Throughout the first winter of the war the Germans had also used ski detachments. Most of these were employed in the mountainous regions of the western front. But small troops had been sent to East Prussia and had proven themselves very valuable there. Again and again Russian troops, attempting operations on ground covered with two or three days' snowfall, had sunk to their waists and chests into the snow and had become easy prey to attacks made by German soldiers on skis. So the Germans early in the fall, when certain parts of south Germany and Austria, covered with high mountains, lend themselves admirably for ski practice, had sent time after time detachments of carefully selected infantry troops to these regions and had made ski experts out of them. Sledges too--large and small--had been provided in quantities, because they had proven their value as means of transporting men and supplies where all other means had failed absolutely.
With the approach of real winter all these comparatively new features of warfare were put to use. Of course the Germans were by no means the only ones to profit from past experience and from the modern advance of the sciences and mechanical industries. But from all reports it is clear that they outdid the Russians in inventiveness as well as in the thoroughness and extent of their preparations.
"Jack Frost" also definitely stopped regular fighting. With its arrival war at the eastern front deteriorated into more or less of a guerrilla war. Instead of attempts to break through the line by miles, both sides settled down to a bitter contest for choice pieces of ground here and there. An exchange of a bit of high ground for a nasty, damp trench in a bog was considered quite a victory. The capture of a small supply train by a small detachment that had managed to sneak through the line at some point unobserved or unoccupied, because it apparently was impossible for occupation on account of the nature of the ground, was as much talked about as only a victory in a real engagement would have been two or three months ago. In a way, both the Russian and German and Austro-Hungarian armies had a much more severe time of it on the east front than the German and Franco-English forces had at the west front. First of all, the latter was located in much more civilized regions, cleaner, therefore, and healthier. Then, too, the nature of the ground in the west was less hard on the fighters, higher in most places, and, therefore, drier. Furthermore, the western line was practically an unbroken line from the English Channel down to the Swiss border. In the east, however, marshes, lakes, and rivers made an unbroken line impossible. All along the front there were innumerable gaps. Of course many of these were gaps because no human being could find a foothold on them, and, therefore, needed no watching. Others, however, while impossible for occupation, were not equally impossible for passage, provided those that attempted to pass were willing to take great risks. And there was no lack of such on either side. So Russians, Germans, and Austro-Hungarians had to be continuously on the jump to prevent such raids of their lines which, though they might have been very small in the beginning, might have had very serious consequences. These conditions, therefore, made war on the east front for everybody concerned truly a war of attrition, equally racking for nerves and bodies.