Battle of Osowiec Fortress/ Attack of the Dead Men

26 years before Operation Barbarossa, Germany got their rears handed to them at Osowiec Fortress by the Russian defenders they were killing. The fortress had been attacked two times prior to this attack but it is this attack that is the most famous attack in the fortress' history. At 4AM on 6 August 1915 (a whole 30 years before the bombing of Hiroshima), German troops gassed almost three whole companies of Russian defenders in an attempt to gas them out as the fort had been a thorn in the side of the Germans since the declaration of war. As the Germans advanced across the fields, they expected the fortress to be empty and victory would be easy. However, when they got there half dead (almost zombie life), chemical burned Russian troops who were also covered in bloody bandages as impromptu gas masks returned rifle and light artillery at the Germans who ran like cowards. "They're already dead, give it twenty minutes and go back to the place” their commanders informed them but the frightened German soldiers remarked “it is not men protecting that place but the devil!” Osowiec Fortress never fell as fresh defenders took the place of the victims' places when the Germans returned months later. Today, Osowiec Fortress is in Poland and sections of it have been used by the Polish army to this day but they have opened parts of it for tourists.