Operation Heinrich: Chapters 1 through 20.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Ten.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.


WEGRÓW, POLAND
2 SEPTEMBER 1914


The headquarters of German 1st Army was a hive of activity. Many corps were being directed across the field of battle and the logistics for all of them and for the supporting units and the coordination of their movements all had to be handled. The staff was pushed to the limit doing all of this and also receiving and distilling reports from the countless units in action already to provide to Alexander von Kluck so that he could make his decisions with the best possible information; of course, other forms of intelligence were equally exploited by the Army headquarters to the best of their ability but the sheer primitiveness of the Russians worked in some way against them; Baron Salza for the most part ordered his corps commanders to attack and nothing else, and garnering useful data from the Russian wireless signals was difficult. Above all of this stood the Chief of Staff of 1st Army, Generalmajor von Kuhl, like the switchmaster at a great rail-marshalling yard, and he now was presenting his argument for the course of action that 1st Army would undertake in the second half of the day to his commander.

“We have an excellent opportunity here to drive the Russians into the valley of the Liwiec,” Generalmajor von Kuhl insisted vigorously to his commanding officer, who was himself not unwilling to modify plans as necessary. “III Reserve Corps is now in perfect position to commence on attack upon the heights over the river. If we drive off the Russians here then we can bring up the heavy howitzers and command every crossing. The Russians will be without supply if they stay on this side of the Liwiec and we'll chop them up if they retreat.”

“III Reserve Corps is also very deficient in heavy artillery,” Alexander von Kluck answered. He was frustrated, and feeling prematurely tired, for the whole situation had developed more quickly than they had hoped for. “Would a delay of several hours allow for IX Corps to attack instead through the evening? That would allow us to bring up the howitzers through the night instead, anyway.”

“I am afraid to say that a lateral movement of IX Corps across the field would completely throw off our positional timetable and interfere with supply to every corps, Sir. As it stands General von Quast has brought his corps in on the extreme right of the field and would best be used in a flanking action. We sufficiently outnumber the enemy that he may face little to no opposition upon the extreme right.”

“Which leaves us only III and IV Reserve Corps for the center,” Von Kluck muttered. “It will mean an attack supported by divisional artillery only. But can IV Reserve Corps at least get into position as well? III and IV Corps have been badly handled in fighting on the left and we don't know how many corps they're facing; at least two,” Von Kluck continued—though in fact they had fought only one, but the Germans had overestimated their opposition since they did not realize that Russian XIV Corps was not yet in action. “I should like to bring up the heavy howitzers of the Guard Foot Artillery, but that would take to long and would only really be suited once we've gained the heights.”

“I'm afraid that IV Reserve Corps is further behind, Sir, and will not reach a position where it could deploy for the advance for at least several hours. We do, however, have the Garde Corps close enough to deploy,” Von Kuhl proposed tenatively.

“They were very badly handled by the fighting around Pultusk,” Alexander von Kluck replied. “And they are scarcely fit, with the losses they have suffered, for such an attack.”

“Sir, I have taken the liberty of placing our three independent landwehr brigades under the command of Freiherr von Plettenburg,” here Von Kuhl referred to the commander of the Garde Corps, “with the aim of using their numbers to restore the fighting capability of the Garde Corps, and recalling numerous incidents in which third-rate troops have nonethless fought most splendid actions when under the command of good officers and fighting regiment-to-regiment with crack units.”

“Hmm.. landwehr brigades fighting with the Garde. Most unusual, but it's sound thinking. It at least gives us another effective corps once again, if somewhat on the unwieldy side. How have the attachments been made?”

“One brigade was placed under each of the Garde divisions and the third brigade is reserved to Freiherr von Plettenburg's command as a corps reserve, Sir.”

“Seamless enough.” A pause for a moment's thought, as the headquarters hummed with activity all around them, and no more. “Very well. Order the Garde Corps forward, Generalmajor. The attack on the left will commence the moment they are in position.”

“At once, Sir.”

“What about the action of II Corps?”

Generalmajor von Kuhl's face scrunched up at that question. “We don't know yet, Sir, save that they are hard-pressed,” he answered simply.

“Then prepare to divert IV Reserve Corps to reinforce them as they arrive on the field,” Von Kluck answered, the situation seeming to re-assert stability at last, when in reality no impression could be further from the truth...


What is it that motivated the Russian soldier? They were fighting for control of a foreign land, differing from them in language and in religion, which their Tsars had enslaved. They were fighting in a battle against forces nearly three times their strength and they had been ordered to go on the offensive against those forces. This they had done, and now on the German Right they had broken through. German II Corps was in general flight and the splendid men of the Grenadier Corps were advancing against essentially no opposition whatsoever. Its commander was now pivoting to the right to sweep up the German Left in a flanking attack as they advanced. Only blocking units were left to deal with the remnants of German II Corps.

General the Baron Salza was no military genius. His only goal was to attack, and this he had done in a direct frontal engagement with the most powerful Army of the German nation; yet, through the sheer grit and the brilliance of the strength of the effective Grenadier Corps, which lacking the politicized officers of the Guards was the best of the Russian corps, an opportunity was opened which might give him the day despite all the obstacles facing his 4th Army. If the Grenadiers could turn the flank of the German Left, and if XIV Corps could be brought into action before the end of the day, then the Baron, through no feat of his own, might nonetheless of managed a great and astonishing victory.

It was not to be. XIV Corps was to slow in deploying; the Liwiec was a minor obstacle, but its artillery and ammunition wagons had a great difficulty in getting across. The usual Russian chaos in the supply branch made the situation worse, and the unusual organization of the corps—one division and three independent rifle brigades—further hampered the state of affairs. Yet this was not a complete failure for the Russians; after all, the Grenadiers were still on the advance.

With a splendid rapidity the Grenadiers made their right pivot and tore into the flank of German III Reserve Corps as it was coming up on the German Left to reinforce the success there. The III Reserve Corps was caught entirely surprised. The Russians, with their typical love for artillery and audacity in using it, brought their guns up to close range and commenced a vigorous enfilading fire against III Reserve Corps. The bulk of the Grenadiers, fresh from hard fighting with German II Corps, nonetheless formed up for the attack without a break or pause despite the difficulty of the corps-level evolution they had just executed.

Quickly III Reserve Corps was thrown into a confused fight on its right flank, having to shift from line of march to battle order in an unexpected direction. The Reservists did this with an amplomb which would have intimidated the regulars of many other armies, but these were the Russian Grenadiers and they used their advantage to the hilt despite the rapidly increasing resistance. Yet for all the brilliance of their combat ability, the Germans had more troops, and they had concentrated them where they were needed as rapidly as they could.

General Freiherr von Plettenberg heard the sound of the rapid-fire of artillery ahead from a close and unexpected position. His subordinates all concurred that it was much to close and that the position of the guns was wrong. It was surprising, and it was ominous. It should not be there, and though he could not immediately explain it, he understood that under the circumstances there was one thing he ought do. He did not wait for orders from General von Kluck. He instead simply ordered his corps to march to the sound of the guns, and they did, guardsmen and landwehr alike.


They had somehow not broke. The 2nd Brandenburg Dragoons, the mounted grenadiers, the sole jaeger battalion and the pioneers; even the corps headquarters staff, and whatever men they could rally. They had fought prone in skirmish order, and had been pushed back relentless by the Russian Grenadiers. They had fought as well as they could, so vastly outnumbered, and they had paid the price for it; 40% of their number were casualties and more would be before the day was over. But the threat of total annihilation had passed as the Grenadier Corps had pivoted to the left and put against them a single regiment of Grenadiers. But that unit, 7th General-Adjutant Graf Totleben's Samogitia Grenadiers, still matched their numbers, and fought with the confidence of victors, skilled ones at that, in placing a relentless pressure upon the rearguard of the shattered II Corps.

It was against this force that Margrete Hoffmeyer now fought. The past ninety minutes of her life had been her whole life over thrice, or more; lived with each second intense. The clarity of the colours of the field, of the sky overhead when glimpses of it were seen, the lush green of the uniforms in front of her, the uniforms of the Russians. The blood of fallen comrades splashed around and of bodies contorted, faces blacked with dirt and powder-smoke, of the smell of crushed wheat, and of the cordite in the explosions of the shells around them.

The Samogitia Grenadiers continued to advance in the finest fashion. They pressed home against the hundreds left of the 2nd Branderburgers, who fought as splendidly as they could, but were faced with dwindling supplies of ammunition and the constant effort of the Grenadiers to get to grips with bayonet. Against the carbines that half of the defending force was armed with this would be their victory, and the general rout of the rearguard of the II Corps. Only the advantage in operational machineguns had so-far prevented this from happening, but it was a sickening feeling in the gut of every man on the line it was soon to take place, that the forced retreat, the firing and dropping back, the savage casualties with each effort made to pull back, could only be taken for so much longer.

Margrete knew everything at once with perfect clarity out of the world around her. Yet at the same time, in a discombobulated madness of close combat, she was focused entirely on one single thing: not killing the enemy, but rather the mechanical, repetitive process of aiming and firing and working the bolt and aiming and firing again, and then reloading, and repeating it all over again, and again, and again, in such a way that the pain in her body and her shoulder from the constant firing of the heavy Mauser and of the strain of the effort of running and falling again and again had faded away, even the sounds of the world faded as her eardrums roared with pain from the constant crack of rifle-fire so loud to them, so that she knew all the world around her but could scarcely remember anything about herself; all of her body's actions had become far to automatic to recall. In this way she had so far survived the most intense fighting imaginable.

The Korporal who the day before had expressed his surprise at her generousity and smoked Abdullahs with her before the arrival of the Cossacks also lived. He effectively was in command, in fact, of a large segment of the remaining line in the front, as so many of the higher ranking NCOs and of course the officers had already been killed. They stood their ground once more and poured their fire unto the advancing Russian Grenadiers. For a moment their tenuous position held by virtue of the storm they unleashed from their rifles. But for every bark of a mauser two mosin-nagants had barked. The Samogitia Grenadiers pressed onward.

“Fall back!”

The order echoed down the line. Korporal Helprin echoed it himself, and then rose up to lead by example, in the only way in this morass that he could. Dashing back, and making sure that everyone else could.

Margrete remained in place, firing in cover as the regiment retired. She nearly missed the order that pulled them back, and as they rose up a curtain of fire swept over them and dozens fell. Again she was not wounded.

Korporal had made it back to the next line of defence himself, though wounded in the left arm. He had ignored it, for the moment, and raced along his section of the regimental combat front, getting the men in position for a second defence. When Margrete reached the line she was nearly the last one of the final rearguard alive in that sector. A tangible relief flooded her, though strangely dulled, at that moment.

But then in rapid succession a burst of rounds tore through Korporal Helprin before he could reach cover himself. He had been close to Margrete; he looked to her as he died, blood spurting from the wounds across his chest, with an expression strictly of surprise—there was no time for pain, and it might have been surprise on his part that she had made it alive, or surprise that he had been hit; either way, he died, and in that same moment of shock through felt herself spun around by a sudden burst of intense pain upon her right hip, crashing and falling to the ground with the impact of the bullet to bone.

She never screamed; or if she did, she never remembered it. She kept her head low and waited for the blood to drain out, and death to come. Ahead of the front lines, even by just a dozen yards, she had little chance of rescue by that hail of fire, and there was no point in falling into the hands of the Russians, anyway, who's brutality was notorious. All of these thoughts passed in a miasma of jumbled regret at the memories of life, until she became away of Korporal Helprin's corpse laying relatively close to her.

The desire to live triumphed over such grotesqueness and she crawled, wormed her way toward it with one leg useless, to rip off his coat and tie it firmly over the wound upon her hip, as best she knew; there was nothing else to be done for it, here. When she was finished, still laying low, she caught in her eye something she could not resist but to muster the strength to reach for. It was a locket, hanging from a dead neck, and when she opened it held the picture of a young man and his bride in their wedding day's dress, the former easily recognizeable as the dead Korporal who had been so glad for her Abdullahs.

The reminder of the man's wife, now widowed, left her with a strange sense of melancholy acceptance of death; and for a while this lasted, even with the effort she had made to save herself, as the battle raged around. But then came the clattering of the hooves of horses, their heavy clomp through the soil.

The firing from her own side ceased abruptly and Margrete risked her head to a sight at once awesome and very worrying; a great mass of horsemen were bearing down directly upon her and she feared now, all of a sudden, death; death by trampling from her own side. That compelled her to the morbid effort, with the last of her strength, of dragging Korporal Helprin's body over her own to shield herself as just moments later the thunder of the charging horses pounded down all around her and the legs of the horses seemed to be in the thousands in a huge wall of charging flesh which overtook her position.

Looking up, from the warm and bloody, draining corpse of a friend and comrade, she could see the uniforms of the men charging overhead, and marvelled, for it was the regiment of the Life Guard Hussars with their distinctive Death's Head shakos. To see the Death's Head Hussars charge over her was something that for a brief and blessed moment removed every other thought of her grim predicament and morbid company.

Four regiments and three separate squadrons of cavalry charged the Samogitia Grenadiers and broke them with the sabre, let by the Life Guard Hussars. Margrete was left behind to fade into a disconsolate unconsciousness until found on the field later that day, still alive despite the loss of blood. The flanking action in the battle against the Grenadier Corps was over but that it could be ended in Germany's favour simply signaled the intensity of the fight in the centre.


The arrival of six brigades, even if four were considerably understrength, and their support by the full strength of the Garde Corps' artillery plus two landsturm batteries, at once through the victory of the Russian Grenadiers over III Reserve Corps into considerable doubt. Now the Grenadiers were fighting outnumbered well more than two to one, and a third of those troops were Prussian Guardsmen. Despite this, the Grenadiers fought with great ferocity, refusing to yield their positions, dying in place like stones upon the ground as they chopped through the ranks of the German counterattack with their accurate and disciplined rifle fire.

Yet, like the hammer of a forge, the Prussian Guard advanced relentlessly, putting the greatest of pressure upon the Grenadiers even as the landwehr units who bolstered their ranks put on the greatest show of courage that they could muster when bestowed with the honour of fighting integrated to the tall and proud guardsmen. They did not let the trust of their generals down, and fought well enough that the Russian officers believed they were facing only the Guard, at full strength.

Still the Russians maintained the stubborn contest. They did not fall back, and for a while the struggle was so dubious in outcome, despite the disparity of numbers against the Grenadier Corps and the fact that they were facing the better part of the Prussian Guards, that it seemed as if they might carry the day. At this juncture, however, General Freiherr von Plettenberg still had one brigade of landwehr in reserve. These he led into action personally to bolster their fighting confidence against the famed ranks of the Russian Grenadier Corps, for which he earned the Pour le Merite on Kaiser Wilhelm's insistance (for he had been the Kaiser's adjunctant).

It was at last sufficient. The Russian Grenadiers were forced back. Their ready became steady, but they were so disciplined that in spite of the forces arrayed against them they did not break. And, indeed, as the afternooon turned into the evening, they might have even been saved from total destruction by being forced to retire as they were; for now, where their flanking screen had been cut up by the cavalry, IV Reserve Corps had now arrived to advance. Their continued retreat brought them into contact with elements of this corps as well, and only superhuman efforts on the parts of the Grenadier officers kept that contact from triggering a general rout.

General the Baron Salza had still not been able to put XIV Corps in a position for an attack, and on hearing that the Grenadiers were in retreat feared that the German III Corps and IV Corps, despite the rough handling they had taken earlier in the day, might attack to cut the Grenadiers' line of retreat and outflank the remnants of XVI Corps—almost entirely destroyed—long the heights. He did the only thing he could. III Corps and IV Corps had been under artillery barrage at long range for the past several hours as they waited in forward positions for the reinforcements which were to launch a general attack, and never came thanks to the Grenadiers. Believing that this might have weakened them enough for a cavalry charge to succeed, the old Baron ordered his two reserve divisions of cavalry to make a head-on attack into the corps.

The result was a massacre, and a pointless one, for Von Kluck was still overestimating the forces arrayed against him and had issued no orders for III Corps and IV Corps to shift positions. Russian horses and Russian horsemen charged with the greatest and best of the boldness and bravery for which they were renowned, but it was entirely unavailing, and two cavalry divisions in this way suffered such losses as to entirely shatter them, making a splendid mass charge directly into rifle, machine-gun, and cannon fire; yet despite these hideous casualties, Baron Salza judged the effort a success, for the Grenadiers did succeed in making it back to safety.

Their casualties were worse than those of the cavalry divisions.


Kouang-Tchéou-Wan, China.
3 September 1914


The fishing junks scattered like a flock of startled birds as a signal gun on the old cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth fired, confirming the flare from the shore. No trading ships had been trying to approach Kouang-Tchéou-Wan since the day before, when the little squadron had anchored off the coast to offload troops and await the morning. Now it was slowly cruising back and forth along a particular stretch of the shore. There were nine ships altogether. The Kaiserin Elisabeth led the squadron, ironically making the whole expedition an Austro-Hungarian one; the other six warships were German, though both the HAPAG and North-German liners which made up the last two had raised the Austro-Hungarian naval ensign since their crews were partially drawn from the naval person at the evacuated Tientsin garrison.

The fleet in addition to the Kaiserin Elisabeth and the two liners consisted of two Bussard-class unprotected cruisers, two Iltis-class gunboats, and the destroyers S.90 and Taku, the later German built but briefly Chinese before being captured in the Boxer Rebellion. The two tiny pacific liners, normally operating on the Shanghai run, were loaded with a mix of Austrian and German personnel, civilians of the same given quick commissions, and civilians with military experience commanding two companies of Chinese recruited in the Tsingtao area and issued spare rifles; about fifteen hundred landing personnel altogether, when the shore parties on the ships were counted as well, along with twelve old 70mm landing guns, an equal number of machineguns, and four each elderly 37mm and 47mm revolving cannon.

Linenschiffkapitan Richard Makoviz of the Kaiserin Elisabeth was the overall commander of the expedition, land and sea. The men had been sent ashore outside of the defences of Kouang-Tchéou-Wan before dawn, and now the signal flare indicated that the short regiment which had been formed for the operation was in position with its artillery emplaced. But really, the big guns for the attack would come from the ships. The Kaiserin Elisabeth herself had five 5.9in guns dialed in on the French lines around the city that they had gained as a concession in 1896. To seize it would be to strike a blow directly into the heart of the French zone of influence in southern China, mostly symbolic, but somewhat practical.

Richard Makoviz—he was of German ancestry, from the Sudetenland—mused on that part of his assignment. He had been quite surprised and pleased by it, but the role that Austro-Hungary was playing in leading the expedition meant that when the city fell that the flag of the Dual-Monarchy would be raised over Kouang-Tchéou-Wan. He did not know why the Germans wanted this, but the Governor of Tsingtao gave him the impression that it was precisely to avoid a move toward German annexation of the city, or, at least, assumption of the 81 years remaining on the lease. That implied a deeper plan, since the Kaiser's interest in acquiring colonies, particularly in the Orient, was well known.

It was time. Five 5.9in and twelve 4.1in guns were ready to fire against the French positions while the destroyers stood guard over the approaches and the transports. Linenschiffkapitan Makoviz took one look around at the peaceful sea, at the junks heeled over in the distance, fleeing the scene of the battle with the wind. China has certainly had its share of battles in its waters in these past years, he mused, and then gave the order: “Signals: 'Squadron commence independent fire!'.”

Ironically, the flags that fluttered up on the mast of the Kaiserin Elisabeth were in the Triple Codex, meant for joint operations of the Triple Alliance in the Mediterranean. But their first usage would be here, in the South China Sea, and it appeared that the Italians had betrayed the alliance anyway. Oh well. The lush greenery of the shore rising sharply out of the calm and placid morning waters was immensely beautiful. The French defensive lines in front of the city could be scarcely discerned, though they were definitely there, faintly fluttering flags and built-up observation points visible. The French defences were, like all those in China, mostly geared to a repeat of the Boxer Rebellion; the heavy guns of his cruiser would show them the kind of warfare they should have prepared for.

It was a Thursday, and the guns under the gathering of the tropical heat prepared for their workday by stripping to the waist as the great cannon were loaded and the breaches of the guns closed, and then slowly elevated into position. The gunnery officers took their time getting everything exactly right, the ships cruising so slowly that they scarcely made any wake. The order had been for independent fire, but nonetheless the Kaiserin Elisabeth commenced action first, her 5.9in guns rippling in fire against the French on the shore in a terrific cannonade. Five explosions were visible just a moment later as the HE shells detonated, appearing like cherry blossoms against the lush green before the roar of the impact and detonation reached the squadron and reminded them that it was a deadly combat.

The rest of the squadron opened up with their lighter 4.1in guns, and then all of the guns commenced to rapid fire, the gunnery crews quickly sweating in the heat and the sun as they manhandled the heavy projectiles to the cannon and kept up a constant maximum rate of fire. The guns landed on shore then joined on, so that twenty-nine pieces in all were pounding at the French positions. Throughout the morning the squadron sailed back and forth, blasting at the French positions along with the landed guns in preparation for an attack on the city's defensive line.

In the meanwhile, the junks had sailed on to safety, and lowered their nets into the water once more. The old fishermen grumbled at the fighting between the occidentals had driven them from their best fishing grounds, but no more. Nothing, after all, would change; it would just be a day or two of poor fishing, and then one set of western devils would replace another in Kouang-Tchéou-Wan. They listened to the roar of the guns just off the horizon, and went about their business, until they had become so used to the sound of fire that their talk returned to common things, not even skittish like they normally would be at such a sound, for they knew there was no impending thunderstorm save that of man. But things were changing.


KRASNYSTAW, POLAND
SEPTEMBER 3rd, 1914


The exhausted men of the Second Tyrolean Kaiserjäger Regiment had stopped advancing in the evening and begun to set up in the field as contact with the Russians petered out. A number of soldiers, finished setting up their tents, had already started a fire and begun fixing what supper they could. Skirmish lines of cavalry and light infantry patrols would keep them from being surprised, at least in theory. Most of the jäger were unconcerned at that prospect; the Russians had fought stiffly yesterday, and into the morning, but by noon the constant pressure on his left flank had caused the enemy commander to begin a determined retreat from contact. The Russians were beaten, they knew it, and the Kaiserjäger knew it.

Around the fire Klaus Wirnzel used an iron skillet to cook a bit of bacon in its fat, soon to be supplemented with an egg scrounged up from some local peasant (he did not want to know the details) by a fellow Jäger. Rodolfo Bonautti was one of the welschtiroler in the regiment and a born “fixer”, and as such a generally good to know person for the private soldiers. The egg had cost him a smoke, previously acquired in another transaction, but Klaus hadn’t picked up the habit yet so he considered it an equitable enough trade. The egg, once fried, would add a bit of variety to the usual rations of coarse bread and whatever meat was one hand doled out while in the field, ahead of most of the logistics train. The smell of cooking meat coming up from the fire threatened to overwhelm as his sense, and his mouth watered in anticipation of the meal. He pulled off a part of the brown loaf bread absently, and stuck it in his mouth.

It had the usual earthy flavor, but Klaus did not mind for once. Hunger was always an excellent sauce.

He sensed someone sit down beside, and then felt an arm on his shoulder. Klaus turned to look at the interloper, and recognized Bonautti. The Italian had an easy smile on his face, and held out a stone sized hunk of cheese.

“Klaus, mi amico,” he began what the other soldier recognized as a clear pitch, “try a bit of this fresh cheese.” He took a knife out of his pocket and sliced off a small corner, which he offered to Wirnzel. The other soldier knew then what sort of transaction the scrounger had in mind.

He still took the offered sample, of course. The white cheese tasted a bit different, but was more than delicious enough. “You want the rest of that cigarette box, don’t you?”

Rudolfo put on a show of looking wounded, but he quickly dropped it. Klaus was too sharp for that to work. “Yeah. The cheese for the smokes. Fair trade, right? You don’t need ‘em, and this will go pretty good with that meal you’re putting together.”

Klaus eyed the scrounger warily. “You don’t smoke either, Rudi. Have a few of the lambs in another regiment needing the tobacco to keep still, I wager.” Still, the cheese would be welcome. “I won’t give you a whole box for it, hell no. I gave you one for the egg, so I’ll give you another for the cheese.”

“Now, now Klaus,” Rudolfo argued, “this is a solid block of cheese. Much more substance than the egg. You can stow the cheese away and enjoy it a couple of nights, unlike the egg. Half the carton, at least.”

Wirnzel shook his head. “Fair’s fair, I suppose. I can stow the cheese away. But we are going to get softer duty now that we’ve kicked the Russians around. There’ll be plenty of cheese for us, and a lot more too, once we settle the country down. But I’ll give you three smokes for the cheese now.”

“A lot of things can change in a day or two,” the Italian reminded him. “We aren’t in Moscow now, are we? Four smokes, final offer. Take it or leave it.”

Klaus thought about it for a minute, stirring the bacon in the skillet as he did so. At four cigarettes Rudolfo would be getting the better of the deal, but only just. And it was not as if Wirnzel really needed the cigarettes. “Alright Rudi, deal.”

He put the skillet aside, and rifled through his nearby rucksack for the box of Russian smokes he had taken off a corpse the prior morning. He found them, and passed them to the scrounger, who handed him the cheese. “Enjoy,” Rudolfo had said, before standing up and heading off to some other part of camp.

Klaus then had several minutes of peace to finish the bacon and then to fry the egg in the remaining grease. He took off bites of the cheese and loaf-bread in the meantime, and was quite contented to be resting and anticipating a decent meal. Reflecting later, it thus made perfect sense that at such a moment the lieutenant came by in a hurry, clearly agitated, and interrupted his plans.

“Douse this fire, now!” he ordered, and not waiting for the soldiers to obey picked up a bucket held near the flames and scooped up earth himself, tossing it onto the fire after a mere second’s hesitation to allow pans to be snatched back. “Finish your meals immediately! And get ready to march within ten minutes.”

The NCOs were visiting other parts of the camp and informing the other Jäger of their new disposition. There was much grumbling about the abrupt situation. Klaus shrugged, and sopped his half-done eggs up with the bread; he had his rifle to hand, leaving him a short span of time to finish up dinner. Some of the other men sitting by the fire were not as lucky, and were forced to abandon their meals uncooked. Minutes passed as he finished off the eggs, then cut off a good part of the cheese and began gnawing on it. There was going to be action this evening, soon, with no chance to eat later, which meant he had to get in everything in the short span allotted. He had just finished covering the remaining cheese in a handkerchief and stuffing it in his rucksack when the squad Sergeant approached.

“Time’s up. Get up, get your rifles, and get in march formation.” The Feldwebel shifted his own Mannlicher on his shoulder. “Battalion is going to be the vanguard reserve. Our cavalry has found the Russians again, and we’re going to hit them. And the old man is going to be with our battalion, so if any of you screw up, you’d better hope the Russians kill you before I do.”

“What about our tents and stuff here?” one of the soldiers asked.

The NCO looked annoyed at the question. “No time. We’re leaving the stuff here. It’ll be collected up and replaced. If you haven’t prepared your rucksack with your personal stuff, it’s too late for it now. Let’s get moving.”

There was no grumbling, as there would have been in a lesser unit. The Tyrolean Kaiserjäger were an elite and knew it, and so they hastily settled into formation outside camp. They formed orderly ranks, and their martial bearing was such that they might have been mistaken for a parade formation had it not been for the dirt and grim fouling their distinctive pale blue uniforms. Klaus was on the outside row and so saw their colonel ride in as if making an inspection, trotting down past the assembled soldiers and nodding in satisfaction. He went ahead to confer with the battalion commander, and shortly afterward the order to begin the advance was given.

Wirnzel stopped thinking for a while afterward, reflexively putting one foot ahead of the other, falling into the groove of the march. The 6th Feldkompaigne would be in the lead of the 2nd battalion, in column behind the skirmish-line of the 1st and 2nd companies, who were the true leading edge of the regiment. Hauptmann Novák was beside them, his horse trotting placidly to keep up with the unit, and sword sheathed, but he was clearly tense, expecting something. There had been a suddenness to the mobilization that seemed to Klaus to hint that an opportunity had been discovered, or that a serious threat had materialized. The officers, and most of the men to be truthful, wanted to win some more glory here on the plains of Poland. Klaus remembered the price they had paid storming the Russian positions yesterday, and their poor lieutenant’s brains spilled out into the dirt, and was less sanguine. But he was a jäger, and duty was duty, and thankfull the march meant he did not have to think about things.

Time passed quickly as did the meters, and the sky darkened considerably. There were no lights to guide the unit, but it continued onwards without incident along some path completely unsuspected by Wirnzel. He was shaken out his seeming trance by the sudden and abrupt halt of the ranks in front of him, stopping himself without thinking about it in response. His eyes had adjusted to the declining light and took in the terrain around him; it was different, wet, ahead what seemed to be a murky forest or swamp. A group of horsemen congregated about outside, paying little attention to the infantry. Hauptman Novák appeared before the company within seconds, coming up from behind and dismounting before addressing them.

“Jägers!” he called out. “Our cavalry reports signs of enemy presence beyond this muck. They cannot patrol forward of this area. Now our first battalion has advanced in and beyond, and reports fires. A large Russian camp, at least. The enemy left has been scattered in the retreat, due at least partially to your heroic efforts! Now we will press home the attack while we can, before they get away. They’re retreating like curs, now let’s give them a swift kick to remember the 2nd Tyrolean Kaiserjäger by!”

The speech was in German, and understood by all but a couple of the Italians in the company, who only understood enough of the common language to respond to the Eighty Command Phrases. Fellows by them helpfully translated, and the body responded with a hearty cry of “Hurra-a-a!” and shouts of eagerness. The advance into the darkness of the woods that followed was led by the Hauptmann himself, with the jägers compacted into tighter ranks to pass through more easily. The path through was twisting and winding, very different from the straightforward match up to it, and it stopped Klaus from falling into his usual reverie. The absence of any sounds from the woods, with the lateness of the hour, contributed to an unease he felt, and the entire body was rather sullen by the time they were deep into the area. Everyone was relieved to find their way through without incident, even when confronted with the lights on the horizon that marked a very large enemy camp indeed.

There was more maneuvering in the failing light as the rest of the companies of the second battalion came through, and the formations adjusted to skirmish order. They positioned themselves to the right of the first battalion, awaiting the order to begin the attack which they had no doubt would come. Klaus could see little of the Russian positions, but Hauptmann Novák had a telescope with which to observe, and though hindered by the encroaching darkness was encouraged by what he could make out. “The Russians are will be caught completely by surprise,” he assured the anxious men of his company.

There was a sudden rush of noise and confusion then as a sharp cry was raised over to the right. Then suddenly gunfire cracked out through the night, the familiar retort of the Mannlicher. There was a piteous sound of pain and despair that could not have been human, but rather marked the distress of some horse. Though no one knew it over by Novák’s company, a pair of Cossacks sent out as part of a belatedly organized screen had run into parts of first battalion. There was no return fire, and for a short period there was dead silence throughout the area. More Cossacks would draw forward, though, to investigate the shots, and the camp would be alerted.

Oberst von Aarenau received news of the encounter within minutes, and realized the decisive nature of the moment. He issued an order to both battalions. “Attack now!” he told his runners to pass on to the junior commanders of the unit. “Fix bayonets and storm the Russian camp in skirmish order. Third battalion to move up as quickly as possible to engage!”

Majors Ehrenburg and von Bézard had anticipated the orders of their colonel, and thus were ready when they received them officially. Thus Klaus found himself advancing at the double-step towards the fires denoting the Russian camp, ready to shoot down or spear the first enemy to show himself. The enemy had now realized something of the situation, and Russian sentries fired out into the onrushing, dimly seen mass. Ready patrols moved into position to buy time for the rest of the defensive force to get themselves ready, while the ubiquitous screening Cossacks recoiled onto the camp at the press of the regiment.

Screams of rage resounded through the night as the skirmish-line pressed forward into the Russian camp itself. Klaus was at the front rank; he flinched as a Russian bullet whizzed by, and tried to spy the source; fires illuminated the sentries, somewhat, and he sensed a man to his front pulling the bolt of a rifle aimed towards him. Wirnzel continued his run now, drawing his own rifle towards the enemy soldier, and another bullet passed by as he did. Aim was difficult under the situations and Klaus knew he could not slow down, but the Russian was about to take a third shot, so he lined up as best he could and fired down perhaps 200 yards. At the same time other Austrian soldiers opened up at the Russians in the camp, and Klaus squeezed the trigger before leveling the rifle back down. He had no idea if he had hit the Russian or not.

The skirmish line hit the perimeter of the camp as a wave, with a frenzy of shooting and stabbing. Klaus followed the lead of his sergeant, heading into the camp to maintain the momentum of the charge. A Russian popped out from a canvas tent, minus his shirt; Klaus brought his rifle up and pulled the bullet in a swift movement, ejecting the spent cartridge, and shot him in the chest. The Russian collapsed, and Klaus paid him no further attention; he could sense the rest of the line advancing behind him, and he felt pushed onward. A body of Russians was fleeing before the advance of his unit, terrified by the sudden attack; others had thrown down their weapons in front of him. The line coalesced again into a firing formation, and the Russian prisoners were shoved towards the back as the squad began firing on the fleeing enemy. The sound of bugles echoed in the distance as more Austrian forces joined in the attack, and cavalry sent the long way around charged down the Russian avenue of retreat.

The sergeant ordered Klaus and another soldier to take the prisoners to the battalion headquarters as soon as the firing died down. As they passed through the outer perimeter, he saw piles of bodies strewn about the camp’s edge; most were in the dark colors of the Russian army, but many were in Kaiserjäger blue. Parties were already out trying to separate the merely wounded from the definitely dead, and the light from one of them illuminated a few of the bodies lying on the Polish soil. Klaus recognized the face of Bonautti among them. The prospect of losing their scrounger was disappointing; but he did not linger on it. They had already seen to much death in this still-young war. The Russian prisoners were still being herded up, and the battalion command was a brisk walk yet away.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Eleven.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.


WEGRÓW, POLAND
3 SEPTEMBER 1914


The Germans had the sun in their eyes as the day began. The way the Liwiec and the town of Wegrów were laid out, the Germans were now forcing to the east—this was part of the result of their counter-march on the approach of Russian 4th Army—and the Russians were attacking directly toward Poland. They had the advantage of the rising sun at their backs, and from fifteen minutes before official sunrise, a massed barrage of the heaviest Russian guns had commened to fire on the German positions. Three corps worth of heavy artillery plus army-level batteries engaged the Germans, mostly 107mm and 122mm long guns, 122mm howitzers, and the absolutely huge 152mm long guns which the Russians so dearly loved, but had in limited quantities.

They had finally been brought into position by the second day of the battle and now Baron Salza had them direct the full strength of their firepower down against the German right flank, which he naturally assumed had suffered the most by far on account of it having suffered at the receiving end of the attacks of the Grenadier Corps. XIV Corps was now moving into attack positions along the line of the rise. The trenches dug over the night were held by the battered survivors of the Grenadier Corps, whom nonetheless Baron Salza judged sufficient to hold the line where the major attack was to be conducted.

XIV Corps was an unusual force of a single infantry division and three independent rifle brigades, and thus somewhat overstrength in bayonets, just like the even more overstrength XVI Corps (which had once possessed three full divisions, but after being savaged the day before was scarcely even a fighting formation at all now). Because it had only one division's worth of divisional artillery, it was weak in that category, but all the heavy artillery which had lagged behind the day before was supporting it, so this was not a concern for the Russians.

The Germans had also spent the night digging in. They had only been able to lay a single length of wire along most of the front, and nowhere more than two, but it would have to be enough as the heavy artillery of the Russians now rained down upon them, and the soldiers of the various corps of Alexander von Kluck's Army covered in their trenches for shelter. General von Kluck had, however, emplaced his howitzers well to the rear where they could support the defence of the lines without coming under serious threat of counterbattery fire. The great range of the Russian pieces put them again in danger, and as the bombardment wore on through the early hours of the morning some of them were disabled. They were well-emplaced, however, so the damage to the batteries was minimal, and the Germans did not return fire, giving the Russians a feeling of false confidence in their success and simultaneously avoiding the unmasking of the guns for a serious counterbattery fire.

In the end the Russians, from a lack of target among the enemy artillery, concentrated on the trenches. With their long-guns they had much less success here than they would have with howitzers, though the limited number of 122mm howitzers did do great execution when they actually hit along the trench line, slaughtering whole platoons in their places. It was an experience beyond mortal comprehension, and yet each man in the line as it was pounded by the fire had to come to terms with it, somehow, or literally go mad.

The sector of the line around III Reserve Corps was chosen for the heaviest attack. Salza, not considering that he was massively outnumbered, seriously planned as though in the Napoleonic era to thrust a wedge between the two sides of German 1st Army so that, from somewhere, the nonexistant forces of his nonexistant reserve might annihilate Von Kluck's right flank. But for all that it was overly optimistic it was still a real danger, and the artillery was a powerful support for the fairly weak trenches of the Germans. On the other hand, the Germans had aircraft up for spotting from just after dawn, and as the Russians continued the leisurely intensity of their artillery barrage these aircraft provided the necessary data to concentrate the full fury of the German artillery in any advance through the sector of the front before III Reserve Corps.

That entire sector of the line was now suffering from the tidal wave of the Russian artillery fire. Instantaneously, it seemed, hundreds of shells would crash down upon them, and yet, in the narrow, crazily twisting trench, altogether very few were even injured, let alone killed, until an unlucky hit struck directly upon that thin line of life and protection. Magdeburgisches Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 26 of the 6th Reserve Division was part of the corps, and here, their Colonel hunkered down low in a secondary line just behind the one that held his men. There had not been enough time to emplace more elaborate defences, nor the need, really, for Von Kluck fully intended to attack the moment the situation had been properly brought under control.

Colonel von Westernhagen, the commander of the Magdeburgisches Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 26, was an experienced soldier—but he had never experienced anything like this. The force of the blows of the Russian fire around them seemed unprecedented, as if the world was ending around them and yet they survived it in their trenches, immune from even the fury of God—and it was certainly the fury of God out there! Yet of course the men appealed to Him, even as it seemed that His thunder was being directed at them.

“Praise the Lord—but keep your head down!” someone screamed nervous, restless advice through the barrage.

“The Lord will take care of us all!”

An explosion to the right. A body was tossed into the air on a carpet of torn up turf and dirt and seemed splashed in blood before it fell. Someone was screaming “Goodbye” over and over again, perhaps to the wounded, or perhaps to the world as they bled out upon the Polish soil. It didn't matter. The men in the second trench line were just as affected, since the range of the Russian artillery and the flat trajectories meant the hits were almost random over both trench lines and even the dugouts to the rear, still close enough for Colonel von Westernhagen to hear the screams of his men under the power of the bombardment.

There, right beside them, the ground was disemboweled by a massive detonation, a terrific impact, which seemed to tear the soul from the body. Even Colonel von Westernhagen could not help at the first impulse to crouch down lower in the trench. Each and every shell seemed aimed at each single man along the line, even though precious few of them did any real damage. The men everywhere were shaken, deafened, showered with dirt and with splinters, and nauseated by the stench of explosives hanging heavy over their thin lines that gave them life through the hail of death.

It was like his body was being lacerated by whips, his bones shattered to pieces, the earth was shaking like it had been upended, until there was no way to tell the shellbursts apart, it was just the drumroll of imminent death. Even for Colonel von Westernhagen it was nearly an unbearable experience, and he only mastered himself through the mathematical precision of the statistics he had been rigorously taught: With a properly dug trench, even an hour-long bombardment of the magnitude of the one they now faced, from guns of that calibre, would not knock out more than a quarter of its occupants. He had a seventy-five percentage chance of being perfectly uninjured.

Yet it was surely the ultimate test of willpower for him and for every one of the men under his command to contain this. And even as he issued orders and responded to reports—most of them casualty reports—and waited, and waited, much of the thought process was devoted to containing the horrid impulse that comes in the human body when, asked to fight or run, it is told to fight—and given no enemy to fight. For the moment, Colonel von Westernhagen, and even man under his command, was simply a target, nothing more than a target, and they had to wait out that period before their training to fight and to kill could take over; and so it was the moral and the spiritual training, the conditioning of the soul, which mattered now.

The bombardment, as focused entirely on the trenches, lasted for more than one hour. It lasted for two. But the estimates before the war of the effectiveness of trenches were considerable underestimates; in truth a very small number of the Germans waiting in their trenches had actually been wounded or killed. But some others had lost the battle of Will, of mind to triumph over matter—in those two hours of hellish shelling, they had snapped had gone stark raving mad. Some of these had tried to run for the rear. They were summarily shot by their commanders for the most part. Others simply cowered in the trenches, wimpering. They were, mercifully or not, simply ignored.

All at once, the shelling stopped. There were a few last impacts as the gunners who had already reloaded emptied their tubes with a last round, and those were the most dangerous, but Colonel von Westernhagen generously waited them out before giving the order: The terrain here was very flat, after all, and the Russians would still be a good distance off. They were there. That was, of course, obvious beyond a doubt.

“Front companies—man the parapets!!” (An exagerrated term considering the rudeness of the trenches, to be sure, but it served the purpose demanded.)

The order was transmitted along the regimental front, and as though completely unaffected by the bombardment, the whole of the men in the first trench line straightened up as one and discharged a furious, rapid, and accurate fusillade, reveling in their chance to do harm to those who had kept them pinned under that maddening barrage for so long. The vicious clatter of the machine-guns joined in at once from their strongpoints on the defensive line.

