Page:EB1922 - Volume 32.djvu/431

Rh

directed by a headquarters at Peterwardein, and Krauss, bound to Yarak by his orders to cooperate in Potiorek's Drina offensive which had not been cancelled, only sent his newly arriving 7th Div., piecemeal, to assist the Landsturm in holding the Syrmian plain. This was, of course, unknown to the Serbian I. Army, which developed its advance cautiously across the plain and by the night of the 8th occupied a front from Platicheno near Klenak by Brestac round to Progar. In the next days, the left stood almost fast while the right pushed out, cleared a passage for the troops at Obrenovats, and by a threat to the rear of Semlin forced the enemy to give up that place to the Belgrade forces. Lastly, the right of the line swung up with its flank on the Danube and its centre on Gorubintsi; the intention was to bring this right wing by a wheel into the W. part of the Fruska range and so to make good the line across that range from river to river which was the objective, without losing men in a frontal battle against the enemy's strong forces about Huma and Mitrovitsa. For three more days it was persisted in, then on the evening of Sept. n, owing to the situation of affairs on the Drina front, it was given up. On the i2th, i3th and i4th a methodical retreat, with which Krauss's agth Div., though released at last from Mitrovitsa- Yarak, was unable to interfere seriously, brought the Serbian I. Army and Belgrade and Obrenovats forces back to their original positions whence the field divisions were hurried with all speed to take part in the new battle of the Drina.

Potiorek's second offensive had opened on the night of Sept. 7-8. The VIII. Corps (with which originally the 2gth Div. was to have cooperated) bordered the Lower Drina as far up as Biyel- yina, the XIII. from that point to Kozluk, the XV. thence to Zvornik, and finally the major part of the XVI. corps opposite Lyuboviya, the remainder, as in the previous phase, facing the Uzhitse Army and the Montenegrins. The Serbs were, as the result of the Yadar operations and the proposed offensive into Bosnia, deployed in strength, and this, on the one hand, increased the probability of repulsing any given attempt, but on the other made it more difficult to deal with any break-through that might actually occur, as the defence system lacked depth.

The attack began with the VIII. Corps. Here it only succeeded in establishing a bridgehead in the N.W. corner of the Machva, covering temporary bridges at Parashnitsa; and the expected cooperative attempt of the 2gth Div. at Yarak was not made, as, by the date fixed for this cooperation (the gfh), Krauss had con- cluded that the failure of the VIII. Corps was too clear, and the situation in Syrmia too critical to allow it. But farther S., on the front of the XV. Austrian Corps and the right of the XIII., the Serbians' III. Army had more difficult con- ditions for defence, and on the night of Sept. 8-9 the passage was forced first at Brasinski Han and then at Zvornik. Crossings followed at other points farther up as far as Lyuboviya. The Serbs were forced back to the Guchevo-Boranya-Yagodnya ridge.

By the nth the situation on this wing was serious enough for the Serbian command to order the cessation of the Syrmian offen- sive and the transfer of the I. Army with all possible speed to the region of Valyevo-Petska.

Meanwhile, local reserves gathered from behind the centre had been dispatched to establish a front Yagodnya-Brankovac-Ro- zani-Proslop. Behind this line, the reassembly of the I. Army about Valyevo was to take place. Its headquarters were ordered to Valyevo, its forces to the same point as a preliminary to con- centrating about Petska, whence the enemy was to be attacked in flank and rear towards Krupany, Zavlaka or Osechitsa, accord- ing to the amplitude of his presumed sweep. The definite line of resistance on which battle was to be accepted if the Austrian pres- sure was maintained, was from the Dobrava S. of Shabats to Brestovats and Tser ridge (II. Army), thence in the hills about Zavlaka or about Osechitsa (III. Army), according to circum- stances, to whatever point on the Petska- Valyevo road the con- centrating I. Army l was able to reach in time.

1 To aid in this concentration, only the Danube I. Div. was to be disengaged at once in Syrmia, and the army was to be reconstituted by this division's picking up en route Danube II. from Obrenovats and a division of the II. Army from Tekerish. This latter did not join, becoming absorbed in the lower Yadar fighting.

