The hussars, two and a half squadrons of them, had a paper strength of over 350. Straggling detachments and lame horses had reduced the actual number of men available for the firing line to about seventy. The troopers were accompanied by a field battery, but guns were more a source of weakness than of strength if they could not be properly supported. Too few in numbers to man a perimeter defense, the Germans instead established outposts on the main roads through the village. German cavalrymen were not as completely helpless afoot as their French counterparts, but they had no machine guns, no entrenching tools, and no bayonets. Regulations allowed them only forty rounds per man instead of the 150 carried by the infantry. That ammunition fast ran out as Russian detachments mounted probing attacks on the hussars’ positions. Out of touch with higher headquarters, with no support in sight, the troopers faced a choice: either write their regiment’s name in the history books with what was likely to be a heroic last stand, or mount, ride out, and live for later fights at better odds. Their commander wasted little time deciding on discretion as valor’s better part. Hussars, after all, were supposed to be light cavalry! Leaving a dozen casualties behind them, the 5th evacuated Kaltenborn shortly before 6:00 a.m.—to the scarcely muted curses of their comrades from the artillery, forced to abandon to the Russians two guns whose crews fought to the last round before being overrun.47
Elsewhere in the woods, just outside of Kannwiesen, a battalion of the 35th Division’s 21st Infantry provided a neat reverse lesson in tactical ambushes. The battalion had spent an uneasy night north of the village, its commander unwilling to involve his bone-tired men in a house-to-house fight that might well attract more Russian attention than he could handle. In his neglected prewar classic, The Defence of Duffer’s Drift, British author Sir Ernest Swinton had argued that modern firepower offered infantry better ways of controlling a position than physically occupying it. Now Captain Tamms had a chance to prove the point. His four rifle companies counted only half their assigned strength, but were supported by two platoons of the regimental machine gun company. As dawn broke he saw long columns of Russian wagons moving through Kannwiesen on their way east. Within minutes four German machine guns and five hundred rifles turned the village streets into an impassable tangle of wrecked wagons and screaming horses. With every exit under fire, the Russian escort was unable to mount anything like a coordinated counterattack. A thousand of them surrendered on the spot. Eight hundred more fled the scene to fall into the hands of another battalion of the 21st, hurrying to the aid of its presumably desperate sister formation.48
The Russian main body, such as it was by then, turned south again, faute de mieux. The XIII Corps by this time had covered almost seventy kilometers through thick woods in forty hours, without either rations for the men or fodder for the horses. Water bottles were empty. Most of the men were out of ammunition. Many had abandoned their packs and “lost” their rifles. As the night waned the Russians, all order lost, straggled south towards no particular destination. As for Samsonov, after leaving XV Corps headquarters on the afternoon of the 28th the army commander went to Orlau, where he briefly met, as noted, the chief of staff of XIII Corps. He then decided to ride to Yanov, where the rear echelon of his headquarters was supposed to have gone, but found the road blocked by a mass of carts, wagons, and ambulances. He turned toward Willenburg hoping to contact his VI Corps, only to find the town in German hands. Any lingering hopes of restoring the situation by command decisions had long since vanished. Samsonov ordered his Cossack escort to save themselves while he and his staff tried to continue on foot. Through the night of the 29th/30th the officers blundered through the woods north of the Neidenburg-Willenberg highway. Weight and asthma slowed the general’s movements and further lamed his spirit. Again and again Samsonov repeated that the disgrace was more than he could bear: “The Emperor trusted me.” Finally he slipped aside in the dark. Minutes later a single pistol shot cracked out of the underbrush. Samsonov would never be called upon to explain the fate of his army.49
At 2:40 a.m. on August 30, 8th Army headquarters received further information about Rennenkampf’s movements. According to these reports Zhilinski’s injunction to move south did not seem to have taken effect. Instead the mass of the 1st Army was turning on Königsberg. Even its IV Corps, according to another intercepted radio dispatch, was apparently under orders to attack the Baltic fortress. Should the new information prove correct, the only threat from the north on August 30 would come from Rennenkampf’s cavalry, and this was no threat at all.50
The staff felt correspondingly comfortable in turning to matters of interior administration. Hindenburg notified his corps commanders that since his appointment his orders had been frequently protested, ignored, or thwarted—“naturally with the best intentions.” Because things had worked out satisfactorily did not mean that such insubordinate behavior was to be institutionalized. A word to the wise should be sufficient to avert sterner measures.
Communications and liaison were also major subjects of Hindenburg’s concern. German troops had regularly fired on each other by mistake, and had been shelled by their own artillery. Now Hindenburg ordered the infantry to sew white patches on their knapsacks or the backs of their tunics, and instructed them to mark their forward positions by brightly colored cloths or boards. He accompanied these suggestions with the common-sense reminder that German soldiers wore helmets while Russians wore flat peaked caps—a difference that should assist the least-experienced artillery observer. The army commander’s recommendation that the artillery should not allow an excessive distance to develop between its batteries and the infantry they were supporting showed slightly less appreciation of the problems of fire control in 1914. Guns pushed too far forward were frequently guns lost to enemy artillery. Nor did the forests in which so much of 8th Army’s fighting took place give many suitable sites for battery positions—especially for the flat-trajectory cannon which still made up over three-fourths of the German field artillery.
Temporary panics might be difficult to avoid in modern war, but their effects could be limited by taking sensible precautions. Supply columns should be kept outside of the battle area. Soldiers spreading rumors of defeat were to be arrested and court-martialed. Men of the telephone detachments were not to discuss the general situation without direct orders from a superior. Hindenburg also reminded corps commanders that they were responsible for maintaining contact with, and thereby control over, their subordinates. Influenced by his memories of events at Scholtz’s headquarters on August 27 and 28, he specifically warned against depending on the telephone to the exclusion of the old-fashioned dispatch rider. Some information was preferable to none at all.51
III
Apparently all that remained was mopping up. Nevertheless, for all of Samsonov’s despair and Ludendorff’s confidence, the fighting was far from over. The Russians might no longer be able to win the battle. It was still possible for them to avoid losing it, either directly, by breaking through the thin German cordon and breaking out the survivors of Samsonov’s center, or indirectly, by intimidating and confusing a tautstretched opponent into making mistakes in deployment or concentration. Neither possibility should be dismissed out of hand. German concerns for what their enemy might do had been amply evidenced since the beginning of the campaign. As for a breakthrough/breakout, the Russian soldier has time and again demonstrated his capacity to rise to a desperate occasion. What would be remembered of Stalingrad had the beleaguered 6th Army’s command been willing to lunge towards Manstein’s relief columns—which were no more formidable relative to their opposition than the Russian troops available outside the German cordon.