Austro-Hungarians retake Czernowitz

Under the date 22 October 1914 the British chronology of the war records the reoccupation of Czernowitz by Austro-Hungarian troops. The capital of Bukovina had been in Russian hands since the beginning of September, when the Russians occupied the city without a fight. Local sources give a slightly earlier date for its recovery, 20 or 21 October.

The city was not retaken by the regular army. After the Russians had marched in, the defence of the southern, mountainous part of Bukovina was organised by the commander of the local gendarmerie, Colonel Eduard Fischer. From gendarmes, customs guards, Landsturm soldiers and volunteers he created improvised units based on Kimpolung and Gura Humorului. Among the volunteers were many local Jews, according to some sources about 500. Fischer himself later described this fighting in a memoir entitled “War without an Army”.

The Russians kept only small forces in Bukovina, as their main armies were fighting in Galicia and on the Vistula. In October, while Austria-Hungary was conducting its counter-offensive in Galicia and the Russian units that had earlier entered Hungary were withdrawing from the Carpathians, Fischer’s units moved north. Despite the enemy’s numerical superiority, after several days of fighting they reached Czernowitz on the Prut and forced the Russians to leave the city.

The Austrians did not hold the city for long. When, at the end of October and the beginning of November, the Central Powers fell back from the Vistula and the San, the Russians again turned their forces towards Bukovina. At the end of November, between 20 and 28 November according to various sources, they took Czernowitz once more. Over the course of the war the city changed hands several times, and the Russians finally left it only in August 1917.