Battle of the Gniła Lipa begins

On 27 June 1915 the Russian troops east of Lviv abandoned the positions they had been defending for several days at Bóbrka and Bukaczowce and began to fall back to the River Gniła Lipa, a tributary of the Dniester. The Austro-Hungarian Second Army and the German-Austrian South Army set off in pursuit, and Austro-Hungarian troops entered Halicz without a fight. A British chronology of the war records the beginning of the Battle of the Gniła Lipa under this date.

After the recapture of Lviv on 22 June the armies of the Central Powers separated. The German Eleventh Army of General August von Mackensen turned north, towards Tomaszów and Lublin. Eastwards, behind the retreating Russians, went the Austro-Hungarian Second Army of General Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli, and from the south, across the Dniester, the South Army of General Alexander von Linsingen. Facing them stood the Russian Eleventh Army of General Dmitry Shcherbachev and the left wing of the Eighth Army. Heavy fighting had been going on since 23 June. The South Army crossed the Dniester at Żurawno and further downstream, but the Russians counter-attacked and for several days held it to narrow bridgeheads. The Austrian official history calls this fighting the Battle of Bukaczowce and Bóbrka. 26 June brought the breakthrough: the Austro-Hungarian V Corps, after bloody fighting for the villages on the Biały stream, especially for Bóbrka itself, broke into the positions of the Russian VI Corps, and the German X Reserve Corps pushed the Russian XXII Corps back across the River Świrz (PL).

When on the morning of 27 June the troops of the Central Powers were preparing for another attack, they found only rearguards in the Russian trenches. The pursuit went on until dusk. The Austro-Hungarian corps reached Zadwórze, Wyżniany and Kurowice, and the 9th Infantry Division took the wooded hills near Świrz as late as 7 p.m. According to the Austrian official history almost 2,700 Russians laid down their arms before the troops of the Second Army that day. The South Army reached the Świrz, but at Żurów and Bukaczowce the Russian XXII Corps could not be dislodged from its eastern bank. On the right wing the Russians gave up the bridgehead at Halicz and General Hofmann’s corps entered the town without a fight.

Airmen reported numerous fires in the villages on the Gniła Lipa and feverish digging of trenches further east, on the Złota Lipa. The commands of the Central Powers therefore concluded that the Russians would stop on the Gniła Lipa only briefly. On the same day at Teschen the chiefs of the general staff, Erich von Falkenhayn and Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, confirmed that the main blow was to go north, between the Bug and the Vistula. The armies fighting east of Lviv were only to push the front away from its flank.

There had already been fighting on the Gniła Lipa in this war. At the end of August 1914 it was the Russians who broke through the Austro-Hungarian defences here, which sealed the fate of Lviv. Now the roles were reversed. The troops of the Central Powers reached the river the next day, 28 June, and at once began crossing to the eastern bank. The Austrian official history counts the battle of the Gniła Lipa proper only from 29 June.