Ahead, the Russians advanced in great gray-green waves, thousands of them. There were surely more than five thousand, no, perhaps eight thousand—perhaps a whole brigade!--attacking them. The range was several hundred meters but that was still more than sufficient for a vigorous and accurate rifle fire supported by the raking of the machineguns to topple hundreds of the Russians advancing across open ground with their bayonets fixed.

There were artillery observers forward, and the moment that the Russians had reached the designated points, they transferred that data to the waiting howitzer batteries, and the 7.7cm guns closer in, all of which immediately commenced firing, concentrated via mechanical precision and the power of modern telegraphic communication to deliver the maximal possible defensive fire with shrapnel shells all along the front of the Russian attack.

A roar like an express train racing past thundered through the sky above the men. It was nothing compared to what they had just experienced, even if it sounded as though the chariots of the gods were rumbling above them, and they continued to grimly load and fire and load and fire, pouring death into the Russians, even as their field of vision was terrifically obscured by the landing of hundreds of shells onto the Russians, slamming down over and over again onto a single specified line a fixed distance in front of the trenches, first massacring their first and second and third ranks, tearing huge gaps out of them, splattering the guts and the blood and the torn flesh of men all around the field, and then the second salvo tearing through the fourth and fifth and sixth ranks and so on as the guns continued to fire on that fixed line on the map, forcing each and every rank of the Russian forces, advancing in column, one regiment behind the other, to proceed at the double-quick through a blazing path of fire which, with the natural accuracy limitations of the guns, was about a hundred yards deep but almost constantly filled with shells.

The yellow clouds of the smoke of the shrapnel shells exploding seemed to hide entirely the Russians coming forward—but still they came on. Rushing out of the acrid fog of the defensive bombardment, they charged onward, coming like ghosts out of a mist, in clumps and single men and thin, disordered, spread out lines, now, but still coming on, their bayonets fixed and in what seemed nearly a general run toward the German lines. Some dropped to their knees and laid down a fire from their mosin-nagants in support of the rush. Most simply relied on the speed of the human body to carry them to range where their skill with the bayonet would even the odds. The machine-guns and the rifles had all the while being showing their effect, too, as the 8mm rounds tore through the Russians with an intense to drop the heaviest of bodies and in a constant hail, supported by the stormwind of the machineguns firing constantly on rapid fire until their barrels overheated.

Finally the intensity of the defensive fire checked the Russian onslaught. The sheer mass of bullets and shells being put into those thousands of charging men halted them, they couldn't run into the hellfire of lead all around them any more. They retreated, or simply dropped to the earth where they stood and cowered for survival, the braver ones snapping off a round whenever they thought they had a chance to do so and live. One moment the great rush had been there, and the next it had simply collapsed like a phantom. Yet it was not over.

Through the gradually clearing clouds of yellow smoke from the shrapnel shells which hazed the field there could be seem glimpses, wisps, of yet more Russians coming on against them. Colonel von Westernhagen didn't fully know what was happening, though he could guess—and he'd be right. The commander of Russian XIV Corps had kept one of his rifle brigades in reserve, and since it seemed like the first attack had been checked he was launching it in another attack against German III Reserve Corps, such that more than two thousand additional Russian troops were coming on, rallying the stragglers of the shattered first attack, picking up what men remained to bolster their ranks, and pushing onward with them whever they could be made to turn and charge once more, even as they themselves advanced crisply right into the killing field, if anything, faster than before.

Death stalked the charging Russians. But they faced death with a transcendental bravery, and they charged on right through its embrace in the form of the killing box of the massed artillery. They were facing men who had been under shelling for hours and who had just engaged in a very vigorous fight, even if it was nearly entirely one-sided; so they had some slight advantage over their forebearers in the attack.

They also pressed it home with a peculiar intensity, the desire to succeed where others had failed, or perhaps believing that even greater vigour would protect them where insufficient vigour had doomed their compatriots. In this way they attacked, and were aided with the grim courage of those of the attacking units who had, on their retreat, rallied for a second effort, or had taken cover and now rose up with the advance of the reserves to join in a second attack.

Through death they came on! The machineguns tore at them, the rifle fire felled whole columns, the artillery smashed down rows upon rows of men, but the Russians came on. A most rapid fire was maintained, but this time the Russians pressed through it. They came on, until they were less than one hundred meters away. Now the distance was one measured in seconds, as the shattered ranks of bayonets nonetheless advanced in brave clumps around banners, around surviving officers with drawn sabres, around NCOs that forced on the waverers with the typical brutality of the Russian non-commissioned officer toward his charges. And between them, the singular advance of the brave, seeking to get to grips even at their cost of their own lives. Regardless of the motivation of the attackers, in the great majority they carried on.

For its part, the Magdeburgisches Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment 26 stood and fired with a will, needing no further orders from its Colonel, holding its ground and pouring on the fire until the Russians were upon them. It was at the last moment that the order was issued:

“Fix bayonets!”

For it was clear that the Russians would make it to the trenches, and thus it was that cold steel met cold steel, and for the first time in the action, even badly outnumbered as they were by now, the Russians had the upper hand in the killing. The last thing stopping them was the wire. Some of them got hung up on it and shot down at once; it slowed them, it gave time for the Germans to fix their bayonets and to put a last full clip into their enemies, killing many more at nearly point-blank range, but there was not enough wire to do any more than that.

The order to fix bayonets had been general to the whole regiment, including the reserves, and from the moment that the Russians were fully entangled with the fighting along the regimental combat front, Colonel von Westernhagen rose up and drew his sword, dashing forward slightly crouched with a few of the daring in his staff.

“Magdeburg, forward! Magdeburg, forward!” He shouted, and the officers in command of the reserve companies echoed his shout and from the trenches of the regimental reserve the men rose up and dashed forward with fixed bayonets to relieve their compatriots involved in the close fighting in the front trench, taking up a simple but singular shout:

“Magdeburg! Magdeburg! Magdeburg!” as they ran.

They swept down into the front-line trench and by their weight they at once drove the Russians, who had a momentary advantage with their skill at the bayonet and with the surprise of their having made the dash to actually breach the trench-lines, back from the trenches at once. In fierce fighting some of them held out, but not for long, not for long enough, at the sheer numbers of the Germans began, the moment that the magic shock was broken, to tell in a most tremendous fashion in the close-quarters action.

This fighting had not continued for more than a few minutes, though it had seen many of the men bloody their bayonets. The Russians again retreated, and a few hotheads leaped up with fixed bayonets to pursue them, but were bodily pulled down back into the trenches by the NCOs of the regiment, to Colonel von Westernhagen's pleasure.

“We await orders for pursuit!” He shouted out among his men—though, indeed, he awaited them with the full expectation that he would be given them, for his own blood was up.


Generaloberst Alexander von Kluck looked from his Chief of Staff to the positional map of the field that was laid out, just adjusted for the latest telegraphic reports from the field at the repulse of the massed assault of Russian XIV Corps. The attack had failed utterly; only in a few places had the trenches been breached in the first attack, and only on a few more in the second, and all of these had been fully repulsed, even following a three hour long bombardment of the most intense nature imaginable. General von Kluck was genuinely surprised that it had not been more costly to his men.

Clearly the Russians were on the verge of breaking. Aerial reconaissance had, at last, clarified the picture to show they were facing only three corps, and though he might have hesitated more at such a frontal assault had these been all his troops, the fact of the matter was that he had the Guard Corps—with three attached landwehr brigades—in reserve, and two corps posted to either flank, while, far on his right, XI Corps was preparing to cross the Liwiec at a point away from the main battle which was essentially undefended.

So even if the Russians managed to hold against a counterattack, the success of XI Corps' flanking maneuovre would be guaranteed. It was good enough, and, moreover, boldness had one more favour—the Russians were still in the process of retreating from the failed attack. An order to counterattack now, even if only the light artillery could be in support, would catch them in general disarray as they tried to organize their defences. It was the best chance to finish this battle that he expected to get.

“We attack,” Von Kluck said simply to Helmuth von Kohl. “This is the best chance we'll get to drive them back against the Liwiec. A general advance along every sector of the front, at once—especially now, for not only are their losses heavy but their supply situation, is, as-usual for the Russians, poor, and they must have used up a great deal of the ammunition for their heavy guns.”

“We'll need time to prepare, even with those advantages, Sir.” General von Kohl answered as the voice of caution to his commander. “And the howitzers don't have the range to fire on their batteries from their current positions.”

“Then let the howitzers fire on their trenches—they have the range for it, yes?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“The field guns can be driven forward to support the advance consistantly. A twenty-five minute bombardment on the trenches by the howitzers as we prepare for the assault, no more, and then launch the assault immediately. That should be ample time to prepare, especially since the howitzers themselves shall need some time to prepare their massed bombardment. The alert for this contingency following the Russian attack went out hours ago to the front commanders, indeed, shortly after the bombardment began; we don't need to give them any more time than that to be prepared to implement it now. If they are somewhat disordered on the attack, swiftness will be their saving grace.”

“Very well, Sir,” Von Kohl cast aside his reservations as he must. “I'll get on transmitting the orders immediately.”

Von Kluck nodded stiffly and turned his attention back to the map.


It was strange to look out on the bombardment of the enemy lines and to realize that you had just been enduring something like that less than an hour before. Altogether it had, indeed, been only about fifty minutes since the Russian attack had been definitely and decisively repulsed for the men of the Magdeburgisches Reserve-Infanterie Regiment 26. It had been enough time to clear away the wire in front of them to prepare for the counterattack, to have the wounded sent to the rear, and for prayers to be said for the dead; they would have to be buried later.

Colonel von Westernhagen watched the last seconds tick away. Every man was tense now, very tense, preparing themselves for the advance, preparing to press home against the Russians. Everything was as ready as it could be got in the time they had; and now there were just seconds left. He kept an eye on his pocket watch as it ticked down the last seconds. The barrage ceased, leaving smoke shrouding the Russian lines ahead of them.

One minute later, a signal flare raced up into the sky from brigade headquarters, as they did from every brigade.

“Regiment... Advance, en column!”

Banners fluttered up, the regimental flags flew at the front of every one of the regiments, the bands struck up their quick marches, and the men rose up out of the trenches and started forward, on the double-quick, with their bayonets fixed. Even as this was done, however, the teams of the field guns, the 7.7cm batteries, were raced forward to support the advance from the positions where the guns had been limbered and hitched to their teams after supporting the defence. The machineguns were also prepared to be brought right forward in the same fashion.

For a moment the attack was a perfectly splendid thing. The Germans advanced, concealed by the smog of their own artillery barrage, the heads of the Russians down, the noonday sun all but directly overhead, their bands keeping to gallant tunes and the men in their great columns and in long rows across the field, bayonets fixed, dashing forward at the quickmarch toward the enemy. In this fashion they covered a great deal of ground, indeed, some two-thirds of the distance toward the enemy, a bit more.

But they did not pass through it unbloodied. The Russian artillery was brought into action quickly enough. Here it was weaker than it should have been, due to the lack of divisional artillery behind three of the brigades. This had not been so much of a hindrance to the Russians when they were relying on their big corps-level long guns for the attack, but it was a great hindrance and it allowed the Germans, marching in formation and quickly, to take relatively few casualties in pressing forward.

They took casualties, of course, and they took a lot of casualties. The Russian artillery had an excellent targed, and from the moment they had recovered and prepared the guns for defensive fire they had reaped in horrific casualties onto the German lines. But the Germans did not, for the most part, remain wedded to the old Napoleon attack in column. Instead they simply closed to about one kilometer—a bit more—from the enemy, outside of effective rifle range and before the machineguns could really have any sort of serious effect, either. And here, in an example of the precision and the discipline of the Germans, despite being under a heavy shelling from the Russian guns, they shifted their attack formation.

“Skirmish lines—advance by company!” was the order given, heeded at once, as the Germans, even the reservists, shifted their formations, falling away, taking cover, at once denying the Russian artillery a target and the easy time they had expected. Then, divided into groups of companies, the regiments would rush up, half dashing forward, while the other half, remaining prone, fired in support. The artillery and the machineguns were now coming up with them as well, and this was the point at which the artillery, the carriages rolling desperately forward as the horses were lashed, were swung around and immediately unlimbered, under fire, with a desperate haste. The guns swung into action, breaking open the ready ammunition, and with a cool precision began to rapid-fire the guns in a suppressing attack against the Russian batteries and the Russian lines.

Other batteries were now working further forward as, alternating by companies, the regiments continued now a swift and dispersed advance in a skirmish order, the gray of their uniforms disappearing into the wheat to be replaced by the crackle of their rifles firing as the men behind them rose up from the same position to dash forward once more, themselves, and the roar of the guns firing on each other and the sound of gun carriages being hit, barrels thrown from their mountings and men and horses killed, added to the sounds of pain and horror from the wounded on the field, and the sight of the bodies of the dead as they fell on the advance, with the Russian rifle and machinegun fire now starting to tell.

With the constant close support of the guns, the Germans pressed on forward, leapfrogging toward their targets, while the machinegun fire of the Russians rattled over the heads of the prone men and chopped through those misfortunate enough to be caught on their feet when one of the Russian maxims swept through their sector of the field. Score after score of men was toppled, but the Germans, aggressive and disciplined, continued to press home to the utmost.

They were facing a weaker opposition than they had expected. The casualties to both the Grenadier Corps and XIV Corps had been truly hideous. They had few machineguns, anyway, for even the rated strength of the Grenadier regiments in machineguns was not great; and, the light, handy field-guns which were so useful in this situation they were likewise deficient in, where their heavy artillery could be of no real use. It meant that an inexorable tide of German troops was closing steady with the Russian lines, and it was not going to be stopped.

Those valiant defenders nonetheless stood their ground. They poured fire from their mosin-nagants down on to the victoriously attacking Germans. They savaged their formations from the moment they rose up to advance, and their constant fire was in conscious disregard for their own safety, to do as much harm upon the Germans as they could, even when they had such excellent artillery and machinegun support while advancing. Yet the Germans came on through it; they braved the enemy's fire and chopped a kilometer into a mere two hundred meters, and then rushed on after that.

The Russian troops had a last chance to hold them at the wire, and in fact they did. For several deadly minutes the German advance was pinned on the still-intact Russian wire, as the Germans were forced to painfully work their way around it, over it, under it, and were getting massacred the whole while, even with the support of their artillery—and it was a noticeably weakened support, for many guns had been lost and countless numbers of the artillery crews cut down from their exposed positions directly supporting the advance, slowing the rate of fire of those guns which were still operational.

It wasn't going to be enough, but the Russians held on and they kept up the defence of their trenches, kept on slaughtering their way through the Germans on the wire, until substantial numbers of them had gotten through it and dashed onward. There was no orderly staggered advance by company now. With their machineguns and their artillery supporting them the Germans simply charged in their grim gray waves, and leaped down into the trenches of the Russians, meeting them bayonet for bayonet, fighting with the shattered units of the previous two days as more and more of their compatriots reached them and added their weight to the see-saw battle in the Russian entrenchments.

Over the roar of the cannonade and the constant cracking of the rifles, on and on, thousands of them all around, over the stacco bursts of the machineguns firing in support or defence, the shouts of men, the sound of the explosion of shells, the constant wailing of the wounded and dying man beside you, or the faint and hideous shrieks and calls of those bleeding out thirty yards down the line, a roar seemed to sweep through the ranks, of victory. They sensed it, and they tasted it, from the veteran to the bloodied mouth of the youth, so in terror at this experience of the attack that he had bit down into his tongue until it bled within his mouth, they all pushed on with a redoubled vigour that carried them into the Russian trenches, and in a terrified, confused jumble of fighting with entrenching tools, rifle bayonets and rifle butts, fists and rocks, they carried the Russian trenches.

It would never be known for sure quite where the Russians were first driven out, because it happened at several places along the line nearly at once, and as the news of it spread, almost telepathically, among the remaining Russians, they lost their heart for further fight and began to retreat, to flee for better ground to their rear, for safety, for the cover of even a light wood. Other officers, sensing the inevitable, ordered their units out of the trenches, to retreat, to maintain their cohesion. As the units fled, they were taken under fire for as long as they could be, but enhancing their already savage losses. Only the already savaged Grenadier Corps managed to, somehow, retreat in good order—but retreat they did, as they must when the rest of the line had collapsed. And then it was over.

The banners of thirty-two regiments of the Imperial German Army fluttered over the Russian trenches overlooking the Liwiec River and the town of Wegrów. Colonel von Westernhagen cautiously formed up his men to defend the trenches against a most implausible Russian counterattack, just as a precautionary measure. Yet half his brain was preoccupied with the marvel of the attack in which he had just participated, ignoring the few nicks of shrapnel--that he had somehow come out no more wounded than that was itself startling—as he slowly took in the equally captivating and grimmer, dreaded fact that the ranks of Magdeburgisches Reserve-Infanterie Regiment 26 were painfully, painfully thin.


“I apologize, Your Excellency,” Helmuth von Kohl offered quietly in headquarters, as Alexander von Kluck waited for his horse to be saddled, preparing to move up with his men now that the Russian trenches had been declared secured. “I should not have doubted our ability to clear the Russian entrenchments.”

“A voice of caution is a wise one, General, think nothing of it,” Von Kluck replied generously, in his element. He had pressed forward aggressively, feeling that the Russians were on the verge of collapse, that such a weak force as it turned out he had been facing was one which had to have expended itself in the truly terrific attacks which the Russians had executed on the first day, and then again that morning—the in the later case, completely useless, unlike those of the day before.

“At any rate, I want the Jaeger battalions moved forward to the front. We should use them to infiltrate forward down into the valley of the Liwiec through the evening and into the night to keep up a heavy pressure on the Russians and maintain them off balance—make sure they press very aggressively, I have no intention of letting the Russians make an escape in the night if they choose prudence, and I want to find out if they try.”

His horse was led up for him, and he swung himself into the saddle with a pained sort of precision of an older man who had once been able to perform such a task much more easily.

“Of course, Sir,” General von Kuhl saluted. “The orders will be transmitted at once. I'll see you when headquarters is brought up to your forward position.”

Von Kluck returned his salute and began to ride away with such of his staff as was to accompany him now a-horse. But before they could one of the officers from the signals regiment dashed up and saluted. “Your Excellency!”

“What is it, Captain?”

“A message from General von Quast, Sir—IX Corps is crossing the Liwiec with opposition from only a thin cavalry screen; a regiment or two at most.” The scrawled out text of the dispatch was offered up.

Alexander von Kluck scanned it briefly and then nodded sharply and looked to Von Kuhl. “We are on the verge of what may be a very great victory here, General, and now I should waste no more time in going forward.” With that he started off.


LUBLIN, POLAND
SEPTEMBER 4th, 1914


A soccer-field inside the “liberated” city of Lublin had been transformed over the past couple of days into an impromptu drill field for the inrush of volunteers to the Polish Legion. The prospect of a Polish military force ready to take to the field to fight the Russians, coupled with the stirring words of Pilsudski (magnified by rumor in the retelling across Poland) and the concrete success at Lublin had captured imaginations across Poland. Of course, Pilsudski had no intention of directing all the offers to support the Legion directly into the line of fire; his secret organization needed to grow as well, and it would serve the Polish people well once the Russians were finally driven out. But he was not unaware of the need to convince the Germans and Austrians that their support would yield some concrete results, and so had begun setting up a training organization at Lublin to expand the size of the Legion. So far it was one of the few things that the Austrians had not given him grief about.

The commander of the Polish Legion grimaced as one of the recruits stepped out of rank, too slow in reaction to the shouted commands of his sergeant. Pilsudski had half a mind to tear the recruit out himself, but within seconds the torrent of abuse that came from the aggrieved trainer convinced him the situation was well in hand. Comrades they might all be, but every volunteer still needed to learn the basics of soldiering. The synchronized marching was the first step of getting them in the right frame of mind, so that every soldier in the Legion could rely upon every other soldier of the legion. Idealism and commitment could make up for a lot, as he had contended when putting together the legion, but one still had to begin somewhere.

His attention was directed away from the soccer field for a moment by the sound of an approaching figure. He turned, and recognized General der Kavallerie Viktor Dankl and his aide, Generalmajor Kochanowski. Pilsudski hated going from his role as the fatherly if demanding komendant of the Legion, to Oberst detached from the Austro-Hungarian Army; still, he gritted his teeth, and saluted sharply. Diplomacy was not a favorite subject of his, by any means, but he understood intellectually just how important relations between his Legion and the Austrians were. For now.

Dankl and his chief of staff returned the salute, but there was a rigidity to the General’s motions that suggested some measure of tension. Pilsudski expected it was directed at him.

“Oberst Pilsudski, you are a madman,” Dankl stated flatly. “You want to integrate into your legion this half-trained militia right before we are to face a major combat with the Russian enemy?” He motioned towards the Legion volunteers, drilling with more enthusiasm than skill, out before the three men. “I cannot allow it. They would be slaughtered like lambs by the Russians.”

Pilsudski bit down his initial impulse to reply harshly. “It is true that these volunteers do not have much training. Some of our more advanced squads have experience as Russian conscripts. That is as good as any enemy they are going to face, and they will be better motivated as well. The Russian peasants will be dying far away for their Tsar, while my Poles will be dying for their Fatherland. As for those less advanced in their training, they can still shoot well enough to be of some use, and this situation is an opportunity to bring them together in the Legion. If they are part of a victory they will become better soldiers for it.”

Dankl nodded, reluctantly. “I concede your point on morale, but the fact is that we are facing an extremely difficult challenge. Elements of six Russian corps, including one or two brigades of Guards, though we haven’t identified all of the units involved. We are not outnumbered, and the Russians cut off by the German advance lack true cohesion, but they are also desperate. Would you toss your volunteers into that maelstrom, Oberst?”

“I would,” Pilsudski, defiant pride in his voice. “Free Polish soldiers will be the match of any Russians. The more difficult the victory, the greater the glory they will get by defeating the enemy. Facing elite Russian units in a debut in combat will create the Legion that I… that Austria requires.”

If Dankl noticed the Pole’s slip, he gave no indication of it. He parsed his lips, feeling reluctant to give in to his nominal ally. And the Legion was still under his authority and command. “Your Legion will be among our reserve forces,” Dankl informed him. “It is likely we will need them, however. And in the toughest fighting, if the Russians get across the San. If they break, if they cannot handle the reality of combat…”

Pilsudski nodded. “The Legion is not a regular regiment, but all of our comrades understand the performance they are expected to give. The least advanced squads will be used as replacements only, if that will make you feel better. And any man who flees from the Russians, I will shoot him myself.”

“I will accept that,” Dankl finally conceded. “I do however need any former conscripts who have experience with artillery. The captured Russian pieces on the Wiatkow heights will be vital to the defense of the city, and any trained artillerymen are too valuable to be used as frontline infantry.”

Pilsudski calculated his possible responses, and finally arrived at conciliation. The more the Austrians owed him, the better his hand during the war. And a defeat at Lublin would set back his own plans. “That I can arrange. I will have them sent over by this evening to your headquarters.”

“Good.” Dankl let that hang in the air. “And one more thing, Oberst Pilsudski. In the future, it is appreciated if you clear any statements you care to make to the Polish people through First Army. The only hope for the liberation of Poland remains the successes of the arms of Germany and Austria; you would do best not to forget that.”

Pilsudski responded with nonchalance at the time. After some other pleasantries passed, and the General and his chief of staff left earshot, Pilsudski let vent an impressive string of obscenities even for him. He then ordered his own trainers to send Dankl the artillerymen, but he was in a foul mood over it the rest of the day.


WEGRÓW, POLAND
4 SEPTEMBER 1914


Throughout the night the Jaeger battalions, all ten of them, had pressed hard against the Russians, pushing them down against the Liwiec. But Salza was entirely, hopelessly, perfectly incompetent. He had understood the reports from his extensive cavalry screens—the only thing going in his favour had been the great preponderence of cavalry in Russian 4th Army—and knew that he had to counter German IX Corps or he would be encircled and annihilated as Rennenkampf had been.

To this end he had ordered the Grenadier Corps—which had suffered no less than 40% casualties among its infantry regiments on the 2nd of September, and more still on the Third—to march at night, crossing the Liwiec, and redeploy to dig in and hold against the completely fresh IX Corps of German 1st Army. It was impossible, but these were the Grenadiers, and they had pulled it off anyway. Exhausted men who had suffered in incredibly bloody battles of the day and the day before had, in the name of the honour of their regiments and their Tsar and the power of the unity of the regimental name of the Grenadiers, forced themselves on, forced themselves into the line of fire once more, and, having completed their tactical evolution, proceeded to dig themselves in.

When General von Quast received data from his screen and the Army's reconaissance aircraft in the mid-morning, he was shocked for a long moment, and then he did the only thing he could. He ordered his men to deploy from line of march into battle formation. The Russians had somehow put a force between him and the rear of the shattered 4th Army, and they would have to fight their way through it.

This IX Corps tried to do. The Grenadiers did not have any wire for their position. They were lacking in their heavy artillery. Even with the pioneers and the walking wounded and, indeed, any man who could operate a gun in the trenches, they were scarcely at 60% strength in rifles. IX Corps had full artillery support, including its excellent heavy howitzers, and its attack was spearheaded by the 34th Infantry Brigade, which contained the Großherzoglich-Mecklenburgisches Grenadier Regiment.

Under the midday sun, the Russians held. They held as the sun arced through the sky into the midafternoon, and when the sun had begun to fall in the early evening, they were still holding their lines. The banners of the Grenadier regiments fluttered confidently the whole while, and even as the artillery crashed down, and attack after attack swarmed up and upon them, they held like a rock against the storms of the sea, a bulwark by which 4th Army might yet somehow be saved.

Overlooking the Liwiec, however slight the heights were (they didn't even really deserve to be called heights), they were high enough to allow artillery to command the crossings of the river—and that, of course, made them as high as mountains as far as a military commander might be concerned for the purpose at hand. Alexander von Kluck pressed the attack, first through the night with the pressure of the Jaegers which had kept Russian XIV and XVI corps pinned down along the river and then now, bringing his infantry closer and closer in as the artilllery continued to command the crossings, slaughtering the men as they escaped through the river.

Throughout the day his continued, as Von Kluck slowly lost the enthusiasm of the late afternoon of the previous day, on account of the very stubborn resistance of the Russian Grenadier Corps toward the advance of IX Corps. Yet for the moment he was inflicting a great number of casualties on the retreating Russians, and he was content to this until in the mid-afternoon he ordered a general advance, again holding in reserve only the battered Guard Corps and the landwehr brigades which had boosted its strength.

By the early evening this advance had commenced, and the corps of the 1st Army swept down against the Russian rearguard. It crumpled with scarcely a fight, having become demoralized, disorganized, and badly attrited under the nearly nine hours of constant shelling without anything more than the most rudimentary of trenches for cover, and the Russians began a flight across the river enmasse. Much of the heavy artillery and the supply wagons were abandoned for the Russians. Much more was destroyed by howitzer fire as the teamsters tried to force their way through the tricky fords of the river for the heavy weight of the limbers and the wagons.

It was worse than that. The Liwiec ran red with blood as the masses of men struggling across it were caught under the fire of the howitzers, and soon enough, of the field guns as well as they were brought up to fire upon the retreating Russians. A few Russians put up a stout defence in the buildings on the west bank and had to be cleared out with most disproportionate casualties. Many others simply surrendered, not willing to risk the crossing of the shallow river as it now was choked with the bodies of the unlucky in the crossing attempt. The rest of them made it across, many lacking their rifles. They streamed eastward, toward the welcoming arms of Russia proper, though they were still hundreds of kilometers away.

Baron Salza had nearly collapsed under the strain of the magnitude of his defeat. In his fear at facing Tsar Nicholas and reporting to him on his failure, he was concerned with perhaps salvaging only a single thing, the escape of the Grenadier Corps. To this end he ordered its commander to retreat eastward at once; the commander of the Grenadier Corps simply ignored Baron Salza's order and continued to fight his splendid defensive action. It was in fact necessary for survival. To disengage from the fight with IX Corps now would risk the collapse of the Grenadier Corps.

Because of that they fought on throughout the evening. The Germans attacked as vigorously as they could, and the scratch reserves which the Grenadiers used to drive the Germans out of the trenches, which they now seemed to carry time and time again, at each combat grew somewhat smaller, composed of somewhat more desperate elements. They were running out of ammunition, and they were running out of bodies to throw into the gap. But they were the Grenadiers of the Russian Empire, and they held. Throughout the whole of the evening, they held, and held, until the ground on which they stood was stained with the blood of their fallen combats and the Grenadier Corps had sustained such losses as that in virtually any other unit would have sent it broken toward the rear.

At last the night came. They had to leave their dead and most of their wounded for the Germans to recover the next day; they had no choice in the matter. They retreated in good order, having left nearly half their number, from every branch and of the whole aggregate strength of the corps, upon the field of Wegrów, dead or wounded and ultimately captured. But in doing so they had not only secured their own escape but also the escape of the fleeing, broken remnants of the other two corps of 4th Army.

They also had some help from the East Front Over-command. Late on the evening of the 4th, Moltke had cabled Von Kluck and ordered him not to pursue 4th Army as its scattered survivors, anchored by the murderously attrited Grenadier Corps, retreated back toward Brest-Litovsk. They were to advance—and not even against Warsaw to the west, but south, toward Lublin. Von Kluck fumed, but as he did, Von Kuhl was already preparing the orders. In the end, Von Kluck issued the orders as he must, and a second opportunity for the decisive annihilation of a Russian army in the field was passed by in favour of the greater strategic objective of the encirclement of the whole of western Poland and the trapping of the garrisons of Warsaw and Novo Georgievsk and the better part of Russian 9th and 10th Armies. That was the German way.

The battered 1st Army of the German Empire thus marched south, not having completely lost its ability to march and fight despite the terribly stiff casualties of the Battle of Wegrów. The scarcely reorganized remnants of the shattered II Corps were sent swinging to the left to cover their flank against any most implausible counterattack by 4th Army—nothing more than those sorry remnants which had been chewed through by the Russian Grenadiers were necessary against the enemy upon which their comrades had avenged them—and six corps marched south toward Lublin and the matching 1st Army of their Austrian allies, so that they might either celebrate their victory or do something to salvage the encirclment out of their defeat, should it come to that.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Twelve.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.


KLESZCZELE, RUSSIA
5 SEPTEMBER 1914


General-of-Cavalry Alexander Samsonov marveled at the fact that his army still lived. He had been attacked by three German armies which surrounded him in a great arc; but simply by the desperate effort to avoid contact he had managed to avoid encirclement. The retreat had been long and bitter and they had lost their heavy artillery and some of their light in it, along with most of their wagons. The soldiers were living off the land—stealing from the Tsar's own subjects—but it simply could not be helped. That they still had ammunition was miraculous.

Samsonov knew that the principle reason for his survival was the action of General-of-Infantry Nikolai Martos, commander of XV Corps. It was Martos who had remained in touch with German 7th Army long enough for Samsonov's two other surviving corps to retreat, and then who had broken off touch in good order. And now it was Martos who had managed to interpose himself between the advance of German 4th Army and the battered, retreating survivors of 2nd Army. He had kept his corps in action beyond reason to save the army, and it had paid for it.

In the end, Samsonov had no choice but to pull XV Corps and Martos off the line, to get them heading back to Brest-Litovsk. They had all but expended their ammunition and their casualties were very great. They could simply not be expected to hold anymore. But that, unfortunately for him, left the only unit capable of a rear-guard action being the XIII Corps of General Klyuev, who had proven himself entirely incompetent during the retreat; unfortunately for Samsonov, General Zhilinsky, the commander of Northwestern Army Group, had forbidden his dismissal on account of his court connections, for General Klyuev was a first-class sycophant, and Zhilinsky himself had links with the household of Maria Fyodorovna; Samsonov did not presume to judge how proper it was for the Dowager Empress to influeence the army, so his speculation stopped there.

Martos had already been got clear, save his artillery, and the remnants of XXIII Corps under his command—literally no more than the battered 3rd Guards Division and only scattered pockets of survivors of its other, annihilated units—had followed. They had been in the process of entraining the around two or three thousand survivors of I Corps and VI Corps which had managed to catch up with the Army's retreat around Kleszczele when the disastrous news reached Samsonov: Klyuev, fighting his rear-guard action just to the north of the city, had, under the pressure of German 4th Army, ordered a general withdrawal on his own authority, essentially abandoning the process of entraining the remaining survivors of the other army corps and the equipment which 2nd Army had managed to get out.

Samsonov had enough of that. He had already issued the orders to sack Klyuev—damn the consequences, now—and was traveling with his staff, forward toward the lines to the norther of Kleszczele, to deal with the situation himself. There was certainly nobody in XIII Corps he could give command to; one of the divisional commanders was dead and the other had suffered a nervous breakdown, and it would make more sense for him to personally command the rearguard action than to entrust it to a Brigadier. He advanced with a scratch 'reserve' of the remains of the Vyborg Regiment, the only unit of I Corps which escaped the disaster against German 1st Army remotely intact, about 2,200 men with only rifles, having lost all of their machine-guns, and some of them walking wounded. With it was the 6th Artillery Brigade, once of XV Corps; bringing the guns forward now meant they might well be lost, but if the rearguard did not hold, they would surely be lost, so it scarcely mattered, and the artillery was sorely needed.

It was clear that he would need it. The 1st Brigade of the 36th Infantry Division had collapsed and was in general flight to the rear. Samsonov had tried haranguing the men as they ran past him, and a few hundred had, chastised, fallen into ranks with the marching Vyborg regiment behind him, but most simply continued to flee, eyes downcast but not stopping in the general retreat. Of the 2nd Brigade, it had now devolved to the command of Colonel Kabanov of the 143rd Dorogobuzh Regiment. With his own regiment and the Kashira regiment he was, he reported, 'holding as firm as a rock'. But Colonel Kabanov was in severe danger of being cut off as the German forces exploited the gap created by the collapse of the 1st Brigade and the Sofiya Regiment of 1st Division to their left.

Of the 1st division, only the Neva Regiment was still in place. Brigadier General Yaroslav Kharitonov was the commander of the 2nd Brigade, and now effective commander of the division. He had pulled his brigade off the line on the extreme left flank when Klyuev had ordered the general withdrawal, but instead of making for the rear had waited for what he expected, Klyuev's relief and the directive of Samsonov to hold the line; he had immediately committed in the centre and was now engaged in a desperate combat with the better part of the strength of two German divisions. To replace Kharitonov's Brigade on the extreme left Samsonov had ordered the 2nd Seperate Cavalry Brigade to advance to the line and wage a defensive battle dismounted.

Samsonov would have sorely liked to have retained XV Corps' two cavalry divisions on the front line, but Martos had essentially expended them entirely in the fighting of his rearguard actions, using them mostly as dragoons to cover the retreat of his infantry, which had been extremely costly; of XXIII Corps little of the cavalry had managed to retreat with the Army, and his army-level seperate cossack brigades were entirely involved in skirmishing on the extreme right flank to prevent the Germans from finding a path for a flanking manoeuvre which they easily had the troops to execute.

So he had gotten two corps clear, save the artillery of one, but also a few thousand survivors of his other battered units, with a few thousand more still in the process of evacuating. But if he was to have anything left of XIII Corps and the other units involved in the rear-guard action the lines must somehow be restored, and rapidly. Ahead, the thunder of the artillery was constant, and most of it was lesser guns. That made Samsonov smile grimly and his uncomfortable staff officers all the more uncomfortable. The Reserve Horse Artillery Division had been attached to XIII corps, and it was by that reinforcement of the artillery of the corps that it had been able to hold up against the full strength of the comparatively intact German 4th Army, which had prior to this been involved only in the complete annihilation of VI Corps and Mingin's division along the frontier almost two weeks prior, giving it enough time to recover from whatever losses they had inflicted.

The streams of men flowing past, twelve or fifteen thousand of them fleeing to the rear, had at last mercifully ceased. Of these Samsonov had managed to rally only perhaps a thousand armed men; this would have to be sufficient. Samsonov, his staff officers, and his 'reserves' were searching now for the headquarters of Brigadier General Kharitonov. Klyuev's staff had fled with him; the divisional staffs had fallen apart with their commanders or in the strain and chaos of the fighting, and Samsonov essentially had to establish control over a corps-sized force with elements of his army staff (which was now otherwise useless, fortunately or unfortunately),

In the end Samsonov did not find Kharitonov until later on; he found trouble first. Ahead the sounds of firing were dying down even as they raged to either side and this made Samsonov fear that the situation ahead was very bad indeed; he ordered the column to come to a halt and scouted ahead in person with his morbidly worried staff, for once brushing aside their concerns.

Fortunately, a group of riders ahead appeared, and as Samsonov reigned in he could see from the late morning's sun that they were Russians. The lead rider of the group came dashing up on sighting them and Samsonov recognized him as Colonel Krymov, one of his staff officers whom he had sent forward to try and locate Kharitonov's headquarters while he was organizing the scratch reserve.

“General! General! You are this far forward!?” Krymov shouted in excitement and consternation.

“How close are we to the front?” Samsonov replied sharply.

“The Germans are coming right for us—they will not be long in coming..” Krymov blurted out through panted breaths, and Samsonov himself handed over a canteen to the man, letting him drink fully of it before waving for him to continue.

“Your Excellency,” Krymov continued more formally: “The Germans are not more than twenty minutes off at the quick-march. They're advancing through the gap where Kharitonov and Kabanov have been unable to make touch due to the thinness of their lines, and you are right in the middle of that gap. Your Excellency, whatever forces you have..”

“We have the Vyborg regiment and a few hundred stragglers—but also the Sixth Artillery Brigade,” Samsonov replied promptly. For once in the long retreat the problem in front of him was blessedly simple, the sort of problem a military man should be presented with: The enemy was advancing, and they had to be stopped with the forces at hand. Samsonov offered a silent prayer to Mary in thanks to God that He had finally seen fit to give him a challenge that he might easily handle as he had in the old days.

“We will deploy them at once, Colonel,” Samsonov offered with the kind smile of a grandfather and turned back to wheel around to his staff.

“Well, gentlemen, the Germans are coming up against us. We won't be able to coordinate with Brigadier Kharitonov, but God has given us the chance to be in the right place anyway. Deploy the Vyborg regiment and the rallied units in skirmish lines as far to the east and west as can be managed without leaving gaps. We'll concentrate the artillery right in the centre, gun-to-gun.”

Postovsky, Samsonov's Chief of Staff, saluted at the orders and rode back to get the brigade and the short regiment into action without a word.

A pause, and he looked to the objectionable General Filimonov: “General, find Kharitonov for me—no matter what! He must be brought into touch with our reserve.”

“Your Excellency,” Filimonov saluted stiffly, disgusted that he had been reduced to a mere messenger but finding he had little choice now but to obey.

General Samsonov idly stroked at his luxurious and still mostly black beard, looking back to Krymov. “Find Colonel Kabanov for me and tell him the same—he must extend his left flank until it comes in touch with our reserves here, somehow or another. That is an order, and you must see that it is obeyed. We cannot afford a gap.”

“Of course, Your Excellency. I'll set out at once. At least we have a lot of day left to try!” Revived by the water he had consumed he started off at once with his guards in a rustled cloud of dust.

A lot of time left for the Germans to attack in, as well, Samsonov mused, and then started back with the remnants of his staff to check up on how well Postovsky was organizing the defensive lines.

Lines was a bit of a misnomer. There was a single line, with no reserve behind it, behind it formed out of scarcely more than three thousand men spread out in thin skirmish order to cover as much of the gap between the two halves of XIII Corps as they could. It was a line which would be unlikely to stop even cavalry, but of course really the line was just there to support the unit which could and must hold the centre: The 6th Artillery Brigade.

Fourty-five 76.2mm pieces were being wheeled into place and unlimbered, ready ammunition concentrated behind them. They were wheelock to wheelock in the centre, between the two halves of the Vyborg regiment, a solid wall of artillery standing at the strongpoint of his position in the very centre of the whole of XIII Corps, astride the Bialystok road.

It took longer than Colonel Krymov expected, but it did not take long before the first of the German regiments marched into view, quick-stepping en column along the Bialystok road. It was one of the regiments of the 25 Großherzoglich-Hessisches Infantry Division, and they were very much surprised to encounter any sort of Russian resistance here, after the center of XIII Corps had crumbled following the breakdown in order with Klyuev's rescinded withdrawal order and flight from the field.

At once the order was given to the artillery commanders. This, then, was the moment for the solid power of the batteries, under the eye of their Army commander who no longer had an army. Fourty-five guns bellowed as one, firing down open sights. They raked the advancing column of German infantry with seven hundred and fifty shells in a single minute. For all intents and purposese its cohesion ceased to exist. The first battalion of the regiment was virtually wiped out, its men scattered every way who survived, taking cover against the onslaught which left a trail of stacked and blasted bodies along the road and both sides of it.

The sound of the guns firing so rapidly, massed together, had left Samsonov half-deaf, but from his position to the rear of the brigade he could only watch in awe as his eyes saw how further the brutality of war had expanded since even his experience as a cavalry commander in the Russo-Japanese War. But the terrain provided cover for the other battalions of the regiment to deploy as the first was, however inadvertantly, sacrificed to the Russian guns. Samsonov belonged to the Kuropatkin School, by which it might be said that he imagined himself in the line of Kutuzov, winning battles by the firmness of his stand and a slow, steady approach.

For three weeks this had proven insufficient against the capabilities of the Germans, and he had scarcely, and perhaps only by a miracle, avoided the destruction of his Army. Yet finally the world had put before him a task of which he was perfectly capable. He just needed to hold this line so that his Army would live, he needed to inflict enough casualties to buy the time for his rearguard to retreat in some degree of order, and this he was able to do. The guns now shifted fire, slower, more carefully aimed, against the dispersing troops of the rest of the German regiment and further savaged it, if not so great and awesome a spectacle as the annihilation of a whole battalion en column which had stumbled into the massed guns of an artillery brigade.

