Attack of the Dead Men 1915: The Great War's Supernaturally Horrific Battle and History's First Weapon of Mass Destruction

 Built by the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II during the 1880’s Osowiec Fortress, located in modern day northeastern Poland, was designed with its large caliber artillery and concrete steel-reinforced bunkers to repel even the most determined German assault on northern Russia in the direction of the Czar’s capital city of St. Petersburg.

In the years 1914 and 1915 during the First World War Osowiec Fortress was the scene of near constant bloodshed as the highly trained and technologically advanced German forces of Kaiser Wilhelm II repeatedly attempted to storm the fortress, overwhelm the numerically superior Russian garrison and drive towards St. Petersburg.  In fact, from the start of World War One in August of 1914, until German forces finally overran the fortress one year later in August of 1915, no fewer than four major battles encompassing six total months of daily hand to hand combat took place in and around the fortifications of Osowiec Fortress.

Osowiec Fortress today in northern Poland

However, no battle in or near Osowiec Fortress, and perhaps no battle in the history of warfare itself, was more terrifying, more ghastly and more nightmarish than the one that occurred there on August 6, 1915--The Attack of the Dead Men.

On August 6, 1915 when attacking Osowiec Fortress, German forces decided to deploy World War One’s most terrifying new weapon--poison gas--specifically, chlorine and bromine gas.  Germany, capitalizing on its vast scientific resources and its unparalleled development in the pharmaceutical industry at the start of the 20th century became the first nation in history to deploy chemical weapons in combat in April of 1915 when they used them against the British at the Battle of Loos on the Western Front.  But within weeks of the appearance of poison gas in the trenches of World War One, chemical weapons were being used by and against everyone on all sides of the battleline, though until the end of the war it was Germany who deployed chemical weapons with the greatest, most frequent and most ghastly effectiveness.

Russian troops in front of Osowiec Fortress 1914

Gas masks, from the most primitive wet cloths worn over the nose and mouth to advanced respirator systems not unlike those still in use today by most of the world’s armies were quickly developed during the war to mitigate the effectiveness of chemical warfare, but the designers and developers of the gas seemed to always remain one step ahead of any defensive measures.  Chemical warfare remained one of the most nightmarish aspects of the battlefields of World War One, and for decades after the war, veterans would wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with the shout of, “Gas! Put on your masks!”  echoing in their heads.  Chlorine, Phosgene, Bromine and mustard gasses left hundreds of thousands of soldiers permanently blind, disfigured and shell-shocked even decades after the end of the Great War in November of 1918.

Chlorine gas was denser than air and designed to be inhaled by the enemy and choke and disorient them; to make them suffocate themselves from within and thereby make them completely worthless when it came to resisting an enemy 

Bromine gas was a reddish sulfurous miasmic mist that was designed to burn and irritate the skin on contact and drive its victim insane with pain and a burning sensation.  During the attack on Osowiec Fortress on August 6, 1915 German forces, after checking that the wind was blowing towards their enemies and not back in their own faces, donned their gas masks and  bombarded the Russian troops arrayed against them with artillery shells filled with both of these horrific chemical compounds.

German troops and horse with gas mask 1916

Unlike the other allied armies on the Western Front, specifically the British, French and later on in the war the American armies, and the German army which opposed it, the Russian army was the least technologically advanced, and the most under-funded army in the entire war--the Czar and the members of the Oligarchic Romanov Dynasty cut corners with the army wherever they could, including in weaponry and food for their soldiers and instead the Romanovs sought to win the war solely with Russia’s most formidable natural resource--manpower.  But, all of this cost cutting and backwardness meant that the Russian troops under assault from the noxious clouds of gas at Osowiec Fortress had no chemical protection whatsoever. 

In the early morning hours of August 6, 1915, Russian soldiers were awakened by the sound of a German artillery barrage and then a dark green and thick cloud began to drift over their lines and into the Osowiec Fortress choking the men of the Russian 226th infantry regiment as they rushed to their defensive positions.

The chemical mixture of Chlorine and Bromine gas launched by the Germans turned into hydrochloric acid as it was inhaled by the Russian soldiers and ate away at their lungs causing them to suffocate on their own blood.

In a hasty attempt to save themselves from the suffocating gas, the Russian troops defending the trenches in front of Osowiec wrapped bandages soaked in their own urine around their faces, covering their noses and mouths in a desperate attempt to keep from inhaling the noxious and deadly gas.  Seven thousand German soldiers, wearing the most advanced gas masks then available, marched across a muddy no man’s land littered with corpses to attack Osowiec Fortress.  After the effective deployment of their chemical weapons the attacking Germans expected to meet little resistance.  They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Not only did the surviving Russian soldiers under the command of a Lieutenant Korlinsky defend themselves--they counterattacked!  The Russians, with their heads wrapped in bandages like mummies, coughing up blood, and tearing at their own flesh to escape the pain of the burning chemicals charged at the advancing Germans before the walls of Osowiec fortress.  

The sight of Russian soldiers draped in blood-soaked rags, stumbling towards them and haphazardly firing their weapons in all directions must have given them the appearance of an attacking army of zombies, hence the name history has given to the Battle of Osowiec Fortress “The Attack of the Dead Men”.  And for a time this attack caused panic in the German lines and halted their advance.

Allied machine gunners with gas masks 

However, eventually the gas proved too overwhelming and the courage of the Russian soldiers, the so-called “walking dead men” was no match in the end for the horrors of modern chemical warfare.  Within days of the famous Attack of the Dead Men Germany would launch its assault with renewed vigor and eventually gain control of Osowiec Fortress for good.

In the end, the Attack of the Dead Men was a testament to both the indomitable courage of soldiers faced with a desperate situation and also to the horrors of chemical warfare employed by all sides during the First World War.

During the Great War chemical weapons caused over 100,000 deaths on the battlefield but countless millions were permanently maimed both physically and psychologically by the horrors of poison gas.  A British soldier who witnessed first hand the use of chemical weapons during the war wrote years later, “I watched figures running wildly….greenish gray clouds swept down upon them blasting everything they touched and shriveling up the vegetation.  Then they staggered into our midst…soldiers blinded, coughing, chests heaving, faces an ugly purple color, lips speechless with agony,” quoted from “Chemical Warfare and Medical Response During World War I” published by the American Journal of Public Health by Dr. Gerald J. Fitzgerald of NYU.  (2008)

Although poison gas killed relatively few combatants during the First World War, the psychological horror that it caused among soldiers and civilians  as history’s first weapon of mass destruction was unspeakable and almost incomprehensible to us today.

British soldiers blinded by poison gas

Over one-hundred years later “The Attack of the Dead Men” by the Russian army in 1915 has been turned into a video game, a song with a music video and countless pieces of artwork but for those who lived through it, so long ago on both the eastern and western fronts of World War One, the horrors of poison gas were all too real.

The phenomenon of “gas fright” emotionally scarred millions who served in the war for the rest of their lives and left an entire generation of young men shells of their former selves years and decades after the guns of World War One had long since fallen silent.