SOMETHING, the Germans saw now, had to be done to keep Austria on herfeet. Indeed, this way of putting it was a euphemism; their own foothold in the east was unstable. Conrad accompanied his plea that they should extend southward by pointing out that their Silesian coalfield was in danger. So Hindenburg was bidden to close down operations on the East Prussian front, leave minimum strength with the Eighth Army to protect the province, and take four good corps down to Silesia. This body, the new Ninth Army, picked up two scratch German corps already on the spot and took up a position on the Austrian left in the last week of September 1914. Hindenburg brought with him Ludendorff as Chief of Staff and Max Hoffmann as what the British Army would call G.S.O.I.
The Kielce province west of the Vistula had been the scene of little fighting and lightly held by either side; in fact, there had been something like a void of seventy-five miles. If Hindenburg, with the Austrians on his right thrusting north-eastward from Cracow, could get in his blow by surprise, he was likely to sweep forward, across the Vistula, and capture Warsaw. However, on 25 September, the Russian cavalry discovered the new dispositions. Now the Russians had to move north to bar the way. Their cautious command would not take the risk of doing this west of the Vistula. So they had to depend on their cavalry to check the German-Austrian advance while the infantry, making a circuitous march, struggled and floundered northward over the bottomless roads of the Lublin province east of the river. Somehow they accomplished the long side-slip, which few other troops in the world could have made in the time. One division is said to have gone without bread for six days. Three armies lined the Vistula. But by now, 9 October, the Germans were along the west bank and farther south the Austrians had advanced to the San and relieved the fortress of Przemysl.
The very few foreigners who, like the British Military Attaché, Colonel Knox, saw the Russian infantry divisions on the Vistula believed that they were worn out. A few days, however, sufficed to restore the strength and energy of these hard and primitive men. Behind them fresh divisions, not yet engaged but containing many veterans of the Japanese war of a decade back, were pouring from the railheads: flat-faced, narrow-eyed Siberians, coming to the rescue of Western Russia not for the first time—nor for the last. Neither command nor troops were defensively minded. They had won great successes. They were in considerably superior strength and full of confidence. As Conrad had foretold, they meant to invade Silesia.
But the old clownish performance was repeated. Hindenburg learnt by intercepting wireless messages and capturing written orders what the Russians were at and what he was running into. The man supposedly made of iron broke off the fighting that had already begun outside Ivanograd and bolted, to the ironical accompaniment of Austrian protests against the abandonment of Poland. Hoffmann penned venomous attacks in his diary against Ludendorff, who, he declared, had lost his nerve. More ironically still, Conrad had to rush northward Austrian troops—who did well in some terrific fighting—to take over a considerable portion of the German front. The Hindenburg-Ludendorff combination had not been notably successful in the role of rescuer.
Conrad did the Germans another good turn when he advised them to launch a counter-offensive from near Lodz into the Russian flank. This operation led to one of the most famous incidents of the war, in a romantic tradition which seemed to have deserted the battlefields. Three German divisions were enveloped and cut off from their comrades. The Russians actually ordered up trains to take them away as prisoners, but they muddled the business and the German divisions broke out. Evidence points to Rennenkampf as the culprit. What army could carry such an incubus as him and his like and survive a war against German professionals? The counter-offensive halted the Russian advance, but the opposing forces dug in for the winter much closer to the German frontier than at the beginning of Hindenburg’s offensive.
On the extreme wings the fate of the Central Powers was a good deal worse. In the north the German Eighth Army was driven back to the Masurian Lakes, and once more the Russians trod East Prussian soil. Some officers returned to their old billets and were courteously greeted by landlords and landladies. While they kept sober the Russians of the Tsar were the kindliest and gentlest of all occupying forces, and anyhow, if there were Russian officers in the Schloss, it would not be burnt out, or the daughters and maids raped, by the Cossacks. In the south the Russians drove the Austrians to the crest of the Carpathians. They even captured the celebrated Dukla Pass, but were unable to penetrate it. Considering that they regularly revealed their plans to the enemy and were already perilously short of shell and even of small arms, the Russian armies had again done well.
