Germans take Muhu and Hiiumaa

On 18 October 1917 (5 October in the Julian calendar) the Germans occupied the island of Muhu, in German Moon, lying between Saaremaa and the Estonian mainland, and began the main landing on Hiiumaa (Dagö), the second-largest island of the archipelago. The British chronology of the war records the capture of both islands under this date. For Muhu this is true, but the last defenders of Hiiumaa laid down their arms only on the evening of 19 October according to the German official history, or on 20 October according to Russian sources.

After the fall of Saaremaa Muhu was the last obstacle on the way to Moon Sound and the mainland. It was linked to Saaremaa by a causeway several kilometres long across a shallow strait, which the Germans had held since the first night of the landing. The Russian command had managed to move reinforcements to the island from Reval, today’s Tallinn, but most of the soldiers did not want to fight. Many threw away their weapons at the first shelling and fled to the port of Kuivastu, hoping to be taken across to the mainland. Only the death battalion, made up of volunteers from the Baltic Fleet, had real fighting value. After the Battle of Moon Sound on 17 October, in which the Russians lost the battleship Slava, German dreadnoughts and cruisers entered the waters south of Muhu, and most of the crew of the heavy battery at Võiküla fled. In the afternoon of that day a landing party from the cruisers occupied the abandoned battery, and an infantry company crossed the strait in boats under cover of a smokescreen. At the same time a German assault company crossed the causeway. The death battalion stopped it with machine-gun fire on the western edge of the island, but during the night the Russians fell back.

On 18 October the Germans advanced across Muhu almost unhindered. Resistance was offered only by Russians near the village of Kallaste in the north-east of the island, who were still counting on evacuation. Most of them were ready to surrender, but the volunteers of the death battalion demanded to be taken to the mainland. The Germans rejected their terms and set an ultimatum expiring at 1 p.m. When it passed, the 138th Infantry Regiment attacked and forced the Russians to capitulate. During the negotiations, however, Russian ships came up and took off some of the soldiers, with the death battalion covering their withdrawal. According to German figures about 5,000 men were taken prisoner on Muhu. That day the minesweepers reached the anchorage off Kuivastu and saw the burning wreck of Slava and the steamers the Russians had scuttled in the channel to close the way north. The Germans paid for their progress in mines: the minesweeper T 66 sank in the strait, and 17 men were killed on board.

The Germans had been trying to take Hiiumaa for several days. On 15, 16 and 17 October a naval landing party put ashore near Sõru (Serro) on the southern coast met resistance and twice had to return to the ships, and once held a bridgehead only for a night. On the morning of 18 October the cruiser Emden shelled the area around Emmaste for three-quarters of an hour, after which a cyclist battalion landed near Sõru, followed by field artillery. The commander on the island, Colonel Vaselago, ordered a withdrawal to a prepared line further north and the blowing up of the batteries in the south. The soldiers took this as a sign that all was lost. Most abandoned their positions, and there was looting along the way. A crowd of demoralised soldiers gathered at the port of Heltermaa on the eastern coast, waiting for ships. Of the three steamers sent for them, two ran aground and only one brought some of the men to the mainland.

On the evening of 17 October the Russian command ordered the naval forces of the Gulf of Riga to withdraw to the Gulf of Finland, and the garrison of Hiiumaa to hold out as long as possible. Vice-Admiral Mikhail Bakhirev wanted to leave Moon Sound in the afternoon of 18 October, but mines were detected on the withdrawal route and the departure was postponed by a day. That same day Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky conferred at the headquarters of the Northern Front on how to defend the approaches to Reval and Petrograd. With the loss of Muhu the Russians lost control of Moon Sound, and with it of the whole Gulf of Riga. Of the islands, they were left with only a scrap of northern Hiiumaa, which fell over the next two days.