entimeter mortar and some other heavy batteries.
The fire rose to considerable intensity in the last days of February
and the first days of March.

On the 3d of March the Russians in their official report dwelt
on the fierceness of the bombardment and its ineffectiveness. On
the 16th they reported that the Germans were pushing several of
their batteries up into closer range, as they had recognized the
uselessness of shooting from a greater distance and on the 18th
they stated that the fire was falling off. On the 22d, finally,
they reported that beginning with the 21st the Germans had been
withdrawing their heavy batteries. They added that a 42-centimeter
mortar had been damaged by the Russian fire, and that "not a single
shot of these mortars has reached the fortress, not a redoubt has
been penetrated. The superiority of the artillery fire evidently
rests with us. The German attack was not only far removed from
placing the fortifications of Ossowetz in a critical position,
it did not even succeed in driving our infantry out of the field
works."

On the 27th of March there was a resumption of the bombardment on
a small scale and another effort began on April 11 with some heavy
guns, ending in an attempted advance which was repulsed without
difficulty by the Russians.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLI

RUSSIAN RAID ON MEMEL

An event in which no great number of troops were concerned, but
which is of importance, because of the feeling which it aroused
in Germany and because it was the first of a series of operations
in what was practically a new theatre of the war was the Russian
invasion of the very northernmost tip of East Prussia. On Thursday,
the 18th of March, 1915, the Russians coming simultaneously from
the north and the east across the border of Courland, moved on the
Prussian city of Memel in several columns. Their troops included
seven battalions of militia with six or eight guns of an old model,
several squadrons of mounted men, two companies of marines, a battalion
of a reserve regiment, and border defense troops from Riga and
Libau, a total of some 6,000 to 10,000 men. The German Landsturm
troops at the Prussian boundary fell back on Memel, not being in
sufficient force to resist the advance. They were finally driven
through the city and across the narrow strip of water known as
the Kurische Haff to the dunes along the shore of the Baltic. The
Russians burned down numerous bui