The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12): Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes
History
The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12): Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes
World War, 1914-1918
On May 31, 1915, they began to roar, and before long the trenches
were completely pulverized--the very trenches that thousands of
Germans and Austrians had died in vain attempts to carry by assault.
The Thirty-eighth Hungarian Honved Division were sent to finish
the work of clearance and take possession of Stryj. The entire
Russian line withdrew to the Dniester, step by step, ever fighting
their favorite rear guard actions, killing and capturing thousands
of their enemies. They retired behind the Dniester, but maintained
their hold on any useful strategical position south of the river,
so far as was possible without imperiling the continuity of their
line.
We must also consider two more Austro-German sectors in order to
bring the combatants stationed there into line with the Germanic
advance--the Uzsok Pass and the Bukowina-_cum_-Eastern Galicia
sectors. In the former the army of Von Szurmay stood beside that
of Von Linsingen opposite the Ninth Russian Army. Von Szurmay led
his men out of the pass and advanced northward on May 12, after
the fall of Sanok had forced the Russians away from their positions
in the vicinity of it. Their line of retreat was threatened by
the Austrian approach to Sambor.
On May 16, 1915, Von Szurmay moved across the upper Stryj near
Turka and passed along secondary roads in the direction of the
oil districts of Schodnica, Drohobycz and Boryslav, arriving on
May 16-17, 1915. Von Linsingen's troops had started their advance
on the same day as those of Von Szurmay, when the Russians found
Koziowa had to retire for the purpose of keeping in touch with
their line: the same pressure that Sambor exerted on the Uzsok.
Here again the Russians adopted rearguard tactics and considerable
fighting occurred during their retreat to Stryj and Bolechow, both
of which were eventually captured by Von Linsingen.
In Eastern Galicia and the Bukowina matters had come almost to a
standstill between Lechitsky and Von Pflanzer-Baltin about the middle
of May, 1915. When the former had cut the latter's connection with
the main line, the brigade of General von Blum and other adjoining
German troops on the extreme right of Von Linsingen tried hard
to relieve the pressure of Lechitsky on the Austrian forces. Not
till after the fall of Przemysl was the connection restored, when
the Russians had to fall back from Kalusz and Nadvorna; on June 9
they evacuated Obertzn, Horodenka, Kocman and Sniatyn. Lechitsky
was also compelled to withdraw from the Bukowina between Zaleszczyki,
Onut, and Czernowitz, where the Austrians were moving along the
Dniester in the north, the Pruth in the south, and over the hills
in the center against the village of Szubraniec. Here the Russians
once more inflicted severe losses on the Austrians, but being in
danger from a flanking movement by the Forty-second Croatian Infantry
through the Dniester forests, they retired from the Bukowina on
to Russian territory on June 12, 1915.
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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