Battle of Mărăști begins

On 22 July 1917 (9 July in the Julian calendar then in force in Romania) the guns of General Alexandru Averescu’s Romanian Second Army began shelling the German and Austro-Hungarian positions on the hills of Vrancea, a mountainous region on the western edge of Moldavia (PL). The batteries of the neighbouring Russian VIII Corps fired with them. It was the start of the battle named after the village of Mărăști, fortified by the Germans in the middle of the sector of attack, and the first offensive of the Romanian army since the defeat of 1916. The British chronology of the war records under this date the start of the “Battle of Mărășești”. That is a mistake: Mărășești lies about 30 kilometres further south-east, and the battle for it began only on 6 August, when the Germans went over to the attack. On 22 July it was the Battle of Mărăști that began.

The plan of the offensive

Since January, when after the fall of Focșani the front had come to a halt on the Putna and Siret rivers, the Romanian army had been rebuilt with the help of General Henri Berthelot’s French military mission. In the summer it was to take part in a joint attack by the Russo-Romanian front, the last link of the Kerensky Offensive. The main blow was to be struck by the Romanian First Army at Nămoloasa (PL) on the lower Siret, the Russian Fourth Army was to attack towards Focșani, and Averescu’s Second Army was to break through the front at Mărăști and enter the Soveja basin. The date was postponed twice and finally set for 22 July. On 22 July the artillery fire intensified along the whole front, from Vrancea to the lower Siret, although at Nămoloasa the actual artillery preparation began a day later.

The first day of the bombardment

At Mărăști the target was the German 218th Infantry Division of General Friedrich von Gerok’s group, the right wing of the Austro-Hungarian First Army. Its line consisted of strongly fortified strongpoints on the ridges, but it had no second position and no sizeable reserves. Sources differ on the hour the fire began. The Austrian official history writes that the Romanian batteries opened fire just after midnight and the cannonade continued with short breaks until the evening. According to the Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu, torrential rain allowed firing to begin only in the afternoon. Averescu himself noted in his diary that the bombardment began in the morning but, in the foul, rainy weather, had to be interrupted between 3 and 5 p.m., and was then kept up until dusk “with the best of results”.

The Romanian infantry approached the German lines at only a few points and was easily repulsed. The Austro-Hungarian front command of Archduke Joseph August still saw no danger. The main blow was expected on the lower Siret, and at headquarters in Baden there was doubt whether the “unwarlike” Romanian divisions were capable of a major offensive. On the same day, with the counter-offensive of the Central Powers already under way in Galicia, the Archduke even sent part of his reserves north.

On 23 July the Romanian artillery moved on to destructive fire, and the village of Mărăști went up in flames. At four in the morning of 24 July the infantry went into the assault and within a few hours broke through the German front. On 25 July, after the defeat in Galicia, the Provisional Government halted the offensive of the Russian troops on the Romanian front, and the attack at Nămoloasa never started at all, but Averescu obtained permission to continue his advance. By 1 August his army had recovered almost the whole of the Vrancea region up to the Putna.