Page - 589 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

The Nameless 589 that everyone already had one. The first models of the Berndorf helmet had consider- able deficits. Weighing over 1.3 kilograms, they were relatively heavy. Occasionally, an additional forehead plate was attached to the helmet, which added 2.4 kilograms and could not be worn for an extended time. The deployment of irritants and poison gas had led to the soldiers of the field army being equipped with German gas masks, which were carried in tin cans. The three-layer filter of these masks only protected the soldiers for an hour ; then a reserve filter had to be inserted. The Steyr-Mannlicher M 95 rifle had remained the main weapon, but it was now the standard weapon of the infantry and had replaced obsolete rifles that had still been used at the start of the war. Furthermore, in 1915 1.4 million Russian rifles as well as a few ‘exotic’ rifle models had temporarily arrived as a stopgap, but became a type of commodity. Machine guns of the Schwarzlose 07/12 model emerged more and more. Improved communications facilities, flamethrowers and large numbers of engineering devices and explosives completed the equipment of the infantry. The cavalry had in the meantime largely been ‘dismounted’ and brought in line with the infantry in terms of uniform and equipment. The artillery, which had become nu- merically ever stronger, received very many new guns, and horse power was above all replaced by engine power. However, the external evidence did not by any means tell the whole story, and the internal findings were even more suited to clearly demonstrating the changes. The soldiers lived in a type of sub-system of normality, advancing or retreating, always provided a battle was not raging at any given moment. In the base zone and in the rear areas, everything could to some extent be found that was also available in normal civilian life : beds for the night, shopping facilities and doctors, but above all bakeries, slaughterhouses with their own livestock, water-processing plants, laundries, delousing stations and brothels. The field post functioned as a rule without complaint, albeit one had to of course be aware that the field postcards were read by the censors. Gift parcels, charitable donations and foodstuffs arrived, provided there was someone who sent such things. The Hungarians were envied, since they allegedly received foodstuffs from the home front more often and in greater quantities. The officer corps had become more bourgeois and, above all, more ‘civilian’. The reserve officers outnumbered the active officers by far. This did not result in a mere sta- tistical observation, however, but instead symbolised a dramatic change : if, before the war, an infantry regiment with around 4,000 men had counted 100 career officers and, after mobilisation, an additional 90 reserve officers, in 1916 the infantry regiments had four or five times as many reserve officers as career officers.1362 In contrast to the other armies, in the Austro-Hungarian armed forces there was no possibility for NCOs to be promoted to officers. This was without doubt demotivating and disappointing. For example, Julius Arigi, a field pilot who  – with 32 air combat victories  – was second only