Fighting begins on the Rawka and the Bzura

The British chronology of the war records under 18 December 1914 the beginning of the battle on the Rawka and the Bzura, adding at once that it had no clear end, as operations gradually turned into trench warfare. The war diaries of some German divisions also count the “battle on the Rawka and the Bzura” from that day. The day before, the Battle of Łowicz and Sanniki had ended. The Russian armies then took up new positions on the eastern banks of the lower Bzura and the Rawka, only 50–60 kilometres from Warsaw. The German Ninth Army of General August von Mackensen at once tried to break through them.

The new line

The front ran from the mouth of the Bzura on the Vistula, through Sochaczew, soon to be in ruins, up the Bzura to the mouth of the Rawka, and then along the Rawka to the south, east of Skierniewice, towards the Pilica. On the northern sector, on the lower Bzura, stood the Russian First Army of General Aleksandr Litvinov, and on the Rawka the Second Army of General Vladimir Smirnov. The rivers were not wide, but their marshy valleys and the woods of the Bolimów Forest (PL) favoured the defence. According to the Polish Wikipedia, from 18 December the front ran past Bolimów, and according to local studies German troops entered the small town that day. Bolimów was to remain on the front line for the next seven months.

The first attacks

The Germans counted on the Russians, exhausted by the retreat, not having time to dig in. On 20 December a German communiqué reported that the Russian armies were trying to hold new, prepared positions on the Rawka and the Nida and were being attacked everywhere. Two days later Berlin reported heavy fighting for the Bzura and Rawka sectors and that in many places the rivers had already been crossed. On 24 December the communiqué mentioned fierce bayonet fighting in poor visibility, when the artillery could achieve little. In these days the Germans took Skierniewice, which ended up just behind their line.

Progress, however, was small. The Germans won several bridgeheads on the eastern bank of the Rawka, especially near Bolimów, but failed to break the Russian defence. The Russians counter-attacked, and individual villages, such as Borzymów, changed hands several times. Both sides dug ever deeper trenches and built wire entanglements and dugouts. Russian soldiers wrote in their letters of weeks spent in ditches where the water came up to their knees, and of the ceaseless artillery fire that “finally shatters the nerves”.

Trench warfare

So began one of the longest positional battles of the Eastern Front. On the Rawka and the Bzura the front froze for seven months, until mid-July 1915. On this sector, in the winter and spring of 1915, the Germans for the first time used chemical weapons against the Russians on a large scale. For the inhabitants of the surrounding villages and small towns between Sochaczew and Skierniewice, this meant long months of life on the front line, among destroyed houses, requisitions and shelling.