United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Pultusk, on the Nareff, fell on July 25, 1915, and on July 30, 1915, the Russians began the evacuation of Warsaw and retreated toward a very strongly fortified line that had been prepared and ran from Kovno south through Grodno and Brest-Litovsk. The 5th of August, 1915, was a fateful day for the Russian armies.
The Upper Nareff flows through this forest and much of the fighting was along its banks. Austrian troops, a few days earlier, had reached Pushany, just north of the Brest-Litovsk-Minsk railroad and from there pressed on in an easterly direction. By August 21, 1915, the Upper Nareff had been crossed after the hardest kind of fighting on both sides, and the advance continued now toward Grozana.
On the same day an outlying fortified position north of Novo Georgievsk had to surrender and other forces fighting between the Nareff and Bug reached the Slina and Nurzets Rivers. The latter was crossed late on August 15, 1915, after the most severe kind of fighting.
A few miles south, beyond the Nareff, Tykotsyn suffered the same fate. In the latter instance the Russians lost over 1,200 men and 70 machine guns. Still farther south, near Bielsk, Russian resistance was not any more successful.
The central group under Prince Leopold had hardly entered Warsaw proper when it continued its advance in an easterly direction toward Brest-Litovsk after having occupied Warsaw's eastern suburb, Praga. At the same time other forces completed the investment of Novo Georgievsk, covering the sector between the Nareff and the Vistula.
These permanent fortifications were supported by strong natural barriers or obstacles in the form of rivers. The Niemen, Bobr, Nareff, Vistula and Bug, with their interminable windings, made more difficult to cross in some places by extensive swamp lands, had, together with the fortified places, offered ideal means for strong defense.
This fortress of Kovno, for which the Germans were making such a tremendous drive and which the Russians tried to hold with all the resources at their command, occupies in respect to the Niemen line the same position which the fortress of Lomza occupies in respect to the Nareff line, only in a much greater measure.
Those detachments of Von Hindenburg's army group which had forced a crossing of the Nareff between Bialystok and Lomza pushed on rapidly to the south and threatened as early as August 18, 1915, the northern section of the Bialystok-Brest-Litovsk railway. On the same day Prince Leopold's forces reached the south bank of the Bug, north of Sarnaki.
The same forces succeeded in crossing the Gac River, south of the Nareff, capturing during three days' fighting almost 5,000 men. Von Gallwitz with his army stormed on the same day Zambroff and then pressed on through Andrzejow toward the east. South of the Nareff, toward the Bug and Brest-Litovsk, the fighting continued throughout the following days.
Word Of The Day