ceský obsah:

Let’s start with entires bearing the field post cancels . Such documents coming from August 1914 are very scare , because the field post network was in construction and the field post offices received their cancels slowly. Fig. 1 shows a field post card sent on Aug. 20, 1914 by a soldier from KK Landsturminfanterieregiment Beraun No. 38. The regiment located in Beroun belonged to Austrian Home Guard .

On Fig. 2 you can see a card cancelled on the field post office no. 33 on August 22, 1914. The sender of the card served in infantry regiment of Benešov called “K.u.K. Infanterieregiment Potiorek No. 102” . Its Name was based on Name of marshal Potiorek of Austrian army at that time, who was also involved in expedition to Serbia. The regiment become famous by the expedition, it took part in first Austrian attack to Serbia on August 12, 1914.

The second group of entires are the cards sent from military post office in Bosnia and Herzegovina . These offices were no field post ones, they were created by Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 19^th century after beating of Turkey and Austrian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Because of Bosnia’s status ”occupied territory ” all civil post offices in the area were closed and substituted by Austro-Hungarian military ones. The military post offices were open for mil. bodies (postage free) as well as for public (for postage payment) . In frame of Austrian expedition against Serbia, the post offices were also used for delivery of mail of attacking units. An example is entire on fig. 3 – a card sent from Bosnian town Doboj (see cancel “K.u.K. Militärpost Doboj”) on August 6, 1914 to Železná Ruda (Eisenstein) in Bohemia and than forwarded from Železná Ruda to Pilsen. The card’s sender belonged to famous 35^th Infantry Regiment of Austrian army being located in Pilsen.

The other and most usual group of entires consists of mail sent during August 1914 from civil post offices. This way was used, when a mil. unit has no access to any military / field post office (because of slow development of field post office network or because no such offices was located in town, the unit was situated in.

Nice example showing second situation you can find on fig. 4. This is a card sent from military hospital of Red Cross in Budapest by an injured soldier of 73^rd Infantry Regiment of Cheb on Aug. 30, 1914. In the town existed no field post office, because no fighting occurred there, so civil post offices had to be used.

Not to describe the situation like all entires of August 1914 have to be send from Serbian line of battle, I am enclosing following cards from my own collection (fig. 5 + 6) . First of them was sent from Russian line of battle (also open in the month) by a soldier of 32. KK Landwehrinfanterieregiment , which was a Landwehr unit of Austrian army. He posted the card in town Neu Sandec in Halic (today’s Poland) on Aug. 31, 1914 . As per censorship cancel on the card it should be censored, but I believe no censor really read it, because the sender writes about ”hundreds of injured Austrian soldiers” , which theme was prohibited by censors.

Another example you can see on fig. 6. It is a card sent in August 1914 by a soldier, who didn’t mentioned his address, so we can not identify his unit. Interesting sign of the card is his posting on a civil post office, who didn’t cancel it by usual postal cancel, but by special one called ”area cancel” used for marking of money orders. On begin of war, Austro-Hungarian Army decided to cancel soldier’s correspondence by such cancels in order to prevent identification of current location of mil. units. This procedure was not much successful and it was not widely done, so entires with such cancels are not often to be found. Because of ”IX” in the cancel, we can deduce, that the card was sent from Silesia by a troop going to Russian line of battle.

Every reader for sure discovered differences in names of Austrian units. The Austrian army was organized in two main levels : federal and national units. The common army of Austria and Hungary consisted of infantry regiments, hunters, Air Force, Navy etc. as well as from field and military post offices network in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The federal units / bodies used abbr. “K.u.K.” before their Name (see fig. 2 a 3) .

Austria and Hungary had national armies as well. We can count to them infantry and rifle regiments of Landwehr (in Austria called Landwehrinfantegieregiment, abbr. LIR - see fig. 5, in 1917 than re-named to “Kaiserschützen” ; in Hungary called Honvéds) . The national armies also consisted of Landwehr units (Landsturminfanterieregiment, fig. 1), where the men aged 32 – 42 served . However Landwehr units should be the helpers only , they were mainly on beginning of the war used like regular regiments . All above units used abbr. “K.K.” .

The differences between “K.u.K.” and “K.K.” abbr. were not clear to the people living at that time in the same way like for us. There is no rarity to find a document with wrong abbr. e.g. in regiments´s Name. This situation was also closed by differences between similar bodies – e.g. military and field post offices were “K.u.K.”, but the civil post offices in whole Monarchy were “K.K.” .

I hope, you also find such interesting cards mailed in August 1914 and you will show them in our bulletin .