Attack of the Dead. Forgotten feat. And why do not the Russians give up?

"Attack of the Dead", the name of the counterattack of the 13th company of the 226th Zemlyanskiy regiment on July 24 (August 6), 1915, when the German gas attack was repulsed. The episode of defense of the fortress Osovets on the Eastern Front during the First World War.
The attack of the Dead at Osovets takes first place in the nomination "Russian military prowess, compared to 300 Spartans - 300 girls". Even in Port Arthur, Sevastopol and Stalingrad nothing like it was there - there were fighting people, while the defenders of the Osovets continued the battle, being technically dead. Death is not a reason to refuse to attack.
Soldiers of the Imperial Russian army proved that even death can not be a valid reason for stopping resistance.
Recently, there was an anniversary of the Deadly Attack at Osovitsy, ranking first in the Russian Military Valor nomination. Compared to that, 300 Spartans is a team of players playing against their gates! Nothing like that happened. In the most famous battles, however, while the defenders of Osovitsa continued the battle, being technically dead
In 1915, the world looked with admiration at the defense of Osovets, a small Russian fortress 23.5 km from the then East Prussia. It was impossible to escape the fortress: it was located on the banks of the river Bobra, controlling the whole district, in the vicinity - continuous swamps. The Germans undertook the first onslaught in September 1914: having transferred from Koenigsberg guns of large caliber, they bombarded the fortress for six days. And the siege of the Osovets began in January 1915 and lasted 190 days. The Germans used all their latest achievements against the fortress. Delivered the famous "Great Bertha" - siege weapons of 420-mm caliber, 800-kilogram shells which broke two-meter steel and concrete floors. The funnel from such an explosion was five meters deep and fifteen in diameter. The Germans estimated that two such guns and 24 hours of methodical bombardment are sufficient to force a siege with a garrison of a thousand men: 360 rounds, every four minutes - a volley. Near Osovets were brought four "Big Bertha" and 64 other powerful siege weapons, only 17 batteries. The most terrible shelling was at the beginning of the siege. "On February 25, the enemy opened fire on the fortress, brought it to the hurricane on February 27 and 28, and continued to smash the fortress until March 3." This week of horrendous shelling around the fortress, 200,000 to 250,000 heavy weapons were fired. And all during the siege - up to 400 thousand. "The brick buildings were falling apart, the wood was burning, the weak concrete gave huge shots in the vaults and walls; the wire connection was interrupted, the highway was damaged by funnels; trenches and all improvements on the ramparts, such as: peaks, machine gun nests, light dugouts, wiped off the face of the earth. " Over the fortress there were clouds of smoke and dust. Together with the artillery, German airplanes bombed the fortress.

The command, believing that it requires almost impossible, asked the defenders of the fortress to last at least 48 hours. The fortress was still six months ....
Already in 1915 the German forces inflicted a number of sensitive defeats on Russia. Because of the pressure of the Austrians, the Russians left Galicia. The Osovets stayed in spite of the decadent conjuncture of the front.
August 6, 1915 was for the defenders of the Osovitsa a black day: the Germans used poison gas. Gas attack, they prepared carefully, more than 10 days patiently waiting for the right direction of the wind. We unfolded 30 carefully masked gas batteries in several thousand cylinders. At 4 am a dark green fog of a mixture of chlorine and bromine flowed into Russian positions, reaching them in 5-10 minutes. A gas wave 12-15 meters high and 8 km wide penetrated forward to a depth of 20 km. There were no gas masks for the defenders of the fortress ... "All the living in the open air on the bridgehead of the fortress was poisoned to death. All the greenery in the fortress and in the nearest area along the path of gas movement was destroyed, the leaves in the trees turned yellow, curled and fallen, the grass turned black and fell to the ground , the flower petals flew around. "The poisonous gas killed all the living creatures who breathed in the air at a distance of 12 km. As the eyewitnesses said, nothing could be seen on the horizon, there was a kraeme silence, even birds flew over the place of attack ... it looked terrible. ..
The 9th, 10th and 11th companies of the Zemlyansky regiment perished in full, from the 12th company there were about 40 people with one machine gun; from the three mouths protecting Byalogronda, there were about 60 people with two machine guns.
Here are the own words of the German general Ludendorff: "The Eighth Army moved into the narrow space between Narev and Bialystok to take the Osovets from the south." 14 battalions of the landwehr, no less than 7 thousand people, moved after the wave of gases. They did not go into the attack. On the sweep. Being confident that the living will not be met. What happened next ...
"When the German chains approached the trenches, a dense green chlorine mist was attacked by them ... the counterattacking Russian infantry. The spectacle was appalling: the soldiers walked into the bayonet with faces wrapped in rags, shaking with an eerie cough, literally spitting out pieces of lungs on bloody tunics. These were the remains of the 13th company of the 226th Infantry Zemlyanskiy regiment, slightly more than 60 people. But they plunged the enemy into such horror that the German infantrymen, not accepting the battle, rushed back, trampling each other and hanging on their own wire fences. And on them, from the Russian batteries, shrouded in chlorine clubs, it seemed as if already dead artillery was beating.
Several dozen half-dead Russian fighters fled three German infantry regiments! Nothing like the world military art did not know ...
What did the seven thousand Germans see? If these 60 people were shooting - and even if they shot fucking accurately, and not as poisoned dying half-people - they would not even be noticed. But these 60 people just got up, staggering, each by itself, and silently went into a bayonet attack. And seven thousand Germans ran ...
In Soviet times Osovets was not very fond of recalling, for the General of Artillery, defending the fortress of Brzhozovsky later joined the Whites and fought with the Bolsheviks. атака.jpg