BATTLE IN POLAND.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IX, Issue 745, 13 February 1915, Page 5

BATTLE IN POLAND.

DASH FOR WARSAW. FEARFUL GERMAN LOSSES. Petrograd, Wednesday. Throwing strategy to the winds, General von Hindenberg's massed attacks on the Bzura resulted in appalling carnage. In the first German onset Irom Skierniewice the enemy swarmed against the Russian trenches along the railway. Whole companies were annihila + ed in the dash through the open. For aix hours hand-to-hand fighting continued at Grabina in a heavy snowstorm. Whole battalions frequently charged one another simultaneously. The Russians encountered a new German ruse, numbers of the enemy feigning death and then firing at the backs of the Russians.

Huge masses of dead lay between the trenches. First the Germans charged, and then the Siberians drove them back. Each charge added hundreds of victims to the heap of dead. The scenes at the wayside station of Bardnary were terrible. The opposing forces used fragments of railway metal shattered by a Russian mine, and clubbed each other fiercely. The enemy were finally driven back in disorder. The second phase of the battle was at Gumine, six miles to the north. Both sides had reached a condition of stalemate when the Germans, utilising railways, motor-lorries, and vehicles of all kinds, rushed up an army corps, which was hurled against the Russian trenches. Half the assailants were shattered by the terrible Russian fire. Nevertheless there came regiment after regiment, shouting "On to Warsaw!" Some got within 50yds, but afterwards none got beyond lOOyde. At one point the Germans advanced 20 deep. Only 100 of the battalion survived. These were blown to pieces later by a Russain mine. It is estimated that 11,000 were killed at Gumina in two days.