End of the Battle of the Gniła Lipa

On 29 June 1915 German and Austro-Hungarian troops were crossing the Gniła Lipa along the whole sector from Przemyślany to the river’s mouth on the Dniester near Halicz. The British chronology of the war records the end of the Battle of the Gniła Lipa under this date. The fighting, however, went on longer. According to the Austrian official history, on 29 June it was only gathering pace, and it was decided on 1 July. On the night of 1–2 July the Russians withdrew to the next line of defence, on the Złota Lipa.

Resistance on the eastern bank

The troops of the Central Powers reached the river on 28 June, after several days of pursuing the Russians retreating from Lviv. Airmen saw no occupied trenches on the Gniła Lipa, and the commander of the German-Austrian South Army, General Alexander von Linsingen, believed that he faced only a single Russian corps covering the retreat of the rest of the army. As early as the evening of 28 June his troops took the western bank of the river near Rohatyn, Koniuszki and Bursztyn, and some units crossed to the other bank. Linsingen ordered the attack to continue.

On 29 June it turned out that the Russian Eleventh Army of General Dmitry Shcherbachev had no intention of leaving quickly. On the high eastern bank, which dominated the valley, prepared trenches and heavy fire awaited the crossing battalions. The German corps of Generals Bothmer and Kosch managed only to come up to the fiercely defended Russian trenches. The Austro-Hungarian 19th Infantry Division fought its way across to the eastern bank near Bursztyn. Near Halicz units of Hofmann’s corps were preparing to cross the Gniła Lipa right at its mouth.

In the north the Austro-Hungarian Second Army of General Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli was also engaged in heavy fighting from the morning. Its V Corps crossed the river at Firlejów, Brzuchowice and Wołków, but on the eastern bank it ran into determined resistance from the Russian XVIII and VI Corps. At Przemyślany itself the 33rd Infantry Division exchanged fire all day. Further north Austro-Hungarian divisions attacked in vain the Ciemna hill near Łahodów, which was defended by a Russian reserve division. Russian batteries, which once again had enough ammunition, shelled them from there, and the Russians counter-attacked again and again.

The decision

On 30 June the fighting continued. The German X Reserve Corps of General Kosch took the Russian trenches on the eastern bank by storm, and the Austro-Hungarian 55th Infantry Division crossed the Gniła Lipa at its mouth and occupied the former Halicz bridgehead. On 1 July the Russian Eleventh Army even went over to a counter-attack and pushed part of the Hungarian 51st Honvéd Division back across the river. That evening, however, the corps of Bothmer and Kosch and the Austro-Hungarian 19th Division broke through the Russian positions on the hills north-east of Bursztyn. The commander of the Russian South-Western Front, General Nikolai Ivanov, ordered a retreat to the Złota Lipa, where new positions had already been prepared. On the night of 1–2 July the Russian corps began to withdraw.

The battle cost both sides much blood. According to the Austrian official history, the Second Army alone lost about 10,000 men in four days of fighting, and its ranks were again beginning to run short of ammunition. There was no strength left for a second great offensive in Eastern Galicia. The main blow was going north, where Mackensen’s troops were attacking between the Bug and the Vistula, and the armies fighting east of Lviv were, according to orders issued in the first days of July, to be content with reaching the Złota Lipa.