The Kingdom of serbia : report upon the atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the first invasion of Serbia

14 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN ATROCITIES

at a range of 1000 metres, an ordinary bullet passes through the body like a trocar, and I have seen soldiers who have been seven times wounded at this distance, and still went on fighting. A single wound from an explosive bullet incapacitates a man from further fighting.

The announcement that the Austro-Hungarian army employed explosive bullets against your soldiers was at first met with a denial by the Austrians. Subsequently it was admitted that special cartridges had been used to verify the range. These * Einschusspatronen” (a Swiss invention, by the way, if I am not mistaken) were to make it possible for the men to get the range by a puff of smoke by day, and a jet of flame by night, both smoke and flame being produced by the explosion of the mixture of powder and aluminium in the receiver within the bullet.

I have shot with these cartridges and do not consider that they really possess any practical value for verifying the range by means of the smoke and flame. As regards the smoke, the quantity is relatively small, and not distinctly visible at long distance range. Moreover, as in the case of the explosive mixtures of aluminium and magnesium employed in photography, the smoke is at once driven to a more or less considerable altitude by the expansion of the gases, and the smoke cloud only forms at a more or less considerable distance from the place of explosion. It is therefore impossible that the smoke should indicate whether an object had really been hit or not. As regards the flame, it is plainly visible by night, but how is a man to