"During the month of August the number of prisoners taken by German troops in the eastern and southeastern theatres of war, and the quantities of war materials captured during the same period, totaled more than 2,000 officers and 269,800 men taken prisoners, and 2,000 cannon and 560 machine guns.
"Of these, 20,000 prisoners and 827 cannon were taken at Kovno. About 90,000 prisoners, including 15 generals and more than 1,000 other officers, and 1,200 cannon and 150 machine guns were taken at Novo Georgievsk. The counting up of the cannon and machine guns taken at Novo Georgievsk has not yet been finished, however, while the count of machine guns taken at Kovno has not yet begun. The figures quoted as totals, therefore, will be considerably increased. The stocks of ammunition, provisions, and oats in the two fortresses cannot be estimated."
The fall of Lutsk had serious consequences for the Russians. With this fortress gone the entire line south of it was endangered unless promptly withdrawn. It was, therefore, not surprising that when on September 1, 1915, the left wing of the Austro-German forces crossed the Styr on a wide front north of Lutsk the entire Russian line down from that point should give way. That, of course, meant the evacuation of Galicia by the Russians. Brody, about halfway-between Lemberg and Rovno on the railroad connecting these two cities, was taken by Boehm-Ermolli's army on September 1, 1915, and these troops immediately pushed on across the border. General von Bothmer's forces, slightly to the south, kept up their advance from Zaloshe and Zboroff in the direction of Tarnopol and the Sereth River. Still farther south the third group under General Pflanzer-Baltin drove the Russians from the heights on the east bank of the Lower Strypa. The general result of all these operations was the withdrawal of the Russian front along the Dniester between Zaleshchyki in the south and Buczacz in the north, to a new line along the Sereth, starting at the latter's junction with the Dniester. But there the Russians made a stand. The hardest possible fighting took place on September 4, 1915, all along the line in Galicia, Volhynia, and on the Bessarabian border. Much of it was of the "hand-to-hand" kind, for both sides had thrown up fortifications and dug trenches, which they took turns in storming and defending.
One of the heaviest battles of this period took place on September 6, 1915, lasting into the early morning hours of the 7th, along a front about twenty-five miles wide, with its center about at Radziviloff, a little town just across the border of the Lemberg-Rovno railroad, a few miles northeast of Brody. There the Russians had strongly intrenched themselves. The fighting was most bitter, especially around the castle of Podkamen, which Boehm-Ermolli's troops wrested from the Russians only through repeated and most fierce infantry attacks and by means of terribly bloody hand-to-hand fighting. However, finally the Russians had to give way, leaving over 3,000 men in the hands of their adversaries. Farther south the armies of Generals von Bothmer and Pflanzer-Baltin, too, had to withstand continuous attacks of the Russians and more or less fighting went on all along the southeastern front as far down as Nova-Sielnitsa, a few miles southeast of Czernovitz at the point where the borders of Rumania, Galicia, and Bessarabia meet.
The result of the Austrian victory of September 7, 1915, near Radziviloff was the further withdrawal on September 8, 1915, of the Russian line, extending over fifty-five miles to the east bank of the Ikwa River, a tributary of the Styr, on the west about thirty miles northeast of Radziviloff on the Lemberg-Rovno railroad. This withdrawal, of course, seriously threatened this fortress, which, being on the west side of the Ikwa, was open to direct attack from the west and south as soon as the Russians had been thrown back beyond the Ikwa. And, indeed, the next day, September 9, 1915, brought the fall of the city and fortress of Dubno. Austrian troops under General Boehm-Ermolli took it by storm, while other detachments advanced to the Upper Ikwa and beyond the town of Novo Alexinez. This was as serious a loss to the Russians as it was a great gain for their enemies. For Dubno commanded not only the valley of the Ikwa, but it also blocked the very important railway and road that run from Lemberg to Rovno.
Farther south along the Sereth the Russian lines had been greatly strengthened by new troops brought up from the rear by means of the railroad Kieff-Shmerinka-Proskuroff-Tarnopol. This enabled the Russians to make determined attacks all along the river, which were especially severe in the neighborhood of Trembovla. General von Bothmer's German army at first successfully withstood these attacks in spite of Russian superiority in numbers, but was finally forced to withdraw from the west bank of the Sereth to the heights between that river and the Strypa River, which are between 750 and 1,000 feet above the sea level. But on September 9, 1915, the German forces advanced again and threw the Russians along almost the entire line again beyond the Sereth. Farther south on that river, near its junction with the Dniester, Austrian regiments under General Benigni and Prince Schoenburg stormed on the same day the Russian positions northwest of Szuparka, capturing over 4,000 Russians.
While Von Mackensen's army was pushing its advance toward Pinsk, the principal city in the Pripet Marsh region, along both sides of the only railroad leading to it—the Brest-Litovsk-Kobryn-Pinsk-Gowel railroad line—heavy fighting continued in Volhynia and East Galicia. West of Kovno the Russians were thrown back of the Stubiel River on September 9, 1915, by the Austrians. General von Bothmer's German army, which formed the center of the forces in Volhynia and Galicia, advanced from Zaloshe on the Sereth toward Zbaraz, a few miles northeast of Tarnopol. Before the latter town, which the Russians seemed to be determined to hold at any cost, new reenforcements had appeared and opposed the advance of the Austro-German forces with the utmost fierceness. In that sector they passed from the defensive to the offensive, and with superior forces threw back the enemy again from the Sereth to the heights on the east bank of the Strypa on September 10, 1915. But with these heights at their back the German line held and all Russian attacks broke down.
In spite of this they were renewed on September 11, 1915, with such strength that small detachments succeeded in gaining a temporary foothold in the enemy's trenches, where the bloodiest kind of hand-to-hand fighting occurred. At that moment General von Bothmer ordered an attack on both flanks of the Russians, who thereby were forced to give up the advantage which they had so dearly bought. However, this did not make the Russians lose heart. Again and again they came on, and so fierce were their onslaughts that the Austro-German line was finally withdrawn to the west bank of the Strypa on September 13, 1915. To the north, along the Ikwa from Dubno to the border, reenforcements were also brought up by the Russians and succeeded in holding up any further advance on the part of the Austrian troops. Especially hard fighting took place in the neighborhood of Novo Alexinez, a little village just across the border in Volhynia.
On September 15, 1915, Von Mackensen took Pinsk after having driven the Russians out of practically all the territory between the Jasiolda and Pripet Rivers. Considering that this city is, in a direct line, more than 220 miles east of Warsaw, this accomplishment was little short of marvelous, especially in view of the fact that the territory surrounding Pinsk—the Pripet Marshes—offered immense difficulties. However, the same difficulties were encountered by the retreating Russians in even greater measure, because, while there is some solid ground west of Pinsk, there is practically nothing but swamps to the north, south, and east of the city, the direction in which the Russian retreat necessarily had to proceed. It was thus possible for Von Mackensen to report on September 17, 1915, the capture of 2,500 Russians south of Pinsk.
In the Volhynian and Galician theatre of war the struggle continued without any abatement. Neither side, however, succeeded in gaining any lasting and definite advantages. One day the Russians would throw their enemies back across the Strypa, only to suffer themselves a like fate on the next day in respect to the Sereth. More or less the same conditions existed east of Lutsk and along the Ikwa, in both of which regions the Russians continued their attempts to drive back the Austro-Germans by repeated attacks.