As for the flanking force, the 6th Reserve Brigade, it advanced through the Jablonken woods in closed columns, with so little regard for security that its vanguard was scattered by a Russian ambush. Its overeager commander then deployed his main body and pushed forward without waiting for artillery support. Instead the reservists’ machine guns, a company in each regiment, acted as units to provide bases of fire, keeping Russian heads down while the infantry worked forward in short rushes. But machine guns or not, the Germans found themselves in an all-morning, stand-up, tree-to-tree fight against the Narva and Korpor Regiments of XIII Corps. These men of the Russian active army had not read the foreigners’ prewar reports of their shortcomings. Not until 12:30 p.m. did the 6th Reserve Brigade force its way into Hohenstein—one house at a time. Of over six hundred Russians buried in this sector after the battle, almost all bore bullet wounds, as opposed to shrapnel or splinter marks, a fact suggesting the closeness of the fighting. All along Morgen’s front, hopes of a decisive breakthrough were translating into a rapidly escalating casualty list.44
Another ambitious general of an improvised formation had also received his orders to advance the night before. Major General Freiherr von der Goltz’s “Higher Landwehr Command 1” had been formed on the outbreak of war to guard the coasts of Schleswig-Holstein against a possible British invasion. The force—more commonly and euphoniously dubbed the Goltz Landwehr Division—had been ordered east to reinforce the 8th Army on August 26.
The Landwehr was the German army’s third line. Most of its men were in their thirties, with terms in the active army and its reserves well behind them. Their principal reminder of their days in uniform was the annually updated notice telling them where and when to report should general mobilization be ordered. In theory the officers and administrative NCOs were to report a day early, check preparations, and have all in readiness for the arrival of the rank and file. In practice things went far less smoothly, at least in the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and Altona, Lübeck and Bremen, which mobilized most of the battalions now serving under Goltz. Officers were assigned and reassigned with bewildering rapidity. Those recalled from civilian life had lost much of their capacity for compelling instant obedience. Those transferred from administrative jobs were still caught up in the mystique of peacetime routines. Active and first-line reserve formations, concerned with expediting their own mobilizations, took first pick of available material. Questions of physical fitness, on the other hand, were met with initial indifference. “We’re all healthy, we all want to go,” shouted one anonymous private in broadest Hamburg dialect when his company fell in for its initial medical examination. A few days in barracks, perhaps accompanied by a bit of sober reflection, generated a significant turnover of men to the depots. But there were dozens more eager for a place in the ranks. By mid-August the Landwehr companies and regiments were beginning to shake down, testing their organization and equipment in field exercises and assuming local security responsibilities on the coast and in the harbors. Then came orders to move east.
At first it did not seem much of a war. The north Germans of the Goltz Division were oriented westward, to the great struggle against France and Britain. Who cared for the potato farmers east of the Elbe? But as the Landwehr’s trains moved slowly eastward they had ample opportunity to observe trainloads of wounded and columns of refugees going in the other direction. They had an even better chance to be cheered as saviors once their trains began rolling through the towns of East Prussia.
The Landwehr would need all of their morale. By the morning of August 27 only seven of the division’s twelve battalions, and one lone artillery battery, had been able to detrain. The arrival of the rest had been delayed indefinitely because of a collision on the line. Goltz knew a Russian division was supposed to be in Allenstein, east of his position. Despite this possible threat to his flank he started southward in the direction of Hohenstein at first light with the troops he had on hand, leaving the balance of the division to follow as best it might. After a sixteen-kilometer march, his advance guard reached the area south of the Kämmerei-Wald when at 9:00 a.m. it encountered Russian outposts. The night before, Max Hoffmann had suggested that the Landwehr avoid unnecessary risks. “We’ll bring them to you,” he declared. Instead Goltz, riding at the head of his column, deployed six battalions and attacked the Russian position across the Hohenstein-Mörken road, leaving only two companies at the south edge of the woods to guard against a possible advance from Allenstein.
The Landwehr advanced with enthusiasm but without artillery. Like Morgen’s men they were unable to make much progress after the initial contact. Then at 9:20 a.m. a cavalry patrol brought Goltz the disturbing information that Russians had been reported advancing from Allenstein in his direction since 4:30 a.m. As if on cue, enemy skirmishers appeared in the German rear.45
They were part of the vanguard of XIII Russian Corps. Kluyev had received neither direct orders nor direct information from 2nd Army during the night of the 27th/28th. His only link with the outside world was a message transmitted through one of Martos’s divisions. This, reflecting Samsonov’s army order for August 28, put Kluyev under Martos’s command and ordered XIII Corps to turn southward to cooperate with XV Corps in attacking the German left. It corroborated both Kluyev’s own view of the situation and the impressions of the staff officer who had acted as observer for the reconnaissance flight over Martos’s positions on the afternoon of August 27. But Kluyev’s corps was almost twenty miles away from Martos—a good day’s march even for fresh troops. To turn out exhausted men for a night move seemed an exercise in futility, especially since Kluyev believed XIII Corps could not reach the expected battle area until the evening of the 28th. The corps therefore started south only at dawn on that day.
Kluyev’s decision was sound enough given the information available. Yet it remains one of the unconsidered might-have-beens of a battle that invited so much speculation on both sides. What were the potential effects of an army corps debouching even an hour or two earlier in the rear of inexperienced Landwehr already engaged to their front?46
Things as they stood were discouraging enough. Goltz’s officers knew how to lead and how to die, but they were unable to move their men forward against even the limited opposition offered by elements of the same brigade that was giving Morgen’s reservists such difficulties further south. Lieutenants found themselves leading twenty men instead of eighty as overweight family fathers collapsed from heatstroke. One of Goltz’s brigadiers galloped forward shouting to a bugler: “Sound the charge with everything you’ve got! I’ll give you a taler!” But this appeal to Hanseatic business sense could not sustain the Germans’ momentum. Not until part of Morgen’s 6th Reserve Brigade came up on the Landwehr’s right flank did the outnumbered Russians finally pull back. They had bought the 2nd Army a morning’s time. And they could still bite hard in the face of a pursuit characterized by more disorganization than enthusiasm—a combination reflecting heavy loss of officers and NCOs, a particular problem in Landwehr formations that often had no more than two officers in a company to begin with.47
At 8th Army headquarters, the situation became increasingly opaque as the morning progressed. Where was Rennenkampf? What would happen when he found that he had almost no Germans in front of him? Where were the reports from the 41st Division? No information had arrived from Morgen since 8:00 a.m. Why were the garrison troops north of Lake Mühlen not yet advancing? What were the Russians in Allenstein doing? At 8:15 a.m. the governor of the Fortress of Thorn made that last question especially vital by forwarding an intercepted radio message. In it Kluyev informed Martos he was moving south to support XV Corps and intended to be in Grieslienen at the head of his vanguard “around noon.” Grieslienen was across Goltz’s and Morgen’s lines of advance! The flank and rear of 8th Army’s poorest troops might well be open to a major Russian counterattack. Uncertainty was an increasing torment.48