A second regiment came up behind the first. There were two German regiments of the 25th Division advancing in the centre and one spread out on either flank. The flanking regiments presented the real threat but Samsonov, having dispatched messengers of sufficient rank to force Kharitonov on the one hand and Kabanov on the other to act to bring the formation together once more, did not feel he could do anything more, and contented himself with riding along the lines, exposing himself to the fire of the enemy as he had not before, to put some metal into the spines of the men arrayed in skirmish line, particularly the units which had only just been rallied by his exhortations on the advance up to the front line.

Scarcely more than three thousand men held against a force which had begun as six thousand, but they held with the aide of fourty-five guns, and those guns were the saviours of the Russian centre. Again and again, throughout the long afternoon, the Germans pressed against Samsonov's centre and sought to break through that narrow gray line laid down upon the Russian soil. And each time the massed fire of the guns repulsed them, until the Germans abandoned the attacks and Samsonov was confident that the line would hold here as long as there was ammunition; that there would not be ammunition for very long was assured by the bitter experience of the retreat, but they were only seeking time to retreat once again, nothing more, and it might just be sufficient for that.

In the early evening, Colonel Krymov came through. He obtained from Colonel Kabanov a battalion of the Dorogobuzh regiment and a scratch unit of the stragglers of other forces and leading it personally, through it toward the right flank of the Vyborg regiment in the centre. This attack caught the flank of the advancing 3rd Großherzoglich-Hessisches Infantry regiment and rolled them up with a vigorous enfilade fire and a series of bayonet charges at close quarters in the woods as they swung companies to the left to meet the attack. This fight degenerated into a sort of combat unique to wooded terrain, where friendly fire was common and the chaos allowed twelve hundred Russians to push back nearly three thousand Germans in a battle that continued through the night.

As the evening wore on, however, there was no word from Brigadier General Kharitonov, and Samsonov became concerned. Worse, before the darkness fell, a fifth German regiment had arrived—one of the brigades of the 25th Infantry Division had three instead of the common two. This force, along with the two regiments which had attacked earlier, drove home another charge against the Russian lines with sufficient ferocity that the narrow, one-man-deep skirmish lines of the Russians were ordered to rise and charge with the bayonet in a last effort to repulse them. But fortunately it never came to that; under the vigorous fire of the massed artillery batteries the attack was broken and at the counterattack of the Vyborg regiment the Germans fell back.

There was virtually no ammunition left. It would not last through another attack. The night, however, was nearly upon them, and from the left there was the sound of heavy artillery fire. Kharitonov, found at last by General Filimonov, had been able to get some of his artillery batteries into an enfilading position against the German infantry regiment on that flank, pin them down with it so that his thin and depleted regiments might shift to the east enough that, as the darkness fell, they made contact with the Vyborg regiment.

At last, Samsonov had some kind of communication with both of the flanks of the savaged XIII Corps, and just in time, too. They would have to make a delicate retreat during the night, and one in which Krymov, who could not be located, could not participate; but they had no choice. The XIII Corps fell back through the night, and only near to the morning did the victorious Russians of the single battalion of the Dorogobuzh regiment realize they were cut off and nearly surrounded. The forest was with them; in that fashion some hundreds made their way out of the grasp of a whole German army without being captured, but they lost their cohesion in so doing. For the rest of the corps, however, they had managed to get clear.

The next day promised another desperate fight, for with steadily lessening numbers of men they would have to fight on the outskirts and in the streets of the town of Kleszczele they would have to battle on so that as many of their number as possible could escape south, to the safety of the fortress of Brest-Litovsk and where 9th Army was forming and the survivors of 4th Army were now also falling back toward. But Samsonov trusted God for the next day, and rode that night, tired, his head hurting, but content that at last his command might be truly saved.


PEKING, CHINA
5 SEPTEMBER 1914


War raged in Europe. It had not really effected the far east yet. To be sure, there had been sightings of the Russian cruiser Jemtugh off the coast near Shantung province, a thousand rumours circulating in Shanghai and Tientsin about the location of Graf von Spee's squadron, and, last but hardly least, the seizure of Kouang-Tcheou-Wan by Austro-German forces. That latest of the events was also the only substantial one, and it had certainly attracted the attention of the Chinese government.

It was perhaps fortunate that Edmund Freiherr von Heyking was the current Minister-resident at Peking for the German Empire. He had been involved in the negotiations which had rolled back Japanese gains following the Sino-Japanese War of the mid-1890s, and from that experience had gained some sympathy toward China. Thus, when the foreign office had been casting about for any opportunistic allies against Russia, and had focused in particular on the Ottoman Empire, Edmund von Heyking had other ideas.

The popular press in the western world had gotten a lot of mileage out of Kaiser Wilhelm's statements during the Boxer Rebellion. The reality of German colonial aspirations was far more complex than the bombastic declarations of the Kaiserreich's Sovereign. On average, a colonial governor in the German colonial service had military experience, thought like a military man, and strived for an efficient administration and the diligent application of regulations from Berlin. Rebellion was punished with great zeal, order was established, and no particular plan of exploitation was followed by mere fact that the German colonies, established for no particular reason at all (discounting the still greater bombast of Tirpitz's Navy League), existed essentially as showcases of Teutonic efficiency in government.

Ironically, Germany's interests in China were probably best served by the American open-door policy, as for the forseeable future they could never hope to have any sort of exclusive economic arrangement in the Republic. Yet the current military situation had transformed benign neglect and idle curiousity into something entirely different. It was the seed of an idea for now, nothing more, but military logic now ruled in Berlin. Russia had a vastness which the German Army could not reasonably expect to overrun; it would suffer the same fate as Napoleon's Grand Army in 1812. The eastern offensive had only been authorized to chop Poland off from Russia before the Russians could mobilize, then swing the armies west for Schlieffen's plan. In light of the data available from the Austrians, it made perfect sense.

The Russians had attacked well ahead of their mobilization schedule. Germany's diplomatic feelers to nations on the borders of Russia, and harbouring grudges against her, had become the focus of far greater attention as a result of this, for it meant that instead of a virtually unopposed march across the Polish plain, disrupting the formation of many Russian armies before they had concentrated and encircling their personnel in vast pockets, the Germans were involved in field engagements with the Russians at nearly every point. They were winning, but it was costly, and combined with the embarassment of the French successes in Alsace, the desire to tire the Russian bear with a dozen bee-stings was overwhelming, and perfectly sound theory at any rate.

That the great nation of China was reduced, in the mind of the German government, to a bee-sting against Russia, showed how far the stature of this country in who's capital Freiherr von Heyking resided had fallen by international estimate. But nobody could deny that progress under the Republic had been made. The internal situation was still quite tenuous: Yuan Shikai, however, had thirty-six divisions, and knew how to organize troops and armies in the western manner. It was to a meeting with the rather authoritarian President of the Chinese Republic that Freiherr von Heyking traveled.

Understandably, the matter of the political fate of Kouang-Tcheou-Wan was one of great interest to the government of the Republic. It was a small territory, but it had been legally leased only to the Republic of France, and understandably the Chinese Republic desired it back. Due to the unusual circumstances prevailing in the German government at the moment, the manoeuvring of the foreign ministry to secure Austrian predominance in the operation to seize Kouang-Tcheou-Wan had gone nearly unnoticed, and because of it not even the Kaiser was expressing much interest in the affair. The Habsburgs, for their part, would be quite glad to lower the Double-Eagle from over the city the moment the Germans had decided what to do with it; they had no interest in a colonial Empire, let alone one in China.

All of that meant that Freiherr von Heyking was going to meet with the President of China to discuss the fate of a French concession now under temporary Austrian control, a bizarre state of affairs, but typical enough for the machinations of the powers in the East. It also meant that Freiherr von Heyking would be bringing good news to Yuan Shikai, and on that ground he had some real hope for substantiative negotiations. Beyond that, he would simply have to see—nobody, after all, thought Yuan Shikai to be a dupe or simpleton. He was a first-rate General and a canny politician by the standards of the East and the Freiherr kept that all well in mind.

Peking had not been changed by the war, of course. There were many Germans and Austrians and French businessmen, soldiers, and administrators of repute having returned to their countries to fight, or in the case of many of the Germans and Austrians, having been organized into the units of the Tsingtao command both for the defence of Shantung and operations against the French pacific colonies. For the most part, relations were cordial. In Shanghai the French were not permitting Austrians or Germans to enter their zone, which was seperately administered, but here the various legations maintained a tenuous facade of civility.

Rickshaws rattled down the streets at the quick scampering pace of the rickshaw men, streets lined with throngs of people, most of whom averted their eyes from the sight of the 1910 Mercedes landau carrying Freiherr von Heyking. The driver was quite skilled in navigating through the Peking traffic, and people generally avoided the diplomatic cars with their little national flags waving, out of either fear or hatred if Chinese, and courtesy if a foreigner. A crazy tangle of architecture slowly gave way to the more organized formality and calm of the government sector, though calm was always relative in Peking.

The landau stopped and Freiherr von Heyking with his aide got out, entering to the Presidential residence and administrative offices of the Republic through the South Sea Gate, and receiving the courtesy salute of the guards there; above them hung a nameboard declaring the President of the Chinese Republic to be Yuan Shikai. The appointment had been scheduled in advance, and events in the south—with Kouang-Tcheou-Wan, of course—meant that it was actually kept on time as efficiently as any German might appreciate. For the moment, the German ambassador would have the full addition of the President of China.

Yuan Shikai cut a dapper figure by European standards, and showed fully the intelligence possible of his race. No European would presume the man before him to be stupid; even the greatest of racists would assume Yuan Shikai to be possessing of the full measure of cold-hearted oriental cunning. He was, of course, and had many other traits beside; though he was not without his weaknesses, his rise to power had so far never seen anyone given the chance to play them against his ambitions, which were fully equal in magnitude to his abilities and perhaps greater. His mustache was gray these days, but otherwise age had treated him well, and he certainly still seemed every inch the military man, not given over to dissolution.

Of course, the Germans did not as a rule underestimate the peoples of the Orient. On the contrary, the Kaiser's enthusiastic overestimations of the Orient posed in terms of apocalyptic conflict were the biggest problem that the German Empire had with the educated classes of China.

“Your Excellency,” Freiherr von Heyking bowed slightly to President Yuan. “Thank you for receiving me so promptly on such short notice.”

“There are matters to discuss of importance, so I do not think to wait, Baron,” Yuan Shikai replied. “Please, do sit.”

The conversation was awkward and stilted, but not to the point of either man having difficulty in their speech with the other. Freiherr von Heyking settled down, his aide standing by his side.

“Your Excellency, the matter which I wish to discuss of course involves the French concession of the city of Kouang-Tcheou-Wan, which was recently taken by joint Austro-German forces and is now fully within our possession.”

“I had thought as much, Baron. You must understand the Chinese position on this matter—it is very clear. The lease of Kouang-Tcheou-Wan was to the French state alone.”

“We could not allow the French to maintain a coaling station at that location, Your Excellency, so we were forced to act, though we do not dispute the Chinese position on the nature of foreign control over Kouang-Tcheou-Wan.”

That had Yuan Shikai interested. The German ambassador had effectively yielded the point without any negotiation at all. “The German government, then, has no desire to control the concession?”

“None whatsoever, Your Excellency,” Freiherr von Heyking replied.

“That is very good—a pleasure to hear. However, the Austrian flag flies over the city at the moment, Baron,” Yuan Shikai noted.

“A matter of military formality, Your Excellency.” The Baron smiled, indulging to Yuan Shikai's own military background. “The Austrians were the principle force involved in the assault of the city, taken by a group under the command of an Austrian officer. It was fully their right to raise the flag of the Habsburg monarchy over the city, but they have no desire to administer it. I have with me a note..” And at that juncture his aide handed him the formal letter, which he then produced to Yuan Shikai—it was of course in French—stating the Austrian position. He then continued his sentence: “Declaring that the Austrian government is prepared to act in concert with Germany on the matter of the disposition of Kouang-Tcheou-Wan.”

“Then I am most curious to hear the intent of the German government, Baron, regarding the disposition of Kouang-Tcheou-Wan,” Yuan Shikai answered, rather skeptically to be sure.

“It is the position of the German government that Kouang-Tcheou-Wan should be returned to the Chinese Republic without reservation or delay, as soon as the material aspects of the transfer can be arranged and implemented,” Freiherr von Heyking replied with an appearance of pleased generousity. “The Chinese Republic has a full legal right to Kouang-Tcheou-Wan which we do not presume to dispute on account of our having removed the French presence for our own strategic interests. Because of this we are now prepared to restore the city and place no stipulations on that restoration. The German Empire, which even now fights to uphold the sanctity of international law and order against governments which would support the actions of anarchists and assasins, would not ever consided in its counsels doing otherwise.”

“Then meetings with the appropriate staff of the German and Austrian embassies should be arranged immediately to coordinate this action. You are planning a public announcement, Baron, I would presume?”

“Of course, Your Excellency.” There was no sense in pretending that the German Empire would not be milking the issue for as much general positive publicity in the world as it could manage, though of course only the Americans, sympathetic as they were to China and with their open-door policy, would be likely to really respond favourably.

It was almost as if Yuan Shikai was satisfied at having found some kind of ulterior motive in the whole business, not, of course, trusting simple altruism on the part of any state. But there was certainly more. There was a war waging and there were plots in the air, as there always were doing general conflicts of the powers.

“Do you have anything else to bring to my attention beyond this excellent news regarding Kouang-Tcheou-Wan?” Yuan Shikai queried rather obligingly to press home the point.

“As a matter of fact there is indeed another issue which could bear some discussion,” Freiherr von Heyking answered with an indulgent expression of his own. “The German Empire, finding itself locked in a general contest with the French and Russian states, has observered the long and unfortunate history of the penetration of those two nations into the territory long claimed and ruled by the Qing administration of China to which your Republic is the legitimate heir. We have noted the advance of French arms which has seen the annexation of vast areas of the Chinese tributary states of Indochina and the securing of the independence of Siam from Chinese vassalage as well; and we have seen the Russians advancing into and indeed annex half of Manchuria, and now they have also caused revolt in the Mongolian territories of the Chinese nation and have annexed other regions in Turkestan. All of this has happened within the lifetime of many men still alive today; great have been the misfortunes of the Chinese nation.”

That speech can mean only one thing, Yuan Shikai thought before it had even finished, and he was surprised by the audacity of it and perhaps even the innocence in which it was proposed, considering that the reputation of the Chinese Army of late was not all that great, though he had made every effort of due diligence to change it.

“The Chinese nation has indeed suffered from much misfortune of late. Most of it, of course, at the hands of the mismanagement of the old Qing regime over our affairs,” Yuan Shikai replied calmly, never giving away a thought. “Indeed, it would be undeniable to say that a great part of that misfortune has come at the hands of the French Republic and the Russian Empire. But Germany has, though your nation, Baron, does indeed have a fine reputation, particularly in the enlightened and cooperative administration of Tsingtao and your interests in Shantung, still nonetheless never shown a particular affinity for the struggles of China to modernize and preserve her territorial integrity. Why do you then bring up these matters?”

“Because, Your Excellency, War has a logic of its own, and the situation the German Empire now finds itself in lends strongly to the idea of the improvement of relations with China and the strengthening of military ties for the support of our joint interests.”

He means to draw me into the war, Yuan Shikai mused, surprised and perhaps somewhat flattered at the audacity of the proposal and the German estimation that it would be worth their time to conduct negotiations with Germany. The Germans, as masters of the military science, would certainly not concern themselves with China in light of the current conflict without some kind of understanding of the difficulties facing the Chinese military, and a seriously plan to utilize it nonetheless. Yuan Shikai was prepared, certainly, to carry on negotiations long enough to determine precisely what this was.

“I would not be adverse to entering into negotiations to that effect,” Yuan Shikai replied, and then added a moment later: “However, Baron, as a gesture of German interest in Chinese military affairs it would be greatly appreciated if this interest, certainly reciprocated among all the Chinese officers who follow the military science and look with interest toward the current conflict in Europe, I would request that first of all that the German government allow a number of Chinese military personnel to be sent to the German armies operating in Russia to observe the conduct of the war.”

“I am pleased to say, Your Excellency, that your request can easily be accomadated.”

“Then, Baron, let us arrange for further meetings, with such supporting staff as-is necessary, to determine how best to support our mutual interests.”


LUBLIN, POLAND
SEPTEMBER 5th, 1914


In the dim light of the setting sun the Russian attackers were difficult to see as they made their way towards the Austrian positions. They approached softly and quietly, their NCOs ready to enforce the silence order with physical punishment, though that would be unnecessary. The 1st Grenadier Brigade had taken casualties pushing through the Austrian screen in the morning, and even more leading the assault on the primary defenses, but those successes had merely reinforced their morale and pride. Now they would make one final push before night fell and made combat risky, and with luck disrupt the enemy attempt to set up another line. They were nearly to the point that the lead battalion would cast off the effort at silence…

Gefreiter Janos Pázmány sensed movement in the overgrown field ahead of the hastily prepared positions of Feldjägerbataillon 11,and dropped his spade. He took up his Mannlicher rifle instead, scanning the area through its sights. He couldn’t make out what was moving through, but something was clearly there. He shouted to his sergeant; “Feldwebel! There is movement to our front!”

Sergeant Döhl looked up at Pázmány, and tried to peer through the bush. He was about to tell the private to return to work when he too noticed the waving of grass, and what could be… “Cease digging! Pick up your rifles!” he ordered the squad. “Gefreiter,” he ordered Pázmány, “take the first shot you are able to.” Janos had earned the Sharpshooting Lanyard for Jäger troops, and was easily the best marksman in the squad. The sergeant also sent one private to find the lieutenant and warn him of possible Russian movements along their positions.

Several tense moments passed, and Feldwebel Döhl was beginning to hope he had simply been spooked by a stag when Janos fired. The sharp retort of the rifle pierced the still atmosphere, and then there was a sharp cry of alarm from about five hundred meters ahead. It was followed by a nightmare as swarming Russian infantry picked themselves up and began a full blown run towards the half-prepared Austrian trenches, with a throaty shout of “Urrrraaaa!” answering the shouts of alarm from the Austrian positions.

The attack began in earnest along the lines of the 11th Feldjäger battalion as well as primarily Slovak Infantry Regiment 72, an unexpected blow that caught both formations off guard. A brigade of the Grenadier including a Life Guards regiment, operating even as it was cut away from its parent division and as part a grab-bag of units separated from their former commands by the German advance, was a truly formidable opponent. The Austrians were lucky that the nature of the attack, the lateness of the day, and the lack of preparation on the Russian side prevented any great support. But they too would lack artillery and had only a handful of machine guns ready to fire into the advancing Russian waves, and if they were dislocated then First Army would be forced to fall back on Lublin itself for proper defensive lines.

Janos worked his bolt again, taking a cursory aim and firing into the onrushing Russians; there wasn’t enough light to pick out the officers or other good targets, and the momentum of the charge was only going to be broken by taking down as many of the Russians as possible. It was impossible to see individual results as the entire line threw down shovels and began firing into the onrushing foe, but clearly Russians were tumbling into the dirt as the Jäger fired home. Not nearly enough Russians, though, and the bayonets of their rifles gleaned menacingly in the dying sunlight. Desperation was beginning to take hold of the Jäger troops as the Russians crossed the yards that separated them, ready to plunge into the Austrian positions.

A volley of rifle fire, though inaccurate, came from the Russian ranks as they closed to a hundred meters. A bullet whizzed by his face, making Janos flinch, but his practiced hands continued working the bolt lever regardless. Other Austrian troops were not as lucky, with cries of pain and surprise coming now from the lines around him, but the Russian fire was taken while on the move. The Russian guardsmen were not stopping to take aim, would not disrupt the momentum of their advance even as the Austrian machine guns finally began to rake their front ranks. The Schwarzlose sections were too few in number and opening up too late to stop the charge by making the Russians stumble over their dead, and a wave of steel met the thin Austrian skirmish line.

A Russian charged through, rifle leveled with wicked bayonet out, clearly aiming to impale the Hungarian sharpshooter. Pázmány stepped aside at the last minute, turning himself so the steel blade went through air occupied by his torso only a moment ago. The Russian half-stumbled when he failed to meet the expected resistance, and before he could recover himself Janos slammed the butt of his rifle into the guardsman’s face. The hard wooden stock crushed bone and pulped cartilage, and the Russian slumped down to the ground and did not move. The Austrian soldier was too busy to deliver his a coup de grâce with his own bayonet, as another Russian followed on the heels of the first. Janos calmly threw his rifle back into position and shot the Russian down as he bulled onward with bayonet leveled.

He sensed, more than saw, that he was dangerously exposed and began stepping back, firing into the onrushing enemy force even as he did so. A quick glance at his side showed more Russian bodies, but also a large number of Austrian dead. Behind him he heard shouts of warning as more Russians closed in and so he spun on his heels and ran towards the nearest cover, the mounts of dirt that had been piled up by the exertions of his squad. Sergeant Döhl commanded from that unintended parapet, unharmed through the fight, though half the squad looked to be missing or absent now. He vaulted over the top and turned back around, kneeling to present a smaller target to the Russians as he lined his rifle up over the earthen pile.

“We were supposed to be fighting in the trenches, not behind this dirt,” Janos muttered in complaint. He continued to fire, stopping only to load another magazine from his pouch as the old one emptied. The Russians kept coming, and his ears could tell him that they were pushing further down in many sections of the line. A small wave of Russian infantry targeted their positions, firing at the Austrians and working their way methodically towards them. Döhl cried out “Volley fire!” and the squad fired as one as the Russians continued to approach, knocking down three of the enemy. The squad continued to fire even as the Russians laid down their own rifle fire, both sides blazing away until the Russians resolved on another charge.

Janos heard a sharp cry from his side, and another private from the squad fell onto his side. Blood and bits of brain matter were slopped on his uniform, and his stomach rose up in rebellion, bile forcing itself up his throat. He turned away in horror from the sight, and pushed his former comrade off his body, and froze up for that moment in absolute dread. But the firing from his position reached a crescendo that focused him on his duties once more, and he peered out over the earthen mound to see the Russians falling back, finally. They were still firing at Pázmány and his comrades, though, and elsewhere the battalion was falling back rapidly. The fire fight went on for minutes afterward until a volley of shots rang out, this time from the right of the squad. Sergeant Döhl fell down, wounded, as did several other Jägers, and the squad’s morale collapsed in an instance; enfilading fire from the Russians could only mean one thing.

“The damn Slovaks have collapsed on us!” Janos shouted. Korporal Roga took over with Döhl down, and ordered him to stop yelling. “Pázmány, Raich, Foldenyi, we’re covering the rest of the squad. They’ll cover us when they reach cover. The rest of you, fall back!”

The four remaining Jägers split their fire between the two Russian groups, allowing both to close in rapidly. The other troops headed into a run for a nearby group of trees. One of the men went down, but the rest made it to safety and set up quickly, and began firing at the Russians within a moment of reaching cover. That produced an immediate effect on the enemy troops, giving a small reprieve to the Korporal and the rest of the squad, but it was clear that their group was the furthest out of the Austrian position. The Russian attack wasn’t going to be stopped, and it was time to get out of the way or be overrun.

Roga shook Janos on his shoulder after he fired off another round; Pázmány was annoyed not to be able to see if he had made his target. “Time to go, private,” the NCO said, and motioned towards the trees. “Make it there. Then we keep falling back. Now go!”

Janos stood up and started running. Bullets whizzed by, and he started panting as he exerted every bit of himself to outrace the Russians. It was close. Infanterist Foldenyi collapsed over midway to the tree grove. Roga cried out in pain just before reaching the trees, tripping over as he was wounded in the thigh; one of the other squad members risked himself to step into the open and drag their surviving leader to safety. Roga, between swearing at the Russians and the wound, reorganized the fallback teams. Pázmány would be among the first to retreat this time.

The same sequence played itself out as the squad retreated back towards the main lines of the 11th Jägerbataillon, with two more casualties along the way, until the squad was “safe” in Lublin proper by nightfall, at below half strength. The entire battalion had taken dreadful losses, and had the dreadful news of learning that Infantry Regiment 72, which had been further advanced in its preparations and had more machine guns, had only fallen back after the Jäger recoil had exposed them to enfilading fire from the Guards brigade. The Russian victory had come at a cost, and the splendid show of initiative by the brigade commander had found the hesitant 10th Army commander, General Pflug, unprepared to exploit to the fullest. The day passed into night and 1st Army managed to re-establish a defensive position around Lublin itself; both forces knew instinctively that the next day would see harder fighting yet.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Operation Heinrich: Chapter 13

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.

LUBLIN, POLAND
6 SEPTEMBER, 1914


At the beginning of the day, Russian forces had concentrated their efforts on breaking into Lublin proper. Heavy artillery culled from fortress commands in western Poland bombarded the city outskirts, reducing many buildings to rubble. The initial assault, spearheaded this time by elements of a Caucasian Grenadier brigade, punched through the light defenses the Austrians had set up in the immediate countryside around Lublin, but swiftly bogged down when trying to force their way into the city. The rubble created by the heavy shelling of the city throughout the morning created a great many strong points for Austrian resistance, while making it more difficult for Russian troops to maneuver around the streets of the city. The battle soon devolved into a bloody close-range stalemate as Russian and Austrian soldiers fought bitterly street by street, both lacking the impetus or numbers to drive through the other side.

Lublin was torn up by the fighting, and it was a sad sight to behold. Some of the Austrian officers, particularly of Polish ancestry, regretted to see what behalf the city, and there was an unusual, workmanlike silence in Dankl's headquarters at the news of the fighting and the dust and smoke rising from the city which provided evidence of the devastation in every such a brief period of time. But the city had already been damaged by the earlier fighting when it was taken, and though the Russian shelling was quite severe it was just another of the realities of war, and particularly this war, which had already proven bloody beyond expectation. Besides, those torn buildings provided cover for the Austrians to hold against a general Russian assault even in limited numbers, and that would be crucial for the battle. Of all things, that mattered the most today.

As the street fighting continued, Austrian heavy artillery in turn began to rain down into the Russian units being feed into the city. Spotters in the Piast-era royal castle relayed information via telegraph line to howitzer batteries dug in on the reverse slope of the Wiatków heights, allowing a high degree of accuracy in the bombardment. The results were devastating to the morale of the Russian units, which was already delicate due to the palpable desperation of their officers and the general level of disorganization in 10th Army. It also prevented the timely withdrawal of units that had already suffered heavy casualties and had been ordered back into reserve status as reinforcements arrived. With Russian artillery already proving ineffective at supporting the advance into Lublin, it quickly became apparent to General Pflug that the heights had to be cleared if the recapture of Lublin and breaking of the encirclement effort were to be achieved.

Reserve units were mustered to support the skirmish line opposite the heights. The 1st Grenadier Brigade, having rested following their ferocious battle last evening, would now be committed to clearing the heights. Field artillery batteries, largely useless in supporting the street fighting, were wheeled out and concentrated to provide support to the advance up the heights. As the Russian artillery was setting, Austrian field guns on the heights opened up into the Russian lines, the bombardment obviously aimed at disrupting the preparations for the assault. Russian crews worked feverishly to get their own guns into action, ignoring the casualties that steadily mounted while the enemy pieces, many of them captured Russian guns themselves, continued to pour fire into them. The Austrian preparations had included sandbags and trenches, giving them an edge the unprotected Russian crews lacked, but soon they too came under fire.

The Austrian guns were better protected and prepared, but the Russians had more field guns available and proved eager to accept the artillery duel foisted on them. Hundreds of shells passed back and forth each minute as both sides made a maximum effort to take the other out of the picture. In the meantime the infantry nearby both suffered from near-misses and shrapnel slicing through the air. With the field artillery of both sides concentrating on each other, the Russian commander viewed the situation as acceptable to begin the attack to clear the heights.

Holding the extensive ridges of the Wiatków Heights was the 2nd Infantry Division, with its fellow X Corps unit, the 46th Landwehr division, holding its left flank to the San river. Two landsturm brigades, with 15 battalions of infantry between them, were tasked as reserve forces for the left flank of 1st Army, including the heights. The 1st Austrian Landsturm Brigade and its 6 battalions had however already been put into positions along the slopes of the heights, in hopes that their weaknesses would be mitigated in a positional defense. General der Infanterie Hugo Meixner commanded X Corps and thus had overall command of the left flank. His objective was rather prosaic; like Parmenio at so many of Alexander’s battles, he would have to hold his flank and draw the enemy’s attention while the decisive blow fell elsewhere. That was not an enviable task.

“General Dankl has given me a most unenviable task,” he muttered quietly to himself—words half breathed, half thought—while looking yet another time through his binoculars. Unenviable, but most prosaic indeed.

He turned and walked over in measure strides to where his Chief of Staff was receiving reports as they came in. Meixner's presence in the command post was impressive enough, a solid figure with a salt-and-pepper mustache who maintained a calm bearing despite his personal distaste for his appointed task in the action. To stand on the defensive was galling in primus, and this moreso.

“Has receipt of the operational objectives by all the regimental commanders has been acknowledged?” Meixner queried flatly, perhaps more peremptory in his request than usual.

“Sir! Yes; I was just receiving the final confirmations now.. Do you want to review any of the status messages on the regiments yourself?”

“Now that we are positioned there is nothing else to do until the enemy moves,” Meixner said, an acknowledgement he rather loathed to make out loud, whilst concluding: “The counterstroke shall be General Dankl's, after all.”

It was however the Russians that thought to land in a decisive blow this afternoon, as four brigades, including the superb 1st Grenadiers, advanced on the heights. The flags of the Grenadier Lifeguards Regiment were unfurled at the front of the advance, and the Russians began a set-piece infantry assault as shells passed overhead. Artillery fire from the Austrian howitzers on the reverse slope now shifted ponderously towards the field before the heights, adjusting themselves to the observations of spotters at the heights. As well the field guns facing the advance broke off their duels with the Russian guns to fire into the slowly advancing enemy infantry, pouring high explosive shells into ordered ranks. Russian counterbattery fire soon redirected their attention to their own concerns, leaving the Austrian infantry to fend for themselves.

Outnumbered though they were, the men of the 2nd Infantry and their attached Landsturm units were in an excellent defensive position, enhanced by many hours worth of preparations. A line of interconnected trenches ahead of the body of the infantry battalions had the available machine guns well positioned to shoot into the advancing Russians. Barbed wire, appropriated from cattle herders and supply stores in the town, had been strung across most of the easiest approaches up the ridges, while bodies of picked men covered the more difficult paths that had been pointed out by locals. The heights had been stormed relatively easily by Austrian formations in their initial attack on Lublin, in the face of numerically inferior and confused defenders who had lacked time to prepare the battlefield. The task of the Russian attackers was an order of magnitude more difficult, at least.

The Russian units being hurled at those defenses included the best soldiers available in an Empire of a hundred and forty million souls, and were driven by desperation and pride to achieve a victory. There was fragility to the Russian morale, but so far they had pushed back the Austrians and were in high spirits, with the officers of the Grenadiers brigades providing an encouraging example to the enlisted men around them, and inspiring many officers in the other units assigned to the attack. In this way the morale of the Russians improved and the willingness of the men to press on through the murderous fire of the Austrians was sustained.

Austrian machine guns worked a fearful execution among the enemy ranks, while massed rifle fire from a higher position proved devastatingly effective. The Russians in contrast had severe difficulties with returning fire due to the elevation of the ridge and the entrenchment of the Austrian soldiers. They were pushed ahead anyway by the pressures of desperation and fear of letting down their comrades, and something else besides. As the flag of the Lifeguard Grenadiers wavered three times in the front ranks, its bearers shot down and staggering, it was picked up and once again renewed the faith of the Russian soldiers. The officers of the brigades of the attack, shamed by the example of the Grenadiers, were leading their men forward and suffered the casualties that doing so entailed, but as they fell the common soldiers pressed on without losing heart.

From a distance well behind the line of safety from Austrian artillery, their General observed the attack through a telescope. Reports began cycling in as the men swarmed up the ridges, looking almost as a horde of ants, while corpses were strewn over the field and at the base of the ridgeline. Dispatch riders were sent to order the Russian guns to support the infantry more directly instead of engaging in an artillery duel with the Austrian field guns. Reserves were ordered brought up to jumping off points even as the first edge of the Russian advance began to struggle its way to the Austrian trenches on the ridges. The attack was going to take longer than he had anticipated, and the bloody price paid by his troops gave him a momentary chill, but there was simply no other choice in the matter. Tenth Army had to break the Austrians in Lublin to escape encirclement, and to do that the Austrian howitzers on the heights had to be silenced.

The advance of the Russian soldiers so far presented an entirely one-sided affair for the Landsturm battalions occupying the primary defensive line on the ridge. Each battalion, however, was being borne down upon by a full brigade, and even the forward machine guns could not stop the momentum of the Russian advance. The time cost imposed on staggering up the ridge bought the Austrian second-line troops more precious minutes to pour unanswered, aimed rifle fire into the enemy at close range. The machine gun crews were forced to vacate under the cover of that fire, drawing back much further up the ridge to the secondary positions where the regulars waited. The sudden shift of the Russian shelling finally forced their heads down even as Russian officers drove their men forward, risking the danger of their own artillery to close the distance to the forward trench. Finally the artillery fire slackened off, and the Russian infantry made their push into the Austrian foe.

Weary and bloodied, the Russians were nonetheless energized by the sudden ability to retaliate. Their skirmish line pushed ahead, with squads detached at available cover to harass the Austrian trenches, providing some measure of support to the body of the bayonet push. Even the Austrian field guns, firing directly into the densely massed Russian infantry over open bore sights, could not stop the sudden deadly onrush. The Austrian second-line infantry fought with the desperation of terror to keep the Russians at bay with rifle fire, and then at the bayonet point, and even with nearby shovels. They were not, however, long service troops nor in the bloom of youth, and their advantages in position and preparation had not prevented this fatal test of endurance and strength. The affair took on the manner of a see-saw, as both forces pushed back; it was not a long affair, as the Landsturm had already been given orders to withdraw as the Russians closed in.

It had been a cold-blooded decision to throw the second-line troops into the fray at the start. General Meixner had been convinced that the forces under his command could have stopped the Russians cold everywhere on the left flank, but General Dankl was angling for another feat entirely. And so the Landsturm were sacrificed to the brunt of the strongest enemy attack, and now paid the price as they fell back raggedly, with far too many of their fellows behind. They had inflicted a heavy toll on the Russians, and none save the Grenadiers were eager to follow them. But even as the Austrians abandoned their positions and left a secure foothold on the ridgeline to the Russians, the reserves held back by General Pflug were released to reinforce the drive. A fresh infusion of strength would obviously be required to carry the attack over the ridges themselves and deal with the Austrian artillery positions on the reverse slope. Thus more Russian troops were funneled into the Wiatków heights even as the meat-grinder of the fighting in Lublin continued.

Night did not stop the fighting. Russian troops maneuvered for position on the ridges with ceaseless probing attacks on the 2nd Infantry Division. The Austrians in turn met their attacks coolly, and sent out parties of their own to scout out Russian concentrations. They were marked down for attention from the field guns in the morning, even as the howitzers continued to rain down shells on both sides. Neither the Russian or Austrian commanders were much concerned about the rate ammunition was expended, and the effects of nighttime shelling were predicted to be daunting. Front-line soldiers had only fitful sleep for the most part, but their available preparations held out well enough despite the weight of artillery being brought down on them. Anticipation of the coming day, which both sides could dimly feel would be decisive, was as much the cause as the noise and danger of the guns or threats of nighttime raids.

Meanwhile, outside Lublin, the men of the Polish Legion waited, tense with barely suppressed excitement. They looked forward to proving themselves in combat, and their Komendant Pilsudski had promised them a glorious role. They would show the world the valor of a Free Polish manhood, of this they were certain. General der Kavallerie Dankl, for his part, pushed aside the doubts and qualms he had about the use of the Legion, and contented himself that whatever else, they were all volunteers.


ENE OF MOLSHEIM,
ELSASS-LOTHRINGEN
6 SEPTEMBER 1914


The French had prepared extensively for the attack that they now undertook to execute. It was centered around the liberated city of Molsheim in Alsace, and was directed toward the northeast. Far enough west that the fortress guns of Strasbourg could not support the defenders in this sector, but in the flat ground of the Rhine valley as opposed to the terrain of the Vosges where the last effort of the French Army in the eastern sector of the front had been bloodily repulsed by the Germans and their incredible superiourity of artillery.

Conversely, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, commander of Fifth Army, had also received reinforcements. Though two ersatz corps had been sent to Bulow's Second Army to replace the loss of the regular Garde corps there, another two—including freshly organized reserve units hastily added to fill out their ranks (for only seven infantry brigades were available instead of eight, initially) had been made available, just in time to reinforce the precariously thin lines of the Vosges with one. The second formed, along with the lone cavalry division in the west, the strategic reserve of the German armies in the west.

This reserve, and indeed the western armies in general, were now under the control of General Erich von Falkenhayn. Initially, Bulow, commanding the Second Army, had held a nominal authority over the defensive operations of the west against France, but Falkenhayn had been continually pressing the Kaiser for a supreme commander in the west. Moltke had fought this on the grounds that he was the appropriate commander of the west, and that the diversion of the armies to the east was strictly temporary. Bulow could direct the western front operations until the main body of the troops was shifted west.

It had quickly become apparent that the main body of the troops would not be headed west as soon as had been hoped for, however, and with that Falkenhayn's argument against Moltke had been given ammunition. Once the fighting was general on both fronts Falkenhayn's argument had gained still more credence as the French overran most of Alsace and the armies in the east were forced into great battles against the fully mobilized Russians, incurring severe casualties. But of course with the Kaiser decisions, even the right ones, were rarely made for the most rational and direct of reasons. It was instead the fact that his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm, was the commander of Fifth Army, which was being forced to yield Alsace, that drove his motivation.

Strangely, too, since for many years the Kaiser had been estranged with his son. But from the onset of the war the Kaiser in his typical enigmatic and easily swayed moods had forgotten all about that, and the Crown Prince again became his precious heir and firstborn son in his eyes. Though nominally acknowledging that the war effort should not revolve around the personal bravery of the Hohenzollerns persay, he was easily swayed by arguments which could improve the situation of Fifth Army, and Von Falkenhayn had ultimately been successful in arguing that the presence of a supreme commander for the west would improve the situation dramatically and allow for Fifth Army to ultimately counterattack.

Naturally he had himself in mind for the position, and the Kaiser, who never thought much into such things, concurred immediately. Bulow protested nearly as immediately as the Kaiser had made his mind up, and the situation had festered for several days as recriminations and counter-recriminations swirled in the German high command. Falkenhayn had succeeded in establishing authority and putting together the bare necessities of an overall command center for the western front, but the one issue which had taken the longest to resolve was the disposition of the overall front reserves.

The Crown Prince had asked for control of the three brigades guarding the east bank of the Rhine, plus the Grand Duchy of Baden's landsturm which had been called up when Alsace was occupied, to defend the east bank against French forays or an all-out crossing attempt to outflank the German armies in the Rhineland and threaten the German heartland. These forces, however, remained under the nebulous control of the military department of the Grand Duchy of Baden, for want of anyone else to establish an authority over them higher than their own brigade commanders for coordination. He had also asked for the second of the available ersatz corps to be sent to him as well to restore Fifth Army's reserve. This had also been denied.

Once Falkenhayn was in control of the situation this request was duly repeated; but by now it had been quite some time, and it was clear the French were preparing for a major push. In light of this evidence, Falkenhayn had instead--and perhaps because it was the smaller force and only of cavalry, rather than an important infantry corps which might be needed to salvage the situation with the dangerous appearance of a similar, if slower, French buildup around Verdun—sent the reserve cavalry corps of the front to provide Fifth Army's reserve. It was, to be sure, closer, and could be moved faster, and that was probably what got it into position in time as the Crown Prince's reserve, for scarcely had it been moved into place behind his lines than the morning of the sixth of September dawned, and with it, the sound of the French 150mm and 75mm guns commencing a massed barrage against the German lines.

Crown Prince Wilhelm rose from his bed to the sound of the guns. His command post was a medieval castle, one of five hundred such in Alsace, dug into warrens of rock and firmly built, safely behind the lines, and on the telegraph. The advantages of modern and ancient warfare were thus combined to give him a central position from which to coordinate the movement of a vast army. It was, though, still close enough to the flatter terrain to the east on which the French were attacking for the sound of the guns to be ominously near. That same sound then wafted across the great Rhine, where the people of Baden waited nervously for war to visit them, and the Grand Duke of that state was preparing another entreaty to the Kaiser that his precious navy do something to defend the river as it ought for all the money put into it.

He dressed quickly, a servant helping him with his greatcoat, for it was most chilly inside the old castle on an autumn morning, and thence proceeded down to the operations center established in the rooms of the schloss without further delay. There, Generalleutnant Konstantin Schmidt von Knobelsdorf, his Chief of Staff, was already at work. He had a map spread out on one table, covered in reports, and his breakfast on a plate in a cleared corner, and was somewhat surprised by the arrival of the Crown Prince so swiftly. But Crown Prince Wilhelm did not see any reason, or time, for delay: He had worried about this situation for far to long to tarry in responding to it when it had now, it seemed, finally come.

