“My dear Lilya and children! We are going safely. We got to Gomel today. I slept at night for the entire mobilization. Austria finally declared war too. The ball travels with me in the safest way. We stayed in Gomel for several hours, but today is Saturday and the station is empty, and everything is locked in the city. In Gomel the 2nd battalion will catch up with us. In general, we are going faster than the schedule. The minutes of parting are terrible, the first time of loneliness is even more difficult; but on the other hand, complete consolation in the certainty that all this will not last long, and besides, all of you, my dears, could notice from my mood that I do not doubt the excellent outcome of our affairs; I have such an unshakable calmness, such confidence without the slightest doubt that this is not without reason: I could not immediately lose the quality inherent in a person - a presentiment! Everything is for the best, everything will go in an amicable way. I kiss you all, V. Kobanov, who loves you with all his heart."
Colonel Kobanov was the commander of the 143rd Dorogobuzhsky Infantry Regiment, stationed in provincial Bryansk and included, together with the 144th Kashirsky Infantry Regiment in the 36th Infantry Division (the city of Oryol). Both regiments fought back in the Russian-Turkish and were well-trained units located relatively close to the border, in the Moscow military district. According to the plans of mobilization, they, leaving about a hundred soldiers and officers each for the formations of the 291 Trubchevsky and 292 Malo-Arkhangelsky infantry regiments, were to become part of the 13th army corps of the 2nd army, the purpose of which was to attack in East Prussia together with the 1st army.
Actually, this is what happened - in early August, the brigade mobilized, left a frame for the second-order regiments and began to load into the echelons. It was from the train in Gomel that Colonel Kobanov, a 53-year-old career officer of the Russian army, wrote to his wife and children.
He wrote, undoubtedly, in order to reassure, because the whole undertaking with an unprepared offensive in East Prussia was beyond common sense and had only one goal - to pull off part of the German troops from the Western Front. In the best case, Samsonov's army would have been defeated after that and with heavy losses would have rolled back, in the worst …
Worst case and came out.
Perfectly prepared regiments bravo entered East Prussia, moved quickly forward, losing contact with each other and complicating logistics. In fact, General Samsonov was leading the army into a sack.
Did Colonel Kobanov and other senior officers understand this?
I think yes, I will say more - Samsonov probably understood this and, perhaps, the front commander Zhilinsky himself. But France was cracking, and the rate demanded - go ahead. Later, General Golovin wrote:
Based on the assumption of our own G. U. G. Sh., these Nometsian troops, assembled against one of our armies, could reach a force of 12-15 Germans. nѣkh. divisions, which is equivalent to 18-22 Russian pѣh. divisions. Hence it follows that each of our armies S.-Z. the front threatened a meeting with a twice as strong enemy. And during these encounters, each of our armies ended up in the web, enveloping it with specially prepared East Prussian railways.
The only question was who the Germans would rush to after receiving reinforcements - Rennenkampf or Samsonov.
The Germans chose Samsonov, whose troops were quickly drawn into the bag. The troops went to die. The first to be hit was the 143rd Dorogobuzh Infantry Regiment. During the march from Allenstein to Hohenstein, a regiment of two battalions (the third remained in Allenstein) on August 28 was left in the rearguard without artillery with a small stock of cartridges in order to stop the Germans. Komkor Klyuev underestimated the forces of the enemy, and a German division from the Reserve Corps fell on the regiment. The Dorogobuzh residents held out until nightfall and went for a breakthrough:
“A terribly solemn spectacle represented the fierce attacks of the remnants of this incomparable battalion, which was marching in the last battles, accompanied by the regimental shrine, the banner and the body of the slain commander … into the final battle, carrying the corpse of his slain leader …"
The regiment's banner was buried, the Germans got only the pole, and the regiment ceased to exist. The next were the Kashirians, who were also left to cover the retreat of the corps:
The valiant commander of the Kashirsky regiment, cavalier of St. George, Colonel Kakhovsky showed unlimited energy in order to gain the time needed for the corps to pass the Uzina. Surrounded on 3 sides, he, seeing no other outcome, grabbed the banner and at the head of the regiment went on the attack. At the cost of the death of the regiment and its commander, most of the corps passed the isthmus …
The regiment's banner will be found by Polish search engines already in the 21st century … The brigade, like the entire army, fulfilled their duty heroically to the end.
And then there was oblivion.
Memory
No.
Much has been written and said about the East Prussian operation of 1914, but in the spirit of exposing the crimes of tsarism, nobody cared about regiments there. And the authorities of the Empire - even more so, the memory turned out to be too uncomfortable. As a result, it is possible that it was for these reasons that the regiments were restored in 1916, despite the loss of the banners. What are the residents of Kashira and the darlings? Here it is the 36th division, here is the second brigade and its 143rd and 114th regiments, they are fighting on the Northern Front …
After the revolution and the Civil War, it became possible to recall the imperialist war only in the context of bad tsarism and certainly not the feat of soldiers, who for ideologists became something like victims who were forced to shoot proletarians in uniform from the other side.
It became easier after the Great Patriotic War, but not on the ground. There is almost no memory of the 2nd brigade at the place of deployment - the garrison cemetery was demolished under Brezhnev, building a school in its place and leaving a narrow square. The barracks were partly demolished, partly redesigned: neither in Bryansk, nor in Oryol there are streets named after those heroes, and there are no monuments either.
The only cross in the title photo was put already in the 21st century, and then after the old gravestones appeared in the park, not completely dug by bulldozers in the 70s. They were ashamed to write, however, which soldiers and where they died. Nothing? Eagle is the Battle of Kursk, Bryansk is a partisan land, and before that …
Or maybe there was nothing?
Who cares?
Here in Bryansk in 1914 - 25 thousand inhabitants, 5,000 of them - the same brigade 2 that went to war and did not return. 20% of the city's population was killed or captured.
Nobody cares, except for individual enthusiasts.
And I catch myself on a heretical thought (although why on a heretical one, look at Ukraine at least) - change the government, and local officials will do the same with monuments that war, because there is nothing to spend money on stupidity - the monuments are not profitable.
We do not remember a lot, but even in provincial cities there is something to remember. For all the tragedy of that war, the resilience of the Russian soldier in 1914 was no worse than the resilience of their sons and grandchildren in 1941. And they did not know about the white-red, the crunch of the French roll and the world revolution, they just went into battle for the Motherland, how and where she told them to.
