Ever since barbed wire had appeared in the last World War, it had become a powerful weapon for the defenders. Attackers had no choice but to stop if they wanted to cross it. And that gave the defenders' concentrated firepower its chance to shine. They could use that opportunity to inflict enormous casualties on the enemy.
The Russian Army now faced exactly this problem. To cut through the barbed wire laid by the Polish Army, they had already suffered considerable losses. Beneath the wire, corpses had piled up in a thick layer.
Boom! A shell landed and blew apart a wooden stake supporting the barbed wire. The crowded Russian soldiers behind it seized the chance to rush through.
"Die, you damned Poles!" a Russian soldier roared.
But the machine-gun bullets flying toward them cut down more than half of those Russian soldiers. The rest could only throw themselves to the ground, not daring to advance any farther. Bullets whizzed over their heads, frightening many of them to the point of nearly wetting themselves. Of course, the ground beneath the thick snow was bitterly cold, and some Russian soldiers were even freezing stiff.
In night battles, many of the German military's technical weapons could not be brought into play, such as large-caliber heavy artillery and Air Force fighter planes. Otherwise, it would have been utterly impossible for the Russian Army to break through the first line of positions defended by the Polish Army and the White Army. Thus, when the Russian Army poured in vast numbers of troops regardless of losses, the defenders' powerful firepower did indeed inflict tremendous casualties on them. Yet some sections of the line were still inevitably breached by the Russian Army.
Russian soldiers clutching rifles with fixed bayonets jumped into the Polish trenches. But the bayonets