The Crown Prince gestured to his Chief of Staff for him to remain seating. There was no point in disturbing his efficient little niche at that moment for formality.

“Where's the French barrage concentrated?” A cup of coffee was thrust into his hand by a soliticious attendant as the heir of the Prussian Crown moved to look over the map.

Konstantin Schmidt responded to the dismissal of formality and the direct question well. He pointed out, without comment, a series of grid squares on the map he had out with the grease pencil he was holding. “You can see the ones I've outlined there, Your Highness. As usual there's little really heavy artillery to speak of but the French do have a much larger number of fifteen centimeter howitzers here than usual so we can assume that the attack is, at the least, a serious endeavour. They don't have enough large artillery to waste it on a diversion, not in this sector anyway.”

“Were the minenwerfer batteries due to be repositioned to that sector emplaced in time?” The performance of the mortars had of course caught the attention of the Crown Prince immediately, and with the reinforcement of a corps into the Vosges, he had consented to weaken their massed strength but add their ability to support along the general line.

“Yes, Your Highness, the attack appears to be falling against XVI Corps, and they have eight of the twenty-four centimeter minenwerfer as assigned, dug in. General von Mudra has only just reported in that he is holding his artillery back from counterbattery fire to meet the French assault when it comes.”

“Good. We're hard pressed enough for ammunition as it is,” the Crown Prince noted, thinking over the matter.. It's very premature, and yet.. “I'm worried about Baron von Mudra's ability to hold. He is a good commander but the French will be exerting their maximum effort here to cut us off from Strasbourg; they will probably expect us to sortie the garrison and the independent brigades there, trusting the artillery to defend the fortresses if it comes to that. So let us move our cavalry reserve into place on the right flank of XVI Corps so that if they must be committed they'll sweep down from the direction of the Vosges.”

“A sound positioning, Your Highness, but the cavalry will only be of marginal use in reinforcing the lines if it comes to that.”

“If there is a general collapse a flank attack into the pursuit of XVI Corps could salvage the situation,” the Crown Prince replied, acknowledging in that, that his mind was on the worst case in this moment. Their units had suffered to much—casualties left every single one of the corps and independent brigades which Fifth Army had started the war with badly understrength—and the enemy had massed to many troops here to make victory certain. But they could still pull it off. They would have to.


The French infantry attack began around 0930 in the morning after a three hour barrage. This attack had begun in planning before the disaster in the Vosges, which had been the result of opportunistic orders, and little other than a greater concentration of artillery before the attack had been achieved in terms of lessons learned. At least the French now had the luxury of choosing their position of attack, and so the artillery facing them here was markedly reduced, and the German ammunition situation sufficiently poor that the troops had been stirred by the sight of the batteries blasting unaided at the German lines.

After the guns had fallen silent, the 75mm pieces were at once limbered up and prepared to be run forward to support the advance of the troops. The flags went up all along the French lines, and following the proud banners of the regiments and the tricolor, the French in their resplendent uniforms went forward, advancing at an angle across the shadow of the rising sun, bayonets fixed and bands playing their haughty, high-stepping quick-marches. Of these the most prominent where the march of The Regiment of the Sambre and Meuse and the march of the Tirailleurs, and those hymns of bloody courage summarized in their own way the fighting of the day.

Tous ces fiers enfants de la Gaule
Allaient sans trêve et sans repos,
Avec leurs fusils sur l'épaule.
Courage au cœur et sac à dos,
La gloire était leur nourriture.
Ils étaient sans pain sans souliers
Là, ils couchaient sur la dure
avec leurs sacs comme oreillers.

The fierce sons of Gaul came on, bayonets reflecting the sun in their iron splendour in the light of the mid-morning. Even rudimentary entrenchments—and the German ability to, and understanding of the wisdom of, entrenching was increasing almost daily—could do a great job at defending against massed artillery, particularly when it was high-velocity, flat trajectory artillery as the 75mm guns were. The 150mm howitzers had wrought a fearsome havoc in the German trenches but there were not enough of them, and even they were not heavy enough, to disperse the German defence. And so, even here, where first glance might suppose that the terrain offered little advantage to the defender, those sons of Gaul were asked to pay for their advance in blood.

Pour nous battre, ils étaient cent mille;
A leur tête, ils avaient des rois.
Le général, vieillard débile,
Faiblit pour la première fois.
Voyant certaine la défaite,
Il réunit tous ses soldats.
Puis il fit battre la retraite
Mais eux ne l'écoutèrent pas.

Massed artillery commenced firing upon the advancing French columns. Hundreds fell in their death-throes or killed outright by the shrapnel, by the high explosive, bodies torn grusomely and survivors crippled or maimed for life in an unending torrent of human suffering and mortality which came with the roar of the shells overhead and the crash of their impact down amongst the packed, quick-stepping men in the advance. But at last the French batteries had a target in the enemy's artillery, and with mad daring the 75's were raced out to the front of the advance and unlimbered in full view of the Germans, and often within the play of their machinegun fire, to at once commence in the rapid-fire of twenty rounds a minute until their ammunition had been exhausted or the quick response of the German counterbattery fire had scythed down the gun crews into a mangled parody of life. Yet, for each minute that a gun was in action at this range, incomparable damage was done to the Germans in reply, and the French gunners never failed in throwing shell after shell in the breach for as long as they lived, firing at a rate to shame the best rifleman as they poured down fire upon the enemy.

Le choc fut semblable à la foudre.
Ce fut un combat de géant.
Ivre de gloire, ivre de poudre,
Pour mourir ils serraient les rangs.
Le régiment par la mitraille
Etait assailli de partout.
Pourtant la vivante muraille,
Impassible, restait debout.

A hundred and fourty paces a minute. The double-quick of French light infantry, famed throughout the world, both voltigeurs and tirailleurs, carrying them inexorably through the hail of shell and machinegun fire toward the German lines, spearheading the attack. Rifles fired again and again, though the advance was never once halted or even slowed for the sake of fire, as the sun proclaimeed the readiness of their bayonets by whom they would prefer to answer the vigorous musketry of their foe. The Germans played the fire of their machineguns through the French lines. The 240mm minenwerfer rained down their immense shells into the advancing French as fast as they were able, slaying great numbers with each eruption of cordite and shrapnel. Through it came the French, inexorable.

Le nombre eut raison du courage.
Un soldat restait, le dernier.
Il se défendit avec rage,
Mais bientôt fut fait prisonnier.
En voyant ce héros farouche,
L'ennemi pleura sur son sort.
Le héros prit une cartouche,
Jura, puis se donna la mort.

At the lines! The clash of arms was made equal: The French carried themselves through to a range at which they might retaliate. The German wire was mostly intact, and here was the last line of defence for their lines, as they chopped the advancing French to bloody diced pieces upon the wire with the most intense fire one could imagine. Yet the numbers of the French, their élan, and the impetous of their charge overcame even that most deadly of obstacles, and so the fighting went to the point of bayonet in the confines of the German trenches.

Here the fighting was much more even and incredibly savage. The Germans showed, though, that they to were capable of fighting in that sort of deadly war where one must kill an enemy's who face can be easily discerned. And worse, they were in some ways more adept at it, for matched against the unwieldy bayonet of the unwieldy Lebel rifle they fought with every implement they could grab, from shovels and picks and hatchets to knifes and the butts of their rifles, as well as their own bayonets, sometimes fixed and sometimes held desperately in the hand. In such close quarters, that was not a great disadvantage, and perhaps an advantage, and they had not suffered such casualties as the French. It let to a murderous combat, one which was over far sooner than might have been imagined to those who engaged in it.

As that violent exchange continued the Germans steadily got the upper hand of it, and local reserves organized vigorous counterattacks which brought about a definite change in the momentum of the fight in favour of the defenders. Leaving bodies as hacked and split as any on the worst medieval field where men had met to kill each other by brute strenght, the French were at length driven to retire after their splendid display, something forced upon them with only the utmost reluctance from the French soldiers, and the firmest combat was sustained the whole while.

Six canons balayaient la plaine,
Crachant la mort sur nos lignards.
" Mes enfants, dit le Capitaine,
Faites-moi taire ces braillards ".
Cette réplique étant très nette,
Les Turcos froncent les sourcils,
Et puis au bout de leur fusil,
Ils ajustent leur baïonnette.

The German soldiers would receive no respite. Even as they drove the French back out of their trenches in the thickest of hand to hand fighting, behind the first wave of attack came the second. These were men in a most strange position, fighting for a country which had changed their entire culture, which had brought them into the service of the Republic from the most primitive of villages, and had directed them to a strange continent, of alien plants and alien cities, and now asked them to fight and die. They did so with such incredible feats of martial skill as inspire the greatest respect as fighting men in the hearts of their opponents, and, by dint of rumour, more than a little blatant fear. They were, of course, the Tirailleurs du Marocains et Sénégalais. These lines of powerful, tall men, black of skin and in the most resplendent dress, advanced in unison with several regiments of the further famed, red-fez wearing men of the regiments of Zouaves, and again the contest was taken up.

Les Turcos, les Turcos sont de bons enfants
Les Turcos, les Turcos sont de bons enfants
Mais ils ne faut pas qu'on les em...
Sans cela la chose est certaine
Les Turcos deviennent méchants.
Ca n'empêch pas les sentiments,
Les Turcos sont de bons enfants.

A murmur ran through the German ranks when the Senegalese came into sight, their black faces faintly visible as distinct from white men, in their gallant uniforms, nothing if not more colourful than even those of the rest of the army, and lead by gaudy and fearless white officers who thought of nothing to be the first to die when leading their men to their deaths. It was distinctly a whisper of fear, for it was said that the Senegalese were cannibals who ate the prisoners they took, and such rumours are most detrimental for morale. Still... The ferocity of the German defence was unslacked, particularly in the artillery, and the play of death was already falling upon the fearsome African regiments and their compatriot Zouaves. For each step of advance at the double-quick that these regiments made, courage paid its price in a harvest of lives, Death dancing unceasingly up and down the line.

Les Turcos sont au moins cinquante
Et ces héros sont beaux à voir.
En mourant leur bouche plaisante:
Les Turcos sont des Français noirs.
Ils sautent dans l'herbe sanglante,
Allah ! ils grimpent à l'assaut,
Et quand ils arrivent en haut,
Les Turcos ne sont plus que trente.

Bravely onward they pressed, sometimes, their bayonets already dirty where they had been splashed with the blood of comrades, fallen mangled, the purple iridescence of the arteries spraying forth out onto the ground and everything all around, men drenched by it as bodies collapsed, grimaces upon their faces in a rictus of agonizing death—death brought by shrapnel and by bullet, by plunging mortar shell and the rapid-fire clatter of the maxim gun. Yet for all that, they pushed forward. They did not yield or halt in their advance, and so, despite the dreadful toll, the shattered regiments which had gone before them soon joined them in the advance, and rejoined the effort: Together, black, white, and semite, under the tricolor, the sons of France carried home their bayonets in one grand rush across the remaining distance, and once more through the issue into doubt.

Alors sans tambour ni trompette,
On voit bondir nos tirailleurs,
En un moment la place est nette,
Il ne reste plus d'artilleurs.
Et quand ils cessent de se battre,
Les six canons se trouvent pris.
Mais eux tout sanglants et meurtris
Les Turcos ne sont plus que quatre.

Here the fighting was again in the trenches. There, the French were held up on the wire. Here, the French advanced, there they were driven back. It was a seesaw struggle in the trenches, the combat without quarter, much longer and more ferocious than the first. The Senegalese and the Moroccans acquitted themselves well here, where they were feared and where they could put the traditions of their people to good work in the hand-to-hand fighting. In this way did they clear the German trenches, force the Germans back, until the front-line trenches were all but devoid of resistance, and the pockets which still held out were forced back. They had carried the day, as their comrades had in the Vosges; this time, however, there was yet another wave behind the victorious one to push onward the advance.

For a ghastly cost, the French had punched a hole in the German front. There were now just the thin reserve lines beyond, and the columns of the French advance pressed on to prepare for the assault against these as the 75's were raced up to their new positions, even under the harrying fire of the German batteries, which kept the area under a constant storm of shell. Hunkering in the captured trenches as their reinforcements arrived, the Tirailleurs and the Zouaves realized how so few of their number were left compared to the full ranks with which they had begun the assault; yet this knowledge simply made the captured trench a sacred place, bought in the blood of their brothers, from which none of them would easily withdraw.

As in the Russian attack at Lublin, there was success when the fall of night made major operations briefly halt. The Germans were driven back and had suffered a severe blow, though at the steepest of costs in the French ranks. Yet at Lublin, the Austrians had a counterattack planned from the first onset. Here, the Germans had only the dubious hope of limited reinforcement, and preparation for another day's desperate struggle to hold the lines ahead of them, and the Crown Prince did not return to his bed that night.


BOSSAU, OST PREUSSEN
6 SEPTEMBER 1914


“Proceed direction Lublin.”

The blunt order to Von Kluck had been dispatched the day before, and the receipt duly confirmed. Moltke had spent the day mostly in handing out directives to the northern armies and the operation of the four cavalry corps which were sweeping south from Vilnius as the 9th Army advanced to take that city. Vilnius did not have extensive fortifications, and some heavy artillery had been detailed to support the 9th Army to be sure of success.

Now the south was in Von Kluck's hands, and Moltke the Younger had been constantly speaking with him over the telephone and making sure that the directives were most clear, that Von Kluck must make for Lublin with all haste, try to engage Russian 10th Army if possible and keep them from escaping, and if Russian 10th army was successful against the Austrians, to salvage the situation there, and either way, complete the encirclement. For battered 1st Army, which had annihilated two opposing armies now, this was just another great task, but one of sufficient magnitude that it was straining at the capabilities of that army, such were the casualties it had suffered in those combats. There was nothing to be done for it, though: first the encirclement must be made.

Yet it was clear that the encirclement would not be as successful as it could have been in netting great numbers of German troops. Even with 7th Army now pressing against Warsaw, and the garrisons essentially cut off in the west, smaller forces moving in everywhere.. Simply, the number of troops caught was not going to be sufficient in that pocket to deal with Russia decisively...

Moltke was alone, as he preferred to be when he was thinking of deep matters, the better to receive enlightened inspiration. It was late evening and he had taken a map with him to his bed, where he studied it unceasingly, indeed, he rather meditated over it. It was in tracing his fingers over the map, imagining the terrain under them, and concentrating on the Earth itself, visualizing it, that he felt himself called to, and spoken to.

I'll move the Eastern Front Headquarters tomorrow... To Augustow, he thought, wondering precisely at that decision, of moving the headquarters to Russian territory.. And also to the north and east. In retrospect it seemed odd, for certainly the fulcrum was with 1st Army, was it not? But as Motlke looked over the map and the names brought back memories of the dispositions of the Russian troops from the day's last reports, he realized there was something more to it.

His eyes fell on Brest-Litvosk, and they lingered there for a while. At last he understood clearly, he thought to himsef: Brest is essentially our new objective, as the Austrians have insisted, they are in fact right—but the method of German arms must be different.

3rd and 8th Armies were the ones in position, along with the four cavalry corps. Moltke thought about that a bit longer. It was very tempting, the idea of forming those ten cavalry divisions into an army. Tempting enough a thought, at any rate, to ignore the other temptation, which was to let his thoughts return to the fiasco of the western front thanks to Falkenhayn's vainglorious posturing with the Kaiser. No, no, there are decisive opportunities here--that, and 9th Army was quite weak; probably one of the stronger cavalry corps should be assigned to it. But that would still leave seven cavalry divisions..

Von Prittwitz would have to go. His replacement was desperately needed; it seemed that the man should come from 8th Army, and in that moment, though he knew there would be much opposition for it, Moltke resolved on promoting Von Francois to replace him. That left the issue of organizing a 10th Army, and for that task there seemed no-one better than the tie for the best corps commander of 8th Army with Francois—General Mackensen, the old Leib Garde Husaren officer. Yet a proper 10th Army would need infantry; of this, there would be one fresh corps available in the near future, and perhaps a second could be formed out of the Konigsburg garrison and landsturm. If the Woyrsch was entrained to the east—surely the Austrians could handle the isolated garrisons in a cut-off Poland—that would provide enough for a proper army.

And all of that, of course, would prepare the way for a second and even more successful series of operations against Russia. Moltke went to bed, contented in his inspiration, and not having realized that he had effectively abandoned the idea of an attack against France through Belgium before the winter came, or, more or less, until the next year, to pursue the annihilation of the Russian armies in the field, be it for good or ill.

[Thirdfain]

Will we get to see the Dreadnoughts of the Imprial and Royal Navy in action? The Archduke loved them, and they should see at least some action against the filthy French....

[fgalkin]

Marina's not posting on SDN anymore (again) for some weird reason, so I'm updating this thread in her stead.
------------------------------------------------

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Fourteen.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.

10 Downing Street
7 September 1914


“Prime Minister, the Russians are collapsing, there is no other way to put it,” Sir Edward Grey enunciated with a certain degree of real distaste. The situation on the continent was proving damnedably difficult for the execution of any sort of desireable British policy objectives. “As we speak, the fate of Warsaw is probably being decided to the east of the city. There is still a significant corridor open, which the Russians are fighting hard to preserve, but all the rail-lines have been cut by the Germans and the Austrians.”

“My reports from General Knox,” Herbert Henry Asquith replied, “suggest that the Russian Second Army has managed to hold a line to the north of Brest-Litovsk, where Russian Ninth Army is mobilizing now. Certainly the situation will have some possibility of a German reversal once this army has mobilized.”

“I do not think so, Mister Prime Minister. The Russian capital is in a panic, and has been since the fall of Kovno. There are extensive recriminations in the officer corps, and the latest wire from St. Petersburg suggests that General Zhilinsky, the commander of the Northwestern Front, is to be sacked. General Ivanov will be placed in command of all Russian combat forces on the front. This is entirely unprecedented, and reflects the fact that Northwestern Front has essentially been destroyed. The fighting forces facing the German army in the north to do not consitute more than two corps. In short the Russians will be hard-pressed now to save Poland, let alone engage in offensive operations.”

Churchill was scowling down the table, cigar held in hand as usual. The table was filled, and the uncomfortable silence of the others as Sir Grey took such a pessimistic turn on the mood in the Russian capital—the loss of Kovno had surprised everyone of course—was not really all that pleasant. The cabinet room was not a happy place today. “We should scarcely be surprised that the Russians are suffering initial reverses here, considering their internal problems and poor performance in the Russo-Japanese War. It is, ultimately, rather immaterial to the conduct of the war, anywhere. The French are very close to breaking through in Alsace and besieging Strasbourg, and we know that a major French offensive against the German armies fronting Verdun and Nancy is about to commence, consisting of at least two fresh armies. Pessimism is entirely incorrect for a situation which could see the Tricolor in Trier by the end of the month. If the Germans gain Poland and even large tracts of Russia it will simply not matter at all if they lose significant portions of the Rhineland.”

“The French preparations for attack are, unfortunately, rather obvious to all, Mister Churchill, including ourselves,” Viscount Haldane pressed home, feeling Churchill rather brash on the issue. “The Germans have already demonstrated in the Vosges that given decent terrain they can hold ground against the French despite being very badly outnumbered.”

“Well, Your Lordship, the Germans suffer from the inattention placed on that front,” Churchill answered. “It will cost them.”

“Undoubtably, but we have no real way of telling the actual momentum of the war for the moment, and we have a much greater issue coming to head.” Haldane then began to speak for the benefit of the whole table: “Home Rule will become law in ten days, gentlemen. Carson's Unionists have been engaging in an increasingly intense pamphleteering campaign throughout the Protestant neighborhoods and districts. Privately Carson may be willing to compromise, but in the meantime it is clear that he is firing hot all the sectarian tensions of Ireland, and they could spill over at the slightest incident. Mass demonstrations are scheduled for the nineteenth in response to the expected Royal Assent. It is believed that tens of thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand, men and women shall show up for these and for the speeches of Carson and his compatriots.”

“Mister Birrel?” Asquith queried sharply.

“It is as His Lordship suggests,” Augustine Birrrel replied. “Mister Prime Minister, the situation is rapidly growing out of control. The conflict is increasingly less in terms of Unionist loyalty versus spearatism, and is taking the tenor of a religious war. In particular the Calvinist segments of the Protestant population of Ireland have been focusing on highly inflammatory propaganda imputing an 'Anglo-Catholic conspiracy to enslave Britain to the,” he coughed, “Whore of Rome', if I may quote from one of the nastier tracts. Royal Assent may inflame them to unacceptable levels.”

“Royal Assent is inevitable now,” Lloyd George snapped. “They are going to have to accept that. The debate that remains for December is over the number of counties to be excluded from the Home Rule Act. And I see no reason to leave many Catholics living in regions dominated by men who think that religious war is an acceptable moral sentiment of the twentieth century.”

Reginald McKenna pressed back against Lloyd George in the verbal sparring: “This is not a matter of moral senitment. If the nine-county solution is necessary to preserve the peace in Ireland than we should undertake it. The Catholics will just have to accept it, and for all that there are a few deranged Calvinist preachers churning out broadsides there is no particular reason to believe that Carson himself is not simply an astute politician trying to maximize the benefits of this situation for his constituency, which he rightly views as the Protestant peoples of Ireland. There is no reason for us to further inflame the Protestants by taking measures against Carson now, save of course that we must prevent further shipments of arms.”

“The Royal Navy is fully deployed to prevent such shipments, indeed, it is turning into excellent practice should we need to blockade the German coast in the near future,” Churchil explained, taking that moment to drive the topic back. The First Lord of the Admiralty was ambivalent about conflict, but he knew that many in the service were not. The German Navy was a threat.

“Then I don't see anything that should be done until we can fully gauge the Protestant response to the Royal Assent. In two weeks time, we will have the information we need for what actions should be taken before the deliberations on the Amendment to the Act, but at the moment this is just a great deal of hot air and wasted paper,” Asquith concluded. “Now, I believe, Mister Churchill, that there was an issue that the French have been pressing us on?”

“They want to ship arms to Russia on British freighters. For the moment they're using a very tenuous route to send modern weapons to Russia, through the Pacific, which Spee's squadron is threatening. They cannot use the Atlantic route to Archangelsk because the German battlecruisers are out in force, as the raid on the French West Indies indicated.”

“That would be illegal,” Haldane interjected. “The Germans would have every right to search and seize the cargoes.”

“British commercial shipping will never be searched and seized by another power,” Sir Edward Grey answered smugly. “That is simply unthinkable, and at any rate, the Germans have no binding blockade of the Russian coast, so measures of blockade are quite illegal by the German Navy, and should they try to stop our ships they would be considered an act of war. It seems a reasonable request.”

“We will give the French permission,” Asquith decided. “Though it will be up to the owners of the individual ships, naturally, as to if they want to take the risk. But of course full protection will be provided for all British shipping, to any port not under a binding blockade, regardless of the particular circumstancs. The Germans do not have any right or power to protest.”


LEMBURG, GALICIA
7 SEPTEMBER, 1914


Third Army had withdrawn towards the capital of Galicia as quickly as it could make it over the poor rail and road networks of the eastern frontier. It had received a sound thrashing at the hands of the Russians, and only the even more dismal prospect of advancing into hostile territory on the same underdeveloped rail network had stopped the enemy from handing it another defeat, yet. General Conrad had been furious at the results of Brudermann’s attack, more so perhaps because he had tacitly condoned aggressive action across the front. The now discredited General der Kavallerie had been removed from command by Archduke Friederich on the 5th, and a well-respected replacement ordered to take his place. Such a shakeup only made a bad situation worse, snarling the reorganization and consolidation that Brudermann’s staff had frantically begun, while failing to salve the seriously damage morale of the army.

Inside the historic town hall, dominating the city’s medieval era central square with a soaring bell tower, the staff officers of Third Army headquarters assembled in a chamber normally used by the civil administration. A thin haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air, clashing with the carefully maintained cleanliness of the room. Tapestries had been replaced by minute maps of the region, around which staff officers huddled, reinforcing one another in their pessimism and frayed nerves. Generalmajor Pfieffer, standing around with a cup of strong black coffee and staring numbly at schematics of the Lemburg fortress zone with bloodshot eyes epitomized the listlessness of Third Army. Soon, very soon, the victorious Russians would arrive to put them to the test soon again, and many of the officers in the room were as worried about being relieved and having their careers ended as they were about the enemy.

The brisk entrance of General der Infanterie Svetozar Boroevi? von Bojna broke up some of the stagnant air, and the assembled officers appraised their new commander quickly. In his late ‘50s, the bald, mustachioed Boroevi? appeared a decade younger and combined a personal aloofness and coldly efficient movements with considerable reserves of energy. He immediately took charge of the situation, addressing his officers in measured tones.

“The Commander in Chief has appointed me to replace your former commander. Some of you are concerned that you will also be relieved. If there is cause for it, then you will be sacked.” His dark eyes and a grim tenseness around the corners of his mouth dared anyone to take him less than seriously. The effect on the staff officers was, for the most part, as though someone had suddenly soaked them in cold water. Boroevi? declined his chin in a fractional movement that might have indicated a certain degree of satisfaction with the looks he was receiving.

“Those of you who demonstrate competence will not have to worry,” he continued. “I am an efficient man, and I appreciate that virtue in others. And we have much work to do. I have had access to your reports to Teschen and Brudermann’s account of what happened at Bus’k. If there is anything I need to know that was not contained in those, I need to know it now. We will have to make drastic preparations in a short amount of time. If you want to save your careers, you will provide me with sound advice and carry out my orders to the letter.”

The long faces were being replaced with more calculating gazes as the staff officers, properly chastised and threatened, began thinking constructively again. Boroevi? decided the time was right to unveil the task ahead, beginning with a piece of good news to soften the blow.

“As you know, the 23rd Honvéd Infantry division was due to be transferred from Second Army. They were at Horodok two days ahead of me, and will arrive at Lemburg by this evening. I am shuffling them under XI Corps, and now order that the marsch formations be culled for replacements for the 30th Infantry Division to bring it back up to strength as rapidly as possible. This is necessary, because we will be fighting a delaying action against the enemy as he approaches Lemburg to buy time to organize the local Landsturm units in order to provide a credible support force for a garrison of the city.”

Pfieffer looked mildly appalled at that. “The fortresses were refurbished a few years ago, but they haven’t gotten any more modern artillery since they were almost demobilized. And the Landsturm aren’t organized sufficiently to provide any higher level command than a brigade, which would be required to hold out any length of time against a serious Russian assault. And let’s not forget what happened at Kovno…”

Boroevi? let Pfieffer go on for another few minutes until he had proved the necessity of replacing the chief of staff at the earliest opportunity. Finally, he indicated that he had had enough by shaking his head. “Kovno was taken by coup de main when its garrison commander panicked; there is no new lesson there, only a reminder of basic command principles. And the Russians will not have the opportunity to move up siege artillery over this terrain and transportation network for some time. It would take long enough for Second Army to launch its own counterattack across the Dniester, which is what we are buying time for. The entire Galician campaign was to be a defensive effort while the left wing sought a decisive victory on the offensive. General Brudermann lost sight of that, and it is evident he was not alone there.”

He looked coldly at Pfieffer. “As far as your concerns about the Landsturm are concerned, Generalmajor, the High Command has seen fit to appoint Feldmarschalleutnant Niki? as the overall head of the Lemburg Garrison Command, which will be reinforced with his 30th Division. That is why it is necessary to buy time to bring the division up to strength with replacements from the marsch brigades. If you have any more questions, it will be appropriate to bring them up later.”

The Generalmajor looked disconsolate, and perhaps deeply ashamed at his violations of military etiquette. He was quiet the rest of the briefing, raising only technical points as Boroevi? laid out a plan of defense along the rolling hills around the city. Other staff officers fell in line as well, sitting down to churn out the necessary orders to get Third Army back on its feet and carry out the reorganizations that their new commander had ordered, with something of a new confidence. But it was fragile, Boroevi? instinctively realized; they had been badly beaten by the Russians, and they were going to need to redeem themselves in action. That prospect was fraught with more concern and tension than longing, and that was a problem, but it was at least a start.


ENE OF MOLSHEIM,
ELSASS-LOTHRINGEN
7 SEPTEMBER 1914


Lean and tall, immaculate in his uniform down to peaked cap, there was no mistaking the stern Prussian features of the man who approached and bowed respectfully to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, his aides which followed him through the halls of the old castle as a gaggle of men following the gesture. “Your Highness,” Erich von Falkenhayn, the Crown Prince's commander, offered graciously. “I am here to investigate the situation on your army's sector of the front personally.”

The Crown Prince had for the last thirty hours been involved in the greatest fight of his life. The French had been constantly pressing, and feeding in unexpected reinforcements, clearly brought over from Algeria, into the fight the whole while, forcing a great revision upward of their strenght. He had been fighting—though he did not know it—a marvelous defensive action, but mostly he had not slept in quite a long time, and the dapper presence of Von Falkenhayn and his staff was a complete contrast to that of the Crown Prince's army, if their quarters were comfortable enough.

“Of course, General,” the Crown Prince saluted, acknowledging his own subordinate military position. “I was not warned of your coming, but... Generalleutnant von Knobelsdorf?” He called out, turning. His Chief of Staff had just entered the room and come to attention, until Falkenhayn gestured for him not to bother.

“Ah, of course.”

“My apologies,” Von Knobelsdorf offered with a tired politeness to Von Falkenhayn. “I just got back from sending the latest dispatch orders to II Landwehr Corps, General. The situation is terrible, to put it shortly.”

Falkenhayn nodded grimly. “Well, we are going to fix that soon enough. The French are attacking in the direction of Strasbourgh, yes?” He accented the name of the city a bit much.

“Yes, General,” Generalleutnant von Knobelsdorf turned his attention to a map laid out on a large table, covered with markers, and Falkenhayn and the Crown Prince walked over to it as well. Knobelsdorf gestured with a gloved hand as he spoke. “We believe that a full corps spearheading the morning's offensive toward Strasbourg and that other units, probably to the strength of another corps, from Algiers are also involved in these attacks, though we don't have firm indications of the units. Our own XVI Corps and II Landwehr Corps have essentially collapsed and a rearguard action is being fought by the most tenuous of ersatz combat formations. We've managed to rally and reform a few units and send them back into action, but the French are pressing us to hard to hope to reform a line.”

“Do you have any chance of it at all?” Falkenhayn inquired calmly, even neutrally.

Von Knobelsdorf looked uncomfortably toward his commander, and the Crown Prince's attention turned to Falkenhayn.

“Cavalry only. My current reserve consists of the Bavarian Cavalry Division and the eleven cavalry regiments of the Army, concentrated, along with a few landwehr squadrons. We were just debating sending them in on a counterattack. They're positioned to hit the flank of the French advance. We hope to be able to drive the French back long enough to reestablish our lines.” The Crown Prince didn't mince words with Falkenhayn about the situation—there was at least one advantage to his royal rank in this occasion, he did not fear the consequences of what was increasingly appearing to be failure.

“Send in that attack at once, Your Highness,” Falkenhayn replied. “They will do what they can. But you are not to try to restore the lines. Instead, withdraw to the west as soon as your infantry has been got clear of the French advance. The Cavalry should not be wasted, either—they must be able to withdraw as soon as the infantry has been got clear, though the later is the clear objective. I know they are going to suffer, and it can't be helped--but I shall want them later. I would also make it clear that I'm simply expecting you not to use them up in a suicide action, since this is no longer a matter of holding the lines but simply a withdrawal; do not be timid, either.”

“You do realize, General, that this is going to open a gap which guarantees that Strasbourg shall be surrounded and the French will certainly try to exploit it?”

“I understand that. The French, however, cannot exploit it. They are already committed to a major assault in the west which will begin soon—possibly as early as tomorrow—with their Fifth Army and a new army formation raised from the Paris garrison and general reserve units. Unfortunately I do not know where the French will attack, other than that it will be west of the Vosges. Because of that I must hold my reserve corps back and any other units I can keep in the reserve; I can give you nothing. So you cannot hold the line as it stands now. You must fall back and concentrate for a counterattack.”

“A counterattack? Even into the flank of the French advance on a strategic level, General von Falkenhayn, my army is scarcely in any shape for that.” The Crown Prince was surprised. Surely Falkenhayn had heard the status of two of his corps? And others were almost as bad.

Falkenhayn listened patiently to the Crown Prince, though he was slightly annoyed. “Indeed, a counterattack. It will be led out of the fortresses of Strasbourg by the Grand Duke of Baden.”

“By the Grand Duke of Baden? But he only has experience as a cavalry commander of small units.”

As did you until recently, Falkenhayn though darkly. “He has the right in his capacity as Supreme Commander of the Army of the Grand Duchy, and it was the only way to get him to agree to committing his entire reserve to an offensive through Strasbourgh. Remember that the city, even surrounded, will still have connections with the east bank of the Rhine via its bridges; they have been blown everywhere further south than Strasbourgh, and so we do not need to realistically worry about the prospect of a French crossing of the river. This frees up the three brigades of the Rhine force and the Lotharingen landsturm brigade, along with the landsturm of the Grand Duchy. As you know, the fact that the French are on the Rhine has called the Grand Duke to muster even the second ban of the Landsturm, and combined with the other mentioned units there are effectively two corps, though very weak in artillery support, waiting on the east bank of the Rhine.

“At any rate. Supported by the artillery of the fortresses of Strasbourgh I intend to use this force to launch a counterattack directly out of the city, in conjunction with your own counterattack from the west. Both the flanks of the French advance will be hit simultaneously. They will not be expecting an attack out of the city—nor, indeed, will they really think your Army is capable of it after the pounding they have given you. We will force them to withdraw, and with luck we will even catch some of them.”

“It could work, General,” the Crown Prince allowed. “Except that I am not entirely sure that such a French assessment would be inaccurate.”

“Then you must make it inaccurate, Your Highness. Your army must be ready to counterattack when I order.” He did not give the Crown Prince a chance to reply. “Now, shall we begin to execute your withdrawal?”

Crown Prince Wilhelm stiffened himself and nodded. “Of course, General.”


LUBLIN, POLAND
7 SEPTEMBER 1914


Fighting continued to rage along the forested hills of the Wiatków Heights and in the historic city center of Lublin as Russian Tenth Army shoved ever further southwards against stiff Austrian resistance. General Pflug was aware his future in command rested on his ability to break the Austro-German encirclement of Poland, clearing the way for counterattack or retreat by the remaining Russian forces. Cohesion among his disparate units, gathered together from still-mobilizing commands or scattered sub-units cut off from their parent armies by German successes in the North, had held up better than he had feared. He still hesitated at the use of his best commands, the two Grenadier brigades, to head the assaults on the enemy; they would be, by far, the best reserve units to salvage a situation if something went wrong. His stomach knotted itself thinking about that possibility, but there was nothing to be done about it, he reminded himself. If there was no breakout there would be no point to having held back his best commands, and while the reserve brigades he had were not up to the standards of the Grenadiers, he had assembled an adequate force.

He was now conferring hastily with the commander of the 1st Siberian Corps, in charge of the attack on the heights, outside a dugout tent nearer to the front lines than he wanted to be. The sound of his artillery pounding away at the Austrians in the far distance was more of a series of loud cracks than the subdued staccato that he preferred. After one particularly loud explosion, he nervously demanded of his host “You are sure we are out of range of the Austrian guns?”

The subordinate commander shook his head, cigarette dangling out of his mouth. “They don’t have any guns capable of reaching us, and they couldn’t know to target this section anyway, sir. That said, our own guns are performing well, but we simply cannot silence the Austrian artillery without taking the heights. I need another brigade released to me. Once those damned hills are ours, we can put our own guns up on top and shell those German bastards good.”

Pflug bit his lip as another shell landed somewhere, seemingly nearby, and with loud force. He fancied he could even hear the screams and cries of its victims, faintly on the wind. Pflug made his decision then. “You have another brigade. The 2nd Turkestan Rifles Brigade out of the reserve. But I want those heights taken by the evening, whatever the costs. We cannot afford to delay any longer.”

The other General saluted, acknowledging the orders he had been presented, and relieved that he had gotten more men to carry it out with. “By your leave, sir, I will return to organizing the next wave of assault on the enemy.”

The commander of Tenth Army waved him away, eager enough to end their audience himself. Pflug was unnerved and wanted to get back to his own headquarters, in a chalet taken over by his resourceful chief of staff. Away from the racket and din of the artillery, where he could look at the broader picture, and act dispassionately. And he needed to send the orders to 2nd Turkestan, after all.

Meanwhile, on the left flank of Tenth Army, sprawling out some distance past Lublin, irregular Cossack cavalry recoiled from a concentrated infantry thrust. They lacked the numbers or firepower to fight off an infantry division, and they had done their job anyway as a tripwire. They scattered, heading off to report on the intrusion. Instead they ran into parties of Austrian horsemen, drawn from the 9th and 3rd Cavalry divisions, committed on the 5th of September to a wide outflanking of the Russian army. Now they performed their own role in Dankl’s anticipated counterattack by intercepting the Russian Cossacks, driving at the enemy at full charge or waylaying them as they passed by roadways.

Pflug had erred in concentrating too much on the city of Lublin and the heights to their west. He had also underestimated the Austrian cavalry and given too much credence to the claims of the Cossack regiments, who faced with disciplined regular formations of cavalry, melted away. His own regular cavalry, held back to exploit success to the west of the heights, would have stiffened the Russian screen considerably. But the overstrength 12th Infantry Division, pressing on westwards with full strength, would have forced the Russian cavalry backwards as surely as they had the Cossacks.

Rittmeister Borek of the 7th Uhlans led his own cavalry squadron in a successful ambush of a Cossack group, coming down the road to Swidnik. He had motioned for quiet as the dust of the Russian horde had become visible, and divided his command into two groups, one blocking the road and the other leading their horses by hand into the forest of the area, accompanied by the horses of the blocking group, who would fight on foot. He, naturally, stayed mounted in the middle of the road, urging on his men’s preparations. The Cossacks were upon them quickly, though instead of stopping and preparing for an assault they simply spurred their horses faster, intending to run down the Austrian force in their way.

More fools they, Borek thought, as he steadied his own horse and took aim with his carbine. He had to use two hands for that, leaving him unable to grip his own saber, but he was eager to get in there with the Cossacks. Unfortunately his place was with the most critical part of the defense, leaving his subordinate Hanucz in charge of the detachment that would be slamming into the Russian cavalry very shortly.

He squeezed off a round into the advancing Russians, as the rest of his men began aimed fire. That would be the signal. “Keep it up!” he called out, urging his men to faster action as they worked their bolts and fired into the Russians or put in new magazines. Borek himself worked his carbine to fire a couple of other rounds, barely aiming, but still setting an example for the troops. His elevated figure attracted no small amount of notice,

It was barely a minute of fire, though, before the loud crashing sound of the heavy chargers of the Uhlans came bounding out of the forest. As they cleared the cover of trees, with Leutnant Hanucz at their head, eschewing pistols and carbines for cold steel, the cavalry troop was a fleeting reminder of the glory of the old Polish hussars. They collided with the Cossacks, a blur of grey uniforms and steel swords, hacking and slicing and riding down the Russians, who were caught by surprise and focused entirely on the threat ahead of them.

Close range combat is always brutal, and the collision of the two cavalry forces was no exception. A fierce downward stroke of the saber could crush into the heads of the Cossacks, cleaving it in two. The Russians themselves had short lances with which to thrust into the attacking Austrians, striking into the gut, even disemboweling a handful of unfortunates. Blood and gore slicked the weapons of both sides, but the Austrians clearly had the better of the collision, and sheer momentum carried them through deep into the Cossack formation. As the massed Austrian formation struck out at any Russians in reach, and the Cossacks grappling with the Uhlans struggled for their lives, there was a complete breakdown in the loose cohesion of the Cossack formation. The outlying Cossacks spurred their horses into gallops in whatever direction seemed best to them, breaking up the solidity of the Russian formation and allowing the Austrians to push through at an even faster rate.

The bloody work continued for minutes that seemed like an eternity to those involved, and became an eternity for all too many. But with the completely collapse of the cohesion of the Russian force, the Austrians smashed through to the other side of the formation, before splitting themselves to try and envelop as many Cossacks as they could. Borek led his own blocking force in an advance, firing at the individual Russians heading their way, and making sure none got off onto the road west. Many of the Russians, superb horsemen the Poles admitted grudgingly, did make it past, but they headed south and east, not north and west. Instead of recoiling towards the Russian rear, they were being driven into 12th Division and the entire I Korps advancing up rapidly behind it.

After the carnage, with the last Cossacks scattered, captured, or dead, Borek reconstituted his forces. “So I was pessimistic”, he remarked to Hanucz, who had trotted over to him. “I thought the men on foot would be harder pressed. Stirring charge, Leutnant, even if you made my job too easy.”

Hanucz smiled broadly at the compliment. “I was honored to have your confidence, sir. Perhaps I had a little too much fun,” he slyly remarked, “and so should save some Russians for you next time.”

Borek snorted. “Next time I’ll be at the head of the men. But for your services, and because your troop is mounted and ready, you will take point. Our orders are to advance to meeting, direction Lubartów. I do believe the old man aims to cut those Russian bastards off and drive them to the Vistula.” Hanucz looked impressed at the idea, but Borek shooed him off. “Whatever Dankl has in mind, we’ve got our orders. Now get moving, before those damn Russians get an idea of the size of what’s coming up behind us.”


W. OF THE
TORRES STRAIT
7 SEPTEMBER 1914


Admiral Graf von Spee was not where the French expected him to be. There were reinforcing the garrisons of Tahiti and New Caledonia with additional troops at the prospect of German landings there. Those landings had initially been a directive of the German government for the purpose of acquiring the French pacific colonies. However, those plans had for the time been slightly altered, leaving Wallis and Fortuna the only occupied territory at the moment.

