Gas attack Osovets. Premiere of the film “Attack of the Dead: Osovets”

August 6, 1915 soldiers of the Russian Imperial Army performed an unprecedented heroic feat- defending the Osovets fortress from the German army, 60 people, being virtually dead, put 7,000 enemy soldiers to flight.

This feat was later called "attack of the dead". And this is not the script of a horror movie about zombies, but our story. Soldiers Russian army proved to the whole world that death is not a reason to refuse to attack. Eternal glory to the heroes!

Osovets Fortress

The Russian fortress Osowiec was located twenty-three and a half kilometers from East Prussia. It was she who became an obstacle on the way of the German army, since there was no way to get around it. There were swamps around it, and it stood on the banks of the Beaver River.

The Germans began the siege of Osovets in early 1915, which continued 190 days. The latest technology was brought to the walls of the fortress military equipment– “Big Berthas”, 4 guns. In total, there were 17 enemy batteries near Osovets, which also included 64 siege weapons.

The first days of the siege

On February 25, the German army began bombing the Osovets fortress 420-mm guns, the shells of which weighed 800 kilograms. They broke through concrete and steel floors. The crater from such a shell was 5 meters deep and 15 meters in diameter.

The Germans decided, based on their calculations, that they would take the fortress even with two such heavy guns during a 24-hour constant bombardment. In the first days, Osovets was hit by more than 200 thousand only heavy shells. This bombardment continued for a whole week - until March 3.

“Brick buildings were falling apart, wooden buildings were burning, weak concrete ones were causing huge chips in the vaults and walls; the wire connection was interrupted, the highway was damaged by craters; trenches and all improvements on the ramparts, canopies, machine-gun nests, light dugouts - everything was wiped off the face of the earth.”

The fortress was also attacked by enemy airplanes. Everything was in clouds of dust and smoke. The Russian command asked the defenders to stand for at least two days. Osovets stood for six months...

Inhumane attack

August 6, 1915 became the last day of the siege for the defenders. The German army used gas attack. They planned it for a long time and waited for the desired wind direction.

30 batteries with several thousand gas cylinders were prepared and carefully camouflaged. At 4 am, a dark green fog of a mixture of chlorine and bromine flowed into the Russian positions, reaching them in 5-10 minutes. A gas wave 12-15 meters high and 8 km wide penetrated forward to a depth of 20 km.

The defenders of the Osovets fortress did not have gas masks. All living things in the path of the deadly gas were destroyed: grass, leaves on trees, animals and even birds flying within the affected radius. Anyone who inhaled the gas was doomed to quick death.

Enemy flight

3 companies of the Zemlyansky regiment were completely destroyed. Of the 1000 people who defended the approaches to the fortress, about 60 people remained with two machine guns.

14 Landwehr battalions, at least 7 thousand people, moved after the wave of gases. They weren't going on the attack. For cleaning. Being confident that they will not meet anyone alive. What happened next...

Here are the own words of the German General Ludendorff:

“When the German chains approached the trenches, counterattacking Russian infantry fell on them from the thick green chlorine fog. The sight was terrifying: the soldiers walked into the bayonet area with their faces wrapped in rags, shaking with a terrible cough, literally spitting out pieces of their lungs onto their bloody tunics. These were the remnants of the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyansky infantry regiment, a little more than 60 people. But they plunged the enemy into such horror that the German infantrymen, not accepting the battle, rushed back, trampling each other and hanging on their own barbed wire barriers. And from the Russian batteries shrouded in chlorine clouds, what seemed to be already lost artillery began to hit them.”

Several dozen half-dead Russian soldiers put to flight three German infantry regiment! Nothing like the world military art didn't know...

Attack of the Dead

What made seven thousand German soldiers flee back? If the remaining 60 infantrymen had been sharp shooters, even in this case they would have been swept away without being noticed. These heroes simply got up from the ground and, staggering, went on the attack against an enemy outnumbered by more than a hundred times! And the enemy ran...

