At Gradow the Russians were utterly outnumbered. To this extent the
German concentration of forces was successful, but no further. They
succeeded in reducing the Russians' tactics from a mere defense of the
trenches to delivering a counter-attack; but this was the limit of their
success.
I have talked with three Russian officers here who were wounded during
the counter-attack. Five machine guns were at work on them as they left
their trenches in a charge. One of the officers was shot through the
chest as he climbed the bank of the trench; the second got perhaps
twenty yards before being hit in the head; the third, however, led his
men home into the German trench. Of the Russians who set out only eighty
were alive and unhurt when they reached the German trench, but this
eighty took it with the bayonet, killing about five times their own
number of Germans.
At Gradow, on the morning of Jan. 2, the ground resembled the strewn
battlefield of Brzezny or the body-littered valleys between the woods
of Augustowo in October. As in those other tragic defeats where the
ruthless Generals sacrificed their soldiers like water, there were heaps
and ridges of gray-clad dead. Gradow is only one single point in the
line which the Germans assaulted, yet here alone they lost upward of
6,000 killed. The same night they attacked positions corresponding at
the villages of Guzow, Radziwillow, Msczonow, and Rawa.
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