Since the 20th of May, 1915, the clearing of the road had been going on; Von Mackensen battering the western forts and the river line as far as Jaroslav, and Boehm-Ermolli struggling to force the southern corner to get within range of the Lemberg railway. On his right, Von Marwitz had become stuck in the marshes of the Dniester between Droholycz and Komarno. The Bavarians on the north again let fly their big guns against the forts round Dunkoviczki on May 31, 1915. At four in the afternoon they ceased fire; the forts and defenses were crumpled up into a shapeless mass of wreckage. Now Prussian, Bavarian and Austrian regiments rushed forward to storm what was left. They still found some Russians there, severely mauled by the bombardment; but they could no longer present a front. They retreated behind the ring. The Tenth Austro-Hungarian Army Corps now made another attempt on Pralkovice and Lipnik. Von Mackensen's men captured two trenches near Fort No. 11—"they had to pay a heavy price in blood for every yard of their advance." Heavy batteries are also spitting fire against Forts Nos. 10 and 12. When the curtain of night fell over the scene of carnage and destruction, two breaches had been made in the outer ring of the forts.
June 2, 1915, dawned—a bright, warm summer's day; the sun rose and smiled as impassively over the Galician mountains, and valleys, and plains as it had smiled through countless ages before the genius of man had invented even the division of time. From all sides of the doomed fortress eager, determined men were advancing; Fort No. 10 was captured at noon by the Twenty-second Bavarian Infantry Regiment; later in the day the Prussian Grenadier Guards took possession of Fort No. 12; during the night the besieger's troops marched into the village of Zuravica, within the outer ring. Austrian troops had broken through from the southwest and also penetrated the inner circle.
June 3, 1915, dawned and again the sun smiles over Galicia and sees the same iron belt of machinelike men still nearer the fortress; but the haggard defenders, where are they? Gone! Flown! They have vanished during the night. Austrians and Bavarians march into the town early in the morning. The only enemies they meet are the dead.
Przemysl has fallen again—fallen before twenty times as powerful a blow as that which struck it down seventy-two days earlier.
Before proceeding with the progress of Von Mackensen and his mighty "phalanx," let us briefly trace the progress of Von Linsingen, whom we left on the road to Stryj and the Dniester, or rather, attempting to force that road. While the forts of Przemysl were being smashed in the north, Von Linsingen was pounding and demolishing the Russian positions between Uliczna and Bolechov. Heavy mortars and howitzers were at the same time being placed into position in front of the Russian trenches between Holobutow and Stryj.
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.