Battle of Krasnystaw begins

On 16 July 1915, after a two-week pause, the troops of Field Marshal August von Mackensen resumed their offensive between the Vistula and the Bug. The main blow was struck by the German 11th Army west of the Wieprz, towards Krasnystaw. At its head marched the Prussian Guards Corps. The objective was the railway from Ivangorod through Lublin to Chełm, which supplied the Russian armies in the Kingdom of Poland.

The offensive was now under way along the whole Eastern Front. Three days earlier the armies of General Max von Gallwitz had launched their attack from the border of East Prussia towards the Narew, and on 15 July, on Mackensen’s eastern wing, the Bug Army of General Alexander von Linsingen attacked. On 16 July the Austro-Hungarian 4th Army on the Bystrzyca, the 11th Army at Krasnystaw and, on the other side of the Vistula, the troops of General Remus von Woyrsch at Sienno went over to the attack. Mackensen chose the sector west of the Wieprz for the main blow because it was the closest to the railway. A breakthrough there would also make it possible to outflank from the west the strong Russian positions on the Wolica and Wojsławka rivers.

Facing them stood the Russian 3rd Army of General Leonid Lesh, badly bled in the retreat from Galicia. The Russian command, however, knew what threatened it and brought its best reserves, the Guards Corps and the II Siberian Corps, to the Krasnystaw area. They entered the battle over the following days.

The weather that day was foggy and hampered the artillery preparation for the attack. Even so, according to the Austrian official history, on the first day the German infantry took the Russian trenches along the whole width of the attack and captured about 6,000 prisoners. Even the army reserves, the 119th Infantry Division and part of the Guards cavalry division, were committed. The front, however, could not be broken. In the evening the Germans stood before a new line of Russian trenches, running from the lower course of the Żółkiewka (PL) across the hills to the sources of the Giełczew. The Russian front held together, so the Guards cavalry could not set off in pursuit.

East of the Wieprz the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps of General Arthur Arz von Straussenburg attacked. Some of its units managed to cross the marshy valley of the Wolica and approach the main Russian position. The German 22nd Infantry Division, covering the Austrians’ left wing, took Skierbieszów and, together with Arz’s troops, held it against strong Russian counter-attacks. The battle was only beginning. Over the next two days the Prussian Guard broke into Krasnystaw and seized a bridgehead on the east bank of the Wieprz.