Artillery General Brzhozovsky, who defended the Osovets fortress, later fought on the side of the Whites against the Bolsheviks. That is why the siege of Osovets in Soviet time were not mentioned in history.

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the famous “Attack of the Dead” - an event unique in the history of wars: the counterattack of the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyansky Regiment, which survived the German gas attack during the assault by German troops on the Osovets fortress 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. The Imperial Russian Army lost 1.5 million people in prisoners alone, and total losses in 1915 amounted to about 3 million killed, wounded and prisoners.

However, was the great retreat of 1915 a shameful flight? No.

About the same Gorlitsky breakthrough, the prominent military historian A. Kersnovsky writes the following: “At dawn on April 19, the IV Austro-Hungarian and XI German armies attacked the IX and X-corps on the Dunajec and Gorlica. A thousand guns - up to 12-inch caliber inclusive - flooded our shallow trenches on a front of 35 versts with a sea of fire, after which the infantry masses of Mackensen and Archduke Joseph Ferdinand rushed to the assault. Against each of our corps there was an army, against each of our brigades - a corps, against each of our regiments - a division. Encouraged by the silence of our artillery, the enemy considered all our forces wiped off the face of the earth. But from the destroyed trenches, groups of people half-buried with earth rose up - the remnants of the bloodless, but not crushed regiments of the 42, 31, 61 and 9 divisions. The Zorndorf Fusiliers seemed to have risen from their graves. With their iron chest they absorbed the blow and prevented the catastrophe of the entire Russian armed force.”

The Russian army was retreating because it was experiencing a shell and gun famine. Russian industrialists, for the most part, are liberal jingoists who shouted in 1914 “Give me the Dardanelles!” and demanding that the public be given power to end the war victoriously, were unable to cope with the shortage of weapons and ammunition. The Germans concentrated up to a million shells at the breakthrough sites. To a hundred German shots, Russian artillery could respond with only ten. The plan to saturate the Russian army with artillery was thwarted: instead of 1,500 guns, it received... 88.

Weakly armed, technically illiterate in comparison with the German, the Russian soldier did what he could, saving the country, with his personal courage and his blood, atonement for the miscalculations of his superiors, the laziness and selfishness of the rear. Without shells and cartridges, retreating, Russian soldiers dealt heavy blows to German and Austrian troops, whose total losses in 1915 amounted to about 1,200 thousand people.

In the history of the retreat of 1915, the defense of the Osovets fortress is a glorious page. It was located only 23 kilometers from the border with East Prussia. According to S. Khmelkov, a participant in the defense of Osowiec, the main task of the fortress was “to block the enemy’s closest and most convenient route to Bialystok... to force the enemy to waste time either waging a long siege or searching for workarounds.” And Bialystok is the road to Vilna (Vilnius), Grodno, Minsk and Brest, that is, the gateway to Russia. The first German attacks followed in September 1914, and in February 1915 systematic assaults began, which were fought off for 190 days, despite the monstrous German technical power.

They delivered the famous “Big Berthas” - 420-mm caliber siege weapons, the 800-kilogram shells of which broke through two-meter steel and concrete floors. The crater from such an explosion was 5 meters deep and 15 meters in diameter. Four “Big Berthas” and 64 other powerful siege weapons were brought to Osovets - a total of 17 batteries. The most terrible shelling took place 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 continued to destroy the fortress until March 3,” recalled S. Khmelkov. According to his calculations, during this week of terrifying shelling, 200-250 thousand heavy shells alone were fired at the fortress. And in total during the siege - up to 400 thousand. “The appearance of the fortress was terrible, the entire fortress was shrouded in smoke, through which, in one place or another, huge flames burst out from the explosion of shells; pillars of earth, water and entire trees flew upward; the earth shook, and it seemed that nothing could withstand such a hurricane of fire. The impression was that not a single person would emerge unscathed from this hurricane of fire and iron.”

