Page - 940 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

940 An Empire Resigns the memorial’. This was a reference to the fighting at Sukov on 20 March 1915. The memorial had to wait and this was understood least of all by the older members of the regiment, who could not be blamed for anything and were struggling for recognition and a sign of remembrance. Those who had been serving longer could be recognised not only by their faces and that certain nonchalance of the ‘veterans’ but also by what they wore as signs of their long service and the events they had experienced in the form of badges on their caps and their uniforms, badges that betrayed an affiliation with a branch of the military or a troop body, and badges that conveyed personal achievements. Some of the badges, which were actually supposed to be visible, were covered up in order not to draw en- emy fire as a result of a suspect glint. Others, and above all high distinctions, were not worn at all, but conveyed with ribbons or miniatures. It was in particular these, however, which were  – if possible  – not only worn with pride but were also repeatedly an incen- tive to expose and prove oneself again. Officers and soldiers craved after something that testified to their conduct in war and was also understood as an emanation of Imperial and Royal favour. For the officers, there was a primary objective : the conferment of the Military Order of Maria Theresa. On 17 August 1917, the 180th conferment took place in Villa Wartholz in Reichenau an der Rax, one of the Emperor’s favourite residences : 24 officers were awarded the Grand Cross, Commander or Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa. After this, the order’s chapter collected the petitions of those officers who believed that they had performed a deed worthy of the Order. The Order was awarded for the last time in 1931. Not dissimilar to the process for submission to the highest officer’s distinction was the procedure for the most coveted accolade for enlisted men, the Medal for Bravery. Officers had also become eligible for this award during the war, but only to a very limited extent. In every case, as with the Military Order of Maria Theresa, a candidate had to enter himself and enclose references from superiors and subordinates with the application for bestowal. Since the officer corps had a high proportion of German Aus- trian officers, as repeatedly mentioned earlier above, it could of course never be ruled out entirely that soldiers from troop bodies who felt more connected to the superior commanders received a more positive evaluation than others, but as a rule it should be assumed that the references were objective and correctly portrayed the service of a member of the army. To a certain extent, the ‘ranking’ of the medals reflected the fate, dedication, willingness to make sacrifices and suffering of a troop body. The Medal for Bravery had already in 1914 become a veritable mass award. It could no longer be compared with its forerunner, the Honorary Commemorative Medals, founded by Emperor Josef II, which had been relatively sparingly employed even during the Napoleonic Wars. The main mint had delivered over 1,500 Gold Medals