Attack of the Dead. Artist: Evgeny Ponomarev
August 6 marks the 100th anniversary of the famous "Attack of the Dead" - an event unique in the history of war: the counterattack of the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyansky regiment, which survived the German gas attack during the assault of the Osovets fortress by German troops on August 6 (July 24) 1915. How it was?
It was the second year of the war. The situation on the Eastern Front was not in Russia's favor. On May 1, 1915, after a gas attack at Gorlitsa, the Germans managed to break through the Russian positions, and a large-scale offensive by German and Austrian troops began. As a result, the Kingdom of Poland, Lithuania, Galicia, part of Latvia and Belarus were abandoned. Only prisoners of the imperial army of Russia lost 1.5 million people, and the total losses in 1915 amounted to about 3 million killed, wounded and prisoners.
However, was the great retreat of 1915 a shameful flight? No.
The prominent military historian A. Kersnovsky writes about the same Gorlitsky breakthrough: “At dawn on April 19, the IVth Austro-Hungarian and XIth German armies attacked the IX and X corps on the Dunajec and near Gorlitsa. A thousand guns - up to 12-inch caliber inclusive - flooded our shallow trenches on the front 35 miles by a sea of fire, after which the infantry masses of Mackensen and Archduke Joseph Ferdinand rushed to the assault. There was an army against each of our corps, a corps against each of our brigades, and a division against each of our regiments. Emboldened by the silence of our artillery, the enemy considered all our forces to be wiped off the face of the earth. But from the crushed trenches, heaps of people half buried with earth rose - the remnants of the bloodied, but not crushed regiments of the 42nd, 31st, 61st and 9th divisions. The Zorndorf Fusiliers seemed to have risen from their graves. With their iron breasts, they sprung the blow and averted the catastrophe of the entire Russian armed forces."
Garrison of the Osovets fortress
The Russian army was retreating, because it was experiencing shell and rifle hunger. Russian industrialists, for the most part - liberal jingoistic patriots who shouted in 1914 "Give the Dardanelles!" and those who demanded to provide the public with power for the victorious end of the war, were unable to cope with the shortage of weapons and ammunition. At the places of breakthroughs, the Germans concentrated up to a million shells. The Russian artillery could only respond to a hundred German rounds with ten. The plan to saturate the Russian army with artillery was thwarted: instead of 1500 guns, it received … 88.
Weakly armed, technically illiterate in comparison with the German, the Russian soldier did what he could, saving the country, atoning for the miscalculations of his superiors, the laziness and greed of the rear officials with his personal courage and his own blood. Without shells and cartridges, retreating, Russian soldiers inflicted heavy blows on the German and Austrian troops, whose total losses in 1915 totaled about 1,200 thousand people.
The defense of the Osovets fortress is a glorious page in the history of the retreat of 1915. It was located only 23 kilometers from the border with East Prussia. According to S. Khmelkov, a participant in the defense of Osovets, the main task of the fortress was "to block the enemy from the nearest and most convenient way to Bialystok … to make the enemy lose time either for conducting a long siege or looking for detours." And Bialystok is the road to Vilno (Vilnius), Grodno, Minsk and Brest, that is, the gateway to Russia. The first attacks of the Germans followed in September 1914, and in February 1915, systematic assaults began, which fought back for 190 days, despite the monstrous German technical power.
German cannon Big Bertha
The famous "Big Berts" were delivered - siege guns of 420-millimeter caliber, 800-kilogram shells of which broke through two-meter steel and concrete ceilings. The crater from such an explosion was 5 meters deep and 15 meters in diameter. Four "Big Berts" and 64 other powerful siege weapons were brought near Osovets - a total of 17 batteries. The most terrible shelling was at the beginning of the siege. “The enemy opened fire on the fortress on February 25, brought it to a hurricane on February 27 and 28, and so continued to smash the fortress until March 3,” S. Khmelkov recalled. According to his calculations, during this week of terrible shelling, 200-250 thousand heavy shells alone were fired at the fortress. And in total during the siege - up to 400 thousand. “The sight of the fortress was terrifying, the whole fortress was shrouded in smoke, through which huge tongues of fire erupted from the explosion of shells in one place or another; pillars of earth, water, and whole trees flew upward; the earth trembled, and it seemed that nothing could withstand such a hurricane of fire. The impression was that not a single person would come out whole from this hurricane of fire and iron."
And yet the fortress stood. The defenders were asked to hold out for at least 48 hours. They held out for 190 days, knocking out two Berts. It was especially important to keep Osovets during the great offensive in order to prevent Mackensen's legions from slamming the Russian troops in the Polish sack.
German gas battery
Seeing that the artillery was not coping with its tasks, the Germans began to prepare a gas attack. Note that poisonous substances were once banned by the Hague Convention, which the Germans, however, cynically despised, like many other things, based on the slogan: "Germany is above all." National and racial exaltation paved the way for the inhuman technology of the First and Second World Wars. The German gas attacks of the First World War were the forerunners of the gas chambers. The personality of the "father" of German chemical weapons, Fritz Haber, is characteristic. From a safe place he loved to watch the torture of the poisoned enemy soldiers. It is significant that his wife committed suicide after the German gas attack at Ypres.
