My War Memories, 1914-1918
found good positions on the Vishniev-Narotch and Drysviaty Lakes line.
Whilst fresh reinforcements joined the Niemen Army near Lake Drysviaty, the north wing of the loth Army wheeled back into the positions mentioned above. The roth Army intended to check the advancing enemy, as had been done in a similar movement near Grodno, but they delayed overlong, and in the end they were severely handled east of Lake Narotch.
The Russian flood surged against our new front, but the tempest gradually died down. Meanwhile the Austrian Army had attempted to execute an enveloping movement by breaking through north-east of Lutsk, but had been repulsed by a counterattack. Near Dvinsk the fighting continued for a long time. The Niemen Army still hoped to take the bridgehead. But the ammunition supply was so bad that an attack was out of the question, and therefore, at my desire, the battle was broken off.
Quiet reigned along the front as far as the Carpathians.
The summer campaign against Russia was at an end. The Russians had been defeated and their front forced back. The operations round Kovno had not met with any great success, as they started too late. That was the outstanding fact. The enemy had been able to thwart the enveloping movement with which they were threatened on the Vilia. If they had been a few days' march further west they would not have been in a position to do so.
Throughout the whole war we never succeeded, either on the Eastern or Western Front, in exploiting a big strategical breakthrough to the full. The one between Vilna and Dvinsk was nearest to succeeding. It showed that a strategical breakthrough only yields its full reward when it is followed up by a tactical envelopment. It was left for the Bulgarian Army in September, 1918, to show to the world the momentous consequences of such an operation. These consequences, however, were possible only because of the utter collapse of that army.
The great anxiety of those September days had once again resulted only in a tactical success. We had had an unusually critical situation to contend with. The action fought by the ist
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