Kaunas, August 1915 On the Eastern Front, on August 17, 1915, following a bombing involving 1,360 pieces of artillery, which included the use of 406 millimeter naval cannons, and after firing 853,000 projectiles, German forces captured the fortified city of Kaunas. The Russian commander of the fortress, General Grigoriev (who had not managed to fly the only railway tunnel between Ostende and Petrograde, had left intact the bridge over the Niemen River, which was said to have never abandoned his underground shelter, except at night, and abandoned the fortress before its fall, without telling its Chief of Staff) was subjected to a war council and sentenced to eight years of forced labor. At Kaunas military depots, the Germans captured several million cans of corned beef, the main Russian supply on the front line, with which they could feed their own troops. Further south, Austrian Brotherhood forces approached the Brest-Litovsk fortress, forcing Russian forces to retreat to the Bug ...