In the Russian Ranks Part 12

The first company down, that which had forced it forward was compelled to take its place, and meet a similar tragical end. At least three companies of one battalion were destroyed one after another in this way: and I think the fourth company was very nearly annihilated; but I had my own affairs to look after just at that moment, and did not see the finish of that particular fight. The Germans were successful for a few minutes; and hurried men so fast into the gap they had made that we of the second line had to rush forward in parties without waiting for orders; and we saved the day by a hair's-breadth only.

I had kept close to Lieutenant Sawmine from the moment of our leaving Lovicz. As we closed with the enemy one of them forced the officer down, and was only prevented from bayoneting him by his clinging to the man's rifle. I sprang forward to save him, and was at once knocked down by a big German. I saw the point of the bayonet poised over me as he kept me down with his foot: my teeth closed tightly to meet the impending death: then suddenly I was free of that iron foot, and for the fifth time during this war covered with blood and brains which were not my own. One of the Russian soldiers who had followed us very closely had blown out the fellow's brains in the very nick of time. There really must be a little cherub who sits up aloft!

Sawmine was badly bruised, but not dangerously hurt; and together we pressed forward with seven or eight of our most devoted soldiers. There are always some men in a company who have more heart in their work than the others; and these are generally found close to their officers at critical moments: indeed, these are the men who do most of the hand-to-hand fighting, and to whom the victory is really due. One of the heroic fellows who formed our little band slew at least twenty of the enemy, I know; and very possibly double that number. I am sorry that I cannot record the name of this brave man, an honour to his country; nor that of others not his inferiors in bravery and self-sacrifice. Alas!

none of them answered the roll-call when the three days desperate fighting was over. The bravest and the best--this is the treasure that war costs a country.

An English officer I am not going to name--I have the greatest respect for his name and his memory--wrote that two armed bodies of hostile men cannot remain on the same ground longer than sixty seconds at most. He made a mistake. Russians and Germans, on the occasion I am recording, fought like bulldogs for two solid hours without a break: and it was all bayonet work, scarcely a shot being fired. Then the Germans broke and fled, as I had seen them fly on previous defeats. There was no equivocation about it: they broke and ran, "bellowing like bull-calves."

Every nation, I suppose, has its peculiarities. I do not depreciate the Germans. They can fight, and fight bravely--but not with the generous bravery that most soldiers exercise one to another. They are cruel in their desperation, vicious in the moment of victory; and they yell for mercy in the hour of their defeat; the only soldiers I have known to exercise this form of--I will not call it cowardice--Hudibrastic caution.

In this battle the wonderful iron shields reappeared; and about 700 of them were taken by the Russians, and used to form a breastwork; which the next day was knocked to pieces by the German artillery.

The enemy was followed half-way to their own lines, and many of them killed as they ran. Unfortunately no Cossacks were at hand, as there was here a fine opening for their peculiar form of ability, which I have no doubt they would have exerted to the utmost.

The number of killed in proportion to wounded was very great: I should think quite one in every three, which is more than double the normal number, even when many casualties are caused by artillery fire; but bayonet work is the most deadly form of military execution.

The prisoners taken are not worth mentioning: the total of German casualties was about 8,000 on a front that did not exceed two versts (2,333 yards English measurement). They lay thickest in and about the trenches. In the bottom of the advanced trenches there was a foot depth of blood which had drained from the corpses. The holes dug at measured intervals for the convenience of the troops (latrines) were full of it; and the men occupying the position were compelled to stand in it half-leg deep for several days until an opportunity came to clean the trenches, when the congealed horror was removed in the camp tumbrels, and buried by the ton in holes dug for the purpose. In one part of the trench I helped to remove a heap of sixty-nine corpses, lying eleven deep in the middle. No one of them had a breath of life left, though some were not mortally wounded. They had been smothered under the weight of their dead comrades, or trampled to death. Outside the trenches there lay heaps of dead bodies, six or seven deep, and innumerable scattered dead and wounded.

All the fighting that day was over before 2 p.m., and our Red Cross men, and hundreds of volunteers, went out to succour the wounded. They were immediately fired on by the German artillery and about twenty of them killed or injured. A flag of truce was then sent out to inform the enemy our sole object was to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded; and that the German injured were receiving the same attention as our own men. The flag was received at a farm used as an outpost by the Germans; and the commander, a big, swarthy-faced man, declared he did not care a curse what our intentions were, he would fire on anybody he saw walking about the field of battle. I inquired the name of this officer and was told it, and that he was a chief Staff Officer to Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who, it was declared, had personally directed the day's fighting.

I believe a protest was lodged with this military churl, but, of course, nothing could be done under his threat. After nightfall volunteers again went out, and nearly a thousand wounded were brought in to the surgeons, quite two-thirds of them being Germans. The total Russian losses were, I should think, about 6,000 men.

While accompanying the flag of truce I used my eyes. About thirty officers were receiving first-aid, or undergoing what seemed to be preliminary operations, in the farm-house and yard; and I heard very pitiful groans in some barns and outhouses, while down the road a string of twenty Red Cross waggons was coming up. I concluded therefore that the enemy had carried back a number of his wounded when he retreated.

There were pools of blood everywhere on the road: for the snow had been trampled down so hard that it could not soak away; and it speedily coagulated into great clots. Many horrible mementoes of the fight lay about. Seeing what I thought was a good sound boot lying on the road, I picked it up. There was a foot in it. I could fill pages with such little stories. There were some collections lying about suggestive of the Germans turning out their dead comrades' pockets. Several letters, the photograph of a woman nursing a baby, and an elder child leaning against her knee; a lock of fair hair--a little girl's, I thought--and less pathetic objects: a pack of cards, a broken pipe, a bent spoon, and some disgusting pictures, suggested many men of many minds--some of them none too clean.

