force was forced to retreat after suffering heavy losses. Despite this initial success, the village of Stanisławów (at the north-eastern outskirts of the city) had to be abandoned soon afterwards, as the Russian 2nd and 3rd Cavalry Brigades gained entry to the city further west, near the suburb of Dziewiatówka. General Mokrzecki panicked, and ordered all Polish troops withdrawn from the eastern part of the town back to the city centre, to the vicinity of the train station and the bridges across Neman River. The approaching Russians however were not able to capture the bridges as both were blown up by Polish engineers around 19:30 hours, by then already under enemy fire. The loss of the train station and the bridges forced trains with additional Polish reinforcements from Podlasie to be diverted elsewhere, which further complicated the situation of the defenders. After the successful retreat to the south-western bank of the river, only the 3rd tank platoon of 2nd company and some isolated Polish infantry forces were left in the city. The company successfully sortied towards the village of Grandzicze north of Grodno, but returned to the cemetery it had been defending since noon. As the platoon did not have communication with other units, it was not informed of the general retreat across the river. In the evening Russian artillery came into range and started shelling the Polish position from the distance. Most of the town was already in Russian hands and around 18:00 the Cossacks of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade assaulted the isolated Polish position from the back, through the narrow streets of down-town Grodno. Realising he had been cut off from friendly forces, 2nd Lt. Jeżewski ordered his forces to abandon the cemetery and break through towards the road bridge across the Neman. Despite heavy enemy fire, the tank platoon was still operational and did not lose any tanks, though only one was still in fighting condition. Two were down due to mechanical failures and had to be towed by other machines, two additional tanks were damaged, but with no loss of life. The tank unit was accompanied by 9 members of tank crews separated from other units and 25 soldiers of a sentry battalion who got separated from their commanding officer. The column started moving slowly towards friendly positions, with Russians trying to assault it from the sides in the narrow streets of the city centre. To