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But here, too, it must be borne in mind that, although we used the word offensive, operations were altogether on a minor scale and restricted to local engagements. Some of the heaviest fighting of this period occurred near the town of Olyka, on the Rovno-Brest-Litovsk railroad.
But the Russians themselves promptly utilized this accomplishment by rushing out of their trenches and making an advanced trench of their own out of the mine craters dug for them by their enemies. Two days later, on May 4, 1916, the Russians were able to improve still more their new positions southeast of Olyka station, and to gain some more ground there.
Near Olyka in the region of the three Volhynian fortresses of Rovno, Dubno, and Lutsk, the Russian gunfire was especially intense along a front of about seventeen miles.
Just south of this place repeated Austrian attacks were launched against a height held by the Russians, both on April 1 and 2, 1916, but they were promptly repulsed. On April 3, 1916, another attack in that neighborhood, this time northeast of Olyka, near the villages of Bagnslavka and Bashlyki, also failed to carry the Austrians into the Russian trenches.
Twenty miles farther north, in the vicinity of Olyka, the little town about halfway between the fortress of Lutsk and Rovno, on the railway line connecting these two points, the Russian forces reported slight progress on May 2, 1916. Northwest of Kremenets, in the Ikva section, Austro-Hungarian engineers succeeded in exploding mines in front of the Russian trenches.
Still farther south at Olyka, west of Rovno, the Russians were thrown back by a bayonet attack, carried out by two Austro-Hungarian infantry regiments.
At that time this front extended as follows: Starting at Tchartorysk on the Styr, a few miles south of the Kovel-Gomel railroad, it ran almost straight south through Tsuman, crossed the Brest-Litovsk railroad a mile or two north of Olyka, passed about fifteen miles west of Rovno to the Rovno-Lemberg railroad, which it crossed a few miles east of Dubno, then followed more or less the course of the Ikwa and passed through Novo Alexinez.
These were especially frequent in the region of Tzartorysk on the Styr, just south of the Kovel-Kieff railway and south of Olyka station where Austro-Hungarian troops were forced to evacuate the woods east of the village of Jeruistche. A slight gain was made on May 6, 1916, by Russian troops in Galicia, on the lower Strypa River, north of the village of Jaslovietz.
About thirty miles south of Kolki, just to the east of the village of Olyka the Russians had succeeded in maintaining a small salient, the apex of which was directed toward their lost fortress of Lutsk almost twenty miles to the west, while the southern side passed very close to that other fortress, Dubno, even though it ran still some distance to the east of it.
A Russian attempt to break through the Austro-German line, held by General von Bothmer's army, on the Strypa west of Tarnopol, was made on October 2, 1915, but failed. The same was true of attacks on the Ikwa west of Kremenet and north of Dubno near Olyka, made on October 6, 1915.
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