The night of the 4th February was very quiet until about four o'clock a.m., when the steady rush of thousands of feet alarmed all who were awake. The Germans were attempting a surprise. A few straggling shots from the sentries along our front, accompanied by shouts of warning; a blaze of rifle fire; the heavy booming of artillery, and, in one minute from the alarm being given, the h.e.l.l of battle was again in full fury.

Our engineers threw search-lights over the trenches and in front of them, so that we could see what we were doing. The effect was very weird, and heightened the horror of the scene; but it helped the enemy as much as it did us.

The Germans used hand-grenades, or trench bombs, as I understand they call them on the Eastern front of the war, but we were not provided with these troublesome and destructive little weapons. However, there was again much bayonet fighting, a species of combat which the Germans did not relish, and in which they always got the worst of it. The Russians had the advantage in the length of their bayonets--a trifle, but trifles are not trifles in close fighting. Moreover, our men have a genius for bayonet-fighting, and keep these weapons always ready for use: that is, they are never unfixed, as I have previously explained, except to be cleaned, and not always for that purpose. The Russian soldier shoots with his bayonet fixed, which is not conducive to first-cla.s.s marksmanship; but then the German also is not a good rifle-shot. Still, I wish I could induce the Russians to adopt the practice of unfixing bayonets when shooting at long ranges.

This night fight was short and sharp. It cost the Germans another 2,000 men, and a good licking; and our men about half that number of casualties, and the increased confidence engendered of another victory.

The Germans had no sooner run back to their own lines than their artillery sought to inflict on us the punishment which their infantry could not do. They opened a tremendous cannonade; it being calculated that 500 guns were playing on our trenches for nearly six hours. Sh.e.l.ls were exploding twenty or thirty at a time, and sometimes quite in showers. The effect was terrific. The air was full of smoke, and clouds of dirt and mud from the trenches blown to pieces; but the loss of life was not great. The section of trench which the enemy had made their objective did not, as I have said, exceed a breadth of two versts; and on this narrow front they concentrated all their efforts and all their fire, though some of the last-named came from flanking batteries situated a long way off. Each gun fired, on an average, a shot a minute: consequently a sh.e.l.l fell on every seven linear yards of our position sixty times an hour. Of course some fell short, others went over the trenches, and some burst high in the air; but still the fact remains that every minute a sh.e.l.l came in a section of our lines which was less than seven yards wide. During the six hours that the bombardment lasted the scene was like that of an inferno: and the noise so great that the men were glad to stop up their ears with any substance they could find.

Many pulled gra.s.s from beneath the snow and used it for this purpose.

The wire entanglement was pretty well blown to pieces, curled up and rolled into heaps which were knocked right over the trenches, and sometimes into them, where it entangled our own men, and gave them much trouble. The number of men killed by this apparently terrible bombardment was fifty, and twice that number wounded.

An hour before dawn the Germans attempted an a.s.sault, rushing towards us in great strength, and in their usual close formation; but they were stopped by our artillery fire, and turned before they reached the edge of the first trench, and fled in a panic. I saw our guns cutting great lanes in the wavering ma.s.ses; but they were soon out of sight, and the dimness of the light probably saved them from more considerable losses.

We had reasons for thinking that the commanders of this host were unable to get their men to make a second a.s.sault, and were obliged to send to another part of their line for fresh troops. There was some commotion in their ranks; and afterwards we could hear their bands playing merry tunes, probably to keep up the spirits of the men.

It was after noon when they made their second advance; and our troops finding they could not stop them with a withering fire, sprang from their trenches, and met them with the bayonet. The fight was a short one. At least ten thousand of the Germans were destroyed, and a thousand prisoners were taken. We followed them right up to their lines; and for a short time some portions of their positions were in our hands: but they brought such a devastating artillery fire to bear on us that our gains could not be maintained, and we had to retire; but we did so slowly and stubbornly and with parade-like precision, the men firing in alternate skirmishing lines, and completely stopping an attempted pursuit. The Germans made two more a.s.saults in the course of the day, but could not drive either of them home; nor had they the pluck to stand up to another bayonet fight. Their losses were appalling, and greatly in excess of those of the two previous days: and certainly exceeded 20,000 men, besides nearly 3,000 unwounded prisoners. It was reported at the time that no fewer than thirteen of their General Officers were killed or badly injured.

The total losses of the Russians on this day alone was 7,000 men: 8,000 of the enemy's wounded, and all our own, were brought in after nightfall, and many more were removed by the Germans; for this day they admitted, and respected, a flag of truce. But the dead on both sides, except in the case of officers, and a few others, were left to rot where they fell. Some regiments buried their own dead, but only under the snow; for the ground was frozen so hard, that it was most difficult to dig graves. A number of bodies were burnt in pine-wood fires; but an officer of high rank was so disgusted with the ghastly sight, that he gave orders that no more were to be disposed of in this way; yet it would have been better than leaving them to be mutilated and partly devoured by the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. Amongst these dreadful creatures were large numbers of those savage and semi-wild dogs which infest all the Polish villages, and flocks of crows and ravens; also wolves and wild swine. All these animals must have scented the carrion from a great distance: and n.o.body could tell precisely where they came from. The firing frightened them away for a time; but an hour's quietude would always be followed by their reappearance. In the early grey dawn, and in the twilight of evening, I have seen the birds of prey pulling out the eyes of the slain men, or contending for the entrails which the dogs had torn from the rotting bodies. It is hardly credible that such horrid scenes should be witnessed on a modern battlefield; but my own eyes were witnesses to it; and I shot several wolves and many dogs that were engaged in such dreadful repasts. All these animals became so used to the noises of battle, even to the thunderous discharges of artillery, that they never retired very far, though how they contrived to hide themselves is a puzzle. I never