 After three months of basic training in Székesfehérvár, his unit was sent to the Italian Front in August 1915, where he was wounded in the leg at the Third Battle of the Isonzo.After convalescing in a field hospital, he was trained as a machine gunner in the 19th Machine Gun Battalion, promoted to corporal and sent to the Eastern Front in the summer of 1916.Nagy was wounded in the leg by shrapnel and taken prisoner by the Imperial Russian Army during the Brusilov Offensive in Galicia on 29 July 1916.