General Rennenkampf’s brilliant raid into East Prussia--which admirably
served its immediate purpose of causing the Germans to transfer great
masses of men from the west to the east, thereby relieving the pressure
upon the Franco-British allies in Northern France--had closed with the
brave Rennenkampf’s heavy defeat of Osterode, or Tannenberg, on the
last day of August. Two days later had happened, as a counterstroke,
General Russky’s capture of the capital of Galicia with its thousands
of prisoners and hundreds of guns, so that, in familiar language,
“honours were easy.”
In point of fact, Rennenkampf, approved soldier in Europe as in
Manchuria, recovered with astonishing rapidity from the severe set-back
suffered by his army in the swamps of Osterode on August 31. While,
as we have seen, that victory was causing General von Hindenburg to
be acclaimed as the popular hero of the hour in Germany, Rennenkampf
had the satisfaction of knowing that his defeat had not appreciably
relieved the pressure upon the Austrian armies in the south.
On September 9 the army victorious at Osterode ten days before (and
believed to consist of eleven corps) commenced a general advance
along the East Prussian front into Russian Poland. For several days
subsequent to his retreat, Rennenkampf had remained stationary along
a line traversing the railway at right angles between Königsberg and
Insterburg. This position he clung to tenaciously until noon of
September 10, when the long-ranging shell-fire of the German fortress
guns which were being used for the purpose, together with a powerful
turning movement around their left flank, obliged the Russians to
continue their retreat. They fell back on the 11th-12th in a northerly
direction slightly east of Wirballen, where a fresh stand was made.
Although the scene of action had now been transferred from German
to Russian territory, the advantage was by no means wholly with the
Teutons. They found themselves operating in a strange and unfriendly
region, and one in which the railway system could not be of much use to
them for the rapid transit of men and material, seeing that the German
and Russian lines have different gauges. Moreover, Austria’s military
misfortunes might now be deemed to have eliminated that Power from the
problem. And Rennenkampf was resolved not to fight another pitched
battle until he could do so under favourable auspices.
Local incidents along this Russian-Polish frontier included the
dropping of German bombs and proclamations into the town of Suwalki. By
these bombs the railway-station and schoolhouse were damaged and one
child was killed. The frontier town of Filipovo also suffered a partial
bombardment. While Rennenkampf’s headquarters were at Insterburg,
certain of the inhabitants of that place were caught red-handed in the
act of signalling movements of troops to their “friend the enemy,”
while in a few cases Russian troops were fired on from houses of the
townspeople. Several of these irregular belligerents were put to death
by sentence of a court-martial. Next morning a German aeroplane dropped
in the Russian lines this audacious message addressed to Rennenkampf:
“Your troops are shooting peaceful citizens. If this is done without
your knowledge, stop it at once! If the troops are carrying out your
orders, then know, General, that the blood of these innocent people
falls on your head, and on yours alone.”
It was not until September 17 that the Russian general’s clever
manœuvring was rewarded by his being able to resume the offensive after
the enemy had not penetrated more than twenty-five miles into Russian
Poland. On the evening of that day the Germans realised that their
attempted outflanking of Rennenkampf’s right was being checkmated by a
vigorous counter-offensive. Very severe fighting took place at or near
the junction of the railways between Kovno and Vilna, and at Stednicki,
where the Niemen is joined by the Dubissa. The Russians held the banks
of the latter tributary in force. By the 18th the enemy were falling
back from Suwalki and four other townships which appear to have been
the high-water mark of their advance. They lost four guns and many
prisoners.
Having regard to the fact that a large proportion of the men of the
German army corps employed here were troops that had been withdrawn
from the western theatre of war, it is interesting to note that they
are accused of having behaved with much lack of discipline along the
line of route. Such accusations are common enough to all warfare,
and the only point of interest here is that they certainly were for
the most part troops drawn from the area of operations where so many
allegations of “atrocities” have been preferred against them.
Roughly speaking, one continuous battle raged along the East Prussian
borderland from September 25 to October 3. This has been styled the
“Battle of Augustoff,” otherwise Suwalki, from the name of the province
or “government” covering the battle-ground. The battle began in the
vast forest that covers miles of country on the Russian side of the
frontier. Through these woodlands Rennenkampf retired, fighting a
series of rearguard actions on a broad front. An episode of the battle
was the attack of the German right on the fortress of Ossovetz, a place
of some importance, as it guards a crossing of the river Bobr in the
midst of a region of marshy forest.
The garrison met the attack by a night sortie against the German
advance, which had got into difficult ground among the swamps and
woods. A correspondent who was with the Russian force gives this
account of the fighting:
“The Germans had not proceeded more than nine miles when they found
that they could not move their guns a yard farther owing to the marshy
nature of the ground. In this predicament they opened fire with
their artillery, and then sent forward their infantry with numerous
machine-guns. The latter got within four miles of the fortress, but
they made no further progress.
“During the night the Russians made a sortie, and, marching by roads
and paths of which the enemy were completely ignorant, they completely
enveloped both the German wings. Imagining that they held all the
practicable roads, the Germans had concentrated their attention on
the fortress and neglected their flanks. When the enveloping movement
became apparent, a fierce engagement ensued, the enemy being completely
at a disadvantage. The fortress guns mowed them down on the open road,
while the Russian infantry poured a devastating fire into their wings.
