serbia

I think it's Serbian Red Cross. The first Balkan War lasted from October 1912 to May 1913. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_Wars

konnakki: Thanks for your comment! At the time of this photograph, the term Servian was in use in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries, and was used somewhat interchangeably with Serbian. Here is one example of the use of the phrase 'Servian Red Cross' in the New York Times from November 1912. All that being said, it would be helpful to also add a reference to Serbia to this record for those searching by the more well-known name. We will do so and then reload the descriptive data to Flickr.

Probably the Sava River (a tributary of the Danube), near Novi Sad today in northern Serbia and formerly Neusatz (in Austro-Hungary). From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbia#Balkan_Wars_and_World_War_I Serbia won the first major battles of World War I, including the Battle of Cer and Battle of Kolubara – marking the first Allied victories against the Central Powers in World War I. Despite initial success, it was eventually overpowered by the joint forces of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria in 1915.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sava_River "The Sava marks the northwestern boundary of the Balkan peninsula (Southeast Europe). All lands north of the Sava (e.g. Vojvodina, northern Croatia, most of Slovenia, etc.) are geographically within Central Europe."

The prisoners are barefoot, and a mixture of very old and very young. It looks like the Serbs were nearly depleted of regular soldiers by this point.

LoC has another copy of this picture at www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2009631748/ Summary: Print shows a large group of Serbian soldiers, most are barefoot, captured at Kreka.

The LoC's other photo has the full caption "Comitadjis serbes faits prisonniers à Kreka près Touzla" (Komitadji Serbs taken prisoner at Kreka near Tuzla). The Komitadjis were guerrilla fighters who fought the Turks in Macedonia and other rivals. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komitadji Tuzla is in Bosnia/Herzogovina, then a part of Austro-Hungary.

Those were not komitdjis, or in Serbian Komite, but they were civilians of whom those eligible of military service were interned into many camps around Austro-Hungary...the only reason was because they were Serbs, many of them Austro-Hungarian citizens!!! But AH were afraid of possible revolts. Unfortunately it was contrary to Hague convention and many of them died in the camps

Miroslav Lazić: Thank you for your comment about this image. It does seem possible that these men are civilians, not combatants, despite the caption from the other version of the image. This article from the International Encyclopedia of the First World War details the internment of Serbians by the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the conflict: encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/prisoners_of_wa... We can add more information when we update.