Page - 588 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

588 The Nameless The system of march formations pulled in each month was to blame for the soldiers no longer being seen as anything other than statistical material, simply ‘human material’. They were brought to the front more or less automatically, and there was barely even time to integrate the soldiers in the regiments and to accustom them to war. Only too often were they immediately deployed and ‘used up’. It took only a few weeks to already become a veteran. In reality, however, the soldiers were still inexperienced, slightly fear- ful young men, farmers, craftsmen, students, salaried employees and workers. It would have been better to train them longer and to send them to the front in larger, and not monthly, replacement formations. But the system was established and rigid.1360 Since 1916, the march formations had not even been covering the losses any more. It was furthermore high time that the oldest eligible generations, the over 40s, were removed from the front and as far as possible disarmed. There was one thing the ‘old warriors’ could do  – aside from fight  – they could tell stories about what they had seen and what the ‘old army’ had looked like. For this ‘old army’ no longer existed. Even the outer appearance had already changed.1361 Since September 1915, the uni- forms had become field grey, greyer and more earthy, and they replaced the clearly visible and sensitive ‘pike grey’ uniform material. Ankle gaiters made of cloth replaced the leather ones. Everything became simpler, in some cases more practical, and always cheaper. Since the colourful facing materials had become too expensive, instead of the coloured collar lapels, only narrow, vertical bars were now attached to the regimental colours. In November 1916, provisional troop insignia made of oil cloth flaps was then introduced. There were hardly any calfskin kit bags left. The soldiers carried rucksacks, in which they tucked a second pair of shoes, a bowl for eating, a set of underclothes, toiletries and reserve rations, letters, personal mementos and perhaps one or two books, frequently the Bible. In addition, there was the bread bag, which held cutlery, bread, a canteen, a weapon-cleaning kit and tobacco. Increasingly, hand grenades were also stored in the bread bag. The cartridge satchel, on the other hand, which held 120 car- tridges for a soldier and 40 cartridges for an NCO, had remained the same. The outward appearance of the officers had likewise changed. The stiff, black cap had promptly disappeared at the start of the war. The other features of an officer were also reduced to a minimum. There were no longer any sashes and no sabre to go with the field uniform. The officers were armed with a bayonet and a pistol. They had never carried a kit bag, but at least subalterns increasingly had a rucksack, since the peace- time equipment of an officer’s attendant, who carried the baggage and took care of the well-being of the officer, had meanwhile been considerably cut back. In 1914, there had still been 54,000 officer’s attendants, which comfortably corresponded to three divisions. How many it was in 1916, however, cannot be put into figures. In 1916, steel helmets were introduced for the first time, with which the soldiers were to be protected against shell fragments and chips of stone. This did not mean, however,