News from the Front - 22nd March 2023
The weekly newsletter from from 1914-1918 - The First World War.
News from the Front exists to share great stories and interesting historical aspects of the First World War. If you enjoy this, do one of the requests at the bottom!
One anniversary
22nd March 1915 - The fortress of Przemyśl falls
This week’s anniversary is the fall of Przemyśl, an Austro-Hungarian fortress town that was finally taken by the Russians after two drawn out sieges that cost them over 100,000 casualties. For those you with a knowledge of eastern European geography like mine, Przemyśl is in modern day Poland, on the border with Ukraine, about 100 kilometres to the west of Lviv.
The town, a major fortress intended to defend the Austro-Hungarian empire from Russian army, first fell under siege on the 24th September 1914. The Russian army, with a force of six divisions under General Radko Dimitriev, encircled the fortress, and began to bombard the outlying ring of forts. The fortress, although cut off from the rest of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was heavily defended by an enormous garrison of some 120,000 soldiers commanded by Hermann Kusmanek von Burgneustädten. The Asutro-Hungarians sent a relief force east to break the siege from outside. The relief arrived at Przemyśl around the 12th October 1914 and the Russians were forced to withdraw, ending the first siege
However, later in the year, the Austro-Hungarian army and their German allies were forced to withdraw further westwards following a change in the overall situation caused by setbacks in the Battle of the Vistula River. Of course, armies can ebb and flow, but towns and fortresses tend to stay still; now Przemyśl was exposed to another siege. Civilians were told to leave on the 4th November and on the 10th of November the fortress was, once again, surrounded and under siege. The fortress was hammered by artillery fire as the outlying forts were smashed up and repeated attempts were made to penetrate the outer ring of defences, but the garrison held on.
Meanwhile, the Austro-Hungarians made repeated efforts to fight their way back to the town and break the siege as they had done before. These encounters were brutal in terms of both fighting and the miserable winter conditions that caused huge numbers of casualties to men fighting in the open.
In February 1915, the last relief attempt failed and von Burgneustädten was told by the Austro-Hungarian commander Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf that no more relief efforts could be expected. Now, without resupply, food supplies began to run out, with the garrison’s horses being slaughtered to feed the men. Dogs, cats and mice began to fetch good prices on the open market. As the situation grew more desperate, discipline began to falter and the garrison’s fighting spirit began to collapse; many officers deliberately caught gonnorrhoea so they could avoid their duties and desertion rates soared. By the 1st of March, over 15,000 men were hospitalised, generally suffering from starvation or illnesses caused or made worse by the effects of starvation.
The fortress began to collapse on the 13th March when the Russians breached the northern ring of protective forts. As the Russians closed in, further improvised defences held them off for long enough for the city’s stores to be destroyed. Then, on the 19th of March, with the end in sight, a desperate attempt was made to abandon the town and break out to and safety, but this inevitably failed as underfed men were counter-attacked by experienced and healthy Russian troops. The breakout failed and the garrison were forced back to the city where, with no hope of rescue and no food left to feed the men, and with just enough food to provide horsemeat and hardtack biscuits to last two days (enough to see them into captivity), the Austro-Hungarians were forced to surrender. But not until they had burnt the money from the treasury, destroyed anything of military value and fired off all the remaining machine gun ammunition.
117,000 men of the Austro-Hungarian Army went into captivity, along with nine generals and 2,500 officers. For these men, a new ordeal awaited. One in five Austro-Hungarian prisoners failed to return from their captivity, and for the starving men of Przemyśl, already weakened by starvation, the odds were stacked against their safe return.
One news story
Anniversary of the formation of the Royal Tank Regiment
This week’s news comes from the British Army, which is celebrating the 100th anniversary since the formation of the Royal Tank Regiment. Speaking about the anniversary, Lieutenant Colonel Simon Worth, the current commanding officer of the regiment, said;
“Our Regiment was forged in the mud and chaos of World War 1, when the introduction of the tank was critical to breaking the stalemate of trench warfare, thereby bringing peace to Western Europe.”
Of course, he would say that, wouldn’t he?
