ly understood from the
following description which is taken from the report of a special
correspondent of a south German newspaper who had an opportunity to
inspect these positions soon after they had been wrested from the
Russians:

"In fortifying this position the Russians had indeed created a
masterwork of modern field fortification. Deep, broad trenches had
been fitted so closely to the landscape that in most instances they
could be recognized as such only at very close distances. Almost all
these trenches had been covered with a fivefold layer of tree trunks,
on top of which there was to be found another layer of earth and over
that again a solid layer of sod. The wooden pillars which supported
this covering had in many places been fastened by means of wooden
plugs into strong tree trunks, which in turn had been deeply imbedded
in the bottom of the trench. Everywhere there were to be found
openings for one and sometimes even two or three sharpshooters or for
machine guns. Powerful shelters had been erected as a protection
against shrapnel. Everywhere the trenches had been located in such a
manner that one would outflank the other. In all the trenches there
were to be found shelters, many of which were spacious enough to allow
a whole company to retreat to them, and to these the Russians withdrew
whenever the German artillery fire was directed against the trenches.
These shelters were deep down below the ground; their entrances were
comparatively small and protected with manifold layers of railroad
rails. In front of these positions had been erected strong successive
lines of entanglements which consisted partly of barbed wire and
partly of strong abatis, formed of trees and their branches. In front
of one section of these trenches the Russians had cut down a piece of
woodland between 150 and 300 feet wide. They had then left the trees
on the ground wherever they happened to have fallen and covered the
entire space with a confusion of barbed-wire entanglements."

Another difficult problem which confronted both the Russians in their
retreat and the Germans in their advance was that of transportation,
especially in the region between the Vistula and the Bug Rivers. Not
only is the number of railroads in that territory very small, but
neither side had available a large enough number of railroad cars to
transport the large number of men and vast quantities of equipment
involved. This necessitated the creation of new m