The Battle of Vileyka

Very little is known in the west about the battles on the Eastern Front in the Great War. The Battle for the small town of Vileyka (now in Belarus), about 100km east of Vilnius, at the end of September 1915 is one such battle. It is rarely, if ever, mentioned in English historical text, but it marked the extent of the German advance east at the end of the Russian Army’s ‘Great Retreat’ of 1915. It constituted one of the few military successes of Russia’s Army, and was instrumental in defining Germany’s Eastern Front for the remainder of the war with Russia.