End of the battle of the Strypa

Under 30 June 1916 the British chronology of the war closes the battle of the Strypa, which it opens on 11 June. On the last day of June, 17 June by the Julian calendar then used in Russia, nothing decisive happened on the Strypa itself, however. The front of General Felix von Bothmer’s German-Austrian South Army had been quiet for more than a week. The last big attack of General Dmitry Shcherbachev’s Russian Seventh Army had collapsed on 21 June. The date in the chronology can rather be linked with reports from the Dniester and the Prut, where at the end of June the Russian troops moved forward again.

The fighting at Kotuzów

After the attack of 11 June at Olesza had been repulsed, Shcherbachev shifted his blow further north, against the left wing of the Austro-Hungarian VI Corps, which was holding on on the western bank of the Strypa. Before dawn on 13 June the 3rd Finnish Rifle Division of the Russian XXII Corps attacked the Hungarian 39th Honvéd Infantry Division. The Russians crossed the river near the village of Wiśniowczyk, broke into Kurdwanówka and forced VI Corps to pull its left wing back to the third line of defence. In the evening the fighting died down.

The most dangerous day was 15 June. In the morning and before noon Finnish and Turkestan riflemen twice attacked the positions of the Honvéd and of the German group of Generalleutnant von Oppeln-Bronikowski between Olesza and Kotuzów, and were twice repulsed. According to the Austrian official history the hillocks at Kotuzów were covered with hundreds of dead and wounded. At about six in the evening, when the corps commander already considered the attack beaten off, Cossacks broke through the exhausted battalions of the 39th Division. The Russians took Kotuzów and reached the village of Gniłowody, but as darkness fell they went no further. On the morning of 16 June Hungarian and German battalions under Colonel Daubner counter-attacked and pushed the enemy back onto the hills east of Gniłowody and Kotuzów. The front of VI Corps stabilised again. On the same day trains carrying the German 105th Infantry Division, brought from Macedonia, began to arrive at Podhajce.

The last assault, 21 June

On 17 June the Russian attacks at Gniłowody and Kotuzów were stopped by artillery fire alone. Shcherbachev was waiting for reinforcements and received the 113th Reserve Division from Brusilov. On the morning of 21 June his artillery shelled Bothmer’s positions on the Barysz stream and on the hillocks at Olesza. Then XXII Corps, the 3rd Turkestan Rifle Division and the new division went into the attack on the sector from Gniłowody to Złotniki. They meant to tear open the junction of VI Corps with the neighbouring corps of General Hofmann. The Finnish and Turkestan regiments attacked in as many as eight waves, but the German 48th Reserve Division at Kotuzów did not give way. By the evening all the attacks had been repulsed with heavy losses. From 22 June there was calm in front of Bothmer’s line. Shcherbachev concluded that he had too few forces and waited for further reinforcements from Bessarabia.

Movement on the Dniester and the Prut

At the end of June the decision was being made south of the Dniester. General Platon Lechitsky’s Russian Ninth Army, which had already taken Czernowitz and almost all of Bukovina, struck on 28 June at Karl Pflanzer-Baltin’s Austro-Hungarian Seventh Army between the Dniester and Kuty. It broke through the front on the Prut and at Kuty. On the evening of 29 June Pflanzer-Baltin decided to give up Kolomyia and withdraw his troops further west. The Russians entered the town on 30 June.

The retreat of the Seventh Army also took in its wing on the Dniester, which linked up with the South Army. General Leide’s group, defending a bend of the river, beat back on 28 and 29 June the Russians who had crossed to its bank, but on the night of 29/30 June it had to withdraw. At noon on 30 June Russian horsemen of the 6th Don Cossack Division struck its new positions in six waves. The charge was repulsed by infantry and artillery fire. The American chronicle of the war in the monthly “Current History” noted under 30 June that the Russians had taken Kolomyia and crossed beyond the mouth of the Strypa. Bothmer now had to guard his right wing as well. As early as 26 June he had given Pflanzer-Baltin an infantry regiment and three batteries of the German 105th Division, and at the end of the month he moved the rest of it to Niżniów on the Dniester.

The balance of the June fighting

On the lower Strypa the Russians won a clear success in June. They broke the defences at Jazłowiec, took Buczacz and pushed the Austro-Hungarian XIII Corps back to the Barysz stream. According to the Russian émigré historian Anton Kersnovsky, between 6 and 17 June the Seventh Army took about 900 officers and 37,000 soldiers prisoner, as well as 41 guns. The Russian state portal devoted to the soldiers of the First World War states that in that time it lost 98 officers and 12,300 soldiers killed and wounded itself. Further north, however, Bothmer held the line of the Strypa, and the attacks of 11, 13, 15 and 21 June cost the Russians much blood. The Austrian official history admits that if Shcherbachev and Lechitsky had struck west with full force in mid-June, the whole front in East Galicia might have fallen apart. The caution of the Russian commanders gave the Central Powers time to bring up reinforcements.

On the Strypa the fighting soon revived. As early as 4 July the Seventh Army attacked again at Barysz and Monasterzyska. Bothmer defended the Strypa until August, when the Russian advances south of the Dniester forced him to retreat to the Złota Lipa.