The defenders were asked to hold out for at least 48 hours. They survived 190 days

And yet the fortress stood. The defenders were asked to hold out for at least 48 hours. They survived for 190 days, knocking out two Berthas. It was especially important to hold Osovets during the great offensive, in order to prevent Mackensen's legions from slamming the Russian troops into the Polish pocket.

Seeing that the artillery was not coping with its tasks, the Germans began to prepare a gas attack. Let us note that toxic substances were prohibited at one time by the Hague Convention, which the Germans, however, cynically disdained, like many other things, based on the slogan: “Germany above all.” National and racial aggrandizement paved the way for the inhumane technologies of World Wars I and II. German gas attacks of the First World War are the forerunners of the gas chambers. The personality of the “father” of the German is characteristic chemical weapons Fritz Haber. He loved to watch the suffering of poisoned enemy soldiers from a safe place. It is significant that his wife committed suicide after a German gas attack at Ypres.

First gas attack on the Russian Front in the winter of 1915 was unsuccessful: the temperature was too low. Subsequently, gases (primarily chlorine) became reliable allies of the Germans, including at Osovets in August 1915.

The Germans prepared their gas attack carefully, patiently waiting for the right wind. We deployed 30 gas batteries and several thousand cylinders

The Germans prepared their gas attack carefully, patiently waiting for the right wind. We deployed 30 gas batteries and several thousand cylinders. And on August 6, at 4 am, a dark green fog of a mixture of chlorine and bromine flowed into 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.

“Every living thing in the open air on the bridgehead of the fortress was 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 gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and lay on the ground, the flower petals flew off. All copper objects on the bridgehead of the fortress - parts of guns and shells, washbasins, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide; food items stored without hermetically sealed meat, butter, lard, vegetables turned out to be poisoned and unsuitable for consumption.”

“The half-poisoned ones wandered back,” another author writes, “and, tormented by thirst, bent down to sources of water, but here the gases lingered in low places, and secondary poisoning led to death.”

German artillery again opened massive fire, following the barrage of fire and gas cloud, 14 Landwehr battalions moved to storm Russian forward positions - and this is at least 7 thousand infantrymen. Their goal was to capture the strategically important Sosnenskaya position. They were promised that they would not meet anyone except the dead.

Alexey Lepeshkin, a participant in the defense of Osovets, recalls: “We did not have gas masks, so the gases caused terrible injuries and chemical burns. When breathing, wheezing and bloody foam escaped from the lungs. The skin on our hands and faces was blistering. The rags we wrapped around our faces did not help. However, the Russian artillery began to act, sending shell after shell towards the Prussians from the green chlorine cloud. Here the head of the 2nd defense department of Osovets Svechnikov, shaking from a terrible cough, croaked: “My friends, we must not die, like the cockroaches of the Prussians, from poisoning. Let’s show them so that they remember forever!”

Shout "Hurray!" I had no strength. The soldiers were shaking with coughing, many were coughing up blood and pieces of lungs. But they went to the enemy

And those who survived the terrible gas attack rose up, including the 13th company, which had lost half its strength. It was headed by second lieutenant Vladimir Karpovich Kotlinsky. The “living dead” were walking towards the Germans, with their faces wrapped in rags. Shout "Hurray!" I had no strength. The soldiers were shaking with coughing, many were coughing up blood and pieces of lungs. But they walked.

One eyewitness told the newspaper: Russian word“: “I cannot describe the bitterness and rage with which our soldiers marched against the German poisoners. Strong rifle and machine-gun fire and thickly exploding shrapnel could not stop the onslaught of enraged soldiers. Exhausted, poisoned, they fled with the sole purpose of crushing the Germans. There were no lagging behind, there was no need to rush anyone. There were no individual heroes here, the companies marched as one person, animated by only one goal, one thought: to die, but to take revenge on the vile poisoners.”

