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
The armies to the south of this group, cooperating in the drive
under Field Marshal von Mackensen which had gained the Teutons
Przemysl and Lemberg, had as their left flank the forces of Generals
von Woyrsch and Koevess between the Pilica and the Vistula mouth
of the San. The troops of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand were pushing
forward on the right of these, and the army directly under Mackensen
himself came next in line to the eastward, joining up with the
armies still operating in Galicia at the extreme right of the great
German battle line.
The chief danger to the Russians at this stage still threatened
from the south, where the archduke and Mackensen had pushed forward
irresistibly in their advance to the east of the Vistula toward
the railway running from Warsaw through Ivangorod, Lublin, Cholm,
and Kovell to Kiev and Moscow.
The advance of these Austro-German armies, which had operated in
the neighborhood of Lemberg, was extremely rapid in the last days
of June, 1915. In four days they covered from thirty to forty miles
in pursuit of the Russians. By the 1st of July, having swept out of
Galicia, their right, under Mackensen, entered the upper valley of
the Wieprz, a marshy country which presented considerable difficulty
to the advance of troops where a tributary of the Wieprz, the Por,
afforded the Russians a natural line of defense. Drasnik, on the
Wyznica, which here extended the Russian defensive line westward,
was occupied by the archduke's forces on Mackensen's left on the
1st of July, 1915.
The drive of the Austro-German armies through Galicia has been
dealt with in the account of the Austro-Russian campaign. As we
carry forward the account of the activities of the greatest part
of the forces concerned in that series of operations from the point
where they crossed over the boundary between Galicia and Poland
out of Austrian territory, it will be well to glance backward a
moment to enumerate here briefly the gains of these armies on Polish
soil up to the 1st of July.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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