"The Attack of the Dead," as the counterattack of the 13th Company of the 226th Zemlyansky Regiment is called, occurred on July 24, 1915, during the repulsion of a German gas attack. This episode is linked to the defense of the Osvyets Fortress on the Eastern Front of World War I.

After the 13th and 8th Companies lost up to half of their personnel due to poisoning, they deployed on both sides of the railway and began an advance. The 13th Company, encountering units of the 18th Landwehr Regiment, charged with a cry of "hurrah" into a bayonet attack. According to a witness, this "attack of the dead" so stunned the Germans that they refused to fight and began to retreat. Many of them perished on the barbed wire obstacles before the second line of trenches under the fire of fortress artillery. When the German lines approached the trenches, the counterattacking Russian infantry surged from the thick chlorine fog. The sight was horrifying: the soldiers charged with their faces wrapped in rags, coughing violently and literally spitting out pieces of their lungs onto their bloodied tunics. These were the remnants of the 13th Company of the 226th Zemlyansky Infantry Regiment, just over 60 men. Their attack instilled such terror in the enemy that the German soldiers, refusing to engage, fled backward, trampling each other and getting caught in their own barbed wire. This battle went down in history as the "attack of the dead."