The combat diary of the 226th Zemlyansky Regiment says: “Approaching 400 steps to the enemy, Second Lieutenant Kotlinsky, led by his company, rushed into the attack. With a bayonet strike he knocked the Germans out of their position, forcing them to flee in disarray... Without stopping, the 13th company continued to pursue the fleeing enemy, with bayonets they knocked him out of the trenches he occupied in the 1st and 2nd sections of the Sosnensky positions. We reoccupied the latter, returning our anti-assault gun 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 2nd Osovets Engineer Company Strezheminsky, who completed and completed the work so gloriously begun 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 situation was restored. Success was achieved at a high price: 660 people died. But the fortress held.

By the end of August, holding Osovets lost all meaning: the front rolled far to the east. The fortress was in the right way evacuated: they didn’t leave the enemy, let alone any guns - not a single shell, cartridge, or even a tin can went to the Germans. The guns were pulled along the Grodno highway by 50 soldiers at night. On the night of August 24, Russian sappers blew up the remains of defensive structures and left. And only on August 25 the Germans risked entering the ruins.

Unfortunately, Russian soldiers and officers of the First World War are often reproached for a lack of heroism and sacrifice, viewing the Second World War through the prism of 1917 - the collapse of power and the army, “treason, cowardice and deceit.” We see that this is not the case.

The defense of Osovets is comparable to a heroic defense Brest Fortress and Sevastopol during the Great Patriotic War. Because in initial period During the First World War, the Russian soldier went into battle with a clear consciousness of what he was going for - “For the Faith, the Tsar, and the 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 the Most High,” laying down his soul “for his friends.”

And although this consciousness was clouded as a result of the rear rebellion of February 1917, it, albeit in a slightly modified form, was revived after much suffering in the terrible and glorious years of the Great Patriotic War.

Attack of the Dead. Artist: Evgeny Ponomarev

August 6 marked the 100th anniversary of the famous “Attack of the Dead” - an event unique in the history of wars: the counterattack of the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyansky Regiment, which survived a German gas attack during the assault by German troops on the Osovets fortress on August 6 (July 24), 1915. How it was?

However, was the great retreat of 1915 a shameful flight? No.

About the same Gorlitsky breakthrough, the prominent military historian A. Kersnovsky writes the following: “At dawn on April 19, the IV Austro-Hungarian and XI German armies attacked the IX and X Corps on the Danube and at Gorlitsa. A thousand guns - up to 12-inch caliber inclusive - flooded our shallow trenches on a front of 35 versts with 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. Encouraged by the silence of our artillery, the enemy considered all our forces wiped off the face of the earth. But from the destroyed trenches, groups of people half-buried with earth rose up - the remnants of the bloodless, but not crushed regiments of the 42, 31, 61 and 9 divisions. The Zorndorf Fusiliers seemed to have risen from their graves. With their iron chest they absorbed the blow and prevented the catastrophe of the entire Russian armed force.”

Garrison of the Osovets fortress

German gun Big Bertha

They delivered the famous “Big Berthas” - 420-mm caliber siege weapons, the 800-kilogram shells of which broke through two-meter steel and concrete floors. The crater from such an explosion was 5 meters deep and 15 meters in diameter. Four “Big Berthas” and 64 other powerful siege weapons were brought to Osovets - 17 batteries in total. The most terrible shelling took place 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 continued to destroy the fortress until March 3,” recalled S. Khmelkov. According to his calculations, during this week of terrifying shelling, 200–250 thousand heavy shells alone were fired at the fortress. And in total during the siege - up to 400 thousand. “The appearance of the fortress was terrible, the entire fortress was shrouded in smoke, through which, in one place or another, huge flames burst out from the explosion of shells; pillars of earth, water and entire trees flew upward; the earth shook, and it seemed that nothing could withstand such a hurricane of fire. The impression was that not a single person would emerge unscathed from this hurricane of fire and iron.”

