A Russian Cossack riding among refugees fleeing before a Central Power advance. The Russians adopted a scorched-earth policy in the months-long retreat before the German-Austro-Hungarian Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive of the spring, summer, and fall 1915, with Cossacks accused of burning homes and crops to deny them to the advancing enemy, and to prevent civilians from remaining behind and providing intelligence to the invader.
Il Cammino della CiviltàThe Path of Civilization
"A terrifying number of people are suffering from malnutrition; the starving arrive in their dozens, frozen soldiers are brought in from the outposts, all of them like walking corpses. They lie silently on their cold hospital beds, make no complaints and drink muddy water they call tea. The next day they are carried away to the morgue. The sight of these pitiful figures, whose wives and children are probably also starving at home, wrings your heart. This is war."
Excerpt from the writings of Austrian Josef Tomann, a junior doctor working in the garrison hospital, on conditions in Przemyśl, Austria-Hungary's great fortress in Galicia while besieged by the Russians. Conditions both in and outside the besieged city were harrowing. Besides being killed in battle, soldiers and civilians starved, froze to death, and took their lives.
Intimate Voices from the First World War by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, page 80, copyright © 2003 by Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis, publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, publication date: 2003
1915-03-08, 1915, March, Przemysl, Austro-Hungarian soldier, Austro-Hungarian Army, civilian, starving, wounded
