he 2d of May at 6 A.M. an overwhelming artillery
fire, including field guns and running up to the heaviest calibres,
was begun on the front many miles in extent selected for the effort to
break through. This was maintained unbroken for four hours.

[Illustration: FIELD MARSHALL VON MACKENSEN

Who Commanded the Victorious Teutonic Forces Against the Russians in
the Southeast]

At 10 o'clock in the morning these hundreds of fire-spouting tubes
suddenly ceased and the same moment the swarming lines and attacking
columns of the assailants threw themselves upon the hostile positions.
The enemy had been so shaken by the heavy artillery fire that his
resistance at many points was very slight. In headlong flight he left
his defenses, when the infantry of the [Teutonic] allies appeared
before his trenches, throwing away rifles and cooking utensils and
leaving immense quantities of infantry ammunition and dead. At one
point the Russians themselves cut the wire entanglements to surrender
themselves to the Germans. Frequently the enemy made no further
resistance in his second and third positions. On the other hand, at
certain other points of the front he defended himself stubbornly,
making an embittered fight and holding the neighborhood. With the
Austrian troops, the Bavarian regiments attacked Mount Zameczyka,
lying 250 meters above their positions, a veritable fortress. A
Bavarian infantry regiment here won incomparable laurels. To the left
of the Bavarians Silesian regiments stormed the heights of Sekowa and
Sakol. Young regiments tore from the enemy the desperately defended
cemetery height of Gorlise and the persistently held railway
embankment at Kennenitza. Among the Austrian troops Galician
battalions had stormed the steep heights of the Pustki Hill, Hungarian
troops having taken in fierce fighting the Wiatrowka heights. Prussian
guard regiments threw the enemy out of his elevated positions east of
Biala and at Staszkowka stormed seven successive Russian lines which
were stubbornly held. Either kindled by the Russians or hit by a
shell, a naphtha well behind Gorlise burst into flames. Higher than
the houses the flames struck up into the sky and pillars of smoke rose
to hundreds of yards.

On the evening of the 2d of May, when the warm Spring sun had begun
to yield to the coolness of night the first main position in its whole
depth and extent, a distance of some sixteen kilometers had been
broken through and a gain of g