Whilst tanks were important, they only worked in conjunction with new infantry and artillery tactics, however, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and take a look behind the news story. The Royal Tank Regiment was formed in 1923, a full five years after the end of the Great War, so to stay on topic for this newsletter, we have to delve back a little into the origins of the regiment.
The origins of tank warfare in the Great War date back to the autumn of 1914, when Lieutenant-Colonel E.D. Swinton promoted the idea of introducing some kind of armoured vehicle. However, it was January 1915 when Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, picked up on the suggestion and began to champion the development of a “land battleship.”
The new weapons were allocated to the Machine Gun Corps and the “Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps” was formed in March 1916, embarking to France in August 1916.
Tanks were first employed in battle as a part of the Somme battles in 1916, with 49 Mark 1 tanks being allocated for the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on the 15th September. Of the 49 tanks, only 36 actually made it to the start line, showing the mechanical problems with this new weapon. Following this action, the Heavy Section Machine Gun Corps was renamed the Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps in November 1916.
Tanks were used in greater numbers in the Battle of Arras in April 1917 when 60 tanks were used in difficult weather conditions with little effect. The Heavy Branch Machine Gun Corps was, itself, renamed The Tank Corps on the 27th July 1917 and adopted a rather evocative motto of, “through mud and blood to the green fields beyond.” Sadly, the motto wasn’t easy to live up to; attempts to use tanks in the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) once again resulted in tanks getting bogged down and picked off by artillery fire.
During the course of the war, the tanks were improved, with the Mark 1 evolving into the much more effective and reliable Mark 5. Weaponry was upgraded and lessons learned in the use of this new weapon.
The high point of the Tank Corps war was probably the Battle of Cambrai on the 20th November 1917, when 378 Mark 4 tanks were used in good conditions on firm ground and punched a hole in the German trench lines. This encounter proved how best to use the tanks and led the way to greater successes at Villers-Bretonneux in late April 1918, early July at Le Hamel and near Amiens on the 8th August 1918, when British tanks were key to the success of an attack. Losses sustained in these actions meant that it was only towards the end of the war, in September, when they were next able to deploy in strength.
Anyway, happy birthday to the Royal Tank Regiment!
One from the archives
Forewarned - the Zeppelin threat
This week’s “one from the archives” is a cartoon from the British magazine Punch, which specialised in satirical stories and cartoons and was published between 1841 and 2002.
Published on the 4th November 1914, the cartoon shows Punch’s iconic John Bull, the archetypal Englishman, being confronted by a Zeppelin emerging eerily over the tree-lined horizon. John shows his contempt for the Zeppelin terror-weapon as he dismisses Zeppelin threat by barely acknowledging it’s existence.
At the start of the Great War, Germany led the world in lighter than air flight and the German army had the most airships of all the belligerents, with 7 in service by August 1914.
During the early days of the war, the Zeppelins, mainly from the Army wing of the service, flew regular observation missions at low altitude, reporting on troop movements. They also dropped artillery shells with blankets tied to them to act as tail feathers to create improvised bombs. August was a punishing month for the Zeppelins and three airships were brought down by ground fire; their gas envelopes were just too big a target when flying slowly near the ground. Whilst the airships didn't explode, they could be forced down as their gas leaked out through multiple bullet holes.
For the remainder of 1914, the airships switched from close observation to tactical bombing missions, hitting Antwerp, targeting railway stations and other tactical targets. As the war of movement came to an end, it became increasingly clear that the airspace above the static trench lines were too dangerous for slow-moving airships to operate.
The threat to the British home front weighed heavily on Winston Churchill’s mind, (certainly more than it did on John Bull’s!) as he was now in charge of defending the homeland. He wrote wrote;
“There are approximately twenty German airships that can reach London now from the Rhine, each carrying a tonne of high explosives. They could traverse the English part of the journey, coming and going, in the dark hours. The weather hazards are considerable, but there is no known means of preventing the airships coming, and not much chance of punishing them on return. The un-avenged destruction of non-combatant life may therefore be very considerable.”
In January 1915, the Zeppelin raids against Britain began in earnest and history shows us that, whilst non-combatants were killed and injured, and disruption caused, in the grand scheme of things, John Bull, and the Punch cartoonist, were right not to be overly concerned about the threat.
One request
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