The fighting had been fierce and sanguinary. The German Ninth Army lost well over 100,000 men, 36,000 of them killed. The Austrian First on its right suffered at least 30,000 casualties. Russian losses, as almost always, are unknown, but the Germans claimed 135,000 prisoners, mostly in the Lodz counter-offensive.
In one sense the Russian achievement had actually been too great. It had compelled the Germans to reverse their strategy. As has been stated, Falkenhayn took over from Moltke with the intention of repairing the damage done at the Marne, so far as that was possible, by a new envelopment of the French left. A great battle or series of battles now to be described was fought between Armentières and the sea. When that was over Falkenhayn had to bring his offensive in the west to a stop. The Germans had been thoroughly scared on three counts: the two invasions of East Prussia, which represented a grave loss of prestige and a considerable loss in beef, wheat, and root crops; the threat to Beuthen, the centre of the Silesian industrial and mining area; and the risk that Austrian arms might suffer decisive defeat followed by a Russian march through the Carpathians and an invasion of Hungary.
Others besides the Austrians called for aid now. Hindenburg was shouting for it. The ‘big business’ men were warning the Emperor how disastrous would be the loss of Beuthen. Falkenhayn felt forced to send eight German divisions eastward during the latter part of November. Little by little he had to do far more than that: to make the Eastern Front the principal theatre of the war for the year 1915. In fact O.H.L. spent much of the year on that flank, leaving only the shred of a staff in the west. Russia’s unexpectedly high fighting qualities brought correspondingly heavy blows upon her.
Meanwhile in the west another tremendous battle had been fought, the last phase of the Race to the Sea. Both sides sensed, while not admitting it to themselves, that if they did not win a decisive victory between La Bassée or Armentières and the Channel coast the deadlock now appearing farther south was likely to grip the whole front. Here the Allies owed much to the stubborn determination of the saintly, tongue-tied King of the Belgians, whose worth few of their leaders appreciated and whose tattered, weary, and shaken army they were disposed to regard as little better than a uniformed mob. They were also deeply in debt to Winston Churchill and his Marines, whom they had not taken seriously. If the King had not held out until the last possible moment in Antwerp, risking the loss of his whole force against the professional advice tendered to him, the investing German troops would have been thrown into the fighting correspondingly earlier. It might then have proved impossible to hold the enemy in front of Ypres and on the Yser.
As it was, the Germans had formed a great mass of cavalry, eight divisions first concentrated near Lille, which spread out westward and got as far as Hazebrouck on the line of least resistance. The B.E.F., moving up from the Aisne, had therefore to detrain well to the west. When, however, the infantry left their trains and set about the German cavalry they swept it back. It was proved, as indeed it had been in the east also, that cavalry armed with carbines had little power even to check good infantry. This was still more the case when the infantry was well supported by cavalry. The B.E.F. was aided to begin with by a French cavalry corps, then by its own cavalry, now a corps of two divisions, first covering the infantry and then moving into a gap between Armentières, the left of the newly-formed III Corps, and the I Corps moving on Ypres. And the British cavalry trooper did not carry a carbine but the short rifle which was standard throughout the Army—a great boon.
The Germans, however, had no longer to rely entirely on forces already engaged. They had prepared an ugly surprise, though it was penetrated before they struck. Eight newly-formed divisions had joined the forces released by the fall of Antwerp and with a Marine division had been formed into a new Fourth Army, under the command of Duke Albrecht of Württemberg. These new divisions were made up as to 75 per cent of volunteers under military age, or not yet called up, the rest being trained reservists. The British and French did not at first realize what they were up against. It included the flower of the youth of Germany, middle- and upper-class students, flaming with patriotism and enthusiasm, ready for sacrifice. They had little power of manoeuvre because their training had been so scanty, but they were absolutely determined to win or fall. For the most part they fell. It was madness on the part of the Germans to send these lads into action, since a large proportion of them were potential officers, of whom there was to be a shortage later on, but they were dangerous troops to meet. At practically the same moment the Germans brought up, on their Fourth Army’s left, the Sixth Army with all the best troops from Lorraine, still under the command of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.
On the British side few reinforcements were expected. The Indian Corps of two divisions had, however, landed at Marseilles just before the battle began, and the British 8th Division, made up of troops from oversea stations, arrived just before it came to an end.
