All What's You Should Know

Fallen Russian soldiers in a trench on the Eastern Front, ca. 1915. Photograph belonging to 'Wooway1' on Flickr. Today 108 years ago, on July 13, 1915, the Germans launched the Narew Offensive against the Russians on the Eastern Front. In May 1915 the Central Powers had launched the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive and forced the Russians some 310 km eastwards, ending on June 22 with the conquering of the city of Lemberg. The Central Powers realized an ambitious, renewed offensive might force the Russians to surrender, thus a three-pronged offensive along the front was planned. In the north the Germans would attack in the Courland region, in the middle across the Narew river towards Warsaw and in the south in Galicia between the Bug and Vistula rivers towards Brest-Litovsk. On June 30, 1915 the Bug Offensive was launched in Galicia and made significant progress, but had stalled by July 9. It was then decided for the other two offensives in the Courland and across the Narew to be...

Fallen Russian soldier caught on barbed wire on the Eastern Front, ca. 1915 The following is excerpts of 21-year-old Danish-German soldier Johannes Jessen's account of his experiences on the Eastern Front in early May 1915. Translated by myself: ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ "On one of the first days of May, the Russians began showering us with shells. We ran like mice from one end to the other to save our bacon. I had placed myself well behind some large planks, but suddenly I hurried away, and when I returned it was all wrecked by a large caliber shell. Later in the afternoon, a comrade and I ran into a dug-out which was still intact, but shortly after we deemed it too dangerous as well. As we exited, Karlemann crawled inside and was killed by a direct hit, which destroyed the dug-out. We were constantly on guard since as soon as the heavy artillery would cease they would storm our positions - that we knew. They fired all day long and when it got dark they came; our listening post hurried back...