Wooden cigarette box carved by Г. САВИНСКИ (?; G. Savinskiy), a Russian POW. The Grim Reaper strides across a field of skulls on the cover. The base includes an intricate carving of the years of war years, '1914' and, turning it 90 degrees, '1918.'
ПДМЯТЬ ВОИНЬ 1914-18To the memory of the soldiers 1914-18Reverse:19141918Г. САВИНСКИ (?)G. Savinskaya
"From battle-casualties and stragglers, regiments ran down to a few hundreds, instead of three thousand men — in the case of 105th Orenburg regiment to less than a hundred. On 21st February [1915] Bulgakov surrendered with 12,000 men, most of them wounded. This was given out by Ludendorff as a new Tannenberg, and so it appears in his memoirs. There was talk of 100,000 prisoners; in practice, the figure was 56,000 for losses of all types in the Russian X Army, although since most of 20. Corps's guns were lost, the Germans took 185 guns. German losses have not been revealed."
German forces had surprised the Russian army in East Prussia by attacking first from the west in a blizzard on February 7, 1915, then by attacking the next day from the north with a new and, to the Russians unknown, army. The Russian army escaped encirclement and annihilation, but 20th Corps, under General Bulgakov, did not. In the Battle of Tannenberg at the end of August, 1914, German Generals von Hindenburg and Ludendorff destroyed the Russian Second Army, and took 90,000 prisoners.
The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 by Norman Stone, page 118, copyright © 1975 Norman Stone, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1975
1915-02-21, February, 1915, Prisoner of War, POW, prisoner of war, Second Battle of the Masuarian Lakes Battle of Gumbinnen, 1914-08-20
