The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 380 pages of information about The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12).

The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 380 pages of information about The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12).

In addition to these five divisions of the First Ban, there was also a regiment of mountain artillery, made up of six batteries, six howitzer batteries and two battalions of fortress artillery.  Then there was a separate cavalry division composed of two brigades, each of two regiments.  Its war strength was 80 officers and 3,200 men.  Attached to the cavalry division were two horse artillery batteries, of eight guns each.  All told, this first-line army numbered about 200,000, with about 5,200 sabers and 330 guns.

[Illustration:  SERBIAN AND AUSTRIAN INVASIONS]

The Second Ban, or reserve, much inferior in armament to the first line, brought the strength up to about 280,000 men.  But this figure is probably an underestimate.  Volunteers were enrolled in immense numbers.  Some of them were men who had been exempted in the first conscription; others were Serbs from Austrian territory.  The United States sent back thousands of Austrian and Macedonian Serbs who had emigrated there.  It is probable, therefore, that the total strength of the Serbian forces shortly after the war broke out was at least 280,000, if not a trifle more.  To this must be added the Montenegrin army which, though operating in a separate field, contributed its share in driving the Austrians back; another 40,000 men of first-class fighting ability and experience.

Finally, there was the third reserve, another 50,000 men, but they could be used for fighting only in the gravest emergency.

The infantry of the First Ban was armed with excellent Mauser rifles, caliber 7 mm., model 1899.  The Second Ban carried a Mauser, the old single loader, to which a magazine was fitted in the Serbian arsenals; while the Third Ban had the old single-loader Berdan rifle.  The machine gun carried was the Maxim, of the same caliber as the new Mauser.

In artillery the Serbians were perhaps not so well off.  Their cannons had seen a great deal of service in the Balkan wars, and the larger a piece of artillery the more limited is the number of rounds it can fire.  It is extremely doubtful that there had been time to replace many of these worn-out pieces.

The field gun was of French make; it was a 3-inch quick firer with a maximum range for shrapnel of 6,000 yards, a little over 3-1/2 miles.  The Second Ban was armed with old De Bange guns of 8 cm. caliber.  The heavy guns, which had done much service outside Adrianople, were of Creuzot make, and included 24 howitzers of 15 cm. and some mortars of 24 cm.  As for the aviation wing, there was none.

The Serbian army was under the superior command of the Chief of the General Staff, Voivode (Field Marshal) Putnik.  Unlike his younger colleagues, his military education was entirely a home product; he had never studied abroad.  His father was one of those Serbs born on Austrian soil; he had emigrated from Hungary to Serbia in the early forties where he had followed the vocation of school-teacher.  In 1847 the future

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The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.