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In a rough way, that front extended as follows: Starting south of the junction of the Beresina with the Niemen, it followed the course of the latter river through the town of Labicha for about thirty miles in a southeasterly direction, then bent slightly to the southwest at Korelitchy, passing to the west of Tzirin, crossed the Brest-Litovsk-Minsk railway about halfway between Baranovitchy and Snoff and about ten miles farther south the Vilna-Kovno railway between Luchouitchy and Nieazvied, at which town it again bent to the southwest, along the Shara River, passing east of Lipsk, and then along the entire length of the Oginski Canal to its junction with the Jasiolda, northwest of Pinsk.
Mackensen's army may have been weakened by calls from the north and from the south for a campaign which was already planned but not yet suspected; at any rate it was too weak to achieve its objectives, the capture of Sarny, Rovno, and Tarnopol, which would have completed the hold of the Germans on the Vilna-Kovno line and given them a base for a farther advance in the spring on Odessa and for the isolation of Rumania.
The problem assigned to them apparently was that of gaining the Vilna-Kovno railroad in order to cut off the Russian retreat, and by the time Vilna fell, September 18, 1915, they had just succeeded in forcing a crossing over the Shara River, which runs practically parallel to the Lida-Baranovitchy section of the Vilna-Kovno railroad.
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