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Updated: May 4, 2025
Again, on October 9-10, 1915, the Russians attacked along these two waterways and on the Ikwa. On the latter day four separate attacks were launched at Burkanov alone. On the 14th another attempt was made to break through the line west of Tarnopol. Then a period of comparative rest set in for about a week.
Besides the Styr and Ikwa Rivers this comparatively small sector offers other natural advantages in the form of a number of smaller streams, the defense of which is greatly assisted by the marshy condition of their banks and the heavy growth of underbrush to be found there.
This fortress, together with Dubno, farther south on the Ikwa, a tributary of the Styr, and with Rovno itself formed a very powerful triangle of permanent fortifications erected by Russia in very recent times.
This withdrawal, of course, seriously threatened this fortress, which, being on the west side of the Ikwa, was open to direct attack from the west and south as soon as the Russians had been thrown back beyond the Ikwa. And, indeed, the next day, September 9, 1915, brought the fall of the city and fortress of Dubno.
Farther south, however, along the Styr and its tributary, the Ikwa, and in the region through which the Strypa, Sereth, and Dniester flow, in the Russian provinces of Volhynia and in Austro-Hungarian East Galicia, the severest kind of fighting was kept up much longer. The preceding chapter carried us, as far as this territory was concerned, up to October 7, 1915.
On the Ikwa, northwest of Kremenets, a very bitter struggle ensued for the village of Sopanov, which during one day, October 7, 1915, changed hands not less than four times, but finally remained in the possession of Austro-Hungarian forces west of Tarnopol.
Austrian troops under General Boehm-Ermolli took it by storm, while other detachments advanced to the Upper Ikwa and beyond the town of Novo Alexinez. This was as serious a loss to the Russians as it was a great gain for their enemies. For Dubno commanded not only the valley of the Ikwa, but it also blocked the very important railway and road that run from Lemberg to Rovno.
To the north, along the Ikwa from Dubno to the border, reenforcements were also brought up by the Russians and succeeded in holding up any further advance on the part of the Austrian troops. Especially hard fighting took place in the neighborhood of Novo Alexinez, a little village just across the border in Volhynia.
Dubno, southeast of Lutsk, a town of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, is located in the valley of Ikwa on its left bank, and protects the Brody-Zdolbitsa section of the Lemberg-Rovno-Vilna railroad, with its branches to Kovel, Brest-Litovsk, and to Kieff.
Furthermore, the fortresses also acted as a barrier, protecting the approaches to Kieff, enabling the undisturbed concentration of an army in that protected zone while the enemy would be busily occupied in battering his way through the fortress triangle. The latter were still more strengthened by the Rivers Ikwa and Styr, which flow to the southwest and north of them.
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