German gas battery

Seeing that the artillery was not coping with its tasks, the Germans began to prepare a gas attack. Let us note that toxic substances were prohibited at one time by the Hague Convention, which the Germans, however, cynically disdained, like many other things, based on the slogan: “Germany above all.” National and racial aggrandizement paved the way for the inhumane technologies of World Wars I and II. German gas attacks of the First World War are the forerunners of the gas chambers. The personality of the “father” of the German chemist Fritz Haber is characteristic. He loved to watch the suffering of poisoned enemy soldiers from a safe place. It is significant that his wife committed suicide after a 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. Subsequently, gases (primarily chlorine) became reliable allies of the Germans, including at Osovets in August 1915.

German gas attack

The Germans prepared their gas attack carefully, patiently waiting for the right wind. We deployed 30 gas batteries and several thousand cylinders. And on August 6, at 4 a.m., a dark green fog of a mixture of chlorine and bromine flowed into 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.

“Every living thing in the open air on the bridgehead of the fortress was 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 gases was destroyed, the leaves on the trees turned yellow, curled up and fell off, the grass turned black and lay on the ground, the flower petals flew off. All copper objects on the fortress bridgehead - parts of guns and shells, washbasins, tanks, etc. - were covered with a thick green layer of chlorine oxide; food items stored without hermetically sealed meat, butter, lard, vegetables turned out to be poisoned and unsuitable for consumption.”

The German artillery again opened massive fire, following the barrage of fire and the gas cloud, 14 Landwehr battalions moved to storm the Russian forward positions - which is at least 7 thousand infantrymen. Their goal was to capture the strategically important Sosnenskaya position. They were promised that they would not meet anyone except the dead.

Attack of the Dead. Reconstruction

One of the eyewitnesses told the Russkoe Slovo newspaper: “I cannot describe the anger and rage with which our soldiers marched against the German poisoners. Strong rifle and machine-gun fire and thickly exploding shrapnel could not stop the onslaught of enraged soldiers. Exhausted, poisoned, they fled with the sole purpose of crushing the Germans. There were no lagging behind, there was no need to rush anyone. There were no individual heroes here, the companies marched as one person, animated by only one goal, one thought: to die, but to take revenge on the vile poisoners.”

Second Lieutenant Vladimir 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 situation was restored. Success was achieved at a high price: 660 people died. But the fortress held.

By the end of August, holding Osovets lost all meaning: the front rolled far to the east. The fortress was evacuated in the right way: not only were they not left to the enemy, not even a single shell, cartridge, or even a tin can. The guns were pulled along the Grodno highway by 50 soldiers at night. On the night of August 24, Russian sappers blew up the remains of defensive structures and left. And only on August 25 the Germans risked entering the ruins.

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 the Faith, the Tsar, and the 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 the Most High,” laying down his soul “for his friends.”

“The Russians don’t give up!” The birth of this famous phrase The press and memoirs of participants in the First World War associate it with that battle. Morning of August 6, 1915. The Germans, besieging the Russian fortress of Osovets, begin a gas attack, liquid chlorine from hundreds of cylinders rushes towards the defenders of the outpost. Soon the gas is added heavy fire guns According to the calculations of the German commanders, few Russians could survive after this. But suddenly - the “dead” rise from their graves.

“We didn’t have gas masks, so the gases caused terrible injuries and chemical burns. When breathing, wheezing and bloody foam escaped from the lungs. The skin on our hands and faces was blistering. The rags we wrapped around our faces did not 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 of Osovets Svechnikov, shaking from a terrible cough, croaked: “My friends, we won’t die like the Prussian cockroaches from poisoning, we’ll show them so that they remember forever!” -

recalls a participant in the events, commander of the half-company of the 13th company, Alexey Lepyoshkin. Thus began the battle that later became known as the “attack of the dead.” On the eve of the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, we decided to talk in detail about one of its most striking episodes.

"Black Time" of Russian fortresses

By by and large the fortresses were not lucky during the First World War. If for many years they were considered the main nodes of many kilometers of defense lines and therefore received the necessary funding for modernization, then during the Great War of 1914-1918 they were faced with big problems. And not only in Russia. It soon became clear that field troops could bypass fortresses, blocking their strong garrisons - sometimes equivalent in size to a small army - and turning impregnable citadels into huge stone traps. In most cases, the General Staff officers at the head of the army were not enthusiasts of serf war, and therefore in the end they found, from their point of view, the most effective method to avoid the capitulation of strong fortress garrisons - simply leave the fortresses to the mercy of fate when the field army retreats, blowing up all their fortifications and leaving the enemy with a pile of ruins. But behind these dry lines describing the decline of the “era of fortresses,” much is hidden: the hard everyday life of the garrisons, the roar of thousands of guns, betrayal and dedication, and, finally, one of the most famous episodes of the war - the “attack of the dead.” In recent years, it has become widely known and has become a symbol of the perseverance of the Russian soldier during the First World War (or, as it was called in Russia, the Second Patriotic War), much the same as the Brest Fortress became for the Great Patriotic War.

The summer of 1915 in general and the month of August in particular became the “dark time” of Russian fortresses: it was then that the Novogeorgievsk and Kovno fortresses were rather mediocrely surrendered, and the Ivangorod and Osovets fortresses were evacuated by decision of the command. At the same time, Osovets could not at all be equal in size of the garrison or in importance to Novogeorgievsk, Kovno, or some Przemysl. It was a solid fortress with somewhat outdated fortification lines, blocking the railway and highway routes to Bialystok.

"Where the world ends,
The Osovets fortress stands,
There are terrible swamps there,
The Germans don’t want to get into them” -

So sang the militia warriors who, by the will of fate, found themselves in the fortress.

Past assaults and forces of the parties

The first two attempts to storm Osovets ( Detailed history The defense of Osovets is set out in the book of a direct participant in the events, S. A. Khmelkov, “The Fight for Osovets.” - Ed.) were undertaken in September 1914 and in February-March 1915 and ended in failure: the Germans suffered serious losses and did not resume the attack. The only thing is that the second attempt was more serious, and having failed, the Germans switched to positional warfare, actively accumulating forces and preparing a new assault.

The besiegers did not greatly outnumber the fortress garrison. However, German commanders were known for their ability to create a huge advantage in the main attack area, which they used on both the Eastern and Western fronts. This time, the 11th Landwehr (Landwehr - German militia-type troops, an analogue of the Russian militia - Ed.) division prepared for the assault extremely seriously. To capture the advanced Russian positions at Sosnenskaya and Zarechnaya, it was decided to use chemical agents and powerful artillery support.

Attention! Gases!

Toxic substances - in this case chlorine - were still new to the warring parties, and therefore the means of defense of the Russian troops (as well as those of their allies on the Western Front) were imperfect. At that stage of the war, toxic substances were usually delivered in cylinders, and not, as later, in shells, so it was very important to have a tailwind so that the chlorine did not blow onto one’s own troops. The Germans had to wait in full combat readiness for more than ten days until the necessary wind blew. For the attack, 30 gas batteries were concentrated in four places (the exact number of cylinders in each of them is unknown, but usually there were 10-12 cylinders in one battery), cylinders with compressed air. As a result, liquid chlorine was released from the cylinders within 1.5-3 minutes.
The hour struck early in the morning of July 24 (August 6, new style) 1915. As stated in the Combat Diary of the 226th Zemlyansky Infantry Regiment,

“Around 4 o’clock in the morning, the Germans released a whole cloud of suffocating gases and, under the cover of their thick chains, launched an energetic offensive, mainly on the 1st, 2nd and 4th sections of the Sosnenskaya position. At the same time, the enemy opened hurricane fire on the Zarechny fort, the trans-river position and on the road leading from the latter to Sosnenskaya.”

However, there were already some measures to counteract the gases: the soldiers burned tow and straw in front of the trenches, watered the parapets and sprayed a disinfecting lime solution, and also put on the gas masks and bandages at their disposal. However, all this was not very effective, besides, many soldiers used ordinary wet rags with which they wrapped their faces.
The defenders suffered greatly: the 9th, 10th and 11th companies, who found themselves in the lowlands, practically ceased to exist, in the 12th company at the Central Redoubt there were about 40 people left in the ranks, at Bialogronda - about 60. The shelling of the fortress, including shells with toxic substances, also came as a surprise to the Russian troops, which is why the Russian artillery was unable to give an adequate response to the enemy, although it had the capabilities to do so.

German artillery created a barrage of fire, under the cover of which the Landwehr went on the offensive. No one expected resistance after such preparation. Everything went according to plan: units of the 18th and 76th Landwehr regiments took the first and second positions without any problems, easily breaking the resistance of the militia company, which was also heavily damaged by gases and artillery fire, standing at the Sosnenskaya position itself. However, then problems began: first, the Landsturmists of the 76th Regiment became too carried away with the offensive and fell under their own gases, losing about a thousand people, and when the remnants of the 12th Russian company opened fire from the central redoubt, the attack immediately stopped.

"The living Dead"

The already mentioned Combat Diary reports: “Having received a report about this (meaning the occupation of the 1st line of defense) from the commander of the 3rd battalion, Captain Potapov, who reported that the Germans who had occupied the trenches were continuing to advance towards the fortress and were already close to reserve, the regiment commander immediately ordered the 8th, 13th and 14th companies to move from the fort to the Sosnenskaya position and, launching a counterattack, drive the Germans out of our trenches occupied by them.” These units, including the 13th company, whose attack was led by second lieutenant Vladimir Karpovich Kotlinsky, were also heavily damaged by gas and artillery shelling and lost up to half of their personnel (the losses of the 14th company, which was in the fortress, were less). The Germans were promised that they would simply take unprotected positions. However, everything turned out differently: Russian soldiers with their faces wrapped in rags, “the living dead,” rose to meet them.
“Approaching 400 steps to the enemy, Second Lieutenant Kotlinsky, led by his company, rushed into the attack. With a bayonet strike he knocked the Germans out of their position, forcing them to flee in disarray... Without stopping, the 13th company continued to pursue the fleeing enemy, with bayonets they knocked him out of the trenches he occupied in the 1st and 2nd sections of the Sosnensky positions. We reoccupied the latter, returning our anti-assault gun 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 2nd Osovets Engineer Company Strezheminsky, who completed and completed the work so gloriously begun 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.
One of the eyewitnesses told the Russkoe Slovo newspaper:

“I cannot describe the bitterness and rage with which our soldiers marched against the German poisoners. Strong rifle and machine-gun fire and densely exploding shrapnel could not stop the onslaught of enraged soldiers. Exhausted, poisoned, they fled with the sole purpose of crushing the Germans. There were no lagging behind, there was no need to rush anyone. There were no individual heroes here, the companies marched as one person, animated by only one goal, one thought: to die, but to take revenge on the vile poisoners.”

The Germans did not expect a counterattack; they generally believed that there was no one in the positions except the dead. But the “dead” rose from their graves. The rest was completed by the Russian artillery, which finally came to its senses. By 11 o'clock the Sosnenskaya position was cleared of the enemy, who did not repeat the attack. On that day, the Russian battle group that encountered the enemy lost approximately 600-650 officers, military officials and lower ranks killed, wounded, or gassed. The enemy suffered heavy losses.

As sad as it may be, the fate of the Osovets fortress had already been decided: an order was received to evacuate it. On August 23, the buildings and fortifications of the fortress abandoned by the Russian troops were blown up, and two days later the Germans occupied the still smoking ruins.
Osovets was abandoned, but the “attack of the dead” of the 13th company was not meaningless: it became a miraculous monument to the Russian soldier who gave his life for the freedom of the peoples of Europe, so that they could choose their own future

There are many examples of true heroism and fearlessness of Russian soldiers during the First World War. One of these episodes was associated with the defense of the Osovets fortress on August 6, 1915 and went down in history as the “attack of the dead.”

