Austro-Hungarians take Šabac

The British chronology of the war records under 22 October 1915 that Austrian troops took Šabac, the chief town of fertile Mačva in north-western Serbia, on the Sava. According to the Austrian official history, Austro-Hungarian units had entered the town two days earlier, on 20 October, and without a fight. The Serbs had withdrawn from it before they arrived. It was not the first time in this war that the town had fallen into Austro-Hungarian hands. In August 1914 they had taken it at the start of the first invasion and had to give it up after a dozen or so days following the defeat at Mount Cer. In the autumn of 1914 they returned to Mačva, and in December, after the defeat on the Kolubara, they retreated across the Sava precisely at Šabac. The memory of the first occupation, when Austro-Hungarian soldiers had shot civilians in the town and the surrounding villages, was still alive in Mačva.

This time Šabac did not lie on the main axis of the attack. The Central Powers struck Serbia above all at Belgrade and further east, on the Danube. In Mačva only weak units of the Austro-Hungarian Landsturm were operating, a levy made up of older age groups, originally intended for frontier protection and service in the rear. Their task was to tie down as many Serbs as possible. On 6 October, on the first day of the offensive, General Béla Sorsich’s group crossed the Sava at Jarak, west of Šabac, and General Rudolf Streith’s group crossed the Drina north-east of Bijeljina. Both became stuck in narrow bridgeheads among swamps and flooded land, under constant counter-attacks by the Serbian Danube Division of Vojvoda Živojin Mišić’s First Army. Torrential rain flooded the riverside lowlands, and on 16 October Streith’s group even had to dismantle its bridge over the Drina so that the flood would not carry it away. According to the Austrian official history, in the fighting near the village of Drenovac Sorsich’s group lost 760 killed and wounded and 200 prisoners, and Streith’s group about 600 men at Badovinci.

The fate of Šabac was decided elsewhere, however. When the troops of Field Marshal August von Mackensen took Belgrade and Smederevo and began to push south, and Bulgaria attacked from the east, the Serbian supreme command had to shorten the front. On 15 October Vojvoda Radomir Putnik ordered the First Army, if necessary, to fall back behind the Kolubara and cover the western flank of the main forces. Mišić then withdrew his divisions from Mačva and from around Obrenovac towards Lazarevac, in order to strike from the flank at the troops advancing from Belgrade. When on 17 October Sorsich’s group renewed its advance from Drenovac, it met only weak resistance. Streith, held up by the flood, moved off a day later. On 19 October the two groups joined up in front of Šabac, and on 20 October they took the town without a fight. They lost contact with the retreating Serbs.

The British chronology does not explain where it took the date of 22 October from, whereas the Austrian official history, based on the records of the Third Army, clearly gives 20 October. As early as 20 October the command of the Austro-Hungarian Third Army demanded that the units occupying Šabac march quickly on Ub and send a stronger group towards Valjevo. The Landsturm men, equipped only for service in the rear, suffered, however, from shortages of supplies, which reached them with great difficulty across sodden Mačva, and a further march could not be planned until 22 October. The capture of Šabac completed the Austro-Hungarian conquest of Mačva, but it no longer had any great significance for the course of the campaign, whose outcome was being decided in Šumadija and in the Morava valley.