Because, of course, during the occupation of Wallis and Fortuna some interesting information had been fortuitously acquired, which had sent Graf von Spee's squadron steaming north. The Russians were in a desperate position in regard to armaments, and had specifically asked that the French send modern artillery and rifles—particularly rifles—to Russia. The problem was that with the German Battlecruisers in the Atlantic, transporting them to Archangelsk was impossible. The only route was through the Suez Canal and along the Asian coast to Vladivostok, and information that Graf von Spee had gained from the courier ship at Wallis and Fortuna had indicated that such a convoy was being sent, with a strong escort of armoured cruisers which had a secondary purpose in engaging him.

German priorities at the time laid, for various political and military reasons, a high interest in seeing that convoy didn't make it through, even though its escort was close to equal with Spee's own force. Spee, though, had a substantial strength of fast, modern light cruisers, which the French lacked, and so he was confident. He was also planning to arrive, early, to lay an ambush if possible in the narrow Sunda Strait, and to that end he had risked his ships on a daring high-speed transit of the treacherous Torres Strait, which the ships of the Kaiserliche Marine under his command had pulled off magnificently.

The German Pacific Squadron was now low on coal, but Admiral von Spee knew they could take aboard coal in the Netherlands East Indies if needbe. The main danger with that was the prospect that the French would learn of the squadron's presence; so, for as long as possible they would forgo coaling, preferring to patrol the Netherlands East ndies secretly. It would also allow them, of course, to get away with operating in Dutch territorial waters should it be necessary, at least until they had been found out. Privately, Graf von Spee was hoping that the Dutch would, considering the friendly relations between the two countries, simply ignore the presence of his squadron.

In the meanwhile he had detached a small force with the older light ships in the opposite direction, toward Tahiti, which was sure to be the weaker of the two garrisons, escorting some commandeered merchants with troops from Tsingtao aboard. They would make a demonstration to leave the French the impression he was still operating in the South Pacific, and land if it was possible to do so, the warships scattering once the mission was complete to commence commerce raiding against French and Russian shipping in the direction of the South American coast.

It remained to be seen how successful those operations would be, or his own against the French convoy which was expected through the Netherlands East Indies. For now, having had their first task of action, but it being essentially an execution rather than a proper battle, the men of his squadron were eager for the fight ahead. Graf von Spee did not mind their eagerness, though he knew that any engagement with the French armoured cruisers, even if his own had huge qualitative and armament advantages, would hardly be a bloodless thing.

------------------------------------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

New update

OPERATION HEINRICH: Chapter the Fifeenth

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell

WIATKOW HEIGHTS,
SW OF LUBLIN,
7 SEPTEMBER, 1914


The pike-grey uniforms given over by the Austrian army stood out amid the brown soil and green foliage and ancient trees that made up the heights, and the volunteers to Pilsudski’s Legion were not, by and large, woodsmen. The crack of sticks, the thrash of leaves, the cadence of heavy boots all gave away their advance to the sentries of the Lifeguard Grenadiers. Word was sent back, officers ordered their men into defensive preparations, and the Russians awaited the spoiling approach of the Austrian enemy. Shots rang out, sounding around the hills and breaking an unnatural silence, as those sentries began taking aimed shots before falling back on the main body of their regiment.

Fortunately for the Poles, the terrain did not allow a prolonged period of exposure at long time, and the grade of it was downhill, favoring a rapid collision of both regiments. Just as well, as while Pilsudski defended his men’s marksmanship, even he grudgingly admitted the better equipped, long-service Russian guardsmen would have an advantage there. The élan of the Polish soldier would best come through by way of shock, instead, so Oberst Pisludski was near the head of the attack, waving his men onward and encouraging them with shouts, though he eschewed the sword for a revolver. The men were nonetheless cheered by the sight of their Kommandant with them, urging them onward and exposing themselves to the same hazards that they were facing, in the name of a free Poland. Near to his side, a member of the legion lofted up on an improvised pole the red cloth with stitched white eagle that had been presented to the Legion by a local seamstress. It was a notable target but its bearer stayed visible through the trees, guiding the Legion’s troops downward to the assault, even as other legionnaires began to tumble down to the ground.

The pale grey-green of the new Russian infantry uniform was better suited to conditions, but only marginally, and the lead elements of the Legion had little difficulty seeing the frontline positions of the enemy as they finally closed in on them. A company of the Grenadiers stood ready to defend their ground as the rest of the unit reoriented to deal with the sudden assault. They had been preparing to support the attack of the 2nd Turkestan Brigade, not defend themselves, and had found little time to rest in forty-eight hours of combat at the head of the Russian assault. The display of the Polish eagle, heartening to the Legion, inspired a rage in the Grenadiers pitched up by the sudden appearance of their own regimental standard forward. They would stand their ground, and they found cover or kneeled down and began working their rifles steadily, firing into the onrushing Poles.

The lead wave of Polish infantry met the fire of the Russians and continued the advance, even as they shed more and more of their numbers, falling down into the dust and crying out hideously. As they approached more closely their officers ordered them to fan out, taking positions and cover to return fire into the Russians, most of them finding trees felled by artillery or simply taking the expedient of falling to one knee. The straight bolt action of the Model 1895 Mannlicher lent itself to rapidity of fire, and the Polish Legion was far better educated than the average Austrian conscript; they had internalized the necessity of keeping the rifle clean and in good operating shape. A steady rain of bullets crossed the space between the two units, with the weight of fire from the numerically superior Poles balanced out by the superior experience and marksmanship of the Russians.

Pilsudski fired downward into the Russian mass, but he quickly realized the tenuousness of the situation. The Grenadiers would receive reinforcements from the rest of their regiment quickly. Dankl expected the Legion to cut into the enemy and hold their attention, to press them heavily to confuse the Russians and draw in reserves. If the Legion bogged down in front of the first Russian resistance, it would never fulfill its role in the attack and would not earn the reputation he needed it to have. The Legion had to get moving.

He stepped out from behind the tall oak shielding him, exposing himself to the fire from the Russians deliberately. “At them, get at them!” he screamed. He waved his pistol at the enemy, firing in the direction. “Close with the bastards and push through, for Poland!” His energetic commands and gestures got through to the men around him, who stopped firing to affix their bayonets. The orders took longer to circulate down the length of the Polish line, but so it did, and men followed the lead of their neighbors, bidden or not by their officers.

In the meantime the die-down in fire from the Legion had acutely endangered Pilsudski, as the Russians were less checked by the rifle fire from his comrades. He flinched as a bullet whizzed by, close, far too close, and fought down the urge to jump back behind his tree. The sounds of the bullet fire assaulted his ears, but he stood firm, staring down towards the Russian positions and shouting, providing a splendid example of defiance. He was, however, quite relieved when he saw the lines of his comrades springing by him, beginning the advance with determination and fearlessness. He joined them in their rush, exulting in the moment. Now the world would see the true measure of Polish valour…


“And so, once we move the corps artillery of the Siberians onto the heights, we will be able to fire directly into Lublin, breaking up the Austrian defenses” the chief of staff for Tenth Army optimistically predicted.

His opposite number for the cavalry corps assigned to the Army looked unhappy with the thought. “Surely it would be better to swing deeply behind Lublin with the infantry push. If we wait for the time needed to set up artillery on the heights the Austrians will be able to adjust their dispositions or pull out of the city. Whereas if we box them in by a rapid advance after taking the hills, there exists the prospect of a great victory.” That it would also let his cavalry swing into good country to the south of Lublin was an unvoiced but palpable argument.

Their commander merely looked on impassively, letting his officers argue and dispute for his benefit, mentally weighing the pros and cons of their respective approaches and trusting to their ambitions to critique each other’s plans. He had moved on to anticipating his reward as the savior of Russian Poland when the abrupt entrance of his radio operator into his well-appointed headquarters tent shook General Pflug and the rest of the assembled staff. His first instinct was to rip the man’s head off for interrupting his planning session; news of the success of the assault could wait, and would only disrupt the mood of the officers brainstorming to exploit it. But he knew the operator had learned by now his tolerances and expectations, so this clearly had to be important.

“Sir, we have reports from the Cossack screen on our left flank.” The radio technician hesitated, but quickly sensed that he would best be served by getting it all out. “The enemy is making a determined attack with infantry and cavalry on our flank. The Turkestan division command reports that scouting has been severely impaired by the enemy cavalry. They estimate the enemy is attacking in corps strength on an axis towards Lubartow, and have requested immediate reinforcement.”

The satisfaction in the room immediately dissipated in favor of consternation and alarm. Pflug had already committed a brigade of the reserve to the attack on the Wiatkow heights, and the other brigade had been ordered to move to that area. A full division was immediately available, but it was another Turkestani unit, in no way the equal of the Siberian divisions committed along the front facing Lublin, the heights, and bounded by the Vistula. Pflug’s face drained of color, and he had to restrain himself from shouting. The pressures of his command weighed down on his shoulders; the Russian Empire had already lost too many men, had had too many armies shredded. And now Tenth Army, which was supposed to have blunted the Austrian offensive, was threatened with destruction itself. The consequences of defeat would be incalculable, not least of all to General Pflug’s career.

“Get the Turkestan Corps command!” Pflug ordered. “I want the entire corps to counterattack at once. We’ll cancel the 2nd Turkestan’s attack, and pull off the heights, but I want that Austrian attack stopped.”

“We’ll need a reliable cavalry screen”, his chief of staff noted. “The Cossacks have failed, to no surprise. We have to commit our regular cavalry forces to make up for their collapse.”

“Yes, yes.” Pflug nodded frantically. “Go to the communications tent, and send the appropriate orders out over the radio.” Despair was beginning to overwhelm the commander of Tenth Army, even as his subordinate made to leave.

“Come back here as soon as you finish,” Pflug ordered. “If the Turkestani troops cannot stop the Austrian advance, we will have to withdraw. Since they are to the north of our flank, we will have to fall back to the West, across the Vistula. Alert our commands to be ready to conduct a fighting withdrawal. In fact, do that now to save time.”


The Turkestani Corps, split into three detachments as part of the reserve, counterattacked hastily and without cohesion. Brigades were fed into the path of the three attacking Austrian divisions as they arrived, without artillery preparation or rest. It was a classic case of defeat in detail, and by the evening I Korps had advanced halfway to Lubartow, deep in the rear of the Russian positions, with little left to impede their continued advance. The elements of the Turkestani Corps fell back, repulsed, and attempted to regroup to the south of the Austrian advance, while panic and rumor spread through the rest of the grab-bag of Russian units comprising Tenth Army. Pflug decamped for the rear, intending to oversee the vital task of organizing sufficient bridging across the Vistula for his army. To maintain command and control he brought along his radio set; but the set, temperamental at the best of times and having been hauled about disassembled in a civilian Mercedes automobile previously requisitioned by Pflug, failed to work when it arrived at his new headquarters.

The units holding the flank of the Russian army on the Vistula, mostly reconstituted military detritus that had been cut off from their parent formations, were the first to lose their nerve. Dankl had weakened the flank facing them to make his counterattack, but several sharp exploratory thrusts had pushed the Russians back, and first one, then another Russian unit broke contact to cross the available bridges and fords. The vacuum caused allowed the 24th Infantry Division to flank the Siberian units pinned on the Wiatkow heights. The attempt of the 2nd Turkestan Brigade to extricate itself and join the rest of its corps was thwarted when it was engaged by the leading elements of the division, and it became readily apparent that the Russian front was under danger of collapse. The order to withdraw was given by the commander of the Siberian corps, but difficulties in communication and the hasty nature of Tenth Army’s mobilization worked against him. Too many units began breaking away, hastily flowing to the rear while the 2nd Turkestan still held out, and the rearguard of the retreat was endangered.

The continued strong push of Austrian forces on the Wiatkow heights would have turned the rout into disaster if not for the stand of the Grenadier brigade. Battered, exhausted, already engaged in a brutal struggle with the Polish Legion, it retreated fiercely, never breaking contact but rather conducting a series of stands to buy time for the rest of the Russian units. Oberst Pilsudski, seeing his chance, drove his exhausted men onward with ever greater fervor, and encouraging them with the prospect of proving their worth and destroying an elite Russian unit. Austrian units along his flanks were less inclined to push on regardless of casualties, but they maintained a steady pressure on the dwindling Russian forces facing them. The flow of units out of the position continued, paid for with the blood of the cream of the Russian Army until, finally, the 24th Division concentrated a full attack on the 2nd Turkestan, and after a sharp fight destroyed a portion of the brigade and drove the rest off to the north, fleeing for the Vistula. Most of the Russian formations that had not escaped soon threw down their arms, surrendering to the encircling Austrian formations and ending their participation in the war. Only the steadfast men of the Lifeguard Grenadiers remained on their feet and ready to resist the overwhelming tide of Austrian forces.

Their route to freedom cut off, their officers mostly dead, companies reduced to a handful of squads, the Russian Grenadiers made a final stand. Their last service to the Tsar and Motherland forestalled any effective pursuit of the broken Tenth Army to the Vistula, and they sold themselves dearly.


EAST BANK
UPPER RHINE
8 SEPTEMBER, 1914


The landsturm 1st ban company of 1 Landsturm Brigade of the Grand Duchy of Baden was armed with GEW M88 rifles, showing the relatively low priority of providing modern weapons to the landsturm of a minor component of the German Army; all active, reserve, and landwehr troops of course had M98 Mausers, and most of the Prussian and Bavarian 1st ban did as well; the rest had to make due with the M88. This scarcely mattered, for the weapon was arguably still superiour to the 3-round Lebel-Berthier of the French.

These men were mostly older. They were not old enough to have seen combat, though, but they were all veterans of all the various classifications of the German Army's layered reserve system, until they had reached the 1st Ban of the landsturm. That meant that they were old men but that they also had as much military training as any force in Europe, lacking only active and regular experience. They would not be as good as regular troops, but they knew their ropes.

What was happening here was something most curious in the recent history of warfare, however. The drill being conducted, hasty and unusual in nature, was preparing these men for the first use of a new weapon in the history of war, a rare enough occurrence, to be sure, even if it was just in reality a modification of an older weapon. These men would gain some real advantage from their use, as the tactics would not be all that different from what they had trained for, tactics which were now obsolete but could be used to some effect with this weapon.

They dashed forward in skirmish order.

“Cover!” The Hauptmann of the Company was dubious about the new weapons but he followed the sequence dutifully.

The company dropped down among the rolling grass of the upper Rhine's flat banks here in Baden, almost disappearing from sight. There was silence; this was not a live fire drill, after all. Interestingly, the company did not have bayonets fixed.

Then: “Advance in skirmish order!”

The Captain dashed forward with his men toward the point where they would be most vulnerable.

In rapid-fire succession: “Halt!”

“Fix rifle-grenades!”

The company drew up to a halt and the men paused as they grabbed the long rifle-grenades clipped to their belts and afixed them over the barrels of their rifles.

“Shoulder arms!”

The guns came up, like they were firing a massed volley in the old style. Here they were sure, and confident.

“Fire!”

The click of the triggers, empty. Had the guns been loaded, the grenades would have been sent flying toward the enemy, now, in a volley more powerful than any rifle could previously have delivered, even if it left the company hideously vulnerable.

“Fix bayonets!”

Now those long blades of steel were presented, snapped onto the rifles and twisted to lock.

“Company, charge!” They dashed toward a nonexistant enemy, who, if everything worked, would be entirely disordered by the explosion of the grenades in their midst. The Hauptmann recalled what he'd been told about the weapons: 'Fire them so close that you feel the furthest piece of shrapnel sting your cheek, and then charge in with the bayonet at once.' It would have to suffice for his third-rate men against the flower of the French Army. It would just have to.


LUBLIN, POLAND
8 SEPTEMBER, 1914


The black soil of the plain before the Wiatkow heights was covered in corpses, though it was fortunately early and chill and corruption had not yet set in. Special sanitation units had begun the grim task of trying to sort out through the bodies to recover fallen comrades, and identify the enemy dead. The Russians had abandoned their artillery, leaving it to be captured in the push along the front after the destruction of the Grenadier brigade. The outcome of the last three days was undoubtedly a major victory, though it was hard to tell from the melancholy cast of the battlefield. Viktor Dankl regretted coming out to observe it already.

Oberst Pilsudski drew up to him, with the slow gait of the exhausted, and saluted. Following him, pointedly, was a young corporal of the Polish Legion, hoisting aloft a dirt-stained flag, punched through with bullet holes and other minor cuts, the regimental colors of the Lifeguard Grenadiers regiment.

“You performed as you promised,” Dankl stated peremptorily, knowing the line that Pilsudski would take. “And your casualties were as terrible as I feared,” he appended.

“Without my men pushing the Russians, the stand of that brigade would have bought enough time for them to manage a more orderly retreat,” Pilsudski asserted. He waved to the flag, now flapping gently in a morning wind. “This is the proof of the valor of the Polish soldier. This is why my legion has done for Austria, and for Poland. We found it wrapped around the body of a Russian private, a strong looking lad. The only surviving officer told me that the late colonel had ordered one of their fit peasant conscripts to wrap it around himself and swim the Vistula to get it clear.”

Pilsudski smiled grimly. “He did not succeed.”

“Apparently not.” Dankl looked at the flag with undisguised disappointment. The Poles would come away with a great share of the glory, increasing Pilsudski’s influence and power. That was dangerous. There would be propaganda benefits in the West, to be sure, and the prospect of mobilizing more Polish soldiers to fight against Russia was handily boosted. But once the war ended, if or when Pilsudski no longer thought his interests and those of the Central Powers coincided…

“I want some of those captured Russian guns to form an integral artillery component for the Legion,” Pilsudski asked, barely short of demanded. So far they had relied on Austrian batteries to provide the support they needed. “The Legion will be able to incorporate former Russian conscripts from Poland, familiar with the operation of those guns,” he added as a sort of justification, after realizing that he might have been overly imperious.

Dankl continued to frown, unhappy with the demeanor and… request of the Polish officer. He opened his mouth to deny the request, but found himself temporizing instead. “That will have to be appealed to Armeeoberkommando and Archduke Friedrich.” Pilsudski had political connections and could go over his head anyway, after all, and alienating the Poles just to be overruled would be unfortunate. It might also keep them busy, for a while. “I will deliver a battery for training and practice purposes, but they are detached from the Austrian army and not a part of the Legion.”

Pilsudski bit lightly on his lip, reminding himself to be diplomatic. “I will send a request to Teschen by this evening.” Weariness seemed to overcome him. “The Legion will require time to replace losses and reconstitute itself, however.”

Dankl nodded in agreement. “So will most of First Army.” He appraised the Pole more closely now, taking in his slopping shoulders, dirt-covered uniformed, lidded eyes. “Go get some rest, Oberst. You’re no use to anyone in your current state.”

Pilsudski stifled a yawn. “I will only after my own men rest.”

“As you wish.” Dankl ground his teeth together. Dealing with the Pole was… unsatisfying. Jumping down his throat about his failure to obey military protocol would be pointless, however. He spun on his heels, leaving for another part of the battlefield, and more respectful subordinates.


NEAR LUKOV, POLAND
8 SEPTEMBER, 1914


Generalmajor von Kuhl hastened to meet his commander, General von Kluck. German First Army had taken a real beating at Wegrów, but they were still able to advance and were indeed engaged in yet another forced march to the south. This one had a single goal, and it was to cut off the retreat of the Russians in the vast Warsaw Pocket. To that end they were nearly at the city of Lukov. Occupying it would cut the last and extremely circuitous rail route under the control of the Russians, and it was entirely undefended. Horse artillery was already being rushed ahead with the cavalry to interdict the line as the main army followed.

The problem was not, however, the issue of the escape of the garrisons in the Warsaw Pocket, and the huge numbers of men in general who had been driven there; in total there were perhaps more than 200,000. None could escape in time. What was more worrying was the fate of Russian 10th Army. If it had been defeated by the Austrians, it might try to retire in this direction. If it had beaten the Austrians, then it would be up to German First Army to somehow restore the gap, and it was this question which had been consuming Alexander von Kluck as he led his army south in the days following Wegrów. Ahead, the city of Lukov was almost visible, and he could see the dust stirred up by the cavalry to be sure.

A force of 150,000 Russian troops—ignoring whatever losses it had taken in the fighting around Lublin, about which General von Kluck knew almost nothing save the terse messages of urgency from Moltke—was thus potentially in his grasp, to be defeated, smashed and forced back into the pocket, and guaranteed as part of the huge encirclement which the allies were now executing. Whether or not that would actually be possible was less up to him than up to his Austrian counterpart.

Generalmajor von Kuhl now knew the answer to that question, however, and that explained his haste in driving up to his commander from where he had been supervising the telegraphic communications. Because of the nature of the wireless telegraphy communication the army, when on the quick march with the headquarters also moving, had to have its receiving and transmitting sets constantly put up, taken down, moved forward, and put up again, in an endless cycle. So really only part of the headquarters was with General von Kluck, as he rode as his predecessors would have in 1870. The rest was concentrated around the wireless telegraphy sets, and communication was by dint of Daimler staff cars racing up from them and back, and also transporting the knocked down equipment when it was time to bring them forward to the head of the column once more.

Generalmajor von Kuhl's driver had raced before the war, and he drove like it, racing along the MacAdamized surface of the Polish road (MacAdamized roads were very rare even in Polish Russia, and essentially unheard of elsewhere in the Empire). The majority of the troops were marching along the railroad tracks next to the road or the sides in long columns of fours, and the road had been hastily cleared for communications. Despite the incredible length of First Army stretched out on the march, it seemed to the Generalmajor that his driver was covering the distance in mere minutes. Smaller installations were more portable and could have kept up with General von Kluck, but these did not remotely have the range to get in touch with the telegraph network where the Germans had been able to repair and secure it, yet.

Generalmajor von Kuhl was dressed rather warmly, even though it was in the summer's heat, for at the speeds the car was racing it was quite cool, and of course he wore goggles like his driver and his aides to protect his eyes from the constant pebbles and dust tossed up by racing along the Polish road. Miles of road were eaten away in scarcely more than mere minutes, as if on the Berlin to Frankfurt express. In a few more minutes of time, then, they came into sight of the advancing headquarters group with General von Kluck, and in a spray of dust and gravel Von Kuhl's driver braked to a stop alongside of them. The horses were no longer startled by the strange mechanical contraption.

One of his aides leaped out and opened the door for him and Von Kuhl stepped out, pulling off his driving goggles and advancing to where Von Kluck had reined in, saluting promptly. “General von Kluck, Sir—a telegraphy message from General von Moltke!”

“Get the Generalmajor a horse,” Von Kluck ordered as he reached down for the dispatch and picked it up.

FOR: GENERAL VON KLUCK, COM. FIRST ARMY

Russian 10th Army has been defeated at Lublin. According to the information of the Austrian army headquarters at Teschen they are retreating northeasterly toward Brest-Litovsk from the Lublin area. All other avenues of retreat have been cut off. Proceed to block the path of 10th Army with the greatest swiftness.

Moltke

General von Kluck looked up, and smiled grimly. Once he took Lukov, after all, the Russians would be forced to retreat across the dirt roads that the peasants used for their farm-wagons, tumultuous and disconnected, across fields and fences and through all the little villages, without any particular available line of supply. They could do it, of course, if they were not fighting and expending ammunition the whole while, and living off the land as they needed to, but it would slow them down and it would give him the time he needed.

“The Austrians won, and Russian Tenth Army is headed our way. We'll establish our headquarters in Lukov and use it as our central point for the position of the various army corps against the Russian retreat. I'll issue specific orders once we're into Lukov.” It would only be a few more hours now.


WASHINGTON D.C.
GERMAN EMBASSY
8 SEPTEMBER 1914


Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff was expecting bad news, namely, the announcement by the supinely confident French that their expected great western offensive had commenced. Instead, nothing like that came throughout the day. Diplomatic wires were chattering, however, with successions that the Russians had been defeated again, but to the Republican sentiments of the United States that was scarcely an important matter.

Instead, he found something altogether much more interesting as coming with priority from the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. It was, in fact, a very surprising message to say the least, containing what might be described as a “provisional shopping list” for the German agents in the United States who were tasked, with the aide of the Rothschilds banking system, to acquire military goods for the German Empire and, in conjunction, Austria. Already, extenisve orders had been placed for ammunition, for the production of the American variant of the Mauser in 8mm Mannlicher, and for artillery, though the Americans did not have the industry to make much of that.

Prices had become massively inflated due to the efforts of what were certainly British agents to bargain up the overall costs, but with American industrial potential that had just made all of the great Captains of Industry more and more interested in the probability of great profits which came with the huge contracts which the German government had, heedless of cost (it would be financed by loans through the Rothschilds system and the selling of war bonds, naturlich--cost was not an issue to the generals of the German Army) begun to place with American companies. Everything was, furthermore, predicated on speed, for Germany did not expect the war to last long. A year, at most; so the focus was on the maximum production within that period of time, still better if it could be delivered within six months.

The orders had begun altogether not that long after Moltke had discovered to his great displeasure, and that of the whole German Army, that the Russians had mobilized more quickly than they had possibly thought possible, no doubt due to their overreliance on Austrian intelligence. But that could not be helped. The dismal state of the Austrian military, as far the Germans were concerned, however, could, and that would be vital, no less, in pushing home a victorious war against France with Russia mobilizing. Worse, they had very quickly discovered that ammunition expenditures were vastly larger than had been expected. The average soldier who had been issued with 250 rounds at the start of the campaign in 8th Army, when OHL had expected such an amount would last for a month, had in fact expended an average fifty rounds a day. So while the artillery and the rifles were bound for Austria, the ammunition was in a large part bound for Germany to sate her army's unexpected hunger for bullets and shells.

All of it was, however, modern. The Americans had great stocks of obsolete battle-rifles and artillery, but this was of no interest to Germany and little to Austria. This message changed that. It was very provisional, but particularly in the points that the foreign ministry wanted the Embassy to look into the transportation of the supplies to, it was part of a somewhat convoluted plan. None of which bothered Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, of course, for thinking that complex and convoluted plans were an excellent idea was a mandatory attitude for someone in the German foreign service. But even as just a preliminary service, this was very unusual indeed.

Writing up a dispatch to task several of his commercial agents to complete the requested survey into the available materials, Bernstorff turned his attention to a quite unrelated subject, namely, composing a press release which would continue to try and make the most of milking both the Polish liberation movement and the restoration of Kouang-Tcheou-Wan to China for their positive propaganda value with the American public. It would be a long day, but then, they all had been since the war started, and it didn't seem that was going to change soon, glorious victories on the Eastern Front or not.
---------------------------------------

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Sixteen

Written by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.

EAST OF EIX, FRANCE
9 SEPTEMBER 1914


The front directly opposite of the French fortress of Verdun was held by X Reserve Corps of Von Bulow's 2nd Army. The area to the immediate east of Eix was held by 19th Reserve Infantry Division, and in that division one of the regiments was the 73rd Regiment, Prince Albrecht of Prussia's Hannoverian Fusiliers. They were on the front line in the trenches which had been expanded over the past weeks since they had taken up this position, the maximum western advance of the German Army as the result of the Bulow-Rupprecht counteroffensive.

The German lines were positioned back far enough to be just out of range of the fortress guns. They were protected by wire, though there was not very much of it, supplies being limited to what could be obtained in the area and only a few shipments in, competing with everything else required by the army as it war. There had been a lot of talk that the French were going to attack the day before, but they had not. Then, early on the morning of the 9th, when the pre-drawn darkness still held, a huge freight-train rumble of passing shells awoke the men as moments later alarms sounded and trumpets blared and drums rolled as explosions shook the night behind them.

The French had dismounted some of the guns of the fortress of Verdun and hauled them into range of the German lines. They were joined with older heavy artillery on the 1880 pattern which had been reactivated from the depots and sent to the front to make up for the lack of modern howitzers, which were mostly concentrated with the Army of Alsace to follow up its successes. They fired much more slowly but there were enough of them to make a real impact on the lines.

All around the regiment came the rolling white-crack flashes of exploding shells, the sound of their explosions and of the ground shaking until it seemed to rattle out your teeth. The light of the explosions lasted for only a moment, but was bright enough to be seared into your retina and linger there. Most of the men did not see the bombardment. They stayed low in their trenches, curled up as close to the wet bottom of the dank hole in the Earth as they could, feeling the rumbling of the ground from the impacts in their bones and hearing them, but never seeing them unless it was the last sight that they saw from the rare direct hit on the crooked lines of the trenches.

The bombardment continued for hours, though part of that was the slow rate of fire of the majority of the guns. It was not really an intense bombardment, and the damage was light. Then the guns shifted, however, and the regimental front came in for an intense shelling. They could only watch and see in the fresh light of the dawn as little bits of dirt were shaken loose from the trench faces, as clouds of smoke bearing the strench of cordite and corpses roiled overhead, obscuring the light of a new day, and all around the cacophony of death was sustained forever.

While the heavy French guns, obsolete and limited in numbers as they were, continued to fire, the great numbers of 75mm light field pieces were brought up close under the cover of their fire to the German trenches. Until that point, the Germans had held their counterbattery fire. Now men with telegraph keys attached to the unrolled cords of wire through the trenches began to hammer out grid coordinate positions for the German howitzers.

As the French commenced the massed fire of the 75's, hammering out 20 or for the best gunners 22 rounds a minute, a wave of rippling light explosions landed amongst the German trenches. For the men of the 73rd Hanoverian, they experienced a world in which they could only hear the constant explosions until they fell together in a constant fluxuating roar around them, as shrapnel was tossed endlessly through the air over their heads, and the continued firing of the heavy guns acted like the bass section of Satan's Symphony as the silent men waited out the bombardment, struggling with inner demons of terror and madness.

Yet they had a renewal of drink to sustain their souls, and a deep cup it was, when the counterbattery fire of the German howitzers began. Every man thus knew that their side was not hopeless and helpless in the fight, and a cheer ran along the trenches at the mere sound of the friendly gunners hammering out their massed salvoes in reply to the French. This was no mere desultory barrage, then. The entry of the 75's to the fray, the intensity of the counterbattery fire from their own side, the gravity of the expressions of their officers and NCO's, it left no-one any doubt that a major attack was about to come.

Among those men who cheered was a Einjahrfreivilliger of the 73rd Hanoverian, and, most interesting, veteran of the French Foreign Legion. His name was Ernst Jünger. In addition to his rifle he clutched a Very pistol which the commander of his platoon had issued to him that night when there was a rumour about of a night attack by the French in the offing, and it had never been retrieved; he did not know if it would be of much use but he still held it, and shook it in his clenched hand when the counterbattery firing had begun, the feeling of which shook off the malaise and left him almost euphoric with the rush of energy, of the action it seemed coming together grandly. It would be his first test in combat.

Above them, the duel of the guns continued for some time. The French 75's suffered heavily under this counterbattery fire. Many guns were damaged and there were many wounded suffered among the gun crews and by the horses of the artillery teams as well. As the Germans focused on the guns, however, the French troops were massing for the attack. It was to begin at exactly 0800 hours. With the constant roar of the massed gun duel ahead in their ears and the smoke wafting up in their eyes, the French prepared prepared for the attack, bayonets fixed, all the bands mustered to inspire the regimental columns in the charge to contact.

It was the extreme left flank section of a massed attack taking place by two fresh armies (one, granted, freshly formed and understrength) from Nancy in the east to Verdun in the west. The extreme flanks were, however, the strongest, the better to catch some of the German forces between them, or at least force their withdrawal elsewise, though the attack was to be general on every sector of the front from Verdun to Nancy even if it was particularly concentrated in certain places. The French generals simply intended to push forward with every man they had available in a great sweeping series of bayonet charges all along the front and drive the Germans back at every point until they broke. And then, to pursue until they no longer could, or else God willing reached the Rhine. If the first attacks did not break through, then 3rd and 2nd Armies would simply form the second wave, and though 1st Army and the Army of Alsace were fully involved in the fighting around Strasbourg, that still left 5th Army under Lazenrac at least partially available for a flanking attack to the east of Nancy should it be necessary.

None of these men really understood the details of the objectives of the attack or, for that matter of the defence. They had particular jobs to do, and that was what they dwelled on beyond their own survival, even if their individual reactions to the impending struggle varied immensely. There was, also, despite the intensity of the first month of the fighting and the great casualties already suffered on both sides, some real confidence. The Germans were defending on French soil here; the French felt that last they should break through and see Lorraine, and match the success of the armies fighting in Alsace, which might even now have taken Strasbourg!

The Germans were clearly having the better of the barrage, even when the heavy guns had shifted to firing back on the German batteries. The fortress guns and the 1880 pattern pieces were all long guns and they didn't have the high trajectory of the German Howitzers that would lend them to being truly effective, while the 75's still firing on the trenches were suffering all the while. The leading columns of the French attack were now close enough to the front to suffer some wastage from the howitzers firing at the 75's, but they held their ground and waited for the order.

It was not much longer. The order was given. All the bands of all the regiments struck up their quick-marches. The flags were lifted on their poles and the order was transferred all along the lines. The columns dashed forward at the double-quick, bayonets fixed. Suitably, considering how often Le Regiment de Sambre et Meuse was played, the attackers had their backs to the Meuse. The attacked with their customary élan, even as the gunners on the 75's continued to fire until they had exhausted their ammunition, or the advancing columns masked their guns and forced them to halt.

The guns ceased firing. The French rushed ahead at that swift, pounding clip of a barge, bayonets ready. All along the German lines came the same order: “Front companies, man the parapets!”

Ernst Jünger was perhaps one of the first Germans, with his excellent athleticism, to push himself up on the parapet of the trench, calmly shouldering his Mauser.

“Sights to four hundred meters!” the Leutnant commanding the platoon ordered.

Ernst adjusted his sights as ordered and focused in on the French columns. He could make out the men in them well. Suddenly the precise point of his aim had to be shifted as the man he had focused in on toppled from the commencement of the machinegun fire at the nearest strong-point.

“Rapid fire!”

He pressed the trigger. The gun barked and recoiled, and he was no stranger to this. Other men flinched at the prospect of killing a fellow man. Not Ernst Jünger. He smoothly worked the bolt of his rifle, took aim at another man and fired once more. And then again. And then again. And then again. Five rounds expended, and he reached for a stripper clip and reloaded the gun in measured haste. The moment the last of the five fresh bullets had been worked in he slammed the bolt closed, raised the gun back up to his shoulder and began to fire once more. Men toppled, but who could be really sure who had killed whom? It was a mechanistic procedure, aim, fire, work the bolt, aim, fire. The bark of guns all around him and of his own was overwhelmed with the sound of the 77mm field guns of the Germans which were now firing into the advancing French columns.

Men toppled in masses like tenpins. The flags of the regiments, though, and the tricolour, continued to wave clearly in the morning's air, even through the stench of the cordite smoke that sometimes obsured them, the wafting yellow clouds from the explosions of the shells of shrapnel in the midst of the columns. There was never a lack of volunteers to push the flags forward. The German machineguns were firing with maximum rapidity. At one point it seemed as if one of the machineguns had raked its way down a row of Frenchman and toppled every single one, like a child batting over toy soldiers with his hand.

The bombardment had done almost no damage to the German trenches whatsoever. The 75's might as well have been cap guns with shrapnel shells when directed against earthern fortifications, and the heavy guns and their rapidity of fire had been insufficient to do any significant damage. The French had a vast advantage in manpower, and it was their only chance. They continued to close, disciplined swift ranks led on by the flags and the survivors of the bands who continued to gallantly play.

Columns fired salvoes on the march, emptying the magazines of their Lebels, and Germans were dying from them sometimes. But the Germans had scarcely any of their bodies exposed and though bullets sent men toppling back into the trenches, almost always dead or dying from a serious head or neck wound, sometimes wounded in the shoulders, whereas the French were fully exposed on the open ground. The toll was atrocious among the French; what unfortunate losses the Germans had they could not even spare the time to pity as they fired.

“Adjust sights to two hundred yards!”

How long had it been? It seemed like eternity but with the rapidity of the French advance it had been minutes at most. Ernst adjusted his sights, and commenced to fire once more. There was nothing more to it.

Braving the German fire, the French pressed on, the lead regiments horrifically attrited even as the bands of the trailing regiments played on and them men in those regiments marched over the carpet of corpses the German fire had created and pressed on to guarantee that the attack would continue even if the first regiments were entirely annihilated. It was, as such a terrific and horrible spectacle, still an immense thing to see the power of human spirit that led the French on in their flamboyant reds and blues, bayonets gleaming in the morning sun, pushing home the attack no matter the cost in blood.

It was a picture of gluttony for Death. Even the strongest and coldest man could eat his fill of slaughter in the visage splayed out before him, and find a limit which was exceeded. The command had been given, however, and the firing did not stop. Nor, despite the seeming limitlessness of the slaughter, were the French repulsed. Ernst fired again, and again, and again, and reloaded and fired once more. But the French came on, as their own fire gained accuracy with closeness even as their numbers seemed to fall all the faster.

They reached the wire. Here they were hung up, and the German machineguns began to rake back and forth along that line, slaughtering everyone who was stopped at it for the slightest of moments. Parties of French soldiers pushed around the barrier and ran toward the trenches with fixed bayonets. The soldiers in the trenches focused on these, and shot them down in massed rifle fire. Yet even the machinegun fire on the wire was better than being out where the artillery was firing, and getting past the wire seemed safer still, so the men of the first regiments often dared their lives with the rest of the dash.

Officers who had somehow survived, their swords drawn, led larger parties through and met with men who had dropped to cover on the ground as the bullets tore through the air over their heads. They dashed on and dropped into the trenches in many places. For Ernst Jünger the shifft was subtle. The men had simply gotten closer, until he was killing them or wounding them—or at least it seemed he was and it scarcely mattered if it was really his shots or not—at very close range. Until, again, one charging soldier was close enough that he was left with no doubt. The man was blown back by the shot that stroke his stomach, his bayonet-tipped rifle falling away.

Ernst Jünger felt a sudden flash of clarity at the bravery of the fellow. But nothing more than that. That the French were brave he knew, and doubted not; but his comrades on the line were incredible, fighting as they were, repulsing so many as they were succeeding to do. The torrent of French attackers from the lead regiments fell off. There were simply no more to press home the assault. Yet they had torn gaps in the wire, and the next wave was coming on fast. Simultaneously, the 75's were being raced forward by their horse teams, even as those poor animals were chopped up by artillery fire and slaughtered along with their crews, all so that they could be fired point-blank into the German entrenchments to support the advance.

They were just as bold and courageous as sight as the first, coming so close that the bands wafting out their French martial airs could be heard through the roar of the cannon and the constant splutter of musketry. Waves of gleaming steel bayonets bore down, creating a hard tip to the melange of blue and red that pushed forward under the proud flags, which themselves seemed to sing with the desire for avenging 1870 which was fairly presented to them. They braved through the Germany gunfire, and continued to drive home their attack.

Though these regiments had also suffered grievously from the artillery fire, they had not been the focus of the massed riflery and machineguns of the Germans as the lead regiments had, and they still had the bulk of their strength and considerably momentum behind them. They picked up remnants of the lead regiments, the brave or the mad willing to continue the attack, and pushed on to the wire as the regiments before them had succeeded in doing, charging headlong into the areas of the battlefield where the machinegun and rifle fire was now at its heaviest. Abruptly their finely ordered ranks collapsed in a malestrom of death delivered from every kind of weapon which could be brought to bear against them.

These men, though, were of a stern and valiant breed. Their attack was not halted even if the organization of their columns disintegrated in the slaughter. They pressed through it, toward the deadly wire, unstinting in their determination to be victorious in the contest, to follow the regimental flags which led them on, to heed the call of the martial songs of their freshly-buried youth and prove themselves as men of France. Forcing themselves onward, souls pitted against machinegun fire, they reached the wire in front of the German troops.

Funneling through gaps in the wires the French poured with their bayonets ready onto the German trenches, directing rapid-fire with their rifles down into them as they leaped into the midst of their enemy and at last presented the point of French steel to face the German infantry man to man.

“Fix bayonets!” The platoon's commander shouted at the last possible moment.

Ernst Jünger was confronted by the enemy with the trenches themselves only moments later. He fired and a man above him toppled down into the trench. He fired again; perhaps another in the press fell. They were being pushed back on that section of the trench, and there was surely fighting everywhere else in the chaotic tangle of the dirt lines which zig-zagged crazily to deflect artillery fire, and now presented an unreal aspect to the narrow and savage fighting in their confines.

It had happened within seconds.

All along the German lines there was bayonet fighting in the trenches, now. Men fought with everything they could find, too, in a bloody and physical melee of up close and personal killing, a horrific and indecisive struggle as the Germans fought with equal ferocity to defend what the French fought to take. As savage as it was, all the reserves of the Germans and all the fresh French who had made their way across were fed in at once, even as the machinegunners calmly continued to tear through the ranks of the still-advancing rear formations of the French attack, and it was against the machinegun strongpoints that the French soon directed their focus, almost more by impulse than conscious design.

Along the trenches where the fighting was at its thickest, a young trumpeteer from one of the regimental bands found himself alone at the lip of the German trench, with fighting raging all around and a bullet having just creased his hair. He put his instrument to his lips and played through a fanfare again and again, simply standing there in full sight of the Germans. None had the heart to fire at him, and he played on as the waves of French infantry surged passed his valiant music and leapt into the trenches to take their bayonets to the enemy, until at last he fell wounded to a stray round. But by then the French had already secured a length of front-line trench in that sector which was eighty meters long.

