of outright excesses, which gen- erally contributed to the Czechs being viewed with suspicion. The Commander of the 10th Infantry Division, Brigadier Mecenseffy, wrote : ‘As well as the requisite level of training, the troops lack […] the necessary discipline and inner moral stability ; this applies in particular to troops of Czech nationality, who  – as I have already reported  – in many cases politically contaminated, only unwillingly follow the call into the field’. If it had been thought that the case of Infantry Regiment No. 28 and the disband- ing of the regiment, which had become known throughout the Monarchy, would have acted as a deterrent and led to an immediate improvement, then it came as a disap- pointment that shortly afterwards, there were two more typical cases that were again felt as a shock. And the impression was certainly given that there was a close connec- tion between the events at home and at the front. On 1 May 1915, a mutiny occurred in the replacement battalion of Infantry Reg- iment No. 21 (‘Eger’). The reason  – as was so often the case  – was a small matter : a man refused to obey, a companion called Mraz took his side, and threatened to use his weapon. He was knocked down and arrested. Numerous other soldiers also refused to obey commands before discipline could be re-imposed. On 6 May, the summary court-martial reached its verdict, and Mraz was sentenced to death. A peloton of Hon- véd Infantry Regiment No. 12 arrived to carry out the shooting, and the replacement battalion of the 21st was forced to witness the execution. Two weeks later, Infantry Regiment No. 21, together with the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 36 (‘Jungbunzlau’) failed in its duty at Sieniawa. The Commander of the IX Corps, Major General Kraliček, a Czech who was highly regarded by superiors and subordinates alike, then applied for the dissolution of both regiments. As in all other cases, the matter was investigated, but finally, the blame for the mass desertion was laid primarily at the door of the 36th Regiment. The situation was even less explicable since the Russians retreated after the breakthrough at Gorlice–Tarnów and the troop bodies adjacent to the two regiments in question excelled themselves in taking Russian soldiers prisoner, while only the two Czech regiments literally dispersed. Kraliček wrote in his argumen- tation that Infantry Regiment No. 36 had behaved shamefully, and that it appeared that its actions had been treasonous.818 In the interim, he claimed, the Russians had also become aware of the lack of reliability, and if the regiments were to be allowed to continue to exist, the Russians would make repeated attempts to push through in sec- tions where they were positioned. The reason given for the application for dissolution was also that on 1 May, Infantry Regiment No. 36 consisted of 2,571 men, with only