LAND & WATER 
August 17, 1916 
The Retreat of Bothmer 
By Hikire Belloc 
UPON the Eastern front the military news of the 
week is the retirement of Bothmer from his old 
line. Or, to be more accurate, the open evi- 
dence of that retirement which has, as a fact, 
been going on behind a rear-guard screen for some days. ■' 
For it'is only Bothmcr's rearguard which is now rapidly, 
passing the Zlota-Lipa with the Russians at its heels: 
The main force of Bothmcr's 10 or 11 divisions must ■^• 
have been streaming back eastward for days behind that 
screen, and the moment when dislocation began was pro- 
bably the moment when on the top of the forcing of the 
Upper Sereth line by the nth Russian army, the 7th 
Russian army took the road and railway bridges of 
Nizniow. Let us examine this movement in some detail. 
Bothmer lay along the line A— B in Map I. 
That line had, of course, been continued north and 
south pretty regularly before the great Russian blows 
were initiated upon the 4th of June last. When these 
blows took their effect two great bulges opened north 
and south of Bothmer as we know ; the Russian advance ' 
through Lutsk, and the Russian advance through 
Czernowitz • and the Bukovina. Bothmcr's position . ' 
would therefore ultimately be outflanked, and it was' 
onlj' a question of time for the Russians to compel them, 
unless the enemy's counter-offensive against the Lutsk salient 
were successful, to fall back. 
The north of Bothnier's ten divisions lay strongly 
entrenched in the hill country just east of the little town 
and railway station of Jezierna. Thence the trenches 
roughly followed the line of the Strypa River, not every- 
where on the same si(ic' of the stream, but occu])ying 
bridgeheads and taking advantage of special conforma- 
tion of land, the centre and strong point of the whole 
system being the ^^'ood of Burkanow on the left or eastern 
bank of the Strypa. A little lower down the stream his 
original line had already been pushed back a good deal 
in the first days of Brussiloff's offensive. During the 
ensuing two months the extreme left of General Scher- 
batcheff's army was pushing steadily along the road and 
railway from Buczacz to Monasterjska on the Zlota-Lipa. 
It was when Monasterjska was taken by the extreme 
left of Scherbatcheff's army, and at the same time the 
bridges of Nizniow by the extreme right of the 7th Army, 
Letchitsky's, .that Bothmcr's retreat was organised and 
presumably begun. At the same time, Sakharoff in the 
north had forced the line of the Upper Sereth and upon 
Friday last the Russian forces in front of the Strypa 
found the screen in front of them withdrawn, and ad- 
vanced rapidly in pursuit of the enemy over the river. 
By Saturday morning the first stage of this combined 
retreat upon the enemy's part and pursuit upon the' part 
of Scherbatcheff's army was accomplished, and had' 
passed at its widest point through a full day's march of 
12 miles. The enemy's rearguards upon Saturday (the 
1 2th) were at Planca just west of Plotycze, just east of the 
railhead of Podhayce, and thence bent rapidly round to 
the west. 
Meanwhile, the conditions upon the flank which com- 
pelled a continuance of the retreat were developing. Upon 
the north Sakharoff, with the nth army, had pushed up 
to the limestone crest which is marked by the villages of 
Olejow and Bilowcc. He was roughly parallel to the 
main railway by which perhaps half of Bothmcr's material 
must be evacuated westwards, and at long range he was 
already able to shell it. Under the older conditions of 
war Bothmcr's position here upon his left or northern 
flank would have been very doubtful. To have your 
main communications running parallel to a large approach- 
ing enemy front is obviously perilous. But the modern 
defensive is such a strong thing that Boehm Ermoeli 
had been able to erect a screen here, which holds up the 
Russian advance of Sakharoff, while his colleague Both- 
mer is retreating. 
On the south Letchitshy's 7th army was working 
against a less formidable resistance. What remained of 
the five di\4sions (three Austrian and two German) was 
here threatening the Russian advance up both banks 
of the deep tortuous limestone valley in which the. broad 
ciiid deep Dniester river runs. The Russians had here 
Tirrived in the early part of last week in front of Stanislau. 
They occupied that town at a quarter to seven last 
Thursday evening and immediately afterwards seized 
"Mariampol upon the Dniester. 
My readers will remember the importance always 
attached in these columns to the two bridges over the 
Dniester above this point : The railway bridge of Jezupol 
and the road bridge of Halicz. If both of these could be 
seized within, say, a day after the occupation of Stanislau, 
Bothmcr's army would have been cut off from the five 
divisions to the south. But the Russian advance upon 
these essential points was barred by the obstacle of the 
Bistryza. 
The scheme of the country about here is as follows : 
Stanislau is the natural meeting place of roads and 
railways, and is a natural market also because it stands 
in a flat .piece of open, watered by a large niunber of 
separate converging streams and divergent branches of 
the main river which one may compare to the Plain of 
0-Vford in England. These all unite four or five miles 
north of the town to form the mai'n . stream of the 
Bistryza. the waters of which are swollen at this moment 
through heavy summer rains in the Carpathian mountains. 
Importance of the Bridges 
' No attempt was made to stand on tlie network of smaU 
streams in front of Stanislau ; obviously with the idea of 
holding the Jezupol Bridge and the Halicz bridge until 
Bothmcr's retreat should be secure, -the enemy concen- 
trated upon the defence of the Lower Bistryza. At the 
moment of writing (Tuesday evening), the Russians still 
seem to be checked by that obstacle. They claim to be 
crossing it in places, and they have already for some days 
past seized the. town of Mariampol, but the Jezupol 
crossing is not yet in their hands ; while, when they have 
whoUy'past the Biztryza and have compelled the enemy 
to give up the Jezupol Bridge (which will, ot course, be 
blown up) there is still seven miles of rather difficult 
country between them and the road bridge of Halicz. 
Should the Russians reach the road bridge of Halicz 
within, say, the next two days, %ve have a very interesting 
situation, because Halicz is the point where the (inila- 
l.ipa falls into the Dniester and the Gnila-Lipa is that 
one of the parallel river defensive lines which cut the 
(Jalician limestone plateau from north to south on which 
■Bothmer will probably lirst elect to stand. 
Let me give the reasons upon which this conjecture is 
based. 
When once the line of the Strypa is abandoned, two 
main defensive parallel lines are to be found westward 
progressively covering the great road and railway junction 
of Lemberg. These arc the Zlota-Lipa, and the Gnda- 
Lipa. 
, We shall have some idea of the situation if wc remember 
that roughly speaking, the Zlota-Lipa represents a third 
of the way "to Lemberg from the Strypa, and the Gmla- 
Lipa rather more than half. The Zlota-Lipa has formed 
an excellent defensive line in the past. It is fairly 
broad and deep in its lower reaches, and it is heavily 
wooded upon either of the high banks which dominate 
its water level by heights of from 200 to 300 feet. 
But in the first place it is already^ turned by the 
Russian progress along the Dniester, and in the second 
place, it is too close to the original line of the Strypa, from 
which the retreat has begun to form a good rallying line. 
The Gnila-Lipa is everywhere very diflicult to cross. It 
has a deep, muddv bottom, and nearly everywhere broad 
marshes upon either side. The country around it is 
indeed bare and provides little cover. It is almost the 
least wooded portion of the Galician Plateau. But the 
