Eighth Army command had insisted that I Reserve Corps attack Allenstein as soon as possible on August 28—at least, no later than noon. Below, however, put his own gloss on the requirement. Over the protests of the army liaison officer Below decided, as he had done on the 26th, to wait for Mackensen and give his own men an extra bit of rest. The I Reserve Corps left its bivouac areas only around 10:00 a.m., its divisions one behind the other on a single road. This meant they were not likely to reach Allenstein much before 2:00 p.m. The reservists were edgy; an unfortunate Russian pilot overflying their line of march attracted the attention of what seemed to be every rifle in the corps. At 10:30 a.m., however, a cavalry patrol reported that Allenstein was only lightly held. From that Below concluded that the Russians had gone south and decided to follow them, hoping to overtake them from the rear.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff had the same idea. Responding to Kluyev’s intercepted radio message stating his intent to be in Grieslienen around noon, 8th Army at 9:45 a.m. ordered Below to pursue the Russians by the shortest possible route “at all costs.” This time Ludendorff took no chances. A phone call sent a plane from Air Detachment 16 northeast. Its crew, guiding on the spiked helmets, tossed out copies of the new order over the marching columns. Instead of waiting on the chain of command, the commander of Below’s leading division informed the corps commander of the change in orders and promptly turned his men south. By that time, 11:30 a.m., Below had received the orders himself, by both aircraft and phone. “Just like a war game” he commented as he and his staff determined the new lines of march.2
One element of a successful war game was missing: completeness. The revised orders made no reference to XVII Corps. Hindenburg believed only part of the corps was with Below. His staff was sure, for reasons unknown, that all but “elements” of Mackensen’s men were on the march south and that in any case Below would promptly inform Mackensen of the new situation.3 Both assumptions were unfounded. Mackensen remained ignorant; XVII Corps remained on the way to Allenstein. Not until noon did Below communicate with Mackensen, and then it was only to suggest that, in view of the “changed situation,” XVII Corps march south once more to cut the Russians’ escape routes eastward.
Mackensen, whose temper was proverbial, flew into a rage. Against his better judgment he had abandoned the pursuit of a beaten enemy—at Below’s urging. Now he was being asked by the same man to reverse his direction again. Mackensen was tired of marching hither and thither on the recommendations of the commander of a mere reserve corps, a man his junior in years, seniority, and influence. He was determined to fight somebody that day, and by this time he was not overly concerned about who it was. The nearest target seemed to be somewhere around Allenstein. Senior officer Mackensen ordered Below to clear the main road. Then, as Below’s troops and wagons slowly made way, Mackensen had second thoughts. Halting his corps for a brief rest, he decided to send Captain Bartenwerfer of his staff by airplane to army headquarters to inform them of his decision and to request specific orders.
Meanwhile, at 2:00 p.m. 8th Army finally established phone contact with the liaison officer attached to I Reserve Corps. Exactly what he reported remains uncertain. After the conversation his superiors definitely remained unaware that XVII Corps was not moving south as expected. They did, however, know that the Russians had left Allenstein. And a crew from the army’s reconnaissance flight, Air Detachment 16, had just returned with a report that the Russian VI Corps had retreated so far out of the battle zone that it no longer posed an immediate threat to Mackensen. A sudden euphoria gripped the army staff. It seemed possible once more to use XVII Corps as the northern arm of an operational pincers, linking up with François’s advance from the south to cut off any Russians that excaped XX Corps and its attached troops. Technology underwrote the dream at 2:35 p.m., when the army signallers opened a telephone connection with Mackensen’s headquarters. The bemused commander of XVII Corps was promptly ordered to advance south with every man he could muster, pursing the Russians “to the last breath.”4
About this time Bartenwerfer landed at 8th Army headquarters. Whether he arrived before or after the conversation with Mackensen is uncertain. Hoffmann says he came before XVII Corps had been contacted. Mackensen and the official history disagree. In any case, Bartenwerfer brought the first detailed news of the situation in the north—and he received “a correspondingly cool reception.” The army staff saw Mackensen’s ill-tempered and ill-judged orders for Below to clear the Allenstein road as at the least risking a monumental traffic jam that would render both corps useless. Bartenwerfer was ordered to fly back immediately and see that Mackensen understood and carried out his new mission.5
Bartenwerfer was also ordered to see that I Reserve Corps attacked that day. On his return flight at 4:30 p.m. he dropped a note to this effect on a column of the corps. The gesture was dashing but irrelevant. It was 8:30 in the evening before the message reached Below, and by then his corps had had a stomach full of fighting.6
Elements of the 36th Reserve Division marched into Allenstein to the cheers of a grateful populace. The Russians had already evacuated the town. The major challenge the victorious Germans faced involved removing a dud shell from the courtyard of the provincial mental hospital, where its effect on the staff apparently exceeded its impact on the patients. Once beyond Allenstein, however, the division was stopped in its tracks by Kluyev’s rear guard. The rhetoric of war is replete with accounts of heroic resistance to the last man. Most of them are best described as exaggerations, but the Russians in this sector made the boast good. The colonel of one regiment died sword in hand, leading the remnants of his men in a bayonet charge. Five hundred Russians were buried in a single mass grave after the battle. Four hundred more fell prisoners into German hands. A few desperate stragglers swam to a small island in the middle of one of the lakes dotting the region. Not until August 31 did they finally surrender.
The other half of Below’s corps, the 1st Reserve Division, began its afternoon more favorably by overrunning XIII Corps’s baggage. Kluyev had sent his wagon trains along the highway southeast from Allenstein. Outside the village of Sasdrosz the Germans caught up with them. Here too the Russian rear guards set a high price on victory. Riflemen climbed the trees of the Allenstein Municipal Forest to pick off anyone bearing such signs of leadership as field glasses or a map case. Not until 3:00 p.m. was Sasdrosz in German hands. By that time every road and path was thoroughly blocked by dead horses and overturned wagons abandoned by panic-stricken drivers. Equipment ranging from camp beds to field telephones to ladies’ underwear looted in Allenstein lay strewn about the landscape. Amidst the lesser booty was Kluyev’s corps war chest, whose contents were duly shared out among its captors after the fashion of the Thirty Years’ War.
As the Germans cleared the highway and emptied the captured wagons, the Russians rallied around the villages of Darethen and Dorothowo. For Below’s infantry, working their way across sand hills and through woods with by now empty canteens was initially a greater torment than enemy bullets. Optimism in the ranks briefly grew when patrols of the 1st Reserve Uhlans reported only weak enemy forces ahead: stragglers and survivors of the rear guard so roughly handled by the 36th Reserve Division. But the troops sent forward on that information ran into a buzzsaw. No one knew where the enemy was. “Flanks” and “rear” became concepts from a training manual. Guns were brought forward, but remained silent for lack of targets. Nor were the Russians in this sector passive opponents. Their local counterattacks threw the German advance into confusion time after time. One battalion of the 3rd Reserve Infantry lost all four of its company commanders in less than two hours of fighting.