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Both March 30 and 31, 1916, were marked by a noticeable cessation of attacks on either side. Long-range rifle fire and artillery cannonades, however, took place at many points from the Gulf down to the Pripet Marshes. German aeroplanes again attacked a number of stations on railroads leading out of Minsk to western points.
Its loss was perhaps inevitable after the fall of Kovno, but it completed the destruction of the base of the triangle and involved the withdrawal of the whole Russian line beyond the Pripet marshes which would break its continuity; and there was cold comfort in the fact that Ewarts got away with most of his troops and stores and that a Russian mine, exploded two days after their departure, destroyed a thousand Germans and set a precedent for similar machinations on their part when they retreated in the West.
A lively local engagement developed on August 16, 1916, west of Lake Nobel in the Pripet Marshes, about sixty miles northeast of Kovel. The fighting lasted throughout August 17 and 18, 1916, and finally resulted in a repulse for the Russians, who lost some 300 men and a few machine guns.
Some of these occurred in the Bukowina, in Bessarabia, and in Galicia, others in the neighborhood of Baranovitchy, north of the Pripet Marshes, and, later, toward the middle of March, 1916, fighting took place at the northernmost point of the line, near Lake Babit.
For a certain time it was not clear whether the gigantic double thrust might not result in the capture of the whole Russian army in Poland. But this did not happen. At Brest-Litovsk there was only a brief halt and then the Russians resumed their retreat upon Pinsk and the Pripet Marshes. Behind the Dvina from Riga to Dvinsk the northern army stood fast.
It will be remembered by my readers that General Brusiloff, early in June, 1916, had his four armies well in hand, and made a superhuman effort to defeat the Central Powers between the Pripet and the Roumanian frontier.
German planes bombarded many places south of Dvinsk, and attacked the railway establishments at Molodetchna, on the Vilna-Minsk railway, at Minsk, and at Luniniets, in the Pripet Marshes, east of Pinsk on the Pinsk-Gomel railway.
On September 15, 1915, Von Mackensen took Pinsk after having driven the Russians out of practically all the territory between the Jasiolda and Pripet Rivers.
To the Russians this part of the country is known as the Poliessie; its official name is the Rokitno Marshes, after the little town of that name situated slightly to the west, but it is usually spoken of as the Pripet Marshes.
He had the advantage of a most efficient artillery preparation, which blew the Austrian entanglements, trenches and earthworks into such a chaos that the bewildered occupants surrendered in thousands when the Russian infantry charged. German reinforcements from the trenches north of the Pripet River tried to stay the Russian rush, but in vain, and many Germans were among the prisoners taken.
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