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The Russians began to evacuate Lemberg about June 17, 1915, the day Von Mackensen's right entered Javorov. On the 19th his advance guard was approaching Rawa-Ruska. Boehm-Ermolli was meanwhile undergoing severe punishment near Komarno, where an Austrian advance force endeavored to get through the Grodek Lakes.
It was not, however, until September 1, 1915, that these troops were able to fight their way out of the forest. At the same time Von Mackensen's troops were following the retreating Russians into the Pripet Marshes.
The retreat became a rout, and the possibility of making a stand, and to some extent retrieving the lost fortune of war, was extremely remote. A deeper motive than the mere reconquering of Galicia lay behind Von Mackensen's plan he aimed at nothing less than the complete overthrow and destruction of the Russian armies.
With these they blasted away Russian line after line, driving the Russians finally almost completely out of Galicia, after retaking Przemysl on June 3, 1915, and Lemberg on June 24, 1915. In the north, in the meantime, the Germans had received reenforcements filling the gap that Von Mackensen's Galician operations had caused.
Then once more the pursuit would begin. During the drive on Brest-Litovsk, covering practically all of August, 1915, after the fall of Warsaw, the operations of Von Mackensen's southern group were so closely connected and intertwined with those of the central group that they have found detailed consideration together with the latter.
They had gained a foothold in Kirlibaba, the key to the Rodna Pass and the plains of Hungary, and were attacking successfully at other points on the 250-mile front. The Russians also had seized the western end of the Cernavoda bridge over the Danube, thus putting a check on any movement of General von Mackensen's troops across the river from Dobrudja.
Suddenly, on the morning of October 2, 1916, the Rumanians threw a pontoon bridge across the Danube at Rahova, about halfway between Rustchuk and Tutrakan, and well in the rear of Mackensen's line. Before the small Bulgarian forces stationed at this point were aware of what had happened they were completely overwhelmed by the Rumanians, who were streaming across the bridge.
At the same time other parts of Von Mackensen's army successfully attacked the Russian line at Vladimir Volynsky, a few miles east of the Upper Bug and somewhat north of the Polish-Galician border. The combined attack resulted in a gradual withdrawal of the entire Russian line as far as it was located in Galicia, aggregating in length almost 160 miles.
On November 9, 1916, it was announced through London that the Russian General Sakharov had been transferred from Galicia and was now in command of the allied forces in Dobrudja; that he had succeeded in pushing Mackensen's lines back from Hirsova on the Danube, where a gunboat flotilla was cooperating with him, and that Mackensen was now retreating through Topal, twelve miles farther south, and was only thirteen miles north of the Cernavoda-Constanza railroad.
"You're a dangerous man to have around, Des, I know that, without worrying my head about any old secret. But you are my friend and Francis' brother and I'm going to help you. "Now, listen! Old von Boden was at that party last night: he came in late. Rudi von Boden, he told me, is going to take despatches to Rumania, to Mackensen's head-quarters.
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