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Updated: June 16, 2025
All along this line considerable fighting took place throughout September, 1915, as has already been narrated. During September 21-22, 1915, this fighting was especially severe west and southwest of Dvinsk, where the Germans were making unsuccessfully desperate efforts to break the Russian lines and get within striking distance of Dvinsk.
As early as the beginning of November weather conditions had made fighting on a large scale impossible for a few weeks. Attacks and counterattacks, such as we have just described, were still kept up in front of Dvinsk and Riga, it is true, but they gradually lost in extent and severity and brought practically no changes of any importance.
To the south of the former city they pushed beyond the Vilna-Petrograd railway, taking Vidsky, just north of the Disna River, in the early morning hours of September 16, 1915. At that time the fall of both Vilna and Dvinsk seemed to be inevitable. On September 18, 1915, the Germans reported continuous progress in their attacks on Dvinsk.
In character this section is rather similar to parts of Minnesota. There are two cities to be conquered in this drier region, Dvinsk, and, further south, Vilna, once the chief city or capital of the Lithuanians.
Aeroplanes were the only branch of the two armies which showed any marked activity. Dvinsk was visited repeatedly by German machines and extensively bombarded. On April 26, 1916, a German airship dropped bombs on the railway station at Duna-Muende, at the mouth of the Dvina, and caused considerable damage.
On the following day, April 14, 1916, the Russians repeated their efforts in the Servetsch region. After strong artillery preparation they launched another attack near Zirin, and southeast of Kovelitchy, but were again repulsed. The same fate was suffered by an attack attempted northwest of Dvinsk. South of Garbunovka, however, they registered a slight local success.
In spite of the lack of any important success the Russian attacks against the Jacobstadt sector were renewed on March 24, 1916. But the German guns had shot themselves in so well that it availed nothing. Other attacks, attempted to the southwest of Dvinsk and at various points north of Vidzy suffered the same fate.
Throughout the last day of April, 1916, artillery duels were fought again at many points. Once more the railway station and bridgehead at Uxkull was made the target for a most violent German artillery attack. Along the Dvinsk sector, too, guns of all caliber were busy. With the beginning of May, the weather became warmer and the rain and watersoaked roads more accessible.
Artillery duels also were staged near Postavy, in the Jacobstadt sector, and at the northernmost end of the line where the German guns bombarded the city of Schlock. All day on April 9, 1916, the guns of all calibers kept up their death-dealing work along the entire Dvina front, and in the Lake district south of Dvinsk.
South of Dvinsk, before the village of Malogolska, the German troops had to evacuate their first-line of trenches when the arising floods of neighboring rivers inundated them. German aeroplanes bombarded the town of Luchonitchy on the Vilna-Rovno railway, just southeast of Baranovitchy.
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