Germans break through at Târgu Jiu

The British chronology of the war records under 16 and 17 November 1916 a battle at Târgu Jiu. In the foothills south of the town, where the Jiu valley emerges from the Southern Carpathians, General Viktor Kühne’s German LIV Corps clashed with two Romanian divisions trying to stop it as close to the mountains as possible. On 16 November fighting raged along the whole front, and on 17 November the Germans broke through the Romanian defences. In Romania, which kept time by the Julian calendar, these were 3 and 4 November.

Târgu Jiu itself, the capital of Gorj county, had fallen the day before. After four days of fighting to break out of the Jiu gorge, Kühne’s troops, part of General Erich von Falkenhayn’s German Ninth Army, entered the town almost without a fight on 15 November; according to the American historian Glenn Torrey it was defended only by a weak militia detachment. Many inhabitants fled. The front’s chief of staff, General Hans von Seeckt, who visited Târgu Jiu the day after its capture, pressed for a rapid thrust south and east before snow blocked the roads. Kühne, Torrey writes, was surprised when the Romanians made a stand on the hills just beyond the town.

The Romanian command still did not grasp the enemy’s superiority. On the hills between Cărbunești and Copăcioasa the 1st Division, bled white in the preceding days, dug in, while the 17th Division, re-formed after its destruction at Tutrakan, was detraining. It was to strike the Germans’ eastern flank. From Orșova three battalions with a battery, the so-called Tăuta detachment, were sent across the mountains to cut the Germans’ line of retreat. On 16 November, as the Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu describes, the men of this detachment marched all day in snow and sleet, hearing in the distance the sound of the guns at Târgu Jiu. On the battlefield the German infantry advanced with difficulty over ground softened by snow. The Bavarian 11th Division ran into the 17th Division, which was entering the fight unit by unit straight from the trains, and after heavy fighting took the station at Petrești de Sus in the evening. Further Romanian transports had to detrain farther south.

In the evening General Paraschiv Vasilescu, commander of the Romanian First Army, ordered both divisions to counter-attack the next day. Instead, on 17 November the German 41st and 109th Divisions broke through the 1st Division, which was stretched over a wide front. According to the Austrian official history its western wing was cut off and about 2,500 soldiers were taken prisoner. The 17th Division attacked bravely, but the German artillery broke up its attacks and by evening it too was falling back. The Tăuta detachment did not reach the battlefield in time. According to Torrey, three-quarters of the men of one Romanian regiment were killed or wounded and the rest taken prisoner. The 1st Division melted away to about 1,800 men, the 17th Division to about 2,000, and the remnants of the Romanian group on the Jiu fell back “in great disorder”.

The victory at Târgu Jiu opened the Ninth Army’s way to the plain of Oltenia. The next day, despite a thaw and snowstorms, German cavalry and infantry set off in pursuit southwards towards Craiova. After the defeat on the Jiu the whole Romanian defence of the Southern Carpathians lost its anchor. The Romanians, who throughout October had held Falkenhayn in the passes, now had to defend Wallachia in open country, with no reserves left in the area.