Mouse, Money, Love and Death: Dubrovnik Military Prisoners in the First World War

Abstract

The article focuses on soldiers from the Dubrovnik region who were captured or killed during the First World War. Most of them belonged to the Home Defense Infantry Regiment Gruž No. 37. The research is based on letters and stationery preserved in the files of police stations from 1919, in the archives of the Dubrovnik hospital within the "Hospital - Disorganized Materials" fund of the State Archives in Dubrovnik. The new government tried to compile accurate lists of reservists for the training exercises of the reserve army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and and postcards were the primary means of ommunication between captured soldiers and their families. Limited by censorship, their contents did not provide descriptions of the battles or emphasize the hardships of life in captivity, but alleviated the longing for home, discussed about material poverty, conveyed pleas for help and confirmation of love. Data on the deceased mainly relate to two fronts, the Italian and the Serbian. The article aims to commemorate the victims from the Dubrovnik area in the First World War and to explain the reasons of the region’s great economic and demographic decline resulting from the war.