The Campaign in Russian Poland

by Percy Cross Standing

As we have seen, the Germans partly obtained this result. Their advancing force drove in the Russian detachments in Western Poland, and the Grand-duke Nicholas withdrew part of the army operating in Galicia to assist in the defence of the Upper Vistula near Ivangorod. The result was that the Austrians were able to reoccupy Jaroslav and to raise the siege of Przemysl for a while. Then came the days of hard fighting along the San and the Vistula, in which the Russians not only held their own, but, making a counter-attack in force near Warsaw, broke through the German centre and compelled a general retreat of the invaders.

This movement began in the third week of October, and it is quite evident that, though defeated, the German armies and their Austrian Allies were neither demoralised by their failure nor broken up by the Russian counter-attack. From day to day they showed an energy and tenacity to which it would be unfair to refuse the fullest praise. The retreat was a slow retirement, in which each day there was a series of hard-fought rearguard actions. The great battle-line was now surging westward across the Polish plain, but every step of the way was to be disputed. On October 24 stern fighting that gradually assumed the character and dimensions of another continuous battle or series of sanguinary combats was proceeding for the possession of this frontier. The front extended roughly for about a hundred versts, or sixty-six miles, from Rawa to the south of the river Iljanke. The roads leading to Radom and Petrikau were the scene of particularly close and bloody fighting. North of Rawa the Russian infantry established a marked superiority with the bayonet. In one miserable village (Motchidlo) they buried seven hundred German dead. Four hundred more were accounted for (captured) south-east of Rawa, and two batteries of quick-firers were taken at bayonet-point in the vicinity of Kazimerjefu.

Much of this fighting took place over marshy forest-lands, and in weather so bad that the guns often sank to their axles. The forest of Nemglovo was occupied by the Russian advanced troops. More artillery and prisoners were gathered in along the shocking roads leading to Novo Alexandrovo. Indeed, a Russian official report claimed the substantial acquisition, during this stern forest-fighting on October 24-26, of 3,000 men and 50 officers as prisoners, and 8 guns and numerous quick-firers.

Many gallant counter-attacks along the ever-widening front were repulsed with heavy slaughter. At any given point, the Russians appear generally to have possessed a preponderance of numbers, while the sense of victory kept the men in thoroughly good heart. The last days of October and first days of November saw nothing save the same succession of hard-fought rearguard actions. On November 7 Russian Poland had been almost cleared of the invaders, and at more than one point the Tsar’s vanguards had crossed the German frontier. On the right Rennenkampf was again entering the East Prussian lake region near Lyck. On the right centre north of the Vistula, from Lomza to within a few miles of the fortress of Thorn, the Russians were close up to the frontier, driving the German left before them through the marshy forest region of Northern Poland. In the centre the frontier of the Prussian province of Posen had been passed by the Cossacks south of Thorn. In South-western Poland the Germans and Austrians were still retiring through Russian territory; but they had abandoned Lodz and Kielce, and it was generally expected that their retreat would only stop at Cracow and on the Upper Oder about Breslau. On the extreme Russian left the Austrians had been forced back half way to Cracow, Jaroslav had been reoccupied by General Brussiloff, and Przemysl was again besieged.

During the retreat through Poland the Germans, under cover of their fighting rear-guards, had very thoroughly wrecked the railways, and done considerable damage to the few paved highways of the district. This work of destruction was evidently carried out deliberately by order of Von Hindenburg and the Headquarter Staff. A large force of engineers must have been used to effect it, and an enormous quantity of explosives employed in the work. Along the railways every station had been thoroughly wrecked. The buildings were burned, the rails torn up at all the junctions, curves, and crossings—the points at which the relaying of the line would require special material—the water-towers for the locomotives had been blown up, and all signals thrown down and telegraph apparatus destroyed or removed. On both railways and roads every bridge had been blown up, and the roads themselves had been very seriously damaged in a way that showed that a very large number of men must have been employed in the work of destruction. The metalled or paved surface of the roads had been broken up with the help of explosives, the surface being destroyed, not always from side to side of the road, but checker-fashion. Patches of the pavement being alternately destroyed on the left and the right side of the roadway, where explosives had been freely used, the road had thus become a kind of zig-zag line of yawning craters. This wrecking of the roads and railways seriously delayed the Russian pursuit, for the country, twice traversed by large armies, had been exhausted of what supplies it could afford, and the Grand-duke had to feed his troops during the pursuit by bringing up everything he needed from Warsaw and the Middle Vistula region.

At the time the impression given by this wholesale destruction of the means of communication in Western Poland was that Von Hindenburg and the German Staff had definitely abandoned all hope of renewing the invasion. It was argued that, if they intended to make another attempt to seize Warsaw, they might indeed have done such partial damage to the railways as would delay the Russian pursuit, but they would not have thus thoroughly destroyed them at the cost of an enormous expenditure of time and labour. If they meant to invade the country again in any force the railways would be a necessity to them. The destruction of the lines seemed therefore to be a counsel of despair, and it was expected that the next phase of the campaign would be the defence by the Germans of their fortified frontier-line.

So persuaded was the Russian Headquarter Staff that the German offensive had definitely come to an end, that preparations were made in the first days of November for the attack on the frontier fortresses of Germany. The programme for the next phase of the campaign was that on the left the advance in Galicia was to be pressed up to Cracow, and, once that place was invested, there was to be a march from the left and left centre into Silesia. The invasion of that province, one of the great industrial regions of Germany, would be a heavy blow to the Kaiser, and at the same time a menace to his Austrian Ally, for through Silesia lies the easiest way from Russian Poland to Vienna itself. Between the western end of the Carpathians and the mass of hills that form the mountain-lands of Northern Moravia and Bohemia there is a stretch of lower ground forming a wide hollow running south-westward from the Upper Oder region towards Vienna. This valley has often in the past seen the march of armies towards the Austrian capital. Thus, for instance, it was by this line that the Russian armies, then allied with Austria, marched south-westward in 1805. The object of the march was to occupy Vienna, then held by Napoleon, and the adventure ended unsuccessfully at Austerlitz.

On the right the Russian armies were to continue the new invasion of East Prussia, and in the centre there was to be a direct menace to Berlin by an attempt to break through the frontier fortress-line. The railways were being partly repaired, and a siege-train was about to be moved up from Warsaw against Thorn, the point selected for the first attack, because the possession of it would give the Russians command of the Lower Vistula.

The fortress of Thorn is situated within five miles of the frontier on both banks of the river and is the junction for five railway lines. Thus the Germans could operate on both sides of the great river. It may be said to dominate all the highways between East Prussia and the rest of Germany. In conjunction with the lesser, but still imposing fortresses of Kulm, Fordan, and Graudenz, it forms the pivot for an army acting on the defensive on the line of the Vistula. Since the opening weeks of the war six thousand labourers had been engaged night and day in strengthening Thorn’s defences.

A thousand fortress-guns and nine great forts, the latter named after Teutonic rulers and leaders, constitute its main armament. They are thus described by the Russian Colonel Shumsky: