Both Russia and Italy had promised the French they would mount new offensives to try and
relieve some of the pressure of the ongoing Battle of Verdun. Last week the Italians had
launched one on the Isonzo, and this week, in colossal numbers, the Russians strike.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War
Last week on the Italian front saw the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo River, the Western Front
was still all about Verdun, Dutch shipping was being sunk at sea, and a prison rescue
went down in Libya. Here’s what came next.
We didn’t look too much at Verdun last week, so I’ll start there.
Last week I mentioned that the Germans had been repeatedly thwarted in their attempts
to capture Fort Vaux. Fort Vaux stood on the right bank of the Meuse. Now, the village
of Vaux changed hands 13 times during March but the fort never fell to the Germans. At
one point the German commander, Lieutenant-General Guretzky-Cornitz, got word that the fort had,
in fact, fallen. He passed the news on to command where it went out worldwide. The Kaiser
awarded him the Pour le Merite, but when his men went to the fort, they were all shot down,
and French Commander in Chief Joseph Joffre issued an Order of the Day to the defenders-
“You will be those of whom it is said- they barred the way to Verdun.” (Gilbert)
On March 20th came a German attack at the edge of the Verdun salient, near Avocourt.
It was the 11th Bavarian division led by General Paul Ritter von Kneussel, who had won his
own Pour le Merite for recapturing the Fortress of Przemysl last year. Initially at Avocourt,
many of his men were buried alive when the French blew in their front lines, but the
French front line troops had been on the lines for too long and had lost hope. Many deserted
and they gave the Germans details of how to pass the French barbed wire. It then took
just four hours for the Germans to capture the French positions and force surrender-
2,825 men, 25 machine guns, and a box full of the Croix de Guerre medals ready for distribution.
This was a big blow to French high command, but it served to rouse the French defenses.
Two days later, when the Germans tried to capitalize on their successes, they were slaughtered
from three sides by French machine guns. Rain had pretty much turned the battlefield into
a swamp and the Germans couldn’t bring up mortars to handle the machine guns. They lost
2,400 men that day and gained zero ground.
Verdun is a fairly small area, and this week France’s ally Russia attacked in a far larger one.
On the 18th, the Russians launched an offensive just south of Dvinsk, a marshy lake area.
The German lines ran from Lake Drisviaty to Postavy, and another Russian attack developed
further south on the banks of Lake Naroch, but the Russians were thrown back with 9,000
men killed in just two days (story of the great war)
The night of March 20th, between Postavy and Vileity, the Russians gained a foothold in
the German trenches and, “in order to throw back a strong German counter-attack, a curtain
of fire was laid before the trenches... at the same time German artillery strongly supported
the attack of their infantry. On both sides the gunfire became so violent that single
shots could not be distinguished any longer. Shrapnel exploded without cessation and rifle
fire became so rapid that it sounded hardly less loudly than (big) gunfire. Late in the
afternoon, the Germans succeeded in retaking the trenches...”
There were, in fact, Russian attacks from Riga down to the Rumanian border this week,
with incredible violence and energy. And the Russian losses were immense- one correspondent
wrote, “They have about 60 divisions ready. Their losses are in proportion and were estimated
on a front of about 90 miles to have been near to 80,000 men. For instance, against
one German cavalry brigade there were thrown seven regiments with a very narrow front,
but 8 lines deep. Four times they came rushing on against the German barbed wire without
being able to break through, but losing some 3,000 men just the same.”
But why do you suppose the Russians were attacking like crazy, especially in the far north, at
Dvinsk and Lake Naroch? And let’s be clear, fresh troops were arriving daily and the Russian
munitions supply network, which had- so far in the war- been one of the main reasons for
Russian failures and disasters was suddenly inexhaustible, and the attacks were all now
pretty carefully prepared. What was going on here?
I’ll tell you what, spring was coming, and with it the thawing of the snows, and the
coming of the floods. And along almost the entire northern front the Germans had a big
advantage coming; their positions were on higher and drier ground than the Russian ones,
and the Russian trenches, once the thaws and floods came, would be unusable. So you can
see that the enormous energy the Russians suddenly had and the total disregard for life
which their commanders had in these March offensives were mainly because of the need
to get their men to better ground before it was too late, and some will argue that from
a tactical point of view, the losses they were taking- the price they seemed willing
to pay, was not too great for the hope for reward, so the attacks in just what is now
Belarus featured 350,000 troops and over 1,000 big guns.
There was a lot of action in the north this week, and some of it was in the North Sea,
where a naval battle took place March 24th.
The German auxiliary ship Greif took on the British converted merchant ship Alcantara.
The Greif was trying to run the British blockade under Norwegian colors when she was hailed.
The Alcantara came within a few hundred meters and put a boat out. Seeing this, the Germans
unmasked their guns and the battle began. In just 12 minutes, the Greif was on fire
and the Alcantara was sinking from a torpedo explosion. Still, the Greif probably would’ve
gotten away but two other British ships arrived and the Greif was hit again. 115 men out of
300 on the Greif were saved, the British lost 74 men, and both ships sank to the bottom
of the sea.
Here’s another marine note for the week. On March 22, the British tried out their new
weapon, the depth charge, destroying a German sub off the coast of Ireland.
And Ireland itself was restless this week.
On the 21st, at Tullamore, a loyalist crowd was demonstrating opposite Sinn Fein premises
in William Street; Sinn Fein being Irish Republicans working for an independent Ireland. There
was a scuffle between the British loyalists and Sinn Fein volunteers, but when the police
arrived and appeared to be protecting the Sinn Fein guys, people began throwing stones
at the building and shots were fired from within. The police went in to search the premises,
and the Sinn Feiners not only refused to be searched; they opened fire on the police,
wounding two officers. Tensions were seriously growing in Ireland.
And here are some notes to round out the week.
On the 18th and the 20th the Allies bombed Zeebrugge. In East Africa, the British drove
the enemy from the Ruwu River on the 18th, and occupied Arusha in Kilimanjaro the 21st.
And here’s a random quote I thought worth sharing about the Allied forces at Salonika
in Greece. I spoke a while ago that malaria was endemic to the Salonika region, but it
was winter now, and a British doctor wrote to the chief British medical officer at Salonika,
“You still have about two months grace before General Malaria comes into the field.”
And another week comes to an end. A battle at sea, unrest in Ireland, the advent of the
depth charge, ever more death at Verdun, and the Russians recklessly throwing hundreds
of thousands of men at enemy lines all along the Eastern Front.
The numbers of casualties, especially Russian casualties, on the Eastern Front truly boggle
the mind. To think that human life was valued so cheaply, but Russia had two great advantages-
land and men- and it would be foolish not to use them. The Western Front numbers are
most often smaller, but still- and I’m not giving too much away- The Kaiser’s biographer,
Alan Palmer, wrote of Verdun, “Ultimately on this one sector of the Western Front the
Germans suffered a third of a million casualties in occupying a cratered wasteland half the
size of Metropolitan Berlin.” I think the concentration of death on a scale so large,
but in an area so small, may well be the most grotesque and shocking thing about the whole war.
All too often these numbers make us forget that each dead or wounded soldier fought another
man, often hand to hand, and most often till the bitter end. If you want to know how these
small scale battles unfolded and how brutal they were, click here for our special about
Trench Warfare.
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