The battle lasted thirty-six hours, and ended in the complete rout of
the Germans, who fled in disorder along the Graevo road. All the German
guns which had stuck in the marshy ground were captured.”
Retiring through the frontier woods Rennenkampf fell back upon and
recrossed the Niemen. It would have been well for Von Hindenburg if
he had contented himself with having driven the invaders out of East
Prussia. But, flushed with victory, and underrating the fighting power
of his opponent, he endeavoured to force a way across the Niemen. By
this time, however, the Russian mobilisation had long been completed,
and Rennenkampf was reinforced by several army corps when he reached
the right bank of the river. The German attempt to cross it in the face
of superior numbers ended in a disaster. The attack was pushed with
reckless daring, and simultaneously at many points attempts were made
to construct pontoon bridges under the fire of the Russian artillery.
Every attempt ended in failure. Hundreds of dead bodies floated down
the stream, and the efforts of the German gunners to crush out the
fire of the enemy’s batteries were unavailing. At last, after incurring
much useless loss, Von Hindenburg abandoned the attempt under the
pressure of a Russian attack on his flank from the southward.
Once more there was fighting day after day in the forests of Augustovo,
as Von Hindenburg’s army fell back through the woods towards the
borders of East Prussia, pursued by the victorious Russians.
Rennenkampf claimed that during these operations the losses of the
Germans amounted to 60,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. The
scenes of desolation around Suwalki and Augustoff after this sanguinary
fighting were pitiful in the extreme. Practically everything had been
destroyed, so that they resembled towns of the dead. All bridges had
been blown up, and but for embankments and broken telegraph-wires it
was hardly recognisable that there had been a railway at all. Wrote a
_Daily Telegraph_ war correspondent of the unholy scene:
“On the fields one sees the ravages of artillery projectiles--deep,
conical holes five or six feet in diameter. Here, too, one finds
shrapnel cases, splinters of shells, skeletons of horses, fragments of
blood-stained clothing, cartridge-pouches, blue-grey coats of German
soldiers, empty schnapps and beer-bottles. In one trench there was a
particularly large number of empty bottles. It is evident that the
German soldiers invigorate themselves with alcohol before battle. Near
one of these batteries of bottles was a soldiers’ common grave. Along
the road are many burnt houses and plundered farms.
“Of entire villages, in some cases only blackened ruins remain. Inside
the houses that have not suffered in this way nothing remains whole.
Pillows and quilts have been ripped open and the down scattered about.
Samovars, dented by heels of heavy boots, are lying about on the floor.
Cupboards and drawers have been rummaged with bayonets.
“What the Prussians could not carry away they have spoilt. Whole
forests have been hewed down or burnt. Wide areas have been cleared for
fields of fire. Peasants’ gardens have been stripped of their produce.
Potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables have been dug up wholesale and
carried off. Local inhabitants, mostly Lithuanians and White Russians,
have been so terrified by the Germans that they hardly realise what has
happened to them.”
The enemy next endeavoured to entrench and maintain himself upon a
line running from Wirballen to Lyck; but on October 8 his flanks were
enveloped after a fierce struggle, and the Russians marched into Lyck.
They were now for the second time establishing themselves upon the soil
of East Prussia--and this time with little likelihood of a somewhat
demoralised foe being able to expel them in a hurry. For the German
offensive along the Niemen had utterly failed.
At the time (October 8) when Rennenkampf followed up this triumph by
driving the enemy out of Lyck, his troops had already been fighting
for seven days and nights without a rest. But they were flushed with
victory. This engagement of the 8th is likely to be known as the battle
of Ratchka, from the name of the village on which the German right
rested. It was ascertained that they had been reinforced with men and
guns (several batteries being captured) from Königsberg. The rapidity
of the advance seems to have had a staggering effect, and the enemy
lost hundreds of his horses in the marshy boglands of the Suwalki
province, leaving his heavy artillery, or much of it, to its fate.
A wounded Russian officer, in a description of the battle of Augustoff
contributed to a Petrograd journal, pays a deserved tribute to the
coolness, intelligence, and enthusiasm of the Slav soldier under fire.
The troops, he says, were simply “chuckling with delight” on receiving
an order to turn the enemy out of a position which could only be
carried by great expenditure of life. With the utmost _sang-froid_ they
put the Germans to rout, then leaving them to the tender mercies of
a particularly vigorous and merciless pursuit by the Cossack cavalry.
Fresh enthusiasm was aroused by the appearance of General Rennenkampf,
who rode on to the position to thank his gallant soldiers for the
extraordinary exertions that had given them the well-worn field. The
music of several bands then joined in the celebration, playing the
beautiful Russian National Hymn to a perfect tornado of cheers from the
weary but satisfied troops.
What a change had come over the scene within one month! A proud
and unbroken enemy no longer retained a foothold upon Russian
territory. Whether regarded as a serious invasion, or as a movement
of co-ordination with the vaster invasion of Russian Poland now about
to be described, the attempt had been signally beaten back in blood.
“Whether,” wrote an English critic of the situation, “the Russians
intend to aim at Berlin or Vienna, is of minor consequence. The great
point is that they seem able to do what they like and to choose their
particular objective as they please. Nothing has been more exhilarating
than the brilliant strategy of Petrograd. The Russian soldiers have
proved not only their steady persistence--a quality which we always
knew to be one of their principal assets--but also a rapidity of
movement and a dashing spirit of attack with which the world was hardly
prepared to credit them.”