Germans take Saaremaa

At dawn on 12 October 1917 (29 September in the Julian calendar) German warships silenced the Russian batteries above Tagga Bay on the north-western coast of Saaremaa, the largest island of the West Estonian Archipelago, and the landing of the 42nd Infantry Division began. The British chronology of the war records the capture of the island under this date, but notes in a footnote that the fighting ended only on 16 October. The first day did indeed decide the fate of Saaremaa: before midnight the Germans had cut off the Russian garrison’s only escape route to the neighbouring island of Muhu and on to the mainland.

The island was defended by General Fyodor Ivanov’s Russian 107th Infantry Division with reinforcements, in all more than ten thousand soldiers, but the regiments were well below strength, and after the February Revolution discipline was being undermined by soldiers’ committees. Ivanov, who did not have enough men to hold the whole coast, intended to delay the German advance at roadblocks among the marshes and forests and, above all, to hold the causeway between Saaremaa and Muhu, along which reinforcements were to come. The regiment stationed by Tagga Bay largely scattered after the first salvoes. The commander of the German division, Lieutenant General Ludwig von Estorff, seeing the weakness of the defence, did not wait for the artillery and baggage trains to be unloaded and at once sent his infantry into the interior of the island: one regiment south, towards the Sõrve (Sworbe) peninsula, the other towards the island’s capital, Arensburg, today’s Kuressaare. By evening all the infantry was ashore. The Germans took the almost undamaged airfield at Papensholm.

The most important task, however, was given to the group landed at Pammana (Pamerort) on the northern shore. The battalions of the 2nd Cyclist Brigade and an assault battalion, meeting almost no resistance, rode the length of the island eastwards and around midnight reached Orissaare, at the end of the causeway to Muhu. On the way they captured, among other things, the treasury of the provincial administration with 200,000 roubles, which was being taken to the mainland. In Arensburg Rear Admiral Dmitry Sveshnikov, who commanded the defence of the islands, ordered the whole division to withdraw towards the causeway, not knowing that Orissaare was already in German hands, and himself sailed to the mainland. For this the front command relieved him of his command and handed it to General Nikolai Henrikson.

In the following days the fate of the island was decided by the fight for the causeway. Russian columns approaching from the west and south and detachments of sailors sent from Muhu attacked the weak German blocking force for two days, and it was beginning to run short of ammunition. It was saved by German torpedo boats, which forced their way through the Soela Strait into the waters between the islands, sank the Russian destroyer Grom on 14 October and shelled the area of the causeway, and by Estorff’s infantry, brought up by night marches. On the evening of 13 October German patrols entered Arensburg, already abandoned, and the next day the main force occupied it. On the afternoon of 15 October the remnants of the 107th Division surrounded at Orissaare, with General Ivanov and his staff, hoisted white flags. According to German figures more than 5,000 men with 14 guns were taken prisoner. Only a few hundred soldiers managed to escape by boat to Muhu. In this fighting Walter Flex, a poet and writer popular in Germany, was mortally wounded.

The defence of the Sõrve peninsula at the southern tip of Saaremaa lasted longer. On its cape at Zerel stood a battery of 305 mm guns which, together with minefields, closed the Irbe Strait, the main entrance to the Gulf of Riga. On 14 October the battery fought a duel with German battleships, but some of the crews fled from the guns. The next day the soldiers’ committee decided to stop resisting. The battery commander, Lieutenant Nikolai Bartenev, tried to blow up the guns, but the fuses failed. On the evening of 15 October Colonel Borsakovsky accepted the German terms of surrender, and on the morning of 16 October the garrison of the peninsula laid down its arms. Before doing so the Russians still managed to destroy a large part of the battery, and some of the soldiers were taken to Kuivastu on Muhu by destroyers and steamers that came for them under the cover of the battleship Grazhdanin. According to German figures about 150 officers and 5,100 men were taken prisoner on Sõrve.

The capture of Saaremaa opened the way for the Germans into the Gulf of Riga, from which the Russians had not let themselves be driven for two years, despite the unsuccessful attack of the German fleet in 1915. Once minesweepers had cleared the Irbe Strait of mines, German dreadnoughts entered it on 16 October. There remained Muhu and Hiiumaa and the ships of the Baltic Fleet defending the Moon Sound. The fighting on Saaremaa showed how much the revolution had weakened the Russian army: well-prepared positions often fell without a fight, and the most resistance was put up by individual detachments of volunteers and sailors.