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CHAPTER XLVI

GRAND OFFENSIVE ON THE WARSAW SALIENT

The great stroke at Przasnysz was the most dramatic feature of a
grand offensive all around the German lines that were endeavoring
to close in upon the Russian armies. On July 16, 1915, the Archduke
Joseph struck hard at the Russians on the Krasnik-Lublin road in
an endeavor to carry the fortified positions at Wilkolaz. His men,
however, were thrown back after ten furious assaults. Krasnostav,
on the road to Cholm, was attacked on the same day by the army or
General von Mackensen, and after a series of desperate rear-guard
actions had been fought by the Russians was swept over by the German
Allies. By the close of the day the Germans had taken twenty-eight
officers, 6,380 men, and nine machine guns.

The Germans, prepared in the recent pause in the fighting, by the
bringing up of their artillery on the long lines of communication
which now stretched behind them, with troops reenforced by such
fresh forces as they could muster, were hurling themselves upon
the Russian defensive positions everywhere along the line. Thus,
on the forenoon of July 17, 1915, the army of General von Woyrsch,
whose objective was the mighty fortress Ivangorod, operating just
to the west of the upper Vistula, broke through the Russian wire
entanglements and stormed the enemy's trenches on a stretch of
2,000 meters. The breach was widened in desperate hand-to-hand
combat. The Teutons by evening inflicted a heavy defeat on the
Moscow Grenadier Corps at this point and the Russians were forced
to retreat behind the Ilzanka to the south of Swolen. Some 2,000
men were taken prisoners by the Germans in this battle and five
machine guns were captured.

Far in the northeast in Courland the army of General von Buelow,
on July 17, 1915, defeated Russian forces that had been rushed up
at Alt-Auz, taking 3,620 prisoners, six cannon and three machine
guns, and pursuing the Slavs in an easterly direction. Desperate
fighting was also taking place to the northeast of Kurschany.

Notes of anxiety mixed with consoling speculations had begun to
appear in the press of the allied countries when the vast German
offensive had thus become plainly revealed and had demonstrated
its driving force. A Petrograd dispatch to the London "Morning
Post" on the 15th of July, 1915, said of the German plan that it
was to catch the Russian armies like a nut between nut crackers,
that the two fronts moving u