AUSTRIAN SUCCESSES

On the morning of July 29, 1914, the day after war had been declared, the residents of Belgrade were startled by a deep roar, followed by the whistling shriek of a huge body hurtling through the air, and a shell burst over the battlements of the old Turkish citadel, doing no damage. Immediately there came another deep shock; the Serbian guns were responding. Thence on the cannonading along the Danube front continued for week after week, with only now and then a lull.

The Austrian batteries bombarded not only Belgrade, but Semendria, Gradishte and a number of other points along the river bank. Next they were seen building a pontoon bridge out to one of the little islands in the river, opposite the city and barges were towed alongside the landings on the opposite shore, presently to be crowded with black masses of Austrian troops. Naturally, the Serbian gunners made these objects the targets of their fire. But these were mere bluffs, such feints as the skilled boxer makes when he wants to get behind the guard of his opponent. If anything, these demonstrations only served to deepen the conviction of General Putnik that the real danger was not from this quarter.

But where was the first great blow to strike? Naturally, not only the General Staff, but the whole army and population waited in deep anxiety. This tension lasted over the last days of July, into the first week of August, 1914.

Then, on August 6, 1914, some Bosnian peasants, Serbs, appeared and reported that they had seen great bodies of soldiers moving along the mountain roads toward Syrmia, in northeastern Bosnia. Two days later, early in the morning, two Austrian aeroplanes whirred over the River Save and circled over Krupani, Shaoatz and Valievo. The last doubts were then dispelled; the attack was coming from the east.

And finally, on August 12, 1914, the message flashed over the wires that the outposts had seen boats in movement, full of soldiers, behind an island on the Drina, opposite Loznitza. Near that town, and in fact along the whole lower course of the Drina, the river has frequently changed its channel, thus cutting out numerous small islands, which would serve as a screen to the movements of troops contemplating a crossing. Pontoon bridges could be built on the farther side of almost any of these islands without being observed from the other shore. This was exactly what the Austrians were doing.

Suddenly, on August 12, 1914, there came a burst of rifle fire and the boom of heavy field guns, and a fleet of barges, under cover of this fire, emerged from around both ends of one of these islands and made for the Serbian shore. The two battalions of Third Reserve Serbians, stationed there as an outpost, trained their old De Bange field guns, of which they had two batteries, on the oncoming swarms and began firing. But the Austrian fire became heavier and heavier; a blast of steel pellets and shells swept through the cornfields and the plum orchards, tearing through the streets of the village and crumpling up the houses. The breastworks of the small Serbian detachment were literally the center of a continuous explosion of shells.

When a full tenth of their number lay dead or disabled, the Serbians began retiring across the cornfields and up the slopes leading to the heights behind Losnitza. There, on higher ground, which offered more effective shelter, they made a determined stand and continued their fire on the Austrian masses.

Having crossed the river, the Austrians threw up defensive breastworks and dug elaborate trenches, thus fortifying their crossing. Next they built a pontoon bridge, and then the main Austrian army poured across; a whole army corps and two divisions of a second.

Meanwhile, on the same day, August 12, 1914, a similar event was happening at Shabatz, on the Save, where that river takes a sharp southward turn and then swings up again before joining the Danube at Belgrade. Here the country is a level plain, really the southern limit of the great plain which stretches up to the Danube, past Belgrade and so into Hungary. Here, too, the Austrians screened themselves behind an island in the river, then hurled their forces across, driving the feeble detachment of Third Reserve Serbian troops back across the plain up into the hills lying to the southeast of Shabatz. Then the advance guard of the Austrian Fourth Army occupied the town, strongly fortified it and built a pontoon bridge across the river from their railroad terminus at Klenak.

Further passages of a similar nature were forced that day, August 12, 1914, at other points by smaller forces; one at Zvornik and another at Liubovia. In addition the Austrians also threw bridges across the river at Amajlia and Branjevo. Thus it will be seen that the invasion covered a front of considerably over a hundred miles and that six strong columns of the enemy had crossed, all of which naturally converged on Valievo. For Valievo was the terminus of a small, single track railroad which joined the main line at Mladenovatz. Thus the Austrians would have a convenient side door open into the heart of Serbia which was, of course, their main objective. To this Belgrade was merely incidental. With this line of transport and communication in Austrian hands, Belgrade would fall of itself.

From Losnitza, where the main column of Austrians crossed the Drina to Valievo, runs the River Jadar, along a level valley, which narrows as it nears Valievo. On the left-hand side of the Jadar Valley rise the southern slopes of the Tzer Mountains, covered with cornfields, prune orchards, with here and there a stretch of thick timber. Continuing southward, slightly to the eastward, up the Jadar Valley another range rises, slightly smaller than the Tzer Mountains, forming a smaller valley which branches off eastward. Along this runs the River Leshnitza, parallel with the Jadar until it makes an independent junction with the Drina. Still farther up the valley the foothills of the Iverak ridges are lost in a series of fairly important summits which closely flank the Jadar River.

To the south of the Jadar River the valley stretches into a rolling plain, which rises abruptly into the giant Guchevo Mountains. It is this range, converging with the Tzer and Iverak Mountains toward Valievo, and forming the plain of the Jadar Valley, which was presently to become the center of the first great battle between the Serbians and Austrians.

A military movement against Valievo, therefore, demanded complete possession of these two ridges, which overlooked the line of march. This the Austrians knew well enough, even before the first of their troops had crossed the Drina. As is well known, the best maps, not only of Serbia but of all the Balkan countries, have been made by Austrian engineers. There was probably not a spur, not a fissure, certainly not a trail, of these mountains that had not been carefully surveyed and measured by engineers of the Austrian staff.

The Austrians knew the country they were invading quite as well as did the native Serbians. All through it may be said that it was not through want of accurate knowledge that the Austrians finally met disaster. Rather was it because they misjudged the relative values of their facts. And one of their first mistakes was in overestimating the effects of the two Balkan Wars on the efficiency of the Serbian army. First of all, as was obvious from the leisureliness with which they proceeded to occupy the two mountain chains in question, that they vastly misjudged the capacity of the Serbian troops to make rapid movements. Even as the first shots were being fired across the Drina at Losnitza, the Serbian forces were on the move, westward. Two army corps were at once rushed toward the Valley of the Jadar; part of a third was sent to block the advance of the Austrians from Shabatz. Meanwhile the Austrians took their time. For two days they busied themselves fortifying the bridge at Losnitza.