Who's Who - Dmitry Shcherbachev
Dmitry Grigorevich
Shcherbachev (1857-1932) served as a generally unsuccessful artillery
commander in the Russian Army during the First World War.
Shcherbachev was an advocate of outdated French breakthrough tactics - heavy artillery attacks upon a narrow front of the line. In command of IX Infantry Corps at the start of the war it brought only failure during the disastrous Russian campaigns in Galicia and Bessarabia, both presided over by Nikolai Ivanov.
In the latter offensive - where Shcherbachev led Seventh Army - his insistence upon breakthrough tactics led to his flanks coming under attack by defenders, causing his overall advance to fail.
In the early stages of the Brusilov Offensive his artillery tactics once again appeared to prove ill-founded, losing some 20,000 men in a failed attack along the Strypa.
However, commander Alexei Brusilov's insistence upon a subsidiary attack at Jaslowiec on 4 June 1916 succeeded at last in producing the desired breakthrough, demolishing German commander Bothmer's southern wing.
Success brought a rehabilitation of Shcherbachev's military reputation, and was handed command of forces in Romania in April 1917 (replacing Andrei Zayonchkovski) until the Russian withdrawal from the war.
He subsequently fought along with anti-Bolshevik White forces on the Don before fleeing into exile in France in 1919.
He died in 1932.
"ANZAC" was coined in 1915 from the initials of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
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