The first gas attack on the Russian front in the winter of 1915 was unsuccessful: the temperature was too low. Later, gases (primarily chlorine) became reliable allies of the Germans, including near Osovets in August 1915.
German gas attack
The Germans prepared a gas attack carefully, patiently waiting for the required wind. We deployed 30 gas batteries, several thousand cylinders. And on August 6, at 4 am, a dark green mist of a mixture of chlorine and bromine flowed onto the Russian positions, reaching them in 5-10 minutes. A gas wave 12-15 meters high and 8 km wide penetrated to a depth of 20 km. The defenders of the fortress did not have gas masks.
“All living things in the open air on the bridgehead of the fortress were poisoned to death,” recalled a participant in the defense. - All the greenery in the fortress and in the immediate area along the path of the movement of gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and fell on the ground, the flower petals flew around. All copper objects on the bridgehead of the fortress - parts of guns and shells, washstands, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide; food items stored without hermetic sealing - meat, oil, lard, vegetables - turned out to be poisoned and unsuitable for consumption."
Attack of the Dead. Reconstruction
German artillery again opened massive fire, after the barrage and the gas cloud, 14 battalions of the Landwehr moved to assault the Russian forward positions - and this is not less than 7 thousand infantrymen. Their goal was to capture the strategically important Sosnenskaya position. They were promised that they would not meet anyone but the dead.
Aleksey Lepeshkin, a participant in the defense of Osovets, recalls: “We did not have gas masks, so the gases inflicted terrible injuries and chemical burns. When breathing came out wheezing and bloody foam from the lungs. The skin on the hands and faces was blistering. The rags we wrapped around our faces didn't help. However, the Russian artillery began to act, sending shell after shell from the green chlorine cloud towards the Prussians. Here the head of the 2nd defense department Osovets Svechnikov, shaking from a terrible cough, croaked out: “My friends, we, like the Prussians-cockroaches, do not die from poison. Let's show them to remember forever!"
And those who survived the terrible gas attack rose, including the 13th company, which had lost half of its composition. It was headed by Second Lieutenant Vladimir Karpovich Kotlinsky. The "living dead" with their faces wrapped in rags were walking towards the Germans. Shout "Hurray!" there was no strength. The soldiers were shaking with coughs, many coughed up blood and pieces of lungs. But they went.
Attack of the Dead. Reconstruction
One of the eyewitnesses told the newspaper Russkoe Slovo: “I cannot describe the bitterness and rage with which our soldiers went against the German poisoners. Strong rifle and machine-gun fire, densely torn shrapnel could not stop the onslaught of the enraged soldiers. Exhausted, poisoned, they fled with the sole purpose of crushing the Germans. There were no backward people, no one had to be rushed. There were no individual heroes, the companies walked as one person, animated by only one goal, one thought: to die, but to take revenge on the vile poisoners."
Lieutenant Vladimir Kotlinsky
The combat diary of the 226th Zemlyansky regiment says: “Approaching the enemy about 400 paces, Second Lieutenant Kotlinsky, led by his company, rushed into the attack. With a bayonet blow he knocked the Germans down from their position, forcing them to flee in disorder … Without stopping, the 13th company continued to pursue the fleeing enemy, with bayonets knocked him out of the trenches of the 1st and 2nd sectors of the Sosnensky positions occupied by him. We again occupied the latter, returning back our anti-assault weapon and machine guns captured by the enemy. At the end of this dashing attack, Second Lieutenant Kotlinsky was mortally wounded and transferred command of the 13th company to Second Lieutenant of the 2 nd Osovets Sapper Company Strezheminsky, who completed and finished the case so gloriously started by Second Lieutenant Kotlinsky.
Kotlinsky died in the evening of the same day, by the Highest order of September 26, 1916, he was posthumously awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree.
The Sosnenskaya position was returned and the position was restored. Success was achieved at a high price: 660 people died. But the fortress held out.
By the end of August, the retention of Osovets lost all meaning: the front rolled back far to the east. The fortress was evacuated in the correct way: the enemy was not left not only with guns - not a single shell, cartridge, or even a tin can was left to the Germans. The guns were pulled at night along the Grodno highway by 50 soldiers. On the night of August 24, Russian sappers blew up the remains of defensive structures and left. And only on August 25, the Germans ventured into the ruins.
Unfortunately, often Russian soldiers and officers of the First World War are accused of a lack of heroism and sacrifice, viewing the Second Patriotic War through the prism of 1917 - the collapse of the government and the army, "treason, cowardice and deception." We see that this is not the case.
The defense of Osovets is comparable to the heroic defense of the Brest Fortress and Sevastopol during the Great Patriotic War. Because in the initial period of the First World War, the Russian soldier went into battle with a clear consciousness of what he was going for - "For Faith, Tsar, and Fatherland." He walked with faith in God and a cross on his chest, girded with a sash with the inscription "Alive in the help of Vyshnyago", laying down his soul "for his friends."
And although this consciousness was dimmed as a result of the rear mutiny of February 1917, it, albeit in a slightly altered form, after much suffering, was revived in the terrible and glorious years of the Great Patriotic War.