The campaign in the north opened with a British advance between La Bassée and Armentières on 12 October. Still there was only German cavalry to be dealt with. It was pushed back, though by no means as fast as when it had first been encountered, because, in this flat, waterlogged region, the drainage dykes had to be bridged, and the smoke shells or bombs which would have been used to cover such an operation in the latter part of the war were not yet available. However, it would have come to much the same thing no matter how fast the advance. When Rupprecht’s infantry divisions were met it was another matter. The British were quickly brought to a halt. Indeed they fell back a mile or so to a position prepared in advance, but there they stood like a rock. The effects of British shooting with both field gun and rifle were greater than ever in country devoid of cover. The Germans were shot to a standstill and the Battle of La Bassée ended quickly.
This battle is accounted part of the Battle of the Yser, which extended from the sea at Nieuport to the La Bassée Canal, nearly 45 miles as the crow flies and far longer on the curving front. The German attack was launched on 20 October, the very day that Haig’s I Corps reached Ypres and took up a position on the ridge east of it. On the northern flank, between Dixmude and the coast, the Belgians, by no means restored after their retreat from Antwerp, lined the Yser, a wide stream creeping to the sea and tidal on their whole front.
After bombardment lasting throughout 21 October the fighting on the Yser reached its most furious next day. Time after time the Germans came on; time after time they were beaten back. The Belgians put up a resistance no one had expected of them. In a bridgehead at Dixmude a French Marine brigade proved steadfast. But Foch was worried. The Belgians had thrown in their last reserves and were exhausted. The men were often so coated with clay that they were hardly recognizable as human. Would they hold?
Not on the Yser. By the night of 24 October the enemy was across the river on the whole front between Dixmude, where the French Marines stood fast, and Nieuport, where a crack French division sent by Foch had just arrived. The Belgians fell back to the Dixmude-Nieuport railway—a very slight obstacle, but better than nothing. Then a staff officer, Commandant Nuyten, after consulting the head lock-keeper at Nieuport, brought in a bright proposal. If, he declared, the culverts in the embankment, standing only three to five feet above the dead flat plain, were first blocked, and then the sluices were opened to let in the sea, the water would flood the ground to the east and lap the embankment without crossing it.1 This was done on 29 October. But the sea came in so gently that men cursed it in their impatience. Eager German battalions waded through the water while a smashing bombardment fell on Ramscappelle, and seized the village, which stood high and dry beyond the inundation. The French division at Nieuport turned on them savagely and slew them or drove them out. The final winner, however, was the sea. The Germans had to withdraw and this front became silent.
A more prolonged and bloodier battle was fought east of Ypres. British and French attempts to advance made little progress and were soon halted. On 30 October the second phase opened on a narrower front, from the Messines Ridge to Gheluvelt, five miles east of Ypres. The Germans drove the British Cavalry Corps off the ridge after heavy and bitter fighting. Farther north, where the blow fell largely on Haig’s I Corps, it was touch and go. The Germans broke through at Gheluvelt, but a fierce counter-attack by a mixed force of battalions from different brigades drove them out again. Then and on other days the young German volunteers came on like men possessed, and at times the roar of a patriotic song would reach the defenders through the din of battle. Incredible numbers of dead were counted by British patrols who crept out at night when the fighting had died down. The Germans themselves have used the phrase Der Kindermord von Ypern to describe the sacrifices of these reserve divisions.1 Yet these youths attacked so furiously that on two or three occasions when they got to close quarters they overran and virtually annihilated British battalions. In such cases there were seldom reserves available on the spot and the only way of plugging the breach in the front was to pull out a battalion from another sector where the pressure was less severe and hurry it to the scene. The battlefield thus became incredibly confused, especially as British and French also tended to become intermingled. It seemed to make little difference to Haig and his French colleague Dubois, commanding the IX Corps. They kept control of their respective fronts and supported each other loyally. Foch fed in such French reinforcements as he could lay his hands on, and finally Sir John French used the Indian Corps to relieve British troops of Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps down in front of Béthune and brought them up to thicken the Ypres front.