Under German siege

The ancient Osowiec fortress, 50 kilometers from the Polish city of Bialystok and 23 kilometers from the border with East Prussia, was of great strategic importance, being one of the centers of defense of the so-called “Polish Pocket”. In September 1914, units of the 8th German Army arrived here. Although the Germans had a significant numerical superiority and used heavy artillery, the Russians managed to repulse the assault. The second assault began on February 3, 1915. After six days of intense fighting, the Germans managed to occupy the first Russian defensive line. The fortress was subjected to massive artillery fire. “The appearance of the fortress was terrible, the entire fortress was shrouded in smoke, through which, in one place or another, huge flames burst out from the explosion of shells; pillars of earth, water and entire trees flew upward; the earth trembled, and it seemed that nothing could withstand such a hurricane of fire,” wrote one of the leaders of the Military Engineering Academy of the Red Army and a direct participant in those events, Sergei Aleksandrovich Khmelkov, in his work “The Fight for Osovets.” The General Staff of the Russian Army set the task for the defense participants to hold out for at least two days. And this time the German assault was repulsed.

Poisoned soldiers

But the Germans did not give up. In July 1915 they went on the offensive again. This time the enemy decided to use toxic substances against the defenders of the fortress. 30 gas cylinder batteries were deployed in the Osovets area. Early on the morning of August 6, they released a cloud of chlorine. The gas penetrated to a depth of 20 kilometers. The Russians did not expect a gas attack, and they did not have any protective measures against it. This led to heavy losses on the part of the 226th Zemlyansky Regiment defending the fortress. About 1,600 people were completely incapacitated. The Germans did not stop there; they also began shelling the fortress, and some of the guns fired chemical charges. Then the German infantry, numbering about 7,000 people, rushed to the assault. The first two lines of Russian defense were occupied. Then the commandant of the fortress, Lieutenant General Nikolai Brzhozovsky, gave the order to conduct a bayonet counterattack. It was headed by the commander of the 13th company of the Zemlyansky regiment, second lieutenant Vladimir Kotlinsky, who gathered under his command several dozen soldiers who were least affected by the gas. From the outside it seemed that the dead were going into battle: the soldiers’ faces were earth-colored, wrapped in rags, and ulcers from burns were visible on their skin. Some coughed up blood, and instead of the usual shouts of “hurray,” an eerie wheezing sound was heard from the soldiers’ throats. However, a handful of these goons managed to put the numerous German infantry to flight. Lieutenant Kotlinsky was mortally wounded in the battle, but by eight o’clock in the morning the defense breakthrough was eliminated, and by 11 the attack was completely repulsed. A few days later, the General Staff gave an order to stop the fighting and evacuate the military garrison of the fortress - its further defense was inappropriate from the point of view of the general situation at the front. In September 1916, Lieutenant Kotlinsky was posthumously awarded the Order of St. George, 4th degree, for the defense of the Osovets fortress. The names of ordinary participants in the defense, alas, have not been preserved in history.

Reasons for victory

The already mentioned Sergei Khmelkov first called the defense of Osovets an “attack of the dead” in 1939: “This attack of the “dead men”... amazed the Germans so much that they did not accept the battle and rushed back, many Germans died on the wire nets in front of the second line of trenches from the fire of the fortress artillery " But how did several dozen Russian soldiers manage to defeat several thousand Germans? First, the German soldiers were convinced that a gas attack would render the Russians completely unable to resist. Secondly, the bayonet attack was not resisted by thousands of German soldiers, but only by the 18th Regiment of the 70th Brigade of the 11th Landwehr Division. Thirdly, the mere sight of poisoned “zombies” going on the attack had a colossal psychological effect on the German infantry. While the Germans were coming to their senses, Russian artillery began to attack.