Two days later the situation was suddenly modified again. On the night of i2-i3th parts of the Austro-Hungarian XIII. Corps began to cross the Drina at Kuriachista, midway between Lye- shnitsa and Loznitsa, opposite the left of the II. Serbian Army, which was by now weakened through giving up local reserves and taking over an extended front for the benefit of the III. Army. This new move threatened not only to cut the Serbian line in two, but to roll up the whole Guchevo-Yagodnya position by a drive along the Yadar valley behind it.

With this, the battle becomes too tangled for brief description. Though the particular threat from Kuriachista was soon ended, the left of the Austro-Hungarian XV. Corps developed strong attacks on Loznitsa. The struggle for the W. end of Guchevo ridge and the lower part of the Yadar valley was fed from day to day by successive reinforcements arriving on each side. Here, minor contests for the possession of minor ground features, attempts to hold a hill long enough for it to be crossed with guns, or to storm it before it could be crowned, went on for days collat- erally with the pressure exercised by the Austrian mountain troops of the XVI. Corps on the left of the Serbian III. Army, until the forces of the Serbian I. Army began to appear on Sept. 15. Next day, with a considerable force in hand, the I. Army staff mounted a counter-attack which bore back the Austrians from the line W. of Kostaynik-Sanats (pt. 83s)-Sokoloka Planina- Petska, to one which on the evening of the i8th ran fromW. of Kostaynik-Sanats-Veles-Karashitsa-Lyuboviya. Then, .with further Serbian gains to the right of Sanats, fighting died away all along the line and trench warfare set in on the front from Kara- shista to Lyuboviya, the Austrians and Serbs facing one another on the line Guchevo-Boranya-Yagodnya-spur S. of Yagodnya.

On the Machva front, meanwhile, the offensive of the VIII. Corps, which had at first obtained only a bridgehead at Para- shnitsa, was resumed in combination with a crossing at Yarak by Krauss's corps, when Syrmia had been evacuated by the Serbs. Here also, after violent but narrow-fronted attacks, trench war- fare set in on the line of the two bridgeheads (N. of Shabats- Glushtsi, and Ravnye-Serbian Racha) which on Oct. 31 were united in one by a successful advance of the VIII. Corps from Ravnye to Glushtsi.

The second phase had been very different from the first. The Austrian staff had taken their opponent seriously, and laid their plans carefully, and it was only after the greatest exertions and very heavy losses that the Serbs had succeeded in pushing back the invaders. Even so, the latter had mastered the greatest part of the river obstacles, and in the absence of aircraft on the side of the defence, could carry on all preparations for a fresh offensive, unseen behind their firmly held trench-line.

Meanwhile, the Uzhitse Army and the Montenegrins, who at the close of the first phase were following up the retreating Aus- trians towards Vishegrad, had developed a series of operations which, like the expedition into Syrmia, were designed to prepare the way for a serious offensive of the II. and III. Armies over the Drina. This being forestalled by the Austrian offensive, the operations of the Uzhitse Army and its allies were without prac- tical effect. They were, however, vigorously conducted. 2

1 On Sept. 4 Goles Height, S.E. of Vishegrad, was stormed by Shumaja II., while farther up the Dwina, other Serbian and Monte- negrin forces attacked at Ustipratsa, Gorazda and Focha. At the latter place the Montenegrins broke through on Sept. II, and a raid was pushed deep into the enemy's country, while a number of simultaneous attacks at Gorazda, Ustipratsa, Vishegrad and Baina- bashta caused the Austrian 8th Mountain Brigade to draw back to Han Pesak and Srebenitsa, when it crossed the rear of its Corps (XVI.) fighting N. of Lyuboviya. This and the other Austrian mountain brigades, however, maintained an active war of raids and expeditions in the mountains. The Montenegrin main body, from Focha, moved E. to Kalinovik, which it captured and then -evacu- ated. Other Montenegrins from Focha and Serbs from the Vishe- grad and Rogatitsa region threatened Sarajevo for some time, though periodically cleared away by expeditions of the mountain brigade from Sarajevo and the 8th Mountain Brigade from Srebe- nitsa and Han Pesak. Meanwhile, the bulk of the Serbian Uzhitse forces (Shumaja II.) advanced by Han Pesak on Vlasenitsa, and also to Srebenitsa. Indecisive fighting took place at the former during the last of September and the first of October, but at Sre- benitsa the threat to the rear of the Austrian XVI. Corps was dissi-