chment of Tyrolese sharpshooters
were trapped in the wire entanglements and annihilated.

One more battle on a big scale remains to be chronicled from the far
eastern sector; it may also serve to illustrate the wide divergence
that not infrequently exists between official communiques recording
the same event. Early in April, 1915, a Russian force threw a bridge
across the Dniester near the village of Filipkowu and moved along
the road running from Uscie Biskupie via Okna and Kuczurmik on to
Czernowitz, the intention being to turn the Austrian positions
south of Zaleszczyki from the rear. We will let the rival communiques
relate what happened:

_Austrian Version_ _Russian Version_
Annihilated two battalions Annihilated two battalions
of Russian infantry belonging of the Honveds; captured 21
to the Alexander Regiment; officers, over 1,000 rank and
took 1,400 prisoners, and file, and 8 machine guns.
drove Russians back beyond
the Dniester.

The curtain was about to rise for the next act, wherein will be
played one of the most terrific reversals of fortune ever produced
in military history.

For quite a month it had been an open secret that considerable
masses of German troops were being transported to the Carpathian
front. What was not known, however, was the magnitude or the plan
of these preparations. Never was a greater concentration of men
and machinery more silently and more speedily accomplished. All
along the south of the range, on the great Hungarian plains, there
assembled a gigantic host of numerous nationalities. But it was
away to the west, in that narrow bottle neck where the Dunajec
flows from the Polish frontier down to the Tarnow Pass, that the
mighty thunderbolt had been forged. Thousands of heavy guns were
here planted in position, and millions of shells conveyed thither
under cover of night. Countless trains carried war materials, tents,
pontoons, cattle, provisions, etc. Finally the troops arrived--from
the different fronts where they could be spared, and new levies
from Germany and Austria-Hungary. Smoothly and silently men and
machines dropped into their respective places: All was ready; not
a detail had been overlooked; German organization had done its
part. The commander was Von Mackensen, nominally Commander of the
Eleventh German Army, but in reality supreme director of the whole
campaign.

During April, 1915, a number of changes had taken place