ion. 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. After cutting down four lines of
barbed-wire obstacles that had been erected by the Germans, they
stormed and occupied two small hills west and south of this village.
This gain was maintained in the face of strongly concentrated
artillery and rifle fire, and repeated German counterattacks, which
later proved very sanguinary to the German troops. German artillery
again directed violent fire against the Russian positions between Lake
Narotch and Lake Miadziol and near Smorgon. A German attack made
northwest of the latter village broke down under Russian gunfire.

At this point the Germans resumed their offensive at daybreak on April
15, 1916, after strong artillery preparation accompanied by the use of
asphyxiating gas. Concentrated fire from the Russian artillery,
however, prohibited any noticeable advance. During the following day,
April 16, 1916, both sides restricted themselves more or less to
artillery bombardments, which became especially violent on the Dvina
line, around the Uxkull bridgehead, and in the neighborhood of the
Russian positions south of the village of Garbunovka, as well as
between Lake Narotch and Lake Miadziol.

Two days later, on April 18, 1916, German detachments temporarily
regained some of the ground lost about a week before south of
Garbunovka. Again on that day the guns on both sides roared along the
entire northern sector of the eastern front. On the 19th the
bombardment became especially intense at the bridgehead at Uxkull and
south of lake.

The artillery attack against the former was maintained throughout the
following two days. German scouting parties which crossed the river
Shara, north of the Oginski Canal, on April 22, 1916, were surrounded
in the woods adjoining and practically annihilated. On the same day a
German squadron of ten aeroplanes bombarded the Russian hangars on the
island of Oesel, a small island in the Baltic across the entrance to
the Gulf of Riga.

As if both sides had agreed to observe the Easter holidays, a lull set
in during the next four or five days. Only occasional unimportant
local attacks and artillery duels were reported. Aeroplanes were the
only branch of the two armies which showed