Ernst Jünger was in the heat of the press on the regimental front of the 73rd Hanoverian Fusiliers. He had fired his rifle until he had emptied his magazine, but as he prepared to reload with his rapidly dwindling supply of stripper clips, he was set upon by a Frenchman. In certain spirits there is a capacity for instant conscious action, in the seconds which matter between life and death. From waist level he thrust his rifle forward with both hands and, being the taller man of the two, drove his bayonet through the stomach of his foe, a fluid and athletic strike which brought the withdrawal of his bayonet even as his enemy keeled over, face expressing a rictus of agony.

His steel bloodied, he looked around for another enemy and did not see any for the moment. He reloaded at once and then prepared to fight once more. As he was about to push on around another bend in the trench, however, a corporal shouted to him—or perhaps to everyone; either way it didn't matter:

“They've taken the strongpoint! We'll get it back—follow me!”

He swung about and followed the Corporal at a run without a moment's pause. Together they picked up another seven men as they dashed up to the squat form of the built up strongpoint, protected by earthen ramparts and sandbags to reasonable heights. There were French around, and the rushing Germans fired a volley which toppled two of the men. The last Frenchman fired and one of their number cried out, staggering to the side, wounded upon his left thigh.

They were on him to fast for him to fire again, and Ernst thrust with his bayonet, missed in his haste, and reversed the rifle to deliver a strike with the butt, but the others of the party had already caught him and run him through. The Frenchmen up in the commanding position of the strongpoint were aware from the firing of yet the latest threat to their lives, and they pushed back out of it, four men, delivering a rapid hail of gunfire down onto the eight Germans.

Ernst felt something sting at his side, a fine, creasing cut that scarcely staggered him, even as his uniform jacket was splattered with the brains of the corporal who had led them forward and two of the others fell besides. He was bleeding but he did not know it, and did not care. His rifle swung up and he fired. One of the Frenchmen toppled. The rifles of his comrades were firing as fast as his own and even as they fell around him the remaining three Frenchmen were chopped up.

But they had still had a commanding position, and as Ernst looked around, he saw he was the last man of the party still on his fight. Mein Gott, he muttered softly, thinking, then I am alone, before he nonetheless pressed forward with his rifle ready into the little redoubt.

An arm twitched in the pile of French bodies. He swung his rifle and fired. click. The magazine was empty, and his body went rigid as he expected to die. But there was nothing, save the grievously wounded Frenchman with his hands sprawled to his sides, palms upturned, empty. Ernst looked for a moment and recovered himself, kicking away the rifles of the wounded and dead French and then looking around at the scene of seven or eight dead Germans killed by rifle and bayonet. He went to collect their arms, also, but then his eye caught on the scene out of the nearer machinegun position. Vast numbers of French troops were pushing forward, through the gaps in the wire and toward the trenches.

Because this machinegun position was silent.

He settled down by it and checked the belt. It seemed intact, loaded, ready to go. He didn't know where the safety was but doubted that the dead men had bothered to set it as they rose to defend themselves. Ernst Jünger grasped the heavy gun in his hands, the smell of freshly slaughtered corpses around him and the sounds of battle unending, and swung it toward the masses of French soldiers.

He began to fire.

Simply holding the trigger down he swept the gun in awkward, jerking motions and was rewarded with the sight of the enemy falling. The rapidity of fire was incredible. It seemed as if he had wiped out a whole French company though his mind told him that was not true. The seconds passed with a seductively glorious destructive power, as he tried his best to direct every round into the enemy and knew he was not doing as well as a trained man.

Then the belt was expended. He rose, and after a moment's hesitation, went to the next machinegun in the strong-point rather than try to reload the one he had just fired. Again he settled down and took up aim at the masses of French, and began to fire at once. Once more he seemed as if he was wielding the thunderbolts of Zeus down into the French ranks. But only a couple seconds passed before he expended this belt as well.

As he rose to make a serious effort to reload one of the weapons, he heard a rustling behind him, and twisted in alarm. That saved his life. The bayonet missed tearing through his ribcage to rip at his uniform, cut along his side and imbed itself in one of the sandbags of the redoubt. In a vicious motion he tossed himself to the right and ripped his uniform clear of the bayonet, falling, though, and landing upon the cut open belly of one of the dead machinegunners. He did not have his rifle anymore.

He reached out for anything he could find, and grabbed an entrenching shovel in his right hand, even as the Frenchman yanked his bayonet free of the sandbag. There was no time. Ernst gathered himself, tensing every muscle for a concentrated burst of energy, and pushed up to his knees and lunged. The Frenchman swung with his bayonet, but where the butt of the gun connecting with him would have knocked him over, the side of the bayonet, even in a solid impact, did not.

His own vicious hit of the shovel, on the other hand, slammed squarely into the man's thigh, and he fell back against the side of the strongpoint's sandbag walls. Ernst Jünger found himself pushed up against the man, both of whom would have fallen had they not crashed against the wall, and their eyes met in a moment of killing ferocity. Jünger slammed the shovel into the brow of the Frenchman. The blow staggered him and brought a flow of blood as he slumped to the side, and Jünger thought it might be over.

Then the Frenchman somewhere mustered the consciousness and the determination and reversed his rifle butt into Jünger's stomach. There wasn't enough force behind the blow at such close range to knock the wind from him, though, and Jünger found himself, like an automaton, in retaliation, raising the entrenching tool and driving the blade into the side of the Frenchman's head. And then again, and again, and again.

He toppled away, and Jünger stepped back and watched as the Frenchman was in the grip of some sort of horrible seizure, his body spasming uncontrollably on the ground, limbs hideously twitching, so clearly not yet dead even though the gray matter of his brain was visible through the hole that Jünger had chopped in the side of his head with the shovel.

Ernst Jünger turned away and found one of the Mausers laying there, of one of the dead men, leaving the French soldier in his death spasms as he checked the gun and confirmed that it was loaded. Abruptly another Frenchman appeared, pushing bayonet-first into the strongpoint. Jünger raised the rifle in a heartbeat and fired at point-blank range, blowing the Frenchman back down to the trench below.

It's time to go he thought, and turned to try and find some safe way out of the redoubt. He managed to get down into the trench only to find that the French, already entering and seizing the redoubt once again, were also pushing along it. A volley of fire was directed at him and he felt the sting and the powerful impact of one of the bullets on his shoulder. His second rifle of the day fell from his arms as he fell to the floor of the trench. He did not even hear his own voice cry out with the sudden shock of pain.

The temptation to slip into shock at the overwhelming pain gripped at him, at the hellish sounds of men fighting and dying all around. But he did not wish to be captured, and he forced himself, one arm hanging useless, to crawl forward until he could no longer see the French who were distracted in securing the redoubt. Then he rose and staggered and ran, sometimes falling and pushing himself back up.

At last he saw some feldgrau uniforms. The men had been expecting French; one, on recognizing him as friendly, dared go forward and help him up.

“Comrade, you can walk?!” Everyone was shouting by now, the bombardment having already made them have to hollar just to be heard.

“Yes, yes!” Ernst replied. He wanted to fight again but he knew he couldn't.

“Then go back, go back behind us until you see a communications trench and follow it. You can still get clear! We'll fight to hold here.”

Ernst nodded and staggered on, supporting himself with his good hand on the wall of the trench as the soldier who had spared the kind words for him raised up his rifle and prepared to face the French once again, most likely to the death.

At last he reached the communications trench, passing along the lines of men who still stood their ground and continued to fire, to continue to hold this section of the trench, with a splendid bravery, officers standing with them, all determined not to give up an inch of ground to the French, no matter how hopeless their position had now become. He left them reluctantly, wishing that he might share his fate with them, and forced himself onward, despite the bloodloss, until he reached a casualty clearing station under his own power. Behind him, the French 75's that had gotten forward had begun to fire point-blank into the part of the trench still in German hands which he had just left.


The French attacks continued throughout the day. They drove the Germans from their front-line trenches, both Von Bulow's 2nd Army and Rupprecht's 5th Army being forced to cede them. The Germans were still inexperienced in trench-building and the second line was far to close to the first, being easily taken before they could regroup and prepare to defend it. The Germans were thus driven out of their defences and forced to fall back, ultimately at all sectors along the line, when Falkenhayn decided it pointless based on the combat reports to maintain any of the line to the west of Nancy. As he had expected he must, he must fall back, and the Germans reorganized in the words to the east of Verdun and fell back from Nancy toward the border.

The French armies intended for the second day of the attack thus sent their units forward to reinforce the attrited Armies which had spearheaded the attack and to make a strong assault on the Germans as they fell back, in hopes of breaking them when they were perceived to be at their weakest and having suffered greatly. With Strasbourg now surrounded on all sides, save the Rhine, by French troops as well, and the German armies in the western portion of the front having been forced from their defences and driven back, it seemed that regardless of the results in the east that the French should be victorious in the west.

General von Falkenhayn, however, had been preparing for the worst. He was, unfortunately, not pessimistic in his evaluations, but he did not find the situation entirely hopeless, either.

The French had suffered a cumulative 28,000 fatalities on all sectors of the Front on 9 September, 1914, not counting wounded in action who died later from their injuries, and missing in action who were never recovered.


Author's note: the fatalities are consistant with OTL 22 August on which 27,000 French soldiers were listed as fatalities.

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Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Seventeen.

Written by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.

RIVER VISTULA, POLAND
OFF NOVO-GEORGIEVSK
10 SEPTEMBER 1914


Prince Heinrich was in an unenviable position. He had been given command of the Vistula expedition by the Kaiser, of course, and the Kaiser considered it an honour. But it had turned into farce. While the Army was winning and advancing admirably, the Navy was bogged down in trying to get its ships up the Vistula to come into range of anything important to attack.

It had ultimately required a division of infantry on each bank of the river to support the advance of the ships, the infantry being covered by the guns of the Vistula Squadron and the infantry clearing away threats from the banks in turn. Cavalry had been added in, and the purpose of the expedition, to rapidly smash through and take Warsaw, was completely lost in the daily drudgery of working the ships through the shallows. And then, of course, there had been the losses.

First it had been the Hagen, hitting a mine placed by the Russian Vistula Flotilla, a force of essentially commandeered small boats with improvised weapons, but in the confined river, it turned out, hideously effective. The Kaiser had apparently imagined that the Vistula expedition should turn out something like the Mississippi Campaign of the American Civil War; but the Vistula was a river less suited to heavy armoured ships than the Mississippi, and war-fighting technology had changed a great deal in those fifty years.

SMS Hagen, fortunately, had been beached before she had sunk and was undergoing temporary repairs which would suffice to allow her to advance behind the fleet and ultimately bring her guns to bear on the target of the fleet. Because the depth of the river at Warsaw had been overestimated by an assortment of individuals who should have known better, it was questionable as to if the Vistula Squadron could even reach Warsaw has it been intended to. Hagen, regardless, would be delayed to the point that it seemed likely that Warsaw would fall before she could be brought back into action, and it was likely that even if the water level of the river increased enough through the coming weeks that the city might well fall before any of them got there.

Then they had lost Heimdall, and permanently. The ship had struck a mine, suffering serious damage, and while her crew fought to save her through the night a group of daring Russians, led by a young naval officer of the rank of Senior Lieutenant with the ironically German surname of Stempel, who had volunteered for the mission. They had crept up toward the squadron under cover of dark in an 18-meter Naptha launch. Despite being detected and fixed in the searchlights, Stempel had ordered the launch forward through the vigorous defensive fire of the light guns of the squadron. Somehow surviving the fire intact, her St. Andrew's Cross on the sternpost brilliant in the intense glare of the searchlights and the shell splashes all around, the little improvised warship had pushed forward against the crippled Heimdall.

It was a mission more successful through raw courage than any technology. Stempel's Naptha launch had driven a spar torpedo into the hull of the Heimdall before being torn apart in the shell-fire as she backed clear. Stempel himself and five men of his crew had survived and been fished from the water, where Prince Heinrich felt obligated by the man's bravado to, once his parole was secured, invite him to the Ägir's Mess, where the war was assiduously ignored and the dapper and dark-haired Stempel with his flamboyant-mustachio, uniform cleaned and pressed to fineness after his undesired swim in the Vistula, had proven a splendid raconteur at table.

Heimdall was nowhere near as fortunate. The ship was not fatally damaged by either blow, but the combination caused ultimately fatal progressive flooding and an extreme starboard heel. The crew was taken off and the Beowulf tried to tow her out of the channel but succeeded only partially before the cables slipped. Two volunteers had swam out to the ship, precariously near capsizing, to try and get a line back on her. They had been onboard when she rolled over, and had somehow managed to make it out onto the hull and survive the capsizing of the ship before slipping into the water and making it to a launch that had gone close in to try and effect their rescue.

The old armoured ship had sunk partially in the channel, and that had forced Prince Heinrich's squadron to sit and wait for several days as dredging equipment was brought up to expand the channel to its maximum depth to a sufficiently additional breadth for the squadron to get around her wreck. At last they had made some quick progress, and once clear of the poor Heimdall it had only taken them a few days to push on the last distance to the confluence of the two rivers—the Narev and the Vistula—at Novo-Georgievsk.

Now then, as the mist faded over the Vistula, here where its depth and power was enriched by the Narev, six German armoured ships were staggered line-abrest across the length of the channel of the Vistula, facing the fort. They had anchored during the night against the current, though the pressure was kept up in their boilers, and the men were at Condition Two. With the fading of the dawn mists, Prince Heinrich gave the order and the crews went to battle-stations. The two single 9.45in/40cal turrets of the ships which could bear were elevated to maximum. They would be firing at extreme range for their guns, aided by spotters along the Narev in firing against the tip of the fort in the triangle of land between the two rivers.

The spotters along the north-bank of the Narev with wireless telegraphy sets had a good vantage point over the whole of the fortifications of Novo-Georgievsk, and were providing coordinates for the fleet, and guarded by a detachment of infantry from the east-bank division against any sortie by the defenders in small boats across the river to drive them out. Furthermore, the remaining stern 9.45in rifles of the six ships were swung about to starboard to bear on the west bank of the Vistula to the south. Here the Russians had been concentrating detachments from the hundred-thousand man garrison of Novo-Georgievsk and from the western garrisons which had been abandoned, to create a defensive cordon north of Warsaw on the west bank of the Vistula so that regular communication between the Novo-Georgievsk and Warsaw garrisons and their mutual support during the coming siege could be effected. These troops would come under the fire of the remaining 9.45in rifles.

For this purpose of the Russians, however, in keeping Warsaw and Novo-Georgievsk in comunication, it was necessary for ships to pass between the fort and the west bank of the Vistula under the cover of the fort's guns, and a concentration of ferries and steamers at the confluence of the two rivers had thus been effected. The secondary guns of the armoued ships were to interdict this to the best of their ability, and for these secondary tasks in general the aviso's were positioned forward for spotting, though they would withdraw if taken under fire by the guns of the fortresses.

Along the north bank of the Narev, the sun shone down, and the mists had parted. Though the fleet could not see the impressive fortifications, the spotters could, and they were all who mattered. Coordinates crackled through the clear air from their wireless telegraphy sets to the great receiving masts of the armoured ships. Prince Heinrich gave the order, glad, at last, that his mission would show some result.

Six 9.45in rifles thundered through the peaceful morning airs of the Vistula river valley. The Russians of the garrison regiments, mustering for morning roll-call, were suddenly disturbed by the sight of the shells crashing down. Of them, the first six missed. But the Germans were firing half-salvoes, one gun on each ship at a time. The spotters refined their estimates, sent back the new data to the gunnery officers of the ships, and another half-salvo, ready in the tubes, was immediately fired according to them. Five missed, so that no less than eleven of the heavy armour-piercing rounds splashed into the Narev or the Vistula, missing their targets. The twelfth shell, ironically the last to come in from the seconds alvo, as the Russians held their breath at the sight, hit land and plunged home, deep into one of the foremost outer batteries of the fortress along the Vistula. A mound of dirt rose into the air, and thunder from the blast followed it through the sky moments later.

Inside, however, the battery lived. The men staggered about as dust and bits of concrete fell about them and their ears were rendered useless, for many minutes at least, made temporarily deaf. But they slapped each other heartily on the back, their post superficially damaged at most, and manned their guns for some sight of the enemy under the rising sun. The siege of Novo-Georgievsk had begun.


RIVER VISTULA, POLAND
SOUTH OF WARSAW
10 SEPTEMBER 1914


Prince Heinrich's Vistula Squadron was commencing the first bombardment of Novo-Georgievsk to the north of Warsaw. To the south, however, a different sort of threat loomed to this Russian bastion, stretching from the southern fort of Warsaw to the northernmost position in Novo-Georgievsk, and defended altogether by some one hundred and fifty thousand men. German Seventh Army under General Josias von Heeringen had reached the Vistula.

A few batteries of horse artillery opened fire with the dawn at the sight of Cossacks patrolling the further bank. The Cossacks had scattered, and after that the peace of the morning returned. The bells of a Catholic church in a village along the river-bank at the road reminded the faithful of the village that it was the memorial day of the Virgin of Wonders, and with such a brief barrage being the only disturbance, the men went to the fields as usual, relieved that for the moment the long arm of Russian conscription would not fall on them.

Soon, however, the village was occupied by a hive of activity. First of all, a brigade of artillery escorted by a Jaeger battalion passed through it to the river bank, where they positioned their guns to either side of the village. Then came a great deal of equipment and men, and with it, the unusual sight of several automobiles. The men of the village had raced back at first to try and somehow protect the women from the soldiers, but they were simply ignored, save for some suggestive but ultimately harmless comments, most of them in German (though the soldiers had by now picked up a few choice Polish phrases which could convey everything important to women of negotiable virtue, and mortally offend all other women) and thus not understood anyway. This was a German Army, and German soldiers did not go through raping and plundering the countryside unless they were told to—which the Kaiser was only generally indiscrete enough to blurt out when dealing with the Orient.

A great deal of work with unfamilar instruments continued for an hour or more, with the artillery dialed on the further bank. The Cossacks did not, however, return. What did happen was that around toward noon another group of cars arrived at the village, this time with a man dressed in the great-coat of an officer of considerable rank in one of them. It was, of course, General von Heeringen himself, and he went immediately to confer with the ranking officer here. That was the commander of Pionier-General 7 and thus the chief Engineer of 7th Army. He was surveying for the locations of pontoon bridges across the Vistula.

The Generals exchanged pleasantries along the bank of the Vistula, their boots in the mud of the bank.

“How many bridges can you put through here? We are just south of the guns of the forts of Warsaw on this road--it is the best place to bring the army across, considering our objective.” Von Heeringen outlined quickly.

“Three, perhaps four, Herr General,” the engineer replied. “We would have difficulty sighting for the fifth, and as I understand it is not necessarily required... Of course, we do not have any more materials for additional bridges across a river of this breadth.”

“Understood. I will accept four—but make sure you manage to get that fourth up. Though we are indeed not bringing the whole of the army across we need to do it the quicker the better, and the supply chains must be good.”

“The Army is to undertake continued movement beyond Warsaw, Herr General? This will require the reinforcement of the bridge approaches for heavy wagons, and the artillery train, which could add another four to six hours to their completion, and would be contingent on more labour.”

“That's correct,” Von Heeringen grimaced faintly, and looked north along the river. “General Moltke wants us to swing around Warsaw and cut through the Russian lines to the north to separate the garrison of Warsaw from that of Novo-Georgievsk. He thinks that the smaller garrison of Warsaw will be easily compelled to surrender once cut off from the support of the greater fortress. He is probably right, but we'll have to wheel around the city to do it, and the forces currently facing the Russians in this area have scarcely more than their strength in men.” A frown. “This would be more acceptable if we could use the river to separate them, but the latest I have heard is that Prince Heinrich has preferred to commence an assault on Novo-Georgievsk rather than run the fort, which was what that devil Tirpitz had promised us his ships would do.”

The engineer frowned as well, but said nothing. It was not assiduous to comment on the doings of superiours of such a rarefied air, and at any rate, what he had just been told simply meant that he had more work to do. Work that was tightening the noose around Russian-occupied Warsaw.


TESCHEN, SILESIA
10 SEPTEMBER, 1914


The level of activity at the headquarters of Armeeoberkommando fluctuated between periods of nervous anticipation and frantic preparations, presenting a stark contrast to the workmanlike efficiency of its German counterpart. General der Infanterie Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf despaired quietly at the tendency to laziness and procrastination seen among too many of his staff officers, and the general lack of efficiency in the Austrian military. He was oblivious to how much of the cycle had been caused by his own requirements for a high degree of improvisation, the result of a drastic strategic error on his part. So far, disaster had been avoided.

The situation around Lemburg, so nonchalantly laid out on the strategic maps in his conference room, threatened to upend the successes of the Austrian military. Third Army had been pushed back to the city, suffering major losses in the process, and now was in danger of being cut off as one Russian army attacked headlong towards the Galician capital, and another drove by to the south along the banks of the Dniester. Second Army was reorganizing by Stanislaw, having been raced north and east from the banks of the Danube, a result of that… miscalculation. The fortresses guarding the city were being mobilized, with Third Army ready to slip away from the threatened encirclement, even as Second Army was finally starting preparations for its own offensive. It was up to Boroevic and Böhm-Ermolli, both of whom he had more confidence in than the unlamented Brudermann, but he intensely disliked the feeling of being unable to intervene in the situation. Plans had been set, all available resources allocated, and that was that.

He fought down the impulse to cable Stanislow and Lemburg for updates on their situation.

The situation to the north, laid out in lines and obscure notations no different from those marking the eastern front, nonetheless was far more inviting to his attention. The enemy’s Tenth Army had been repulsed in their attempt to retake Lublin, and by current reports was withdrawing in disorder northeasterly. German formations were well south of Lukov, according to their own high command, and thus in position to aid First Army in sweeping up the remnants of that enemy force and collapsing the might encirclement on Russian Poland. An encirclement that seemed now to be falling on empty farmland instead of half-mobilized Russian armies, vindicating his own insistence on Brest-Litovsk as the pivotal point of the campaign. Already he could see opportunities, lines of advance, Russian responses…

The rotund, impressively bearded Archduke Friedrich interrupted his planning with a discreet cough as he entered the room. Conrad turned to acknowledge the old man, while trying to keep hold of a tangent in his mind that had been interrupted. The Archduke, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial military, habitually deferred to Conrad’s strategic advice and left most planning in his hands, but he was ultimately in charge. He did not look happy, and so Conrad reluctantly let slip his current thread, to deal with the old man.

“The remnants of Tenth Army are further east than our reconnaissance had indicated.” The Archduke handed his chief of staff a series of telegrams, marked as received from the German High Command. “They are already at Parczew.”

Conrad glanced at his map on the wall, scanning for the name, looking between Lublin and the Bug. “Perhaps fifty kilometers south of Lukov. So, the Germans will finish off that rabble and earn yet more glory.” Then he glanced downward, his gaze drawing to the situation around Chelm, where Fourth Army had been facing Russian Fifth Army. The last report from von Auffenburg also came to mind.

“Fourth Army had reported that the Russian forces facing them were maintaining only a light contact, and had not elected to defend Chelm. They may be falling back to pull away and go to the aid of Tenth Army,” Conrad concluded. “That might pose a threat to the Germans.”

“It cannot be allowed. The Imperial and Royal Army will not disappoint its allies,” Friedrich stated. “Fourth Army must engage the enemy in a decisive battle as quickly as possible.”

Conrad glanced at the map again, and he saw his opportunity for a bold maneuver. “We should let the enemy Fifth Army advance further north, followed loosely by Fourth Army. If Dankl and First Army advance energetically, they can interpose themselves between the Germans and the Russians. They need only delay the enemy somewhat for Fourth Army to cut off their route of retreat to the east, and to concentrate for a grand double encirclement of both enemy armies.”

“First Army was depleted in the recently concluded battle,” the Archduke observed, presenting a mild objection to Conrad. “Are they up to an aggressive advance and combat against a fresh enemy force?”

“The enemy Fifth Army was severely defeated by von Auffenburg at Zamosc and so will be in worse shape,” Conrad predicted confidently. “General von Dankl has managed to make good most of his losses by using the marsch brigades, as was intended. And the morale of First Army is high following their victory, which will allow them to bear the exertion required and still manage to overcome the enemy.”

“Prepare the orders, then” Friedrich said, approving the plan as Conrad knew that he would. The Archduke was the commander-in-chief of the Austrian army as a result of his lineage and exalted rank, and ultimately relied on his subordinate to do all the strategic thinking of the war.

“They will be ready by the evening. We will have another great victory in Poland for his Majesty within the week,” Conrad promised glibly. And, he thought, I will show the Germans how things are done.

“I will leave you to your work then, General.” Friedrich’s eyebrows closed together as he recalled another matter. “While you are at it, authorize General Dankl to let this Pilsudski fellow have some guns. No need to bother the cabinet about a few field cannons,” the Archduke added as an afterthought. “The dispatches from the Germans will be waiting for you as well.”

“Very well, Herr Generalfeldmarschal.” Conrad wanted to debate the issue, but while his superior effectively let him run the army, he had the conservative Habsburg sense of protocol in full measure. And at any rate, once the Russians were beaten, any malcontent Poles could be crushed by his splendid army, and they would be useful to use against the Hungarians. Conrad dismissed it from his mind, instead concentrating on the axes of advance required to pull off his grand envelopment. Among other things, it never crossed his mind to let the Germans know what he was planning.


EYLAU, OST PREUSSEN
10 SEPTEMBER 1914


“Marcus Ulrich?” The young man asked with a terse enough look as he strode into the private room in the state hospital in Eylau. He was dressed in the uniform of a Hauptmann, and seemed annoyed that he had been given this job. But he was around a lady—even a very unladylike one—and he did manage to remain composed and polite, if frigidly so.

“Yes?” Margrete Hoffmeyer looked up rather tiredly, and then tried to straighten up in bed at the sight of the uniform of an officer, but really couldn't yet; she was still quite weak. “Sorry, Sir.”

The Hauptmann relented at that, and waved his hand holding a stack of thick documents. “It's quite alright, Frauline Ulrich.”

She frowned, and indeed her heart sank, at that stack of papers, and she stilled herself for the worst. “What have you come to see me for, Sir?”

“Well, your situation is very unusual, you understand, not underheard of but technically illegal,” the man was of the Junkers class, in fact, from this very region, and he ached to be on the front rather than dealing with attache matters back here, particularly this one unusual case. “That said,” he added hastily on seeing the look upon her face, “You are not being punished in any way.”

Margrete sighed in relief.

“I understand this was made at a very high level, Korporal, though it is, I note, something that we want you to keep quiet.” The Hauptmann smiled at her expression of surprise, and that one official use of the rank. “Yes, we're mustering you out with the rank of korporal, officially due to status as a war invalid. You'll be able to receive the full pension—but we'll need your real name, Frauline Ulrich, so that you can recover the checks in the name Marcus Ulrich, on account of his status as an invalid. And, again, this is all contingent upon you not making any effort to popularize the story of your exploits.” Nobody really wants to admit that women can easily contrive their way into serving in the ranks, he thought with some wry amusement.

“Of course, Sir,” Margrete answered with a sigh. “Though I rather hoped to have been able to return to duty.”

The Hauptmann just sort of goggled at her, and then shrugged. “You have had your adventure—and I won't deny that you have managed to do more service for the reich than many men. Be content with that, Frauline Ulrich, and don't push your luck and your life.”

“Very well.”

The Hauptmann took out a pencil and settled down in the chair to the side of Margrete's bed, setting the papers down there and selecting the top one, some sort of official-looking document or another. “Then go ahead and tell me your real name, please—your original place of residence before enlisting would also be useful.”

Margrete took a deep breath. It's inescapable, really, and I don't think it will change anything. “Margrete Hoffmeyer. Berlin, Bradenburg, Prussia.”

A long silence fell as the Hauptmann just stared at her. At last: “Hoffmeyer? A Jewess?”

Margrete closed her eyes. “Yes. Yes, I am a Jew.”

“Very interesting. I would have never thought that such a person would volunteer for military service in the Kaiser's Army.”

“Jews, also, may be patriotic,” Margrete bit back, exasperated by this point though she did not even open her eyes. “Have you stood and fought against the Russian Grenadiers?”

The Hauptmann leapt to his feet, eyes enraged. “Frauline! What you said is scarcely an appropriate thing to infer about any gentleman.” Of course nothing more came out of it; even a Jewess who had impersonated a man was still a woman, and such a man would not ever even think of striking a lady.”

“I have no doubt that you are courageous, and given the chance, would fight hard. But please. Whatever else is said about Jews and whether or not it may be true; do not judge me by it. I think the fact that you come here, however grudgingly, to address me while I am in a hospital sick-bed from wounds I have received fighting, speaks enough for where my loyalties lay, and my religion and my family have nothing to do with that.”

The Hauptmann calmed as he took in the words and his initial outburst faded, at last taking a deep breath and beginning to speak in penitence for his words. “Very well, Frauline Hoffmeyer. You are correct, and you have my apologies. I will not deny that there are Jews who render great services to the Kaiser and nation.”

“Apology accepted,” Margrete answered. “Now, I assume you're giving me the discharge papers, Sir?” It was hard to get out of the habit of adding the honourific, and she caught herself only after she had done so, this time.

“Of course, Frauline Hoffmeyer.” They were separated from the pile and handed over. “Per their terms, as I've already spoken with the hospital administration, you'll remain here without charge—the government assuming expenses—until the relevant medical authorities deem you fit for release.” A faint smile. “I was told that would be in less than two weeks.”

“Well, at least you can get information out of them, Hauptmann,” she replied, and managed to smile faintly.

A gallant smile was returned, the spirits of the Hauptmann being recovered—though the conversation had convinced him to file another request for transfer to a front-line command. “Of course, Frauline Hoffmeyer. And now I shall leave you to your rest, and return to my duties. May you have a swift recovery, and a good day.” At that, he exited.

It left Margrete to return to her thoughts, of the last sad duty she had to perform, of telling the Widow Helprin precisely how the last days of her young husband were spent, and how he had died.


BUCHAREST, RUMANIA
10 SEPTEMBER 1914


“Vilnius has fallen, Constantine Bratinu,” King Carol of Rumania spoke peremptorily as he sat on a park bench behind his Royal Palace, a quiet enough setting, and it was very comfortably warm in early September. The King felt that he needed it; his health was not what it had been. He was speaking to his Prime Minister, who stood uncomfortably. “German Ninth Army has taken it. This essentially confirms that Russian First Army, as the Germans told us, was entirely destroyed.

“Furthermore, the Austrians have won a great victory at Lublin, their First Army destroying the Russian Tenth Army, which We are told may have fallen into a vast encirclement between the two armies of the Central Powers. The Russians are in retreat in every area except around Lemberg, and they have had destroyed entirely four armies and another has suffered badly. Furthermore, the Austrians have their unbloodied Second Army in the area of Lemberg, and We expect to see anothere Russian reverse there.”

And, as a long concluding summary: “We have just this morning received a telegraph from the Kaiser, who has informed me that the Vistula Squadron, under the command of his—Our—relative,”

Constantin Bratinu winced at the reference to his Sovereign's German ancestry being so proudly displayed, but remained silent as the King continued.

“Prince Heinrich, has reached the fortress of Novo-Georgievsk and brought it under bombardment. This telegraph was accompanied by formal offer from the German ambassador containing the following—a treaty to make war on Russia, without separate peace, until both German and Rumanian aims are met, Rumanian aims in German eyes being Besserabia, the city of Odessa, and the Transdniestria, or, additional areas of coastal Ukraine in compensation for the Transdniestria. Furthermore, Rumania would receive from Germany one thousand artillery pieces before the end of 1915, to be manufactured in the United States and shipped in German hulls and Austro-German railroads to our nation, a shipment of two million and five hundred thousand pounds stirling worth of gold bullion will be delivered within a month of our entry of the war, and the German Mittelmeerdivision currently in Constantinople, consisting of the battlecruiser Goeben and the cruiser Breslau, will move immediately to Constanta and operate from that port to defend the Rumanian coast against the Russian Navy.”

King Carol slapped his hand against his right knee in an emphatic gesture. “Constantin Bratinu, you have a duty to this nation just as We do. If We were in command, solely, We would agree to these terms and enter the war immediately on the side of German and Austria. But We acknowledge our constitutional role, and therefore must have the support of the government. Are these terms not sufficient?”

Prime Minister Bratinu took some time to think about his answer. It was quite true that the promises were excellent. The offer of Odessa was particularly tempting. It was a first-class port and industrial center, and though it was entirely Russian in population, a single Russian city could easily be absorbed in Rumania without any great difficulty, certainly not out of proportion to the benefits that would be gained from it. The money was more than enough, and of course Besserabia was indeed a vital part of the greater Rumanian nation. The problem wasn't the terms, it was that the allies might not win against the entente.

“Your Majesty,” he said, carefully and judiciously. “These terms are excellent, though I request to see them in writing..”

“We will arrange for the original of the proposal to be provided to you before you leave,” King Carol answered immediately. He was clearly expecting to finally get what he wanted, but against Bratinu was going to let him down.

“My thanks, Your Majesty. In that case, recalling that neither Warsaw, nor Novo-Georgievsk, nor Brest, have as of yet fallen, I have a compromise proposal. If the Germans take Warsaw, and the Austrians defend Lemberg, then I will find the situation nonetheless acceptable in the east, even if Novo-Georgievsk nor Brest have fallen. Yet the situation for Germany in the west has seen some serious reverses, and French successes. So let us also consider that front, namely, the German fortified city of Strasbourg. If the Germans hold Strasbourg, and the Austrians hold Lemberg, when Warsaw falls, then my government will support entering the war under the outlined terms.”

King Carol frowned deeply, and stood. “You are being to cautious. But I will acknowledge that under those terms it is certain that we will not, at least, delay so long that the Germans no longer feel us necessary in their war effort. Very well, Constantin Bratinu. Those shall be our terms for signing the agreement. We suspect that you shall find this nation, by them, at war much sooner than you may expect.”

“I fear that indeed may be the case, Your Majesrty,” Bratinu admitted.

After the usual formalities, King Carol headed off at once. His body hurt; he was in old age, and his health was no longer so good. But before going to relax he wanted to compose a message back to Kaiser Wilhelm. Carol wanted to make sure that the German military understood precisely what would be required of it by his ministers for Rumania to join the war effort.


PARCZEW, POLAND
10 SEPTEMBER 1914


German reconaissance planes had sighted the shattered, retreating 10th Army. Some of the more inventive among their pilots had even contrived to throw small bombs out of their cockpits onto the columns spread out along the roads, more rag-tag masses of men, really. These, though having no real effect, when dropped from planes greatly scared the Russians who had, of course, never experienced aerial attack before. Further chaos and disorder was done to 10th Army, accordingly. It was not without cost to the daring airmen, though, for one of the more intact Russian regiments had stood its ground under its officers when so attacked and directed a massed rifle-fire into the offending flying machine until it was shot down.

Generalmajor von Kuhl was infuriated with such stunts from the increasingly valuable reconaissance assets, but it was hard to rein in the pilots who were for the most part of the nobility and who had learned flying as an amusement and then suddenly found it a skill in demand on the outbreak of the war. The information, at least, had nonetheless gotten through, and it had been invaluable in directing the strength of the attrited but still combat-capable 1st Army toward the Russians.

The Army had quick-marched from Lukov toward Parczew. They had left the heavy train behind, but the 10th Army of Russia was a rabble which had abandoned not only all of their heavy artillery but most of their field artillery, and many of the men were entirely unarmed. The best units could put up a good fight, however, and did. The situation was still worse, though, for Von Kluck had ordered the Jaeger battalions and cavalry regiments, as he had gained experience with in his desperate effort to seize the crossing of the Bug before it could be fortified which had allowed all his further victories, to press ahead together as a flying column toward the east of Parczew to cut off the Russian retreat.

As this was done, the leading infantry units of 1st Army had encountered the fleeing Russians. The regiments swung crisply from marching order to battle order, and pushing ahead in skirmish lines commenced a heavy fire against the unprepared Russians, who were bereft of any reliable reconaissance data with the whole Army command structure tottering on the edge of collapse. Many units simply collapsed at the first onset. Others, however, turned and stood their ground.

The Siberian Rifles fought hard in their divisions for the survival of the 10th Army. With the Guard cut off and annihilated at Lublin they were the best troops available, and despite the heavy losses they had suffered, they fought with stubborn bravery at Parczew. The initial and splendid victories of the German regiments melted before this glorious stand of the hard Siberians. Such artillery of the Russians as survived was brought forward, and added to the fire of the Siberian divisions even as the German batteries wrought havoc amongst them.

Accordingly the assaults were temporarily called off as the corps were properly formed, and resumed in the afternoon. This time the German howitzers were in support, and against each of the four Siberian divisions standing the line, there was a whole German corps. On both sides the units were attrited, and so the German superiourity of nearly two-to-one was essentially maintained.

Von Kluck had established his headquarters in a house in Lukov, and from here he directed the operations of his corps in the vicinity of Parczew, the redoubtable Von Kuhl serving once more to push the corps onward, and to concentrate them at the point of decision. As the general attack began the rattling of dispatches coming in and being sent by telegraph and wireless telegraphy was constant, and the map was being continuously upgraded with new data.

The Russians were fighting in the open, with no time to prepare even trenches, and they had only half their strength in field guns and no heavy guns, whereas the Germans, though attrited in men, at their artillery at full strength. It was these guns which ultimately broke the Siberian Rifles, the guns against which they had no reply, the howitzer shells raining down among them as a vigorous rifle-fire was kept up by the Germans in great numbers. But it took time, time in which the Russians were trying to escape, the other shattered units falling away, running, fleeing to the east.

Here they encountered the horse artillery of the cavalry, and the massed machineguns of the Jaegers, along with the carbine and rifle fire of both. Even as the Siberian Rifles were fighting their desperate action under the merciless artillery which chopped them up as thoroughly as it could, those men who stood firm on open ground, they were being outflanked by the greater numbers of the Germans. They still fought on, even though they were a demoralized and defeated army.

They stood their ground and fought upon it throughout the afternoon and into the evening until the rumours that they were cut off began to spread throughout the mass of the Russian Army, and finally reached them. Their officers held them in a show of stubborn bravery. The shrapnel shells fell among their ranks without pity or mercy, while they were surrounded with rumours that their position was hopeless. Despite that absolutely hopeless feeling, the officers managed to hold them to their places until the sun was setting.

At this time the surviving corps commander attempted to execute a withdrawal to the south from the field, simply ignoring the by-now nonsensical orders of General Pflug. When the Siberian Rifles finally began to leave their positions, however, the artillery was prepared for it, and they were expected, after having stood for four hours under the massed howitzer fire and the rifles of the Germans, to retreat in good order.

Under those terrible guns, they could not do it. Aircraft, German aircraft, flew over the field until the night was very close, and then turned away for their landing fields. They were like devils over the scene of destruction, the smoke rising up from the ground, the long columns of men who had thrown down their rifles and were fleeing to the south, when it became clear that the path east was blocked. And at their head, the Siberian Rifles, who finally fled when they were made to retreat, and had to thus retreat through that hellish bombardment of modern war. They could hold, but they could not fight their withdrawal under that sort of fire.

The battlefield was Von Kluck's. Generalmajor von Kuhl even managed to arrange for a Army Airship to replace the planes into the evening, and to be over the field through the night to the first dawn. It approached, churning through the air, sighting in on the columns of smoke rising up in the gathering dusk, on the huge amount of dust churned into the air by the fleeing men and their pursuers, the Maltese cross on the tail-fins visible to the advancing, victorious troops below, pleased and surprised at a victory so bloodless to them.

The corpses of the valiant dead, of course, did no looking or cheering. But they had fought their best. 10th Army was now indeed a rabble, and a rabble which was running, without its arms, all abandoned on the field to the Germans, who pursued them to compel as many as possible to surrender. Here and there among the scenes of total human misery, of madness and fear and chaos, there were still those who retained their senses and their courage, and a countless number of little actions of the platoon or company level, forever unnamed, silently attested to Russian bravery even in the midst of disaster.

Night fell, and there was nothing between the First Armies of Austria and Germany save for empty Polish fields.


NORTH OF NANCY, FRANCE
10 SEPTEMBER 1914


Through the afternoon, Charles Péguy's company marched north, through the remnants of the German trenches. The corpses from the attack of the day before had not yet been buried, and it offended the Poet's sensibilities, for these were courageous men, and his religious duties, for among them would be Catholics like himself. He was now a Captain, promoted after less than two months under the colours, on account of his bravery at Dieuze, but also because of the brutal fact that Company Commander was the position most likely to get a man killed in the whole of the French Army at the moment, and so quite a large number of replacements were required.

They were marching north from St. Max—the poor town was thoroughly chewed up and shot through by the Germans--toward Delme, back in Lorraine. Tommorow, the next day at the very latest, they would be back on the liberated soil of Lorraine. And this time they would stay.

Everywhere, Péguy could see the evidence of the ruin of the German Army. The bodies were just a part of it. There were destroyed machineguns and cannon, horses' bodies pitifully shot up, overturned wagons, equipment abandoned, abandoned trenches partially collapsed. Yet he knew that, also, tomorrow or the next day they might well have to fight, for the Germans were, despite all of these losses, retreating in good order.

He was prepared for his own death. He had already seen a great deal of bloodshed, and he had suffered the crushing despair of being forced back and seeing the Germans on French soil. Yet now these attacks had infused him a sense of optimism once more. The full strength of the French Army was being sent forward in a great lunge. The Germans had been broken, sent on a retreat back into Lorraine, and they still had two armies, recovered from their earlier reverses, to press home the attack. Perhaps by tomorrow, as well, Strasbourg would be taken in the east.

