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Updated: June 16, 2025
On the following day, August 4, 1916, the Russians made an attempt to cross the Dvina near Deveten, a few miles northwest of Dvinsk, but were repulsed. Another similar undertaking, attempted August 8, 1916, east of Friedrichstadt, met the same fate. On that day German batteries successfully bombarded Russian torpedo boats and other vessels lying off the coast of Kurland and forced them to retire.
Between Dvinsk and Lake Drisviaty a violent artillery and rifle duel was kept up almost continuously, resulting at one point, just below Dvinsk near Shishkovo, in the breaking up of a German attack. South of the lake, at the village of Mintsiouny, however, a German attack succeeded and drove the Russians out of some trenches which they had gained only the day before.
It was transferred to the Dvina after the fall of Brest, and had since been engaged before Dvinsk. The Reserve Guard Corps was in the central group of the German armies, and the other, the Third Division, was still in Galicia. The British and the Prussian Guards had made each other's acquaintance in the Battle of Ypres.
The railway stations at Remershaf and Dvinsk were bombarded by German aeroplanes, while other units of their aircraft visited the Russian lines along the Oginski Canal. Both on April 11 and 12, 1916, artillery activity on the Dvina was maintained. A German infantry attack against the Uxkull bridgehead, launched on the 11th, failed.
On the Dvina and in the Jacobstadt region there was an artillery and rifle duel. German aeroplanes were making frequent raids on the Russian lines. They dropped sixty-eight bombs during a nocturnal raid on the town of Dvinsk on June 27, 1916. The damage both to property and life was considerable. An attempt on the part of German troops to take the offensive south of Krevo was repulsed by gunfire.
On the next day, October 9, 1915, the Russians attempted unsuccessfully to regain these positions and were also defeated to the west of Ilukst, north of the Ponevesh-Dvinsk railroad. On the 10th, attacks west of Dvinsk and Vidzy, north of the Disna, had no better results.
For over an hour and a half artillery of both heavy and light caliber prepared the way for this attack. But again the Russian lines held and the Germans had to desist. Before Dvinsk and to the south of the fortress artillery duels inflicted considerable damage without affecting the positions on either side.
This campaign was carried on mostly in the frozen terrain of the Dvinsk marshes, and along the Dvina River, and the German losses were also heavy, although the Russian attacks were as a rule repulsed. In Asia Minor, however, Russian successes of the winter were crowned in the early spring by the fall of the Baltic seaport of Trebizond, which was occupied on April 18.
According to the German War Office more than 1,300 Russian prisoners were taken. Simultaneously with this partial relief in the south Field Marshal von Hindenburg began an attack at several points against the Russian right wing and part of the center. He penetrated the czar's lines at two points near Jacobstadt, halfway between Riga and Dvinsk, and at Kochany between Lake Narotch and Dvinsk.
A Hungarian staff correspondent, who was with Von Hindenburg's army, had this to say about the siege of Dvinsk, or rather about the attacks on its outlying fortifications: "The German army could not make use of its heavy artillery, for it proved quite useless, owing to the extreme narrowness of the Russian trenches.
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