The German XX Corps' attack plan called for 41st Division to strike into the Russian rear, and only after their success would the 3rd Reserve Division with two attached Landwehr brigades make a frontal assault to crush the Russian XIII Corps between them. When 41st Division's advance failed miserably, Lt. Gen. Kurt von Morgen sent his reservists forward anyway, without reconnaissance or artillery support.

Third Reserve Division's 6th Reserve Brigade plunged into the Jablonken Forest with little preparation, not waiting for artillery support or for reconnaissance. Once among the trees they met the massed Russian Narva Infantry Regiment, in a furious close-quarters fight described in some detail in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's August 1914. After hours of close-quarters combat, in which the massed German machine-gun companies provided a "wall" of fire support, the Germans finally pressed forward to capture the village of Hohenstein.