Fall of the Double Eagle by John R. Schindler

Author:John R. Schindler [Schindler, John R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS032000 History / Europe / Russia & The Former Soviet Union, HIS027090 History / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781612348049
Publisher: Potomac Books
Published: 2015-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

After a few minutes of this “concert from Hell,” Urbański found his courage and got up from the safety of his clover patch and returned to the fight, leading his brigade, “overtaken by complete fatalism.” He soon witnessed one of his company commanders being taken to the rear with grievous bullet wounds to the neck and head, streaming blood over his face and uniform that the captain could not staunch with his handkerchief. Yet his brigade’s losses were relatively light overall on August 23, as the Russians withdrew before serious battle was joined. The next day would bring worse.48

On August 24, the full might of both Dankl’s and Salza’s armies were fully engaged, leading to intense fighting along a front of forty kilometers, as regiments vied for hills and villages. As Habsburg intelligence had predicted, Russian units proved adept at surprising advancing Austro-Hungarian units, who seldom had artillery support ready, but the First Army compensated with sheer grit and an eagerness to charge the enemy that astonished many officers. The heaviest fighting took place around the village of Suchodoły, less than ten kilometers west of Kraśnik. Troops of I Corps marched through dense woods late in the morning, looking for the enemy but finding hardly any Russians.

Troops of the Thirty-first Landwehr Regiment, part of Urbański’s brigade, found the seemingly endless forest eerily quiet, encountering only a single dead Russian infantryman as they made their way toward where they expected the enemy to be. The regiment emerged from the woods at the village of Liśnik, just south of Suchodoły, where they had a brief midday rest. But at 12:45 they were ordered to get on their feet and clear the nearby Hill 282 of Russians, who thanks to their drab, mustard brown field uniforms were difficult to spot at a distance. Two of its battalions were committed to the attack, which was undertaken without artillery support, as the division’s guns were far behind. The troops, a jumble of Germans, Czechs, and Poles from Silesia, were cheered onward by officers yelling “For the emperor!” in three languages, followed by cries of Vorwärts! which got going the customary shouts of hurrá as the infantry ran forward, bayonets fixed, in what ought to have been skirmish lines but, due to enthusiasm and lack of training, devolved into dense columns of infantry.

Officers were the first to fall, as they made easy targets with their shiny sabers and yellow sashes. The first lieutenant to go down yelled, “I’m hit—keep going, boys!”—and so they did. By the middle of the afternoon, Hill 282 belonged to the attackers, taking a hundred Russian prisoners, including six officers, but at the cost of hundreds of casualties. Primitive Habsburg tactics, in particular the want of finesse in the attack and the absence of any artillery support, nevertheless carried the day thanks to sheer numbers and élan.49

The Fifth Division attacked toward Suchodoły on Urbański’s left flank, and it too took its objectives, but at a high cost. Cracow’s Thirteenth Regiment, which had

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