Captain Charles Péguy was a 41-year old man. He had already lived a full life; the men under his command were but boys. His nation was his highest object, and he intended to lead these men who would carry its future to glory through the fire and iron of this great struggle, this contest of life and death for France, from the front. Already some officers murmured about the tactics being used, about their own hideous losses. But the best among them knew better than that. A French victory would only come if the officers led the men from the front, and the French were allowed to prove their mettle in close-quarters with the bayonet against the German foe.

He would fulfill that role to the height of his ability, and it was up to God if he should live to see Lorraine freed again or not. But regardless, he would at least die upon its Soil, once French, and as the army advanced, again part of the nation. That, he could be sure of.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

Operation Heinrich: Chapter Eighteen.

A collaborative work by Marina O'Leary and Christopher Purnell.

VISTULA EAST BANK
WARSAW, POLAND
12 SEPTEMBER 1914


The dawn's light rose up over the fields just to the south of the sprawl of Warsaw to the east of the Vistula river. There, they illuminated an unusual forest of steel, fourteen barrels elevated toward the sky. They were squat, broad, short, altogether massive instruments. Twelve were of one distinct size, and two of an altogether even greater one, and they were pointed toward the centre of Warsaw on the west bank, off in the distance to them.

Above, wooden blades chopped into the air. Zeppelin LZ.VIII was moving into position with a stately, ethereal grace. The Russian troops in eastern Warsaw—hastily sent there from the Novo-Georgievsk area to form a second line on the east bank of the river when the Russian commanders decided they had enough troops to expand the perimeter—looked up in a mixture of superstitious awe and fear at the flying craft, which they began to fire at indiscriminately with their rifles.

Quickly the Russian officers moved to get their men to cease fire. They were besieged, and ammunition had become precious and not something to be wasted at the flying German toy that their men wildly called Satan in their ignorance. As it slacked off, the airship continued forward through the clear and calm early morning air, making thirty-five knots in its stately progression toward the city center of Warsaw, at an altitude of about three thousand feet, descending slightly now so that its mission could be more effectively executed.

The strange battery was twelve kilometers from the center of Warsaw. The day before, they had been emplaced here, the work only finishing toward the night. Their target was the citadel of Warsaw. Built in the early 1830s, it was an entirely obsolete earth-and-masonry construction last rebuilt in the 1870s, and due to be closed in 1913, yet maintained by the laziness of the Russians in proceeding with the demobilization of their fortresses in Poland. It was defended by less than ten thousand men, some of whom were now stationed through the city, though in all some six thousand were within the confines of the citadel itself.

To the immediate north on the east bank of the river Vistula were the eastern suburbs of Warsaw. The troops which had just been firing at the Zeppelin were stationed here, where the Russians had ended up fortifying the east bank as well as the west bank, digging trenches as their experience in the Russo-Japanese War had taught them. The Citadel in Warsaw proper was however the weakest point of the Russian defences, and the Germans, fully understanding its weaknesses, had amassed a considerable array of firepower against it.

In point of fact, however, of the fourteen heavy guns on the field, twelve of them were actually Austro-Hungarian, 305mm caliber rifled mortars of the Skoda Works. They were pulled by specially designed trucks, and could be assembled for action in just a few hours. Their maximum range for precision firing was what they now stood at—twelve kilometers. With them were two weapons, larger still, both of the German Empire's greatest operational howitzers. They had bores of 420mm caliber. These had taken somewhat longer to set up, but by the morning all fourteen guns were ready to commence firing.

Due to the age of the fortification they were targeting and its location inside a major city, its position was well-known. The Germans were firing on the Warsaw Citadel based on calculated firing angles from a grid pattern, and the vast scale of the fortress allowed that the circular error probability of the guns offered no risk of particularly great damage to the surrounding civilian structures of the city. There would, of course, be some: the order was nonetheless for a quick reduction of Warsaw, on the understanding that the faster the city fell the better for the people in it, and secondarily, due to diplomatic considerations of the allied governments in regard to the note received from Rumania two days prior.

The guns were holding their fire still, however, and there was one reason for this. On the night before, as they were being positioned, the LZ.VIII had taken off from inside East Prussia. It had traveled through the night, slowly, to conserve fuel. Now it was over Warsaw proper, and with its wireless to provide artillery spotting for the siege guns the guns would begin their targeting salvoes. These salvoes were being held until it arrived, to make doubly sure that the guns were perfectly on target for the rapid reduction of the Warsaw citadel, and of course to prevent excessive firing into the city centre proper.

Over Warsaw, the citizens of the city, in the grip of a sort of nervous questioning of their fate, since it was well known that German cavalry had been sighted the day before on the outskirts of the city, and that the Germans were crossing the Vistula in force to the south, now could spy the approach of a strange shape. The more savvy and literate among them knew precisely what it was, and the rest could make at least educated guesses. Even the soldiers in the Warsaw Citadel were mostly educated enough, being artillery troops, to avoid panic, unlike the Russian peasants--the infantry on the east bank--did when they saw the shape which had now passed over them and reached the west bank of the city, their firing long since brought under control by their officers. Other Russian troops had learned that airships were not supernatural forces of evil by now--though perhaps they were worse—but these men had yet to see action.

That oversight would shortly be rectified.

A wireless telegraphy message leapt through the clear air to the receiving and transmission station also set up the night before when the batteries were being emplaced. It came from the LZ.VIII, and was tersely simple:

LZ.VIII reporting. We are in position to observe fall of shot against Citadel Warsaw.

Another message skittered back from the telegraph needle to the airship, as it cast its long shadow over the old streets of Warsaw, and left uncomfortable or curious those out that early Saturday morning, trying to get done what business as they had quickly, without being hassled by the authorities who had declared martial law on Wednesday, three days prior. It was just as simple:

Battery control. Am firing 42cm howitzer. Record fall of shot.

The receipt was acknowledged, and then the order was issued to the lead gun of the 42cm battery. Final elevation was fixed according to the grid location of the Warsaw Citadel based on pre-war maps of the city. The barrel of the gun elevated a negligible two more degrees. The order was given.

Fire burst in a great cone from its mouth, along with tremendous billowing smoke, out to dozens of meters. The sound was absolutely deafening. As the ringing in the head of the battery commander cleared, he looked out and could see the massive 2,200lb shell briefly visible as it rapidly vanished into the distance on its ballistic trajectory at a rate of 400 meters a second. Then they waited.

On the airship, a young volunteer-ensign with good eyesight had been assigned to sweep the area. The brilliant flash and eruption of flame from the gun's impact straight into one of the streets directly abutting the fortress grounds to the east was immediately visible. A gunnery officer, adjusting a fine set of Zeiss binoculars, confirmed the spot and then began to use slide-rule and grease pencil against the grid map to work out the precise position.

On the street, a huge crater had been torn out, and the wall of the ancient fortress slightly damaged, whereas the buildings on the far side of the street were heavily damaged and all the glass for blocks around was shattered. Injured people stumbled away in a daze, shocked from the intensity of the overpressure of the shell in the air around them.

The artillery commander received the latest firing data from the LZ.VIII, and it was promptly provided to the gun-layer of the second 'Bertha in the 42cm battery. The airship was warned for a second shell coming in. Howitzer No.2 was fired with the same intense spectacle as the first.

This time the shell, through its long flight of twenty-seven seconds, held strictly to course. It slammed down in the midst of the Warsaw Citadel, shattering a barracks—fortunately for the defenders, unoccupied save by two unfortunate cleaners from the local populace, since they had been ordered to the walls already. The explosion was easily visible and the success of the seconding targeting was immediately relayed. The first gun was adjusted to the position of the second as it was reloaded.

Now it was the turn of the twelve-inch Austrian mortars. There would not be any peace in Warsaw that day, nor the next.


MUTZIG, ELSASS
12 SEPTEMBER 1914


There was a weak-point in the French advance. In the Vosges to the west of their main advance to the east northeast of Molsheim, just some kilometers to the west, was the modern fort complex of Mutzig. It had been inaugurated in 1893 and was intended to prevent what the French were doing—trying to force a breach in the German line between the Vosges and Strasbourg. The French had chosen to cut the fortress off and reduce it later. The defenders had not even fired a single shot yet, though they could have repeatedly, but they had been instructed by Falkenhayn to hold their fire unless subject to a general attack.

A heavily reinforced French division had been tasked to break through the defences, which the French Army regarded as something to be easily brushed aside, a minor fortification of only about fifty guns and six thousand five hundred men, second line garrison troops all. To aide in the capture of the fortresses, furthermore, they had issued tear-gas grenades to their assault troops for use on penetrating the fortresses to force the surrender of those inside the massive concrete-reinforced ramparts.

The fortress was named Festung Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the French attack on that early morning was directed against Feste Ost. The French attack was pressed home after an artillery bombardment, using mostly old 1870's pattern heavy pieces without recoil suppressing systems, which had lasted for not less than a day to make up for its lack of intensity. It was assumed that this had been enough.

To the roll of drums and the playing of their bands, the French advanced an hour after the break of dawn with the ceasing of the fire of the guns at that point. A slight suppressing fire from the 75's was maintained. Thousands of shells, despite the weakness of the barrage, had nevertheless hit the fortress, and it was a minor construct by the standards of fortification.

It was also new. The French started up the gentle rise toward the fort, which had been, of course, nicely cleared to provide the maximum range of fire. The artillery opened up. Not a single gun had been knocked out. Four 15cm, eight 10.5cm, twelve 5.7cm, and six 5.3cm guns could bear on the French advance. They were all in steel-domed retracting turrets or naval style heavy gun shields which were shielded themselves up to the barrel in meters of reinforced concrete set into raised earth. The French artillery could not even fire with sufficient elevation to do hurt to the later.

Conditions inside the turrets were perfect. The fortresses had electric ventilation systems powered by sixteen petrol engines set deep in the widely spaced and independent stations of the fortress, all of them equipped for maximum overlapping fire. The German guns were fired with the maximum rapidity possible, and their ammunition supplies of shrapnel shells were copious.

Despite it, the French forced their way through the artillery fire, gaudy formations ripped to shreds in the systematic pounding of the German guns through their men, yet persevering. Then they advanced into machine-gun and rifle range. Of the former, there were four machine-gun pillboxes, each with four HMGs, which could bear on the advance. Of the later, some two thousand men with rifles had been shifted to protected positions where they could meet the French assault.

The German machine-guns fired and fired on full automatic. They tore through their belts in less than a minute, and another belt was fixed on and continued to fire. The French continued to try to advance: Now the slope was steeper, and the combined rifle and machine-gun fire, especially the later, was incredible in its intensity. It also did not slack. The Germans had provided four extra barrels for each HMG, and one was fired until it was literally red-hot, so that the metal of the barrel neigh-glowed and the water jacket had been turned to steam, a man wearing baker's gloves wrenched the barrel off to cool and another was locked on the gun in its place even as the water jacket was refilled and more ammunition belts dragged forward, and as soon as this process had been completed, a pit stop for the gun, it commenced to fire again with the same rapidity as before.

A few times the French guns managed to score direct hits on the turrets. The sound of the ringing of the bell-like shape of the turret was horrible for the men inside, with eardrums shattered and ears bloody, staggering about in shock, but they were totally unhurt, and the turrets scarcely dinted. Hard-edged gun captains got their men back into the thick of the fight in moments, and the shrapnel shells were pumped out without slacking into the midst of the advancing French division.

The machine-guns gave the French the worst of it, though. They were in heavy concrete embrasured pillboxes which were equally invulnerable to the weak and low-angled French cannon. Their field of fire was perfect, and in the equally perfect conditions of the pillboxes, they were managing rates of fire very close to their cyclical maximum, at least until they had to be temporarily halted long enough to replace overheated barrels. There was no limit to how long they could fire, and they swept back and forth across the field in pre-planned patterns, leaving no part of the French advance untouched by the hail of bullets.

Thousands of bodies of the dead and wounded littered the slope up toward Festung Kaiser Wilhelm II now. Between the rifles and the machine-guns, three bullets were fired every minute for each Frenchman on the field of battle. Soon that was further increased, as the fortress commander released another regiment of men to also move to the attacked side of the fortress and add their rifle fire to that of the men already hotly engaged with the French.

At last, the French recoiled. There was absolutely no letting up of the firing down against them. The guns simply never halted in firing with the maximum rapidity, the machine-guns simply never stopped their vast, stuttering attacks ripping across the field, the men in the firing embrasures kept up ten rounds rapid of aimed fire throughout the assault, and now there were almost twice as many of them as before, essentially all the infantry of the garrison.

When the advance faltered, it did not have any chance to press on and take the fortresses by sheer grit and the aide of the tear gas grenades they'd been issued. The chance would never be offered. The flags of the French regiments were, despite the courage of their bearers, mostly laid out upon the field under the murderous waves of fire from the German guns, as the Germans laid on everything they had into the wavering French with the utmost intensity, with a businesslike efficiency that saw them not slack in the smallest degree even to cheer when the French hesitated.

They broke, and turned and fled down the field. Those who could not make it took cover among the bodies of their comrades. The assault disintegrated, and in fact, the whole overstrength French division essentially disintegrated.

As soon as the commander of the garrison had confirmed that the attack had been broken, he sent a report in to headquarters on an encrypted wireless transmission. It was received by Falkenhayn, and his headquarters staff, with the utmost felicity, issued instructions to the Crown Prince Wilhelm and the Grand Duke of Baden. Now that Festung Kaiser Wilhelm II had torn apart the French assault against it with thousands of Frenchmen killed or wounded, and firmly held, its position as the linchpin in the German plan of counterattack was assured, and that plan could go forward. The Crown Prince immediately prepared his battered but reformed army to counterattack directly south, toward Mutzig, to relieve the fort. The Grand Duke of Baden, however, had more urgent concerns on his mind.

Even as the French attack on Mutzig was repulsed in waves of blood, they were commencing their primary assault against Strasbourg, an assault that came with no warning as the French commander there gambled on the ability of his infantry, with surprise, to storm the forts. It worked.


PARCZEW, POLAND,
12 SEPTEMBER, 1914


The 7th Uhlans again had the forward point of the cavalry screen of First Army, this time advancing out into the Polish countryside in search of their allies. Radio reports from Teschen had confirmed the destruction of the Russian 10th Army by the Germans, and now Dankl was eager to make contact with them to complete the encirclement of whatever enemy troops were left in Poland. Scattered bands of fleeing Russians, disorganized knots of deserters, and more organized groups mashed together from different companies under a single junior officer or senior NCO were all that was left of the force that had given the Austrians such a stiff fight at Lublin. Mikolaj Borek was, however, disinclined to take risks after a short but sharp fight with such a group the day before and so ordered his cavalry troopers to remain cautious.

So far the day had been without incident. The countryside was still picturesque, populated with tilled fields on the side of the dirt road, with the occasional peasant hut or more substantial barn breaking up the monotony. Few of the inhabitants of the region were in evidence, attributable to the chill wind blowing out of the east, cutting through even the thicker cloth of the winter blouse being worn by the cavalrymen. The sun was coming down from its highest arc in the sky; Borek checked his watch, confirming that it was an hour and some after noon. The stride of his horse, a familiar rhythm, took his mind off the losses of the past few days and the prospect of yet more combat, and let him fall in quietly amid the rest of his patrol group.

The level dirt road started inclining upward, and they trotted up a gentle hill; Borek saw several of his scouts waiting there dismounted, including Leutnant Hanucz, who seemed to be scanning the horizon with a pair of binoculars. Borek ordered a halt to the party; “Dismount, every fourth man will stay back to hold the horses. We will advance up there on foot.”

Borek stretched out after he handed the reins of his horse over to a private holding on to another pair, grateful to be out of the saddle for at least a little while. His legs ached from disuse, and even the relatively smooth ride had done little for his backside. He seemed to tap into an unexpected reserve of energy after a few bored yawns accompanied by more stretching, and revitalized, strode up the hill eagerly. The rest of his headquarters followed behind, private soldiers leveling their carbines warily on either side of the road, displaying a military paranoia in severe contrast to their officer.

“What do you see, Josef?” Borek asked as he topped the hill, entering into the group of men already observing from it. Leutnant Hanucz lowered the optics and turned to salute, a gesture Borek returned lazily.

The junior officer then swung an arm out before them, pointing to some figures on the horizon. “Cavalry, sir. Not ours. I dismounted my scouting party, and sent a detachment under Stabswachtmeister Porborek ahead to take up position and observe. If need be we are prepared to resist a Russian attack.”

“Sound precautions,” the Rittmeister noted, approval evident in his voice. “They are not inside rifle range, that much is certain. Can you tell how many there are?”

“Looks like perhaps a dozen horsemen, but dust shows there are more coming up behind them.” The leutnant shrugged. “Could be a Cossack sotnia. It’s still too far to see them clearly, even with the good Swiss optics.”

“If you don’t mind,” Borek asked, phrasing the order politely. The younger officer handed over the field glasses, allowing his commander to have a look at the figures in the distance.

“Hrmm. Too disciplined to be Cossacks,” the squadron commander judged. “Nor would I expect any leftover Russian cavalry from their 10th Army to be so precise. They might be the Germans.” Borek considered the possibilities for a moment, before turning around and handing the glasses back to Hanucz. “I want you to take the rest of your detachment and move ahead dismounted,” Borek ordered. “If they are the Germans, make contact. I’ll send Stabswachtmeister Weiss with you to make sure there is no problem with communication. If they are Russians, well, you will have the advantage of being on foot.”

Hanucz saluted, then motioned downwards for the benefit of the rest of his men. “As you wish, sir. How soon will it take the rest of the squadron to provide support to me if it is an enemy formation?”

“Within a quarter of an hour,” Borek assured him. “And I am sending Leutnant Olszewki back to regiment headquarters to report our situation. They will have a welcoming party ready in time, whether for Germans or for Russians.”

With that, the leutnant followed his men already heading downhill. It would be a while longer before they would learn whether friend or foe awaited them.


Oberleutnant Fritz Kersten of the 10th Magdeburg Hussars looked tensely toward the approaching troops. He was uncertain of their national origin, still, looking through his binoculars... They had not been certain. They rode toward the group which was advancing on foot, now, the Oberleutnant leading his troop. After the constant fighting, the prospect of more had grown quite unwelcome, and he really wanted them to be Austrians. Badly, for I've lost enough friends in these past weeks.

It was a long ride, both the sides tense, and wishing they had national flags to clearly display rather than, for the Germans, just the uncertain pennons of the troop, which might not be recognized by the Austrians. As they drew closer, it seemed that the uniforms of the group were not Russian, but they could still not be sure of it.

Finally, on both sides and almost of a single will, they halted. Oberleutnant Kersten rode forward himself, in front of his men, with the rear of the troop still taking some time to catch up to the rest of it. The small party of Austrians waited for him, accepting that clearly, the officer coming forward alone, there was not going to be a fight, though the identity was still uncertain on both sides...

“Ho, there!” Fritz shouted out, daring himself and speaking, of course, in German. “Oberleutnant Kersten, Tenth Magdeburg Hussars. If you're Austrians, we're glad to see you—and if you're Russians, then turn back to your own regiment, we'll let you return to their positions before we attack!”

There was a brief conference of discussion on the far side, and one of the men, a sergeant, it seemed, or other senior NCO, stepped forward. “This is a detachment of the Seventh Uhlans, under Leutnant Hanucz, who is very glad to see you, and greets you in the name of His Majesty the Emperor and King!”

Austrians, after all! Fritz's heart soared for a moment, and then he frowned at the name of the Leutnant. But they're just more Poles. Oh well, at least there won't be a fight.

The “two Firsts” had met.


STRASBOURG, ELSASS
12 SEPTEMBER 1914


Through the storm of hell the French had carried home the assault on Strasbourg. Three divisions attacked. They had been preceded only by the normal artillery barrage which had begun from the moment that the fortresses of Strasbourg had been brought under the guns of the French army, without any increase in intensity of the fire or especially concentration of the batteries which would give away that an assault was about to begin. The three divisions had been concentrated with special care, even as other units guarding the perimeter of the city retained their normal positions. Then they had been flung against it with the maximum swiftness of advance.

Absolon Guenegaud had somehow survived the torrent of German defensive fire which had followed the moment the Germans had realized they were under attack and had brought the defences fully on line to respond. Those precious minutes had allowed the French to get in close against the vast German defences of Strasbourg and they had exploited that advantage to the hilt. Now, the French corporal could count himself as an incredibly lucky man.

A moment before he had been in the midst of the most intense slaughter that he could imagine, worse than the fighting around Colmar that he had experienced weeks before. Now, the barrage was infinitely close, and yet touching nobody. They were inside the fortress itself, nestled up against the great bulwarks which were pouring down fire onto their comrades still struggling to get ahead. Not, of course, in the interior yet... And it's there we've got to get.

Despite the vigorous barrage and the machine-gunning they'd taken on the assault, it appeared that they'd actually take the fort, just as they'd been victorious at Colmar before this. It remained to get inside, and he realized that even as a mere corporal he was the ranking man among the dozen and a half clustered about him. “Alright! Who's got the grenades?” He shouted out, still unsure about what they were supposed to do—except produce some kind of toxic smoke. They'd been told to cover their mouths with fabric when going into an area where they'd used the grenades, and some of them had either been issued scarfs or gotten them, or similar things, for that purpose. He now fixed his own over his mouth and nose carefully as a show of hands indicated what looked like it would be enough.

A few more men approached, having pushed inward far enough to escape the murderous fire of the guns, but Absolon did not wait to explain to them what was going on. He simply trusted that they would follow. Bayonets fixed, the French charged forward with an ear-ringing cry, and in a flash of blue and red spilled into the rear of the German fortifications, twenty-five now, against five hundred. The guards of the battery were brought down in a hail of bullets and the quick action of bayonet and rifle-butt. In seconds, they were slain and Absolon saw blood on his bayonet, only vaguely aware of how it might have gotten there.

The thunder of battle continued all around them, and the gunners of the fort were still pouring their fire down on their comrades out beyond, unknowing of the danger lurking behind them: And even if they had been, they would have continued to fire until the last minute, anyway.

They reloaded the small magazines of their rifles and carried on. Reaching the doors to the fort they were at once forced open. Now they were met by a hail of gunfire from inside. More French soldiers had come from somewhere, who knew where, and they joined in the group led by Absolon, who made out naturally as the leader without realizing that a sergeant had in fact by now joined them. There was no time for any issue of ranks: The man in the front led, and it was all about swiftness and violence. They dashed in against the fire and a short and vicious melee followed. Stabbing and battering and kicking in the close confines of the entrance to the battery they pushed on ahead.

“Grenades! Grenades!” Someone was shouting, and it was Absolon himself. A volley of tear gas grenades was tossed down the corridors of the fort, and into every room as the French spread out. Shocked, the Germans, coughing and clutching at their eyes, scarcely had time to resist, especially the gunners. The French shot them when they did, or bayoneted them, and carried on, Absolon carried on, even though he was bleeding, wounded himself, and his eyes were watering, sobbing almost intensely, with the strength of the tear gas in the confined space of the older Strasbourg forts which didn't have the electronic ventilation of Mutzig, and his throat was despite the scarf already starting to burn.

He staggered about, lunging with his bayonet at men, at shapes that he thought were men, he did not any longer know. He fought, and pressed on through the warren in which he was thoroughly lost, until he saw ahead of him a great number of men and prepared to face them, in his final fight, until he realized through his red and bloated eyes that the blurry images ahead were red and blue instead of gray.

“We have taken the fortress!” One of them ahead screamed out delightedly.

Absolon simply collapsed from exhaustion and the effects of inhaling so much xylyl bromide as he had during his mad dash. Above, the Tricolor flew over part of Strasbourg for the first time since 1870.


Hauptmann Adolf Holzhausen, commanding a company of the 1 Landsturm Brigade, was positioned inside the city for the big counterattack to come the next day when the assault on the southern portion of the defences had begun. His men had been very tense the entire time, checking over their grenade drill and waiting, as hours passed and the sun reached high into the afternoon sky.

Then he saw an incredible sight. It was the Grand Duke of Baden himself, in full dress uniform, surrounded by his staff, riding forward along the lines of the brigade with the brigade commander. His Sovereign—the Emperor was but the President of his Confederation—before him and his unit.

“Attention! Present arms!” He shouted, leaping to his feet and drawing his sword to deliver a salute as the Grand Duke approached the portion of the brigade containing his own company. He was, the Hauptmann realized, addressing the men with the same quick speech in succession:

“Soldiers of Baden! Strasbourg is in mortal danger. The French have penetrated the fortifications. I ask of you to attack. Beyond the river is our home; and this is the city of our brothers, German in name and in blood. Defend it for your Duke, and drive the French back from our sight! Now, attack, and by God's grace may the day be your's.”

The Brigadier of the Brigade split from the Grand Duke's party and rode back along the line. “Brigade, with me!”

The men were cheering like crazy, caught up in the enthusiasm of being addressed by their sovereign such that they ignored the gravity of the situation. Hauptmann Holzhausen nearly screamed out the next and logical command:

“Fix bayonets!”

As the men locked the bayonets onto their rifles as the inevitable order came from the brigadier, in formal terms, and the drums struck up the roll of the advance at the double-quick step. In a mass of gray fabric and bobbing pickelhaubes the 1 Baden Landsturm advanced toward the sound of the guns, boots sharply stamping against the cobblestones beneath.

Victorious the French advanced, not knowing that the Grand Duke of Baden had under his command two corps which had just been thrust across the bridges of the Rhine into Strasbourg, and carried, also, on every available boat. Even as the French poured into the breach he now gambled on a reckless all-out counterattack with every unit, bayonet-to-bayonet on the fortifications of Strasbourg.

The men of 1 Landsturm Brigade pressed onward. They could hear ahead, and abruptly, the sound of many field guns engaged in rapid fire. As they advanced through the countryside, now, the last evidence of the urban area vanishing in the dust behind them as they quick-marched toward the enemy—the fortifications were several kilometers beyond the downtown, and urban growth had not yet filled in the gap—they could see ahead the smoke rising from the area of the most intense firing, from the guns engaging and what was surely the advance of the French.

These middle-aged men were not youths anymore, who could maintain this pace of march almost indefinitely. But they were fired up by the speech of the Grand Duke, fired up by the bold example of their Brigadier advancing a-horse in front of them, and filled with a sense of tremendous urgency in their task. Boots swinging against stone, their bayonets swayed with the spikes of their pickelhaubes in their crisp advance.

Beyond, the Brigadier of the brigade could see that a battalion of 7.7cm field guns lined up wheel to wheel firing at point-blank into a great mass of French infantry, tearing horrific gaps into the advancing enemy with the great rapidity of their fire, yet clearly on the verge of being overrun by countless thousands of the French.

“Beat the advance!!”

The Brigadier drew his sword, and as he did a bullet flying far from the attacking French nicked along the side of his horse, and the mare reared up with a loud whinny; he held desperately to his reins lest he be unseated before his men, and thrust the sword forward out of balance more than intent. It was, however, still a gesture which was understood by all, and most of the men thought it a moment of drama. The drums struck up the roll, and the flag-bearers pushed ahead, the banners of the Grand Duchy of Baden obscuring those of the Empire itself as they were rushed to the forefront of the press with great pride in the hearts of those who carried them, breast bared to the enemy fire and advancing with the symbol of one's homeland rather than any weapon.

A deadly fusillade from the old rifles was directed into the French as massive clouds of dirty smoke spread from the blackpowder cartridges they used, and then again, as the 1 Landsturm swept forward in formation of advance. Before them, the gunners were fighting with the bayonets on their carbines for survival, the battle literally at the guns, ferocious no-quarter hand-to-hand combat, the gunners having seen the advancing Brigade and resolved to fire into the strength of the French until the last minute to give the infantry their best chance.

1 Landsturm's brigadier was killed at that moment, shot down by French bullets off his horse, as the unit continued to advance with bayonets ready, rushing down against the scene of the fight. Even as their commander's lifeblood bled out, Hauptmann Holzhausen led his men straight into the fray, as did the officers of every company, battalion, and regiment, even as many of those men fell like their Brigadier, dead to the ground of Alsace. The middle-aged men of the Landsturm met the finest flower of French youth—but the French had already suffered horrible casualties and were exhausted and in a desperate battle with the gunners. The Landsturm was fresh, and when they met the French they struck home with the mass of their bayonets and drove forward lest they lose the flags of their Grand Duchy at the very forefront of the lines. The cry was strictly national: “On, Baden! On, Baden!” They called out as they drove the French back with a point-blank fusillade and then were bayonet-to-bayonet with the French ranks, recoiling the French infantry clear of the suffering gunners from the shock of their momentum.

All along the line, the men of Baden were counterattacking, under the eye of their Grand Duke, jubilant as he saw his counterattack succeeding and the French retreating back toward the forts. Old artillery was called in service, the fleeing fortress troops rallied and fell in with the advance, there were even several provisional landsturm companies of men from the population of Strasbourg, pedantically organized with ancient uniforms from the Strasbourg fortress storehouses lest they be mistaken as civilians. His second corps was following the first to add mass to the counterattack which he intended not to merely seize the walls but also to actually drive the French from the field. It was a day early, and completely unplanned, but the troops were concentrated, and that, combined with elan, was to have to be enough.

1 Landsturm was advancing in regiments and battalions now, a great and disorganized mass among many other such masses as it crisply pursued the French back toward the overrun fortifications. The flags of Baden in the lead, the brigades raced each other toward the enemy, bayonets whetted in blood. French reinforcements were still pushing forward. Now they were halted and prepared to defend the fortifications against the German counterattack. This meant that the Germans coming up were suddenly met by a vigorous fire from the French rifles in the fortifications. Yet these fortifications were not meant to be held from interior attack, and were in fact designed to be easily retaken from the rear, precisely in case they should be overrun.

The positions for the French were therefore entirely bad, and those for the Germans, excellent. Yet the French troops exacted a heavy toll for as long as they could maintain their positions, until the mass of brigade after brigade, two divisions of German troops and some change beside it, pushed heavily upon them. The Germans were in very close now, and it was then that Hauptmann Holzhausen, witnessing the great fire of the French defenders and even exposed manfully to it, saw one of the other companies firing their rifled grenades into the French, and then charging home with the bayonet exactly as they had been drilled.

He issued the orders for his own company with the greatest felicity. “Unfix bayonets—fix rifle-grenades!” The company halted at the order and the men performed the operation under the fire of the French.

“Fire!”

A hundred grenades—there should have been more, but they'd lost so many men—arced forward to crash violently and detonate amongst the French, even as some of the men were bowled over by the intense recoil of the rifles when firing the grenades, entirely unprotected for it.

“Fix bayonets and charge!”

The men re-affixed their bayonets on the run, or in haste and followed, as they made a disorganized dash forward for the fortifications into which they'd just poured their grenades. Some did not even have the time or the ability to fix their bayonets, and they fought by swinging their rifles like clubs when they met the French hand-to-hand in the fortifications.

Hauptmann Holzhausen bloodied his sword in the fighting as his men and the men of the other companies gained the fortifications with grenade, bullet, and steel. Vicious fighting was everywhere around them in the close quarters, and the twitching bodies of the run-through wounded in the bayonet fighting seemed like a living, roiling carpet to this field of war. Around him the sweep of the advancing men of Baden surged forward. A team reached the flagpole on the fortress and cut down the Tricolor. The banner of the Grand Duchy was raised in its place, as Holzhausen's men thrust the captured French flag into his hands.

There, in the fortifications of Strasbourg, his men collapsed exhausted, and he with them. The retreating, shattered French fell back to their own lines, and to their still-greater consternation, a second German corps appeared to take up the torch of the first that had counterattacked. With the exhausted men of II Ersatz Corps as spectators, III Ersatz Corps pressed home the attack on the retreating French, advancing under the cover of the guns of the fortresses to either side of those which had been taken, as gunners were found to man their recaptured guns as well, wherever they could be repaired and brought back into action.

It was late evening, now, and the sun was fast setting, but II Ersatz Corps pressed home into the intense fire of the French 75's to break the French lines which had been hastily reestablished. The French, having Strasbourg in their grasp and then having lost it, fell back in disarray and dejected defeat, and only the excellent action of their gunners allowed the retreat to be made. That action inflicted terrible casualties against the Germans, reaping through the inexperienced and second-line units with a particular vigour, pinning up their advance even when they had the support of the fortress artillery, and perhaps unnecessarily scattering thousands of dead and wounded across the Rhenish plain before Alsace for the sake of the Grand Duke's aspirations to not merely save the city but break the siege. Yet with the infantry disordered and in retreat, the French artillery alone could not save the day. The lines could not be reformed, and the gunners were ordered to hold until darkness fell to give the infantry a chance to make good their escape and regroup.

The Grand Duke's amateurish counterattack, relying entirely on the vigour of his men, faltered under the defensive fire of the French artillery. The French were still forced to abandon their cordon of Strasbourg, but the defeated divisions escaped to the south, not annihilated, the gunners having sacrificed themselves almost to the bitter end, staying on to fire and fight until the sun set and the infantry was safe. The Grand Duke consoled himself with fourty captured guns, and defended his actions to Falkenhayn on the grounds that had he not counterattacked with everything, at once, Strasbourg would have been lost, and he had merely attempted to exploit obvious successes.

Falkenhayn, of course, had no choice but to accept what was already a done deed, and he ordered the Crown Prince to continue the next day's assault. An encirclement might still be successfully salvaged, and regardless, the French had reached their high water mark in Alsace. Falkenhayn was to workmanlike to harbour much room or time for regrets. The next day would remain more important to the outcome of the campaign in Alsace, and the desperate situation in Lotharingen occupied still more of his attention.


LEMBURG, GALICIA
13 SEPTEMBER, 1914


The Russian howitzers rained down shells into the outer works of the Lemburg fortifications, trying to suppress the machine gunners and riflemen taking shelter in the concrete bunkers. Even the powerful 152mm howitzers of the Russian artillery arm were insufficient to truly crack the fortresses, and there had been no time to bring up siege artillery. An attempt to support an attack on the southeast sector of the fortifications with direct fire from 122mm field guns had proved disastrous thanks to the plentiful Austrian artillery inside the besieged city. Now the artillery did what it could to support the storm of the fortresses with the bayonets of the infantry; and that best was extremely limited indeed.

Johan Nikic, the commander of Festung Lemburg, looked out over the battlefield from the safety of a brick and concrete blockhouse, and tallied the cost the Russians were running. Corpses of the enemy forces were stacked up like cordwood for yards before the outer works, and even further beyond them clumps of dead testified to the effectiveness of the fortress artillery. Austrian losses were obscured, hidden inside the works for the most part, but Nikic was well aware that they could not have been heavy. Even with the Landsturm formations being used as the static defense, and his own regulars kept back to provide a reserve to counterattack any points seized by the enemy, the Russian attack was being beaten back with ease.

“They can’t keep this up for much longer”, he observed to his guide, a middle-aged lieutenant of the reserve from the city.

And true to his expectation, the Russian artillery intensified briefly, followed by a sudden bolting of Russian troops from the line of the outer bunkers. Austrian soldiers along the lines continued firing into the enemy as they pulled out, though gradually slackening off to conserve ammunition as the enemy pulled further and further out. In the works themselves, fighting continued to mop up the remaining pockets of the enemy assault troops who had become cut off and unable to make the retreat. Hand-picked squads of Hungarians from his 41st division were used in that desperate fighting, sparing the less fit reservists of the Landwehr. That had become an obvious necessity to Nikic after the first attempt by the Russians to storm the fortifications, when somewhat less than a platoon of Russians had fought off a company of Landsturm for hours inside an occupied blockhouse.

A bit of plaster fell from the ceiling of the room, and onto Nikic’s bare head. He shook it off, startled and irritated, and slipped on his Kappe. “Have to have the engineers inspect the fortifications if the shelling is having an effect this far out,” he reminded himself.

The guide simply shrugged. “The concrete used in construction was maybe not the quality specified in the plans. Wouldn’t be the first time some logistics officer swiped good materials for bad. That’s why so many of them are Jews.”

“The engineers will look into that as well,” Nikic said offhandedly. Trust a Pole to see Jews behind every corner, the Hungarian officer thought disdainfully. “If there was any corruption, it will be punished severely. Now, let us go examine the front lines directly, lieutenant. The Russians rudely interrupted this inspection, but I won’t let them spoil things entirely.”

He left the blockhouse, guide in tow, heading to the front line of bunkers. A group of dismounted hussars, from his headquarters security squadron, joined him outside. Nikic stopped to encourage a party of walking wounded passing by, and to speak with the field officers at each position along his way. It was a morale building exercise more than anything else, but one had kept up every day during the siege and which was fast becoming a habit. The majority of the troops under his command were Landsturm, after all, and rather hastily mobilized formations at that; they required a great deal of care in handling. Their confidence had been buoyed by their victories over the desultory Russian attempts to storm into the city, but it would be tested in any siege. The visibility of their commander would help matters, and also allow Nikic to see for himself the condition of his troops and the fortifications, hopefully heading off any unpleasant surprises.

He had stopped by one for the foremost bunkers and was discussing the fighting with a landsturm captain amid the bodies of Russian assault troops and Austrian defenders when he received a runner from his headquarters. The private smartly saluted and informed him politely that the Russians had dispatched an officer under flag of truce with a proposal.

“It looks like the Russians want to surrender already!” he joked, provoking weary laughter from the nearby Austrians. He then begged leave, expending some more words on their fighting prowess, before heading back to the administrative complex of the fortress. It took some time to arrive there walking, with Nikic deciding that he needed to ride by horse or requisition a motor-car in the future in his daily inspections. He was met outside the entrance by a party of his staff, clustered around one young looking fellow in the uniform of a Russian officer.

The Russian saluted and introduced himself, first in fluent French and then in passable German as Nikic approached. “Lieutenant Ivan Gurov, at your service. I bear a request from General Ruzski for a truce of a few hours to allow for the recovery of the dead.”

“A practical request,” Nikic replied, “especially given how many there are of them. But how do I know your commander will not send observers forward as part of the recovery detachments, to look for weaknesses at close range?”

The Russian looked appalled at the suggestion. “General Ruzski is a gentleman, and will swear by his honor as an officer of the Russian Empire to not do such a thing.”

“War is not a society party,” Nikic observed, while debating silently with himself the proposal. It was a short debate. Nothing Ruzski could learn would be that critical, and removing the bodies was a necessity. Best to do it during a truce. “Nevertheless, I will accept the word of your commander, and am willing to extend such a truce for as long as is required to honorably remove the dead.”

“General Ruzski is willing to hold such a truce until dawn, or for an hour after the task is done, which of them comes first.” The Russian lieutenant looked relieved at the acceptance of the proposal.

“You may convey to General Ruzski my compliments and acceptance of his terms,” Nikic confirmed. “I would also suggest that we arrange a meeting between members of our staff, and the local Red Cross authorities, to discuss details of work parties and the exchange of the dead between our forces.”

Lieutenant Gurov nodded. “I think General Ruzski will favor such a suggestion.”

Nikic turned to the Sergeant commanding the Hussars acting as his bodyguards. “Arrange a safe conduct for the lieutenant here.” Turning to Gurov, he asked “Did you arrive by horse, or did you walk?”

“I rode to the edge of our lines, and walked in,” Gurov answered. “Your staff was kind enough to drive me to your headquarters by motor car, once I passed your outer works.”

“Very well then, you will be driven to the edge of our lines and allowed across unmolested. You may also ride back to deliver a reply from your commander,” Nikic conceded. “See to it, Adolph,” he ordered his chief of staff.

“Yes sir,” the Major replied. “If you would follow me,” he stated to the Russian, leading him towards the headquarters motor park a short distance away.

When asked on the matter later, Nikic replied “War is beastly enough and getting worse, there is no reason not to allow such customs to continue to allow us to retain something of our humanity. And we are charged with holding Lemburg as long as possible, at any rate. This truce buys time without costing us any more lives, and was the correct thing to do anyway, so I was happy to accept.”

Work parties filtered out of the Russian lines and the Austrian fortress works an hour after the Russians first proposed the truce. They both worked through the evening and into the night before the last bodies were removed. By midnight the truce was over, but for the first time since Lemburg had been placed under siege, the firing of the guns was absent until the morning and for some time afterward.


S. OF WASSELONE
ELSASS
14 SEPTEMBER 1914


Much to Falkenhayn's frustration, Crown Prince Wilhelm had felt necessary to beg and plead for another day to get his troops into position for the big counterattack. The Grand Duke of Baden was leading his counterattack out of Strasbourg at the moment, using the II Ersatz Corps and elements of the city garrison after the III Ersatz Corps had been chewed up in breaking through the French cordon around the city. His counterattack was already rapidly bogging down after the huge casualties his units had suffered on the 12th, and not much progress had been made on the 13th. The French were, however, responding to this new threat rather than the shattered 5th Army.

Now Crown Prince Wilhelm was finally launching his big counterattack. To this end he'd concentrated the fifty 9.45in minenwerfers which had been experimentally attached to his army and served so well defensively in the Vosges to support the new attack, concentrated along the area of front to the south of the town of Wasselone where the main attack was to come. Combined with as much of the corps artillery as could be concentrated here, the Germans were preparing to attack with not less than three corps, though all of them were exceptionally understrength and in total they had scarcely more than the strength of two corps in reality.

Privately the Crown Prince thought the delay would make things better. The French would surely have to be weakening their forces here, and it did not sit well to launch such a major attack on Sunday. Moreover, with Mutzig having so definitely held, they had the anchor they needed for their attack to pivot and still have an excellent chance of encircling the French Army of Alsace. It was with these hopes in mind that the huge bombardment commenced on the morning of the 14th, and was maintained for two hours, including the firing of the 24cm minenwerfers, which due to their limited range were placed right at the front line.

The French artillery commenced counterbattery fire, particularly against the massive minenwerfers, but their own position was highly exposed, and the shrapnel and HE of the big mortars knocked out a considerable number of the exposed French guns. French troops suffered nearly as bad, seeing as their positions were entirely unprotected and they had to lay prone against the ground or dig on their initiative narrow slit trenches and foxholes to protect themselves from the vigour of the German barrage.

For two hours the French held under that horrific barrage with essentially no cover, waiting out the casualties that they endured and the madness of the noise and the suffering of the wounded—and of everyone else from the psychological trauma of the intensity of the vibration of the ground and the sound in the air—everything overpowering and ugly in the perfect clarity of everything that happened in those desperate circumstances, pumped with adrenaline.

Then the bombardment ceased, and the Germans advanced in their grim gray waves against the, just as the Crown Prince had hoped, badly outnumbered enemy, only a single corps without any heavy artillery support. The Germans, at least, though their three corps were badly attrited, had essentially all the artillery of those three corps, and it paid off in the severity of the barrage through which the unprotected French were forced to suffer, particularly the mortars.

Some of the French machine-guns were still intact, and these put up a stiff barrier to the success of the German assault, until 7.7cm guns were rolled forward to knock them out at close range with HE, the battery duel of the German and the outnumbered French guns carried on at closer and closer ranges until almost all of the French guns had been silenced or forced to retire, and then the advancing Germans rose up and pressed home the last of the distance.

Under this general attack, the French retreated, and continued to retreat throughout the day, as Crown Prince Wilhelm's rested 5th Army began its counterattack under much better circumstances than the Grand Duke of Baden had. Soon the French corps facing him was in general retreat, and was angling to the east to avoid the weight of the German troops to the west which were definitely seeking to turn the flank of the French corps. In doing so, the Army of Alsace was separated from the other French forces in the Vosges by a not inconsiderable number of kilometers, and through this gap Crown Prince Wilhelm sent a Cavalry Corps, reinforced by an Ersatz cavalry division made up of the cavalry regiments of Fifth Army, along with a few others. This force struck straight south toward the fortress of Mutzig—named, ironically, after the Crown Prince's father—and the garrison there which held and could, in an emergency, perhaps put a regiment or two into the field to reinforce the operations of the cavalry.

At the same time, 5th Army continued to press against the French infantry with the utmost pressure that their attrited units could develop, constantly threatening to outflank the French and forcing them to fall further and further back, until the whole left flank of the Army of Alsace was in mortal danger. But thanks to the events around Strasbourg, the Army of Alsace was already falling back, and chances for Falkenhayn to repeat the Cannae which had doomed Russian First Army along the Neman here in the west dimmed with each hour. In Lorraine, the French continued to advance, and were nearly at the gates of Metz.


CHELM, POLAND
14 SEPTEMBER, 1914


Feldmarschalleutnant Wittman made the final pronouncement on the situation to the assembled corps commanders and staff officers. “Russian Fifth Army has crossed the Bug and is retreating towards Kovel.”

His 6th Cavalry division, forming the screening and reconnaissance elements of Fourth Army, had been charged with keeping track of the Russian enemy. His efforts had been hobbled by orders from the High Command to allow the enemy army the freedom of maneuver to advance northwards, towards the conjunction of Austrian and German First Army. The enemy commander had instead used that freedom of movement to feint northwesterly before escaping across the Bug and deep into Russian territory.

General der Infanterie Auffenburg fumed at the turn of events. Conrad would be furious. “If only we had been allowed to press an engagement on the 11th…”

“They probably still would have gotten across the Bug,” his Chief of Staff, Generalmajor Krauss, observed. “They wouldn’t have gone as far north as they did otherwise. We could have inflicted more losses on them, though. With their withdrawal to Kowel they will be on the rail lines to the Ukrainian conscription centers, and will receive replacements and reinforcements rapidly.”

Von Auffenburg nodded, conceding the point. “We have lost an opportunity to maintain our ascendancy over one Russian field army. Given the escape of Fifth Army, there is no more strategic rationale to our continued advance up the Bug. There are no major enemy concentrations that we know of between here and Brest-Litovsk, and First Army is tasked to capture that fortress and complete the encirclement of Poland.”

General Schemua of Second Corps glanced over again at the situation map. “How the devil did the Russians figure out the trap? Our cavalry screens had not skirmished for days before they began their turn to the east, and surely they could not know about the movements of our First Army.”

“They knew their Tenth Army had ceased to exist and that First Army was near Lublin,” Krauss responded. “General Plehve has proved himself a capable general, despite our early victory over his army. Given the beating we gave him at Zamosc, he may have simply judged it futile to try to take on the Germans with Tenth Army unable to offer any support.”

“My scouts have noticed significant Russian aerial activity in the past few days,” Wittman added in. “I doubt they could replace vigorous cavalry screening, but it is possible their observers saw something to put them on their guard.”

Schemua looked less than convinced by the explanations put forward. “You are ignoring the possibility of Russian agents among the local population, or even in this army. The loyalties of the Czechs are dubious, and the Ruthenians have many countrymen in this part of Poland.”

“Our counterintelligence section has been looking into the problem,” Krauss stated, addressing the answer more to his commander than Schemua. “They have said there is no reason to believe that the Ruthenian troops are particularly unreliable, and the local population has been largely apathetic. The collapse of Infantry Regiment 28 remains a shock, and certain Czech delegates in the Reichsrat have been making treasonous utterances, to be true. But the masses of the Bohemian population have remained solidly behind the war and have rallied to the cause of their country.”

“The Evidenzbüro will handle questions of loyalty,” Auffenburg ruled. “And under no circumstances will any officer question the devotion of soldiers in this command without due cause. The possibility of damage to morale is not to be treated lightly.” The tone in his voice cut off further debate on the matter. “Now gentlemen, we will need to reorient ourselves to follow the enemy Fifth Army. With First Army handling Brest-Litovsk, then Kovel is our logical objective. I want Second Corps on the road to Kovel by this evening…”


-------------------------------------
Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[fgalkin]

BENESTROFF, LOTHARINGEN
16 SEPTEMBER 1914


The Germans stood along the Metz—Sarrebourg rail line as far as the major junction of Benestroff. The junction of Benestroff was a major focus for the French attacks. Around the town itself the Germans had, using orders of martial law, caused the townspeople to dig an inner liner of trenches to support the outer one dug by the German troops. To either side of the town, however, there was only one trench, to the west following the largely straight railroad embankment of the Metz-Sarrebourg line, and to the south-east following the rail-line toward Guebling and then Dieuze, a necessity since a line following the Metz-Sarrebourg railroad from Benestroff to Sarrebourg would turn that city into a nearly indefensible salient. The German trench was, at least, fairly deep and extensive. Moreover, it was right up in front of the railroad embankment, and the rear of the trench was gently sloping. The Germans were, after all, good engineers first and foremost.

Rupprecht's Bavarians were defending the Benestroff-Guebling-Dieuze rail embankment. Dieuze had been captured the day before yesterday by the advancing French armies (and just yesterday, Morhange had been liberated for the second time), but they had been brought to a halt along the low ridgelines to the north, and that position anchored neatly into the position along the rail embankment. 276e regiment d'infanterie, part of 55e division de réserve, was tasked to attack a portion of the Benestroff-Guebling line. The whole 3e groupe de divisions de réserve was to be used in the attack on Benestroff and the Benestroff-Guebling Line, with supporting units attacking the “bend” in the German line south of Guebling as it turned east to the north of Dieuze. These units had suffered heavily in the initial assaults at the beginning of the war but had time to recover and had not been engaged in breaking the German lines earlier in September, leaving them with several weeks since their last heavy actions.

Here, Captain Charles Péguy commanded one of the 250-man companies (back up nearly to full strength—he had 238 effectives) of the first battalion of three in 276e regiment. The job of the 55e division de réserve of which he was part was to break through, outflank the Germans to the immediate north of Dieuze, and essentially to forment the collapse of the German line toward the east, guaranteeing the fall of Sarrebourg and relieving pressure from the armies in Alsace which had been abruptly thrown onto the defensive once again. It was important, and yet Captain Péguy had no illusions about the dangers involved, looking out on the position he was about to lead his troops into assault, obscured as it was by the smoke and flame from the constant barrage of the 75's, and the deep rumble of the slower firing 1880's pattern weapons which provided their heavier support.

The artillery barrage had been maintained for no less than six and a half hours at every point from Benestroff to Guebling before the commander of 3e groupe de divisions de réserve was informed that his artillery was critically low on shells needed to provide close support for the advance. His artillery had, therefore, done all it could do. The barrage having started three hours before dawn, it was now getting on toward noon, and the sun was well into the sky.

As the order was passed to the artillery to cease firing, and it did, a last few shots sent spinning toward the German lines, everyone tensed, knowing that the order to advance would almost immediately follow. Captain Péguy rose and gripped the hilt of his sword. I should very well die, he thought privately to himself. But it shall at least be on French soil, and French soil on which were it not for this war I would not have the chance to embrace with my body in peace. So be it, then. The order indeed came. Bugles blew and drums rolled. The band of the 276e regiment, smaller in size from the casualties that it had taken which had not been so easily replaced, nonetheless struck up a gallant attack march. They were going to attack to the north of Guebling, on the left side of the road into the town, straight at the rail embankment, though the target for Péguy's company was actually a rock quary along the tracks at the extreme northern point of 276e regiment's regimental front.

With the order given, Péguy drew his sword. Though in middle age, his time in the army had already made him exceptionally fit, and his uniform virtually gleamed in the sun from its splendid apppearance. His light wound from the earlier battle of Dieuze had healed so that only the scar remained. He was as ready as he ever could be, more ready than he had been Dieuze, to die for France. Wiser, perhaps, and more aware that it would surely be his fate, but he accepted this calmly enough. It would be his, then, to lead his men to victory at the price of his life.

“Men! God has called you to liberate the soil of the Patrie. I will be the first man on the embankment—now, Forward! Forward!” He dashed forward, out toward the enemy at a job as his men advanced in columns toward the German lines, at the fastest march-step by which they could maintain order, one hundred and sixty paces to the minute. Row after row of French columns could be seen in every direction, advancing toward the rail-line in splendid order, bands making the occasion noisy, almost festive, as those ordered ranks pressed on ahead toward the embankment beyond.

The yellow smoke of the shells which had burst all along the rail-line was now beginning to clear, showing just precisely the scale of the high embankment that they were beginning to assault, the scarcely visible hole in the ground that was the trench, the culverts regularly spaced along the embankment, the rock quarry now more clearly ahead of them.... And then the counter-fire began. At once the field was gripped with the usual and horrible power of chaos as the defenders showed their teeth despite the tremendous bombardment.

Here the enemy had prepared his position well. The Germans had sited their machine-guns on the embankment in prepared positions to which they had been moved from their cover just down the reverse slope the moment the bombardment had ceased. 7.7cm pieces had been positioned in culverts along the right of way so that together with the machine-guns they would furnish a wall of fire up and down the track, and could be easily withdrawn to the other side and safety if necessary. A short distance to the east German artillery observers and more machine-guns were located on a prominent hill, overlooking the approaches to the track and providing coordinates for the fire of the howitzers positioned well to the rear. Farther north—directly opposite Captain Péguy's section of the front—the Germans had turned the rock piles surrounding a quarry he was assigned to attack into a series of strong points.

Rows of men collapsed. There was nothing more to it, as the machine-guns raked through them, chopping down everyone in a line. One moment they were there and the next a sprawl of bodies decorated the fields and blood watered the furrows, all of it, though, the pure manhood of France. It seemed like Captain Péguy's company had lost twenty men including the lieutenant commanding one of his platoons before he even knew that they had been taken under fire. Yet in that time they had covered the ground desperately fast, quick-stepping forward and the soldiers, under the urging of the non-commissioned officers, closing the ranks where the wounded had fallen even as the machine-gun fire continued to tear through them.

Péguy's company was denser packed than most, not having a fixed section of the front to attack but instead being focused solely on the quarry. The machine-guns chattering out from inside of it all seemed aimed at him, and him alone and then all of this men, all at once, and they were all falling... It was immeasurably worse than even Dieuze, that was all he could think, and yet with a proud fatalism he pushed forward. The company to the right of them was suffering an enfilading fire from two 7.7cm guns positioned in a culvert, slow-slung to the ground so that their barrels were scarcely above the surface of the regular fields and the shells seemed to skip along madly before bursting amongst the men there with deadly effect though it seemed perhaps also all an illusion of his mind..

He pressed forward. Rifles joined in, and more of his men fell. Somehow he had not yet been hit, not yet killed. A second of his lieutenants was slain. Under this fire the formations collapsed. Péguy suddenly felt a painful blow and staggered down. I am killed! he thought in his mind, the whole idea strangely relieving, his sword following forgotten... And yet there were men around him, helping him up.

“Captain! Captain!?” They cried, worrying for his life.

He found that he still had strength. He did not even stop to look for his sword, let alone bind the wound. Instead he grabbed his cap off the ground and held it in his hand, his right hand, for he suddenly found that he could not move his left arm well—the wound had been a machine-gun bullet clipping his left shoulder. Holding his hand with the cap in it high, he seemed to fling himself out of the arms of the men who had helped him up, and ran forward. “For the Patrie!”

“Vive la patrie!” The soldiers echoed, no longer marching, running, after the example of their officer, men pausing individually to empty the hopelessly small magazines of their rifles before pressing on with gleaming bayonets. Péguy drove his men to within twenty meters of the quarry before the sheer intensity of the fire from inside of it drove them instead to the ground. There the company stayed, even as it suffered more wounded.

All along the line of attack of the 276e regiment it had been completely stalled with grevious casualties. More than three thousand men, caught in a cauldron of death. Yet they were not retreating. Even as they had been forced to seek cover for their lives, men here and there continued to push forward, even the flag-bearers dragging their standards forward, unable to expose them but refusing to leave them behind. An orderly bound up Péguy's wound, and he armed himself, in lieu of anything else, with the rifle of a fallen man, even though he could not handle it well with one arm injured. The bayonet had already been fixed, and that would have to serve enough, then.

For about thirty minutes they laid prone under that machine-gun fire even as howitzer shells plunged down to their rear, taking it, enduring the madness of the torture of being helpless under that that fire, sometimes managing to snap off shots anyway to a dubious effect. Then, the 2nd battalion of the regiment managed to put itself together for another attack. Rising up to primal cries of “Vive la patrie!”, eight hundred and fifty men dashed forward straight into flanking artillery fire from the culverts and massed rifles and machine-guns from the trenches and the top of the rail embankment, emptying their rifles at the machine-gunners as they dashed forward to put it to the touch with the bayonet in the German trench.

When Péguy caught sight of that mad, brave attack, his heart filled with pride and courage in the cause of France. Unthinking, he simply stood up, and joined in the cry. “Vive la patrie!” Clumsily holding the rifle with the help of his wounded hand, he charged forward as fast his legs could carry him over the rough ground at the verge of the quarry toward the German machine-guns right ahead. It was a primal roar of men's voices screaming which matched him, as his men watched that madman, that utterly courageous madman. They could not leave him to go on alone!

“VIVE LA PATRIE!” The company rose as one man and followed their command, dashing the last short distance through the murdering defensive fire, through the storm of bullets raking through them, up into the midst of the quarry itself. In short succession, two more officers of the company were struck down, yet Péguy was alive and with him in the lead the momentum of the men was unstoppable.

2nd battalion's renewed attack had been carefully planned. When Péguy simply exploded forward with his company, the rest of the battalion attacked as well more like a primal force. Six hundred men, unstoppable! They had less of a distance to go, and pushed through the light wire defending the German lines. Vigorous point-blank fusiliades tore through them but they carried on, and thereby gained the German trench in several places, leaving a hundred bodies of wounded and dead behind, so many desperately close to their objective, entangled on the lip of the wire or fallen on the lisp of the trench.

Péguy gained the rocks, and stumbled and fell among them hard, knocking his breath out; it probably also saved his life from the last German efforts with maximum rapid-fire to drive back the French. It did not avail them, and the men of his company, carrying on before they realized that he had fallen, swept over three machine-guns and put their crews to the bayonet. Péguy realized his men were faltering. He raised up his cap in his right hand to show that he was still alive. They raised a ragged cheer and pressed on, even as the clip of a German bullet could be felt upon one of his fingers, whipped back sharply as though it wasn't there. He grabbed the cap tightly against his hand to staunch the flow of blood and lowered it, seeing that the tip of his ring finger had simply been carried off.

In the sheer amount of adrenaline coursing through his body the terrible pain he was in fact in from his two wounds did not even registered. He only thought himself lucky that he was not dead yet, and possessed of almost a mad determination to still change that while doing as much damage to the Germans as possible. The rifle now a useless prop, he nonetheless raised it up as he dashed forward, holding it more as a symbol as time seemed to slow down and his men pushed on through the stone quarry, a company-to-company fight in which the casualties flew thick and heavy and the intensity seemed better suited for a clash of two battalions. Rifles were emptied at point-blank range, reloaded, as men dashed forward with bayonets, in the maze of cut rock. The French pressed along the rims of the holes cut into the living rock, and in several cases men were forced down to be shot, or simply clubbed until they fell.

It was Charles Péguy's Private Little War, as by sheer force of personality, blind to his own death and wounds and willing to accept the death of any man out of his love for his country, but most of all his own, he drove his company forward, even as it suffered more and more casualties, even as the last officer and other leaders of the company fell wounded or dead, such that he was the only officer, the only high-ranking NCO, left in the fight—all the others dead or dying—and some wounded men, inspired by the example of lunatic patriot rage in their warrior-poet of a captain, dragged themselves forward to work their rifles from amidst the rocks in support of their still-advancing and on their feet comrades, fighting just as hard to the limit of their abilities as they did.

Without any officers and high-ranking NCOs to restrain them, Péguy himself leading his men in the fury of battle with one objective in mind, there were no German prisoners taken to speak of. It was just a bitter fight to the death, in the confusion of the quarry where chunks of rocks proved weapons as often as bayonets, sheer muscle cracking bone and releasing the life-blood of men, French and German alike, out onto the open rock, a wound in the earth filled with the malignant, hateful glory of unyielding patriots fighting down to the last tooth, the last claw, for their causes in a battle at once incredibly glamorous and as hideous as the black depths of Hell, without quarter, where surviving had been reduced in the minds of these men to something secondary to the goal of bashing in the brains of the human being just across the rock-piles from you.

He found himself, then, in one moment of perfect clarity to see the carnage that his vigour and his patriotism had brought about. Blood stained rock and bullets flew everywhere, spitting out chips off the rock in the close quarters as the shouts of struggling men and the screams of wounded reverberated in the strange scene of the quarry, even as, further around them, the French units continued to press their attacks against the Germans on every point of the front. But they had not gained the embankment, yet, he saw, and he also saw ahead of them that here, where the Germans had excellently prepared the quarry as a strong-point, they had neglected to post men along the embankment as a reserve, not having enough troops, perhaps.

His way of taking it was simple. He started forward, and trusted that his men would follow him. They did. He led them, crawling and stumbling up the railway embankment, until in groups the numbers increased, and thirty-one men counting Péguy lay along the tracks. The battle in the quarry below was still continuing, and they at once turned their attention to it, reloading their rifles if they had not before had the chance, to put down upon the surviving Germans a vigorous fusiliade of fire.

The Germans were surrounded in the quarry. They suddenly had fire coming against them from all four sides and the French pressing against them in mad, desperate effort, the greatest and most powerful of fighting men that could be imagined as they relentlessly attacked their foes, not letting up for a single moment. The Germans in the quarry had lost every single one of their officers, both from the infantry company and the machine-gun section it had been supporting. The wise old NCO's had seen enough of this bloodbath; they knew when the situation was absolutely, irrevocably beyond hope.

The Germans began to surrender in mass, and this time the fervour of Péguy's heart also changed. As he realized what was happening, the charity of his Catholic faith overtook him, and placing a corporal in charge of the men along the embankment, he climbed down it to insure that the prisoners were taken and treated properly.

He succeeded in finishing that task even as the pain in his body became absolutely overwhelming as the adrenaline faded in him, impossible for him to bear anymore as with it came the absolute exhaustion of coming down from the desperate fight. And yet, though his target had been the hardest, he knew from all around that the battle was continuing in absolute ferocity, that the French had not yet gained the embankment. So he pushed himself together, and with a moment of clarity, of military sanity, issued orders to his men:

“Bring the German machine-guns we've captured up and set them up to enfilade the German positions on either side of the quarry, and to defend us from counterattacks from the other side of the embankment. Find all the ammunition for them as you can; let the most skileld men command them.. And find a wounded man who can still walk, and send him asking for reinforcements here. We can break the German line.. We can break it!” At the last exclaimation he collapsed unconscious.

All along the lines the French had gained the trenches not once, but thrice. They had taken the German trenches, again, and again, and again. They had pressed into them with absolute courage and absolute ferocity. And the same thing had happened each time. The Germans retreated willingly from their trenches even as their immediate reserves dashed up, untouched, from the reverse slope, and laying prone along the railroad track, fired directly down into the trenches, which offered no protection from the rear, and in fact turned into a charnel house, a carefully planned position along which the riflemen and the machine-guns along the railroad embankment could completely command the French.

Yet, with the greatest of bravery, the French had suffered that fire and tried to struggle up, out of the back of the trench and up the railroad embankment, time and time again, through the massed riflery of the Germans tearing through them. The French reserves were sent forward, and the French attacked, and took the trenches again, and again were massacred trying to advance out of them and up the railroad embankment directly behind the trench-line, under their hail of bullets which came against them from point-blank range.

Though it had been planned instead of accidental, the closest thing to which this horrific slaughter which might be recalled in the history of warfare was the Sunken Road at Antietam during the American Civil War. Piles of bodies, both the original German defenders who had been veritably slaughtered at point of bayonet, and now all of the French attackers who had fallen in wave after wave, filled up the Trench until it had a new floor made up of the uncertain footing of corpses and the bodies of the not-yet-dead, many of them to be killed by bullets fired at the still living of later waves of the attack which had to cross over them, and when they missed, thunked into the flesh of the dead below them, or those still living who had fallen among them and now would not remain that way for long.

Around Benestroff the concentrated French attacks had carried both of the German trenches. But then, pressing into the town, it turned out that the Germans had withdrawn from their trenches each time the French pressed into them, and thereby established themselves with fortified machine-gun strongpoints in the city of Benestroff itself, where they caught the advancing French in a murderous crossfire from every building, who had already been badly bloodied in the taking of the trenches, and therefore had an understrength brigade halted the determined attack of a division of the reserves stone-cold, inflicting thousands of casualties.

When the French tried to attack again they discovered something worse, for the defenders of Benestroff had been issued flamethrowers. Massive, clumsy things on wheeled carts which were intended for defensive emplacements or short range offensive use, used from the buildings inside the town they were not actually very effective in sweeping the streets, but they had a horrible morale effect, to see men burned alive, to see the oily smoke rising and liquid flame churned out in long arcs through the air. That had served to halt the French again, and much quicker, allowing for a short, sharp counterattack which had driven them entirely out of Benestroff. In disarray, the attacks of that division, the 54e division de réserve, were halted cold and gave the Germans a desperately needed respite.

Yet the main attack, delivered by two more divisions and a brigade from the next corps in the line along the Benestroff-Guebling-Dieuze alignment was continuing, and even as the corpses piled by the thousands into the trench below the railroad embankment, the French continued to press home their attacks. Their ferocity, their bravery, it all transcended even the ideal of élan, and also epitomized it as they attacked yet again, pushing through the enfilading fire of the german artillery in the culverts, braving the machine-gun fire and the riflery from above, driving home into the body-piled trench once more, straight into the teeth of the German rifles firing at point-blank range down onto their heads.

One could see where this attack failed as had the ones before it, by the point at which the corpses stopped up the railroad embankment, a high water mark splashed out in blood and torn-open entrails. Yet the French had not been beaten by this failure. The messenger had finally reached someone of appropriate rank. A reserve battalion was sent in to exploit the gap, and the French briefly fell back to reorganize for one last great push even as the sun now declined toward the western horizon in the sky, a day of battle and a day of death having already been waged.

The Germans had by this time realized the gap in their lines and sent two companies to push the battered, victorious French of Péguy's company back. They had run into their own machine-guns, manned to their best of their ability by the French, who were also using mausers in many cases due to having expended all the ammunition of their own rifles and not having received any more from the rear. In this fashion the survivors of Péguy's company held off the Germans for an hour unsupported. In doing so they lost another thirty men despite their excellent defensive position.

The arrival of the battalion saved them from a general collapse, and the French drove back the German attackers with a sudden force, bringing in two more machine-guns which could now enfilade the German reserves on the reverse slope of the embankment to either side. Steadily the Germans were driven back nearly a hundred meters in each direction by the fire of the arriving French battalion, the two attacking companies which had already suffered at the hands of Péguy's men shattered, reeling back with heavy casualties at the crisp advance of the French reserves.

This, then, was the signal for the last great attack of the day. The survivors of the bands rose up, and with them the flag-bearers. All along the tricolor and the regimental colours advanced, the swords of the officers who lived, and there were few of those, defiantly drawn. The colonel of the 276e infantry regiment led his men into action personally this time, emphasizing the desperate, final nature of the attack. Somehow these men who had been led straight into a charnel house four times already that day willingly rose and pushed on with fixed bayonets straight into it for yet a fifth time.

Along the embankment the Germans could scarcely believe their eyes that the French were coming on again. Most of them did not realize that a gap had been torn in their lines and that they were in critical danger, being generally low on ammunition. Their officers, though, knew it, and led them in the defence with a grim determination which was afforded of their commanding position, firing down into the French from the start, and maintaining that steady, resolute fire through the whole attack, even as the French gained the trench again, almost in ease.

Now they were in the killing trench, and once again they suffered incredibly for it, falling into their places like they were collapsing into a mass grave prepared for them all. Somehow they all knew it was this attempt which must succeed or they should lose the day and the Germans would hold. They pushed on, through the carpet of bodies which made the footing in the trench treacherous and up against the killing fire of the Germans above, chewing through their numbers at point-blank range with a perfect advantage of height for their guns.

They were coming on, and nothing would stop them. When they gained the top of the embankment in one great rolling wave with their fixed bayonets they would carry on over it, and there was nothing to stop them, then, from outflanking and rolling up the troops to the north of Dieuze and the east. Nothing at all. If these Germans lost, it would be all over for the German Army in Alsace-Lorraine, and more to the point, of course, all over for the Bavarian Army itself which stood and held and fought here.

Somewhere, at some point, one of the officers of the Bavarian Army along that embankment realized it. That if those French got up with them, and they were already now trying to push up the slope to strike home with their bayonets, then it would be all over. He pushed himself up from the prone position, even as his unit was taking enfilading fire from the array of the stone quarry. “Give them the bayonet!” He shouted as he charged down toward the French.

A few moments later, the office was struck down, killed in the prime of life like so many that day during the grand attacks, but it didn't matter. His men had risen up, and swept down from the embankment to meet the French bayonet to bayonet. And then, all along the line, officers ordered the same, or their men simply got up and did it. In some cases it was because they were out of ammunition, and in some cases, raw courage, or brilliant madness, or simply imitation of what, as an act of desperation, became a splendid tactical move.

The French had been fighting throughout the day, running and charging and being driven back; the Germans had stood their ground the whole day, and had received supplies and had a chance to eat and drink to their fill in the lulls in the fighting. They were physically better prepared for close combat, and the French, who thought themselves masters of the bayonet, were shocked to suddenly see the Germans rise and rush down the slope, with full momentum beyond them and bayonets fixed, when they, exhausted in their five attacks, tried to struggle up it.

In the end, it was inevitable. The French were recoiled, thrown back by the bayonet attacks of the Bavarians all along the line. Their assault staggered in a moment of genuine bayonet-to-bayonet killing where both sides, for a brief time, less than a minute surely, actually tried to simply stand their ground and kill each other with their bayonets, a sort of fight almost absolutely unheard of in the who history of warfare.

And then, only after that terrible moment of physical killing, the shock of the German counter-charge with the bayonet was born home, shoock through the French, and drove them back. There were desperate efforts to change this. The commander of the 276e regiment fell in close combat with the Germans, trying to rally his men and get them to force their way through the Germans up to the top of the embankment, somehow, somehow. Yet these efforts proved unavailing when the sheer exhaustion of the men was considered, and they staggered back, and at last broke, and made a general retreat from the line of the railroad embankment back toward their starting positions.

The French retreat was almost uncontested on account of fact that the Germans had little ammunition with to fire into them retreating, and were themselves disordered from their bayonet charge, and to exhausted, to really carry on the battle in any form, even by adding to the slaughter of the retreating. They had held the line, and that was sufficient for today, sufficient for Germany to survive.

Yet there was one exception. At the stone quarry, and for one hundred and fifty meters on each side of it, the embankment was still in French hands, and the tricolor still flew throughout the night. Charles Péguy's bloody cauldron of death, engineered by his romantic love of the patrie, remained gloriously French soil, in French hands.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[CaptainChewbacca]

That's beautiful writing.

[fgalkin]

LEMBURG, GALICIA
20 SEPTEMBER, 1914


The siege of Lemburg had entered its second week when the expectation of immanent relief began floating about the garrison inside the fortress city. The Russians had maintained a steady pressure on the outer fortifications, but lacked the heavy artillery to smash them outright and had thus far failed to storm them. The regular 41st Infantry Division had been faced with driving Russian assault parties out of trenches and even parts of the fort system itself, and had met the challenge of maintaining the integrity of the fortifications. The last Russian assault had been two days ago, a corps sized attack on the entire southern edge of the fortifications, and had been more touch and go than usual, and had been repulsed only by profligate use of the fortress artillery shell stocks. Morale was nonetheless high, especially among the regulars, who had been spared the bulk of the casualties suffered by the fortress personnel and the Landsturm formations supporting them.

The Russian army investing Lemburg had begun reorienting themselves to the west over the night, with dawn making clear the change to observers in the high points of the city. Feldmarschalleutnant Nikic expected the arrival of a relief force at any hour, and so had reconstituted the 41st Division to make a sortie in support. The fortress artillery as well was being readied to lend its considerable support to such an effort, and had been used thus far to harass the Russian forces still involved in pulling back to the west. For all the wasteful use of shells, the fortress still had a considerable stockpile, and Nikic saw no reason not to use them to the fullest now. After issuing contingency orders, and meeting with the battalion commanders, he withdrew to the Citadel, where he had made his headquarters, and waited for further developments.

Austrian Third Army, bolstered by reinforcements from the Serbian front and replacements garnered from the marsch formations attached to it, had begun its offensive to relieve Lemburg at dawn on the day before. It had come back into contact with the Russians only on September 18th, and they were scrambling to throw up a defense against the oncming Austrian forces. Only the 21st Corps of the Russian army had managed to set up a defensive line in time, and their undeveloped trench line was hammered furiously by the concentrated artillery of the Austrians, bolstered by heavier howitzer batteries taken from the fortress of Prezmysl. The Russian artillery and other formations still moving into position were caught unprepared for the bombardment and suffered heavily for it. The six infantry divisions of the army were attacking on a relatively narrow front, aimed directly at Lemburg itself, and advanced everywhere along it.

Despite the advantages of the Austrians it had been hard fighting to break through the 21st Corps, which had bought time for the rest of Ruszki’s command to prepare themselves. Under pressure, and faced with the 21st Corps becoming hors d’combat, Ruzski had ordered a fighting withdrawal to a position closer to Lemburg. Unfortunately the Austrian 3rd Infantry Division, supported by the 2nd Cavalry Division, had already succeeded in slipping around the flanks of the Russian defenses and was threatening to break through to the road to Lemburg. Ruzski had no choice but to devote his available reserve, consisting of elements of the 31st Infantry Division, to counterattacking that Austrian thrust instead of shoring up the collapsing 21st Corps. The Austrian breakthrough had come towards the evening, and Third Army had been forced to retreat precipitously to avoid complete disaster. Only in the town of Horodek, situated between two lakes on the extreme north of the line of combat, did the Russians have a solid position, and elements of the 17th and 18th Infantry regiments of the 5th Infantry Division held fast. To the south of them, the rest of 9th Corps, and the entire army, was falling back and straining to hold a cohesive front denying the Austrians the western road to Lemburg.

Third Army’s hastily prepared plan for defense was unhinged by the inability of Brusilov and nearby Eighth Army to act in support of his forces, notice of which was only received in mid-afternoon. The scale of Austrian 2nd Army’s crossing of the Dniester had become apparent on the 20th, forcing Brusilov to order his own fighting retreat to avoid encirclement. Two Austrian divisions attached to the former Armeegruppe Kövessháva had begun probing into the gap between Eighth Army’s rearguard and Third Army as it was forced north and east, accentuating the precarious strategic position of both armies. The orders relayed from Alexseyev were clear; Third and Eighth Armies were to retreat to a defensible line in the face of the Austrian offensive, in preparation for an abandonment of Galicia altogether. Already there were plans afoot to use both armies to recover the situation in the north, but they had to be extracted intact and Ivanov was no longer willing to risk them in pursuit of victories over the isolated Austrian armies. The orders, ably implemented by Brusilov and his Eighth Army, only added to the confusion in Third Army.

The relatively disorganized 21st Corps was now the weakest link in the Russian front, extended forward from 10th Corps to its south and straining in an ever-thinner line of contact with the more stalwart 9th Corps to the north and west. Late in the morning 11th Corps, kept by Lemburg to maintain the siege and therefore in good cohesion, was detached to replace 21st Corps, which was on the verge of outright collapse. The movement of the Russians was noted by the defenders of Lemburg, and communicated to their own Third Army by way of radio. Boroevic committed part of his reserve, including the 11th Marschbrigade, to a new series of furious attacks on the Russian center. The 53rd Division finally cracked and lost all cohesion under the assault, as their fighting retreat became a rout due to the panic due to aggressive flanking maneuvers of the 11th Marschbrigade. The entire 21st Corps collapsed shortly afterward, becoming a fleeing wreck of random commands that clogged the road leading to the east. The break in the lines also exposed the 10th Corps to enfilading attacks from the two divisions previously fighting the 21st Corps, forcing it to attempt to break off contact and pull back hastily.

The collapse of the Russian center snapped the line of support to 9th Corps fighting along the lakes to the north, and forced it to abandon the defense and fall back unchecked as well. They retreated southwesterly, abandoning the main road to Lemburg, as Ruzksi now intended to retreat by the south of the city, in concert with Eighth Army’s pullback. Elements of two Austrian infantry divisions, the Honved 23rd division and the 30th infantry division, pushed on through Horodok and tried to outflank the corps on the march. The 46th Infantry Brigade, with the majority of the 4th Cavalry division, pushed on down the road to Lemburg and the formal relief of its garrison, which might yet enable them to cut across the lines of retreat for the Russian formations. They faced only sporadic resistance along the road from cut off and disorganized small units, and overtook a number of Russian convoys of wounded dispatched to the field hospitals near Lemburg much earlier in the battle. The largely Serbo-Croat 8th Honved regiment appeared on the road before the Lemburg forts in the early evening, bearing their regimental flag and marching almost as if on parade, notwithstanding the fighting they had already conducted.

A dispatch runner from the fortifications entered the Citadel, message in hand, He saluted the leutnant on watch; “Gefreiter Munkcási reporting with dispatch for Feldmarschalleutnant Nikic. We have sight of the relief force approaching from the east.” The junior officer barely restrained his own glee at the announcement, and conducted him to the commander’s office with perhaps unseemly haste. The general was, however, not in the office. A quick search found him outside, enjoying a cigar and discussing the quality of wine available for the officers of the garrison with the logistics officer of the division.

“About time,” he replied when appraised of the situation. He dismissed the runner to return to his unit, and sent for his chief of staff. “The division will go out and meet the advancing forces,” he ordered. ”The sortie will be along such lines as the tactical situation suggests.”

It took an hour or so to assemble the division in form to advance out. In the meantime riders from the approaching brigade had made their way to Lemburg, carrying dispatches and updates for Nikic. Radio contact with the army headquarters was also established. Nikic reviewed his own orders, delivered from Boroevic; the 41st Division would support XI Corps in pressuring the Russian left flank. It was, in fact, in excellent position to cut in on the line of retreat for the enemy 9th Corps, together with the 4th cavalry division, and offered the potential for inflicting a serious check on the withdrawal of the Russians. Nikic gathered the battalion commanders in conference, laying out their roles in the advance. Finally, he mounted his own horse and spoke before the assembled enlisted men of the 31st Honved regiment, which would lead the advance out; instead of the customary German words of command, he addressed the unit in their native Hungarian.

“The 41st Division has held against the Russian hordes, despite being outnumbered and cut off from our comrades in Third Army, and has performed many feats of valor defending this city. Your regiment has been at the forefront of the counterattack and stand against the strongest and most capable enemy forces, and now will be at the forefront again as we go on the offensive. The families of the Veszprim district have great cause indeed to be proud of their sons, for you have honored them in your warlike prowess. As I have called upon you for resoluteness, tenacity, and aggressive spirit on the defense, now I call upon you for those qualities in the attack. I am certain you will display for our waiting comrades the boldness of the Magyar spirit and the excellent martial qualities of our beloved Hungary, and rout the foreign invaders of this fair land. Let us go out now, and vanquish the enemy that has besieged us, and win for ourselves and our Emperor the laurels of victory.”

The short speech, and perhaps more the prospect of taking the fight to the enemy, stoked the enthusiasm of the regiment, and Nikic was met with cheers. Shortly afterward, at a signal, the regimental band struck up a Hungarian marching tune, and the men began marching out of the assembly ground of the fortress barracks on the road east. The rest of the 41st division followed them in order, with Nikic encouraging them each in turn, using German with the two regiments of the majority Rumanian 40th brigade. The 31st regiment was quick on the march, and began singing as they began down the road to the rendezvous with the approaching friendly brigade. When they met, the siege of Lemburg was officially lifted; but there was much work still to be done, and the formal celebration would be held later. In spite of the low-key nature of that achievement, it would have massive political and military ramifications in the following.


Benestroff-Dieuze Line,
Lorraine, Germany.
20 September 1914


Smoke rose up from the fires of critical installations set alight, and from the burning of the fields set on fire by the artillery. Columns of men pressed on past the rail-line where thousands of their comrades had been killed only days before. Over the stone quarry, the French Tricolor still flew. Now it flew also along the whole line. It had been taken. There were more French dead on the field today, but they were victorious.

They had not defeated the armies of their enemies, however. Instead, as the sun set, German columns in good order swung back toward the north and the east. They had defended their lines only until the French were seen as having a definite advantage, and then they had immediately pulled back, not giving a chance for the French to swing things in their favour. They might have held. They might have beaten off the French. Or they might have at least inflicted many more casualties.

General Falkenhayn was not interested in those casualties. He would be glad to have them, but right now he was interested in holding the west. He sent to the Kaiser, asking for reinforcements from the armies with which Moltke was now playing his game of manoeuvre against Brest-Litovsk, a game which might erupt into violence any day, now, but it didn't matter to Falkenhayn. He was, after all, fighting now on German soil, and he intended to hold it. If Moltke's offensive had to be delayed, so be it.

For the moment, however, he was assuming the worst, that the Kaiser would not give him the troops he needed. So he had made a decision. He ordered the Benestroff-Dieuze Line abandoned on the first strong attack of the enemy. And with it, he had ordered Sarrebourg abandoned. The French would simply have to be allowed the pleasure of taking it, and he, the unfortunate task of explaining his decision to the Kaiser, though he hoped it would at least impress upon the All-Highest the necessity of transferring troops to the west.

Now, he would plan his defence in the best Prussian style, though. He would give enough territory, at as stiff a price as he could make it, to nonetheless entice the enemy to keep coming on. And then he would present them with a wall of machine-gun and artillery fire, as strong as he could make it, and grind through them for as long as he could hold.

There was no panic in the German Grand headquarters for the West. Instead, the officers methodically went about their business as telegraph keys chattered out the latest reports, and orderlies brought stacks of papers to be signed or carried away those which had been signed and officiated. Plans were made, and plans were executed. Every aspect of the withdraw was dealt with via a certain almost maddening, machine-like, precision certitude.

National character was sometimes based in truth, and the Germans were as humourless and precise on the retreat on the advance, as the great switch-master of the west, Erich von Falkenhayn, redirected his troops and redrew his plans, concentrating his resources for the purpose of holding as long as he could, and in doing so, putting as many tens of thousands of the sons of France as he could six feet under the fine soil of the Rhine valley. Behind the victorious French advancing today would come countless more, and even as Falkenhayn acknowledged the inevitability of this loss, he planned the bloody slaughter of those who would carry on the attack of today's victors.

Above the field of the retreat, German reconaissance planes reported on the movements of the advancing French columns to keep any German troops from being cut off. As they did, they encountered French reconaissance planes. When the war had started and such encounters took place, they had, unable to attack each other, simply given a jaunty wave and carried on their way. Now, they stopped their reconaissance work to allow their observers to blaze away at their fellow aeronauts with rifles.

In the east, even as Falkenhayn executed his withdraw and left Sarrebourg to the French, the sons of the Romanian soil were receiving their orders to appear at their mobilitization depots and regimental concentration points. The war was spreading.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin