Start of the Battle of the Strypa

A British chronology of the war records under 11 June 1916 the start of the battle on the Strypa, a river in eastern Galicia on which the front had stood since the autumn of 1915. On that day, 29 May by the Julian calendar then used in Russia, General Dmitry Shcherbachev’s 7th Army struck beyond the Strypa at the right wing of General Felix von Bothmer’s German-Austrian South Army. Fighting on the river, however, had been going on for several days already. Russian accounts count it as part of the Jazłowiec operation, dated from 6 to 17 June (24 May to 4 June by the Julian calendar).

Breakthrough at Jazłowiec

Shcherbachev had commanded the 7th Army since October 1915 and had already led it in the unsuccessful New Year offensive on the Strypa. This time he prepared the attack very carefully. He had jumping-off positions built close to the enemy trenches and trained his infantry on mock-ups of the Austrian fortifications. As the point of breakthrough he chose a salient in the front at Jazłowiec, south of Buczacz, held by General Rhemen’s Austro-Hungarian XIII Corps of Karl Pflanzer-Baltin’s 7th Army. He was short of heavy artillery: according to the Austrian official history he had only 23 heavy guns in the whole army. He therefore concentrated his forces on a narrow sector, and the bombardment lasted longer than on other sectors of the offensive begun on 4 June.

On the morning of 6 June the Russian II Corps, led by the 3rd Turkestan Rifle Division, took the first line of the Austro-Hungarian 15th Infantry Division, and on the afternoon of 7 June it broke through the defences at Jazłowiec itself. The shattered division fell back behind the Strypa. According to the Russian historian Cherkasov, cited by the Austrian history, the 7th Army took 9,000 prisoners in the first two days. The Russians then advanced slowly, but XIII Corps had no reserves left. On 8 and 9 June it withdrew to the Barysz stream, while Russian cavalry spread panic in its rear. At dawn on 10 June the Russians entered the abandoned town of Buczacz and seized the bridges over the Strypa. General Arz’s Austro-Hungarian VI Corps, which stood north of the town, had to pull back its right wing west of the river.

Bothmer takes over the defence

The Austro-Hungarian command feared that a gap would open between the 7th Army and the South Army. Pflanzer-Baltin, who on news of the defeat had been thinking of retreating behind the Dniester as far as the Prut, was expressly forbidden to do so. At noon on 10 June VI Corps was placed under Bothmer. The Bavarian general ordered it to hold its positions at all costs, and from his modest reserves near Podhajce he gathered three regiments and three batteries under Lieutenant-General von Oppeln-Bronikowski, commander of the German 48th Reserve Division.

Shcherbachev meanwhile concluded that his exhausted II Corps could not attack further on the Barysz stream. He shifted the weight of the attack to the north. On 11 June XVI Corps was to cross the Strypa and push the enemy westwards, and XXII Corps was to join it. Russian cavalry waited to go through the breach towards Podhajce.

11 June

In the morning Russian artillery shelled the trenches of the Austro-Hungarian 12th Infantry Division, made up largely of Polish regiments from western Galicia, which on 9 and 10 June had defended themselves stubbornly near Buczacz. The division’s left wing fell back from Kurdwanówka. At about eleven the Russian 47th Infantry Division came out of the Strypa valley and seized the line Kurdwanówka–Sapowa, while the 41st Division attacked from the direction of Jezierzany and around noon took the village of Olesza.

Then Oppeln-Bronikowski’s group, which had been marching south since morning, struck. First it retook Kurdwanówka. The Austro-Hungarian rifle and Honvéd regiments fighting alongside it pushed the Russian 47th Division back behind the Strypa. After two in the afternoon the German 223rd Reserve Infantry Regiment attacked the hills between Kurdwanówka and Olesza, and the 12th Division recovered Olesza. The Russian 41st Division withdrew eastwards and held on with difficulty by using its last reserves. XXII Corps confined itself to skirmishes that day. On Bothmer’s northern wing, near Worobijówka on the road from Tarnopol to Zborów, the Austrians took an important hill held by the Russian 11th Army in the morning, but lost it again at noon.

The first day of the battle

The attack of 11 June did not bring the Russians a breakthrough, and XVI Corps suffered heavy losses. The next day it lay exhausted in its trenches and the fighting died down. Shcherbachev, who was considered a cautious and methodical commander, had to bring up replacements and ammunition. His army had, in any case, been given a supporting task. The Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander, General Mikhail Alekseyev, wanted only feint attacks on the Strypa, with the main forces of the front advancing from Volhynia on Lviv. General Aleksei Brusilov, however, left his southern armies freedom of action.

For the moment Bothmer had saved his right wing, but his army was weak. He had sent most of his reserves to the fighting near Buczacz, and only one German regiment remained in the centre of his front. The Austro-Hungarian official history admits that after the breakthrough at Jazłowiec a “fear of breakthrough” seized even good units on the lower Strypa, which fell back as soon as the enemy broke into the neighbouring sector. In the following days the Russians kept attacking, above all near Kotuzów. Bothmer was waiting for reinforcements: the Germans were sending the 105th Infantry Division to Galicia from the Macedonian front.