As for the commanders on the spot, by noon François had assembled only a half-dozen battalions on the high ground north of Neidenburg. This force, however, was supported by no fewer than sixteen artillery batteries, including seven of heavy howitzers, drawn from everywhere in the corps sector. With that mass of guns behind them, François was confident his infantry could hold its position against anything up to an army corps. But as the day passed the Russians failed to appear. Major Schlimm’s two battalions, reinforced by odd lots of cyclists and gunners, were still—somehow—holding on south of Neidenburg.
Defeat had made their enemy cautious. Long-range artillery fire from François’s new positions slowed the attack even more. By 3:45 p.m. the fighting line was three kilometers outside the town. Schlimm’s infantry put up a resistance determined enough to deter the Russians from using their superior numbers in one quick, overwhelming rush. Instead they sought a way around, and made no haste in the process. Not until 6:00 p.m. did Schlimm report to François that he was outflanked and in danger of being overrun. Shortly afterwards all communications with him were lost. His small force continued, however, to delay the Russians by making a fighting withdrawal through Neidenburg. Not until 9:00 p.m. did elements of the 3rd Guard Division occupy and secure the town. Schlimm’s valiant defense had bought François most of a day.59
The bulk of I Corps spent that day rounding up Russian prisoners—a process more easily described than accomplished. Through the night of August 29/30, bursts of rifle and machine gun fire, the screams of terrified horses, and the uglier sounds of men dying had echoed everywhere along the Neidenburg-Willenberg road. In the midst of disaster the Russian artillery lived up to a tradition dating back to Peter the Great. Batteries, sections, and individual crews fought it out to the muzzle until shot to pieces by German guns or overrun by German infantry. In one sector dawn found a silent Russian battery, its cannoneers shot or bayoneted to a man, with fifty German bodies heaped in front of the guns as grim tokens of the last rounds.
Max Hoffmann later declared categorically that German troops would have broken through I Corps’s thin cordon, but there was no ammunition, no food, no water, no orders. The Russians were impeded by their own transport as abandoned wagons, mired guns, and dead horses piled up on the paths and trails. To leave the shelter of the forest was to run a withering gauntlet of fire. Nor was it always easy to surrender. German detachments seeking to disarm prospective prisoners found themselves taken under fire by Russians more belligerent or less aware of their situation. In at least one case they responded by mowing down the Russians to their front with machine guns, white flags or not, until all shooting in the sector stopped.
By the afternoon of August 30, XV Corps dissolved on the road between Ruttkowen and Saddek. Most of its men sat down and waited for the Germans to come and get them. The unfortunate General Martos spent the morning dodging German patrols until he finally took the risk of trying to reach the Russian frontier by car. His driver was promptly shot by a picket of the 43rd Infantry. Martos suffered the supreme indignity of a generaclass="underline" being captured apart from his troops.60 Taken to Osterode, he was quartered for the night in the same hotel that sheltered the 8th Army staff. Ludendorff, like Eisenhower in Tunisia thirty years later, had no interest in offering the traditional courtesies to a defeated enemy. Hindenburg took pains personally to greet his adversary, praising the bravery of his corps and expressing regret at meeting under such circumstances. As Hindenburg took his hand, Martos burst into tears.61
But were the captured guns, the thousands of prisoners, merely Bellona’s jest? Shortly after noon on August 30 an aircraft from Osterode brought François a message that reinforcements were on the way.62 None had appeared by nightfall. Once again the 8th Army suffered from the yawning gap between intelligence information and the practical capacity to respond to that information. Von Staabs for one protested vigorously that the men of his 37th Division were simply too tired to move. By this time Scholtz and his division commanders had acquired a certain reputation as what British Field-Marshal Montgomery would in a later war call “belly-achers,” but this was no time to weed out senior command assignments. Grudgingly, army headquarters agreed to Staabs’s suggestion that the march be delayed until the next day.
Staabs was at least honest in his reservations. Other commanders simply fudged. Goltz reached the area west of Michalken before stopping. Unger’s men bivouacked in Frankenau. The 41st Division halted northeast of that town. The 3rd Reserve Division received its marching orders so late that Morgen postponed its advance entirely until the next day.63 Nevertheless at 7:30 p.m. on August 30 army command notified François that he would be in tactical command of an attack to be made the next morning against the Russians around Neidenburg. He was authorized to issue any orders he thought necessary, though army headquarters wanted the Goltz Division and the 3rd Reserve Division held as far north of Neidenburg as possible just in case Rennenkampf complicated the situation by a surprise appearance.64
Nor were the encircled Russians completely helpless. During the afternoon four battalions of Conta’s 1st Brigade, supported by a battalion of the 52nd Field Artillery, had pushed northward into the forest from Muschaken. The operation seemed a walkover. Whole Russian companies led by their officers came in under white flags—so many that the Germans disarmed them and sent them to the rear without escort. Cheering and laughing, the column reached a comfortable-looking meadow just outside the village of Malagofen around 5:00 p.m. The Germans halted, stacked arms, and doffed their equipment. Cooking fires were started, quartermasters were preparing to issue rations, when a burst of Russian rifle fire ended the idyllic maneuver picture.
Frightened horses dragged guns and wagons in every direction. Riflemen and machine gunners blazed away at random. Officers who had no idea what was happening gave orders anyway. A few company commanders rallied enough men to form a skirmish line and led it into the woods. The brigade commander, Brigadier-General von Trotha, joined the charge with the color party of the I/41st Infantry. The flag was an obvious target and Trotha went down fatally wounded before taking twenty steps. Two battalion commanders were killed trying to rally their men. A battery was temporarily abandoned in the confusion. Colonel Schönfeld of the 41st Infantry finally had his headquarters bugler blow “Rally” again and again. Squad by squad, the Germans straggled into Malagofen and began to sort themselves out. Firing continued until nightfall, with Germans shooting each other more often than Russians. The Russian detachment that had started it all was long since gone, its men never to know what they had done to their conquerors.65
The incident at Malagofen suggested the encircled Russians could still fight. François slept with his pistol by his side. Morgen, who normally prided himself on his calm, was awakened during the night by loud shouts that the Russians were attacking. Discovering that a zealous orderly had taken away his clothes, the division commander ran outdoors in his nightshirt, strapping on his Luger as he went.66
Mackensen’s corps also spent an anxious day wondering what had become of the Russians they had faced and beaten on August 26. Here chronology must be modified in the interests of clarity. Most of the Russian VI Corps reached the Ortelsburg area by the morning of August 29. Regimental commanders urged the necessity for a day’s rest. Communications with army headquarters were episodic, and Blagoveschensky was not anxious to report his disaster in detail. He was saved, at least for the moment, by Samsonov’s last order to VI Corps, issued on the 28th while the army commander was riding to meet Martos. It was to hold the Ortelsburg area “at all costs.” Blagoveschensky seized the chance to remain passive, even when German vanguards occupied Ortelsburg itself.67