His army corps faced no more than companies and shadows. The German detachment from the 35th Division that had arrived in Ortelsburg during the night of August 28/29 left the town on the morning of the 29th and took the road to Willenburg. This was a calculated risk on the part of its commander, Brigadier-General von Hahn. The nearest German troops, a half-dozen companies of the 176th Infantry, were still far back on the road. Hahn’s superior, Major-General Hennig, was correspondingly and uncomfortably surprised when he and his staff drove into Ortelsburg at 1:00 p.m. on the 29th to find only a cavalry detachment trying to keep control of a town still full of Russian stragglers. Within minutes of Hennig’s arrival Russian patrols, elements of the 4th Cavalry Division, gingerly entered Ortelsburg’s outskirts. Were they an isolated force or the vanguard of a counterattack? It was no time for heroics. Hennig and his staff officers abandoned Ortelsburg at top speed under Russian fire and drove north looking for reinforcements.
By the time they encountered the vanguards of the 1st Cavalry Brigade, the 176th Infantry had reached the scene. The regiment was a drill sergeant’s nightmare. Packs long since abandoned, cartridge belts slung around their necks, the men marched along in a column of flocks, gnawing on chunks of bread obtained from village bakeries and houses by an enterprising reserve lieutenant. But they retained enough energy to clear the Russians out of Ortelsburg by 9:00 p.m.
His cavalry’s brief success inspired even the supine Blagoveschensky. During the night of August 29/30 elements of VI Corps, about a division supported by some heavy artillery, began advancing towards Ortelsburg from the east and north. It was this force that was spotted by Air Detachment 16. The Russians were indecisive and hesitant, unwilling to press home an attack. Nevertheless the position of the Germans occupying the town was serious. The cavalry had withdrawn the previous evening rather than risk being surprised in bivouac. Hennig had his headquarters staff and six understrength infantry companies—not a single artillery piece or machine gun. One house after another burst into flames as Russian guns found the range, but Hennig refused to abandon Ortelsburg a second time. Instead he sent messengers in every direction requesting support.68
Army headquarters meanwhile had forwarded the air report of Russian troops near Ortelsburg to Mackensen. The commander of XVII Corps received the information at 11:20 a.m. on August 30, and found himself once again at square one. His 35th Division was supposed to be making contact with François’s I Corps and rounding up stragglers in the forest around Neidenburg. Instead its commander, at least, was miles north of his assigned sector, playing the hero in a surrounded outpost. The 36th Division was supposed to be acting as a backstop against Russians coming from the north or west. Now Mackensen felt constrained to order that formation to turn eastward, meet the threat from Ortelsburg, and put Hennig back at the head of his own troops where he belonged.69
Good intentions at higher levels were no substitute for firepower on the line. Hennig’s handful of men were counting their cartridges and eyeing their bayonets when, in a scene more” appropriate to a Hollywood battle than an East Prussian one, two squadrons of the 10th Jäger zu Pferde rode through heavy Russian fire into Ortelsburg. They had left Willenburg; earlier that morning, sent north by Schmettau to find and engage the enemy. The lieutenant-colonel in command heard the guns and marched to their sound as a Prussian officer was supposed to do. His hundred or so carbines were welcome enough on the skirmish line. Even better were the shrapnel rounds of the field battery he brought with him.
By noon slightly more substantial help arrived in the form of Ortelsburg’s original conquerors. Von Hahn’s detachment had made such slow progress south that one of Hennig’s messengers was able to reach it and turn it around. By this time it was a real flying column—a machinegun company, a squadron of cavalry, and a battalion of field howitzers. The few infantrymen who remained with it were riding captured Cossack horses. At the trot and the gallop, Hahn brought his men the thirteen kilometers to Ortelsburg and took the Russians under fire from positions south of the town. A lieutenant of the 176th led twenty-five men, the remnants of his platoon, in a counterattack just as the shells of eighteen German howitzers began bursting on the Russian positions. And in what seemed like a miracle to the Germans on the spot, the Russians began to retreat east and southeast.70
This maneuver was less a response to German boldness than a reaction to the Northwest Front’s only direct effort to influence the developing disaster. At 11:00 a.m. Zhilinski’s chief of staff had telegraphed an order to VI Corps. Blagoveschensky was ordered to cooperate with Samsonov by concentrating his corps at Willenberg! He immediately broke off the fighting at Ortelsburg and started his men south, only to be checked during the night of the 30th/31st by another front order—this one to withdraw across the Russian frontier. Once again Blagoveschensy obeyed with alacrity. The surviving Germans were too few to do more than catch their breaths and give thanks to providence.
François, like Mackensen, respected Russian powers of recovery. His orders for August 31, issued at 5:30 a.m. on that day, were for Goltz and Unger’s troops, the 3rd Reserve Division, the 41st Division, and the 5th Landwehr Brigade to advance against the Russians around Neidenburg. If all went well, he reasoned, this mass of troops should close in on the town from three sides and end the last Russian threat in the south once and for all. But by the time his orders reached their destinations, elements of the 41st Division had reached Neidenburg and found it empty. The Russians occupying the town had retreated during the night.
Sirelius had learned from survivors of the disaster to the Russian center and calculated the approximate strength of the German forces moving against him. His decision, generally condemned, cost him his command. Had Sirelius moved faster on the 29th, had he risked his superior numbers in overrunning Schlimm’s battalions when the Russians in the pocket still retained their organization, he might have opened a corridor for some of the trapped men. His critics, however, discounted the lessons taught since the opening of the campaign. Prewar Russian doctrine might stress attacking off the line of march. Wartime Russian experience, however brief, suggested improvisation was a recipe for disaster against the Germans. At least Sirelius was able to draw consequences and pull his division out of the German noose. With the Russians in his sector again in flight to the south, François ordered his own corps to continue mopping up while notifying 8th Army that its reserves were free for service as required.71
The roundup of the 2nd Army’s broken center continued throughout August 31. Skirmish lines and small columns of XVII Corps pushed their way through the forest from the north, collecting stragglers as they went. An Orthodox chaplain negotiated the surrender of several thousand exhausted soldiers to Schmettau just outside Willenberg. At 11:00 a.m. Kluyev himself handed over another thousand men to a detachment of I Corps. Hour by hour the numbers grew. Hundreds, then thousands of men sat glumly under the guard of a few German riflemen. Riderless or unharnessed horses wandered about. The detritus of a broken army, ambulances, supply wagons, telephone carts, piled up on the Neidenburg-Willenberg road. Farm houses filled with captured officers. A village school saw teachers and pupils give way to a half-dozen Russian generals and their staffs. The plunder of a campaign found its way into German knapsacks or pockets. Every Russian officer appeared to carry his own personal hair-clippers somewhere in his baggage. Linen, lingerie, and silverware, looted from houses on the Russian line of march, called forth ironic admiration for the taste of Muscovites who seldom fell prey to kitsch. Even Martos’s car, carefully searched, turned up a large and expensive silver bowl belonging to the local Landrat. Martos denied any knowledge of the object. His chauffeur was not available for interrogation.72