Third Battle of Oituz

On 8 August 1917 (26 July by the Julian calendar, then in force in Romania), Austro-Hungarian and German troops of General of Infantry Friedrich von Gerok’s group attacked the right wing of General Alexandru Averescu’s Romanian 2nd Army in the valley of the Oituz river, in the mountainous borderland between Transylvania and Moldavia. This was the second arm of the German pincer. For two days Field Marshal August von Mackensen’s German 9th Army had been assaulting the front at Mărășești, on the Siret. Gerok was to break through the mountains to the valley of the Trotuș river near Onești, and then advance on Adjud to meet Mackensen. The Romanians call this fighting the Third Battle of Oituz, because they had already fought twice for the same pass in the autumn of 1916, in October and November, when the troops of the Central Powers were entering Romania from Transylvania.

Forces and plan

The main blow was struck by General Siegmund von Benigni’s Austro-Hungarian VIII Corps, the left wing of Gerok’s group within General Franz Rohr’s Austro-Hungarian 1st Army. It consisted of the Hungarian 70th Honvéd Division, the Austro-Hungarian 71st Infantry Division and, between them, on both sides of the Oituz valley, a scratch force under General Seydel of the German 117th Division, reinforced among others by the Württemberg Mountain Battalion, brought straight from the Western Front, and by dismounted Austro-Hungarian cavalry. According to the Austrian official history (“Österreich-Ungarns letzter Krieg”), the corps numbered 24,300 rifles, 194 light and 49 heavy guns. The aim was to get out of the narrow Oituz valley and seize the road junction at Onești. The Trotuș valley, with its railway, the coal mines at Comănești, the oil wells at Moinești and the salt mine at Târgu Ocna, was the main supply artery of the Russo-Romanian troops in the mountains. Its loss would have meant disaster.

The Austrians and Germans were counting on the Russians, who until recently had held this sector, fraternised with the enemy and visited him at the spa of Slănic. A few days earlier, however, they had been relieved by the Romanian 7th Division (from 2 August) and 6th Division (from 4 August), part of General Gheorghe Văleanu’s IV Corps. The Romanian historian Constantin Kirițescu writes that the positions taken over were very weak: a single, and discontinuous, line of trenches, sparse wire, no second line. The 6th Division had come straight from Mărăști, where it had fought until 1 August. The Romanian divisions, on the other hand, were large, with 14 battalions each.

The first day

According to Kirițescu, at six in the morning the Austro-Hungarian and German artillery opened fire on the Russian sector to the right of the Romanians, and by seven the guns were firing along the whole front of the Romanian IV Corps. At about ten, as the Austrian official history writes, in the presence of the front commander, Archduke Joseph August, the infantry of the 71st Division broke into the Romanian first line south of the valley. On the right wing the Romanian 27th “Bacău” Regiment beat off four successive attacks below the Pravila peak. In the centre the Germans and Bavarians broke through the front of the Romanian 16th Regiment and, after a fight in which almost two whole companies were buried in their trenches, took the Ungureanu hill in the evening. South of the Oituz, after a bombardment with gas and tear-gas shells, the enemy tore open the line of the 6th Division and advanced deep into the wooded valleys. By evening the Romanians had lost their first line in several sectors, but the front had not fallen apart. Averescu came to the battlefield and threw in his reserves.

Further fighting

The battle lasted until 22 August. On the morning of 9 August a Romanian counter-attack took back from the 71st Division almost all the ground it had gained, but in the afternoon the Hungarian 73rd Honvéd Brigade broke through the front again, and the Romanian IV Corps had to fall back to a new line. On 11 August the Württemberg Mountain Battalion took the Cosna hill, and the Honvéds reached the mouth of the Slănic valley, from where their machine guns were already firing on the road in the Trotuș valley, opposite Târgu Ocna. The Romanian heavy batteries began to pull back to Onești. At the last moment reserves arrived: the dismounted 1st Cavalry Division, a brigade of border guards brought up by lorry, and a battalion of mountain troops, which on 12 August, together with the Russians, threw back the Hungarians below the Cireșoaia peak. On 13 August Averescu counter-attacked with the whole IV Corps and retook Cosna. Gerok’s attack had stalled.

On 19 August, simultaneously with the last great assault at Mărășești, Gerok renewed the attack. The Germans took Cosna again but got no further. On 20 and 21 August Romanian attacks on the hill broke against the German defence, and on 22 August the Romanians beat off the enemy’s last assaults. According to Kirițescu, the Austro-Hungarian and German artillery then set fire to Târgu Ocna, which its inhabitants had abandoned. On a front about 20 kilometres wide the Central Powers had pushed the Romanians back by at most 6 kilometres. They had taken no important town and had not reached the Trotuș valley. The Romanians lost, according to Kirițescu, about 14,000 killed, wounded and missing.

In the fighting for Cosna Lieutenant Erwin Rommel, leading several companies of the Württemberg battalion, distinguished himself. He later became one of the best-known generals of the Second World War and described this fighting in his book “Infanterie greift an” (literally “Infantry Attacks”), published in 1937. In the autumn his battalion, like the German Alpine Corps from Mărășești, went to the Italian front. At Oituz, as at Mărășești, Ludendorff’s pincer failed to close. The Romanians count this battle, together with Mărăști and Mărășești, among the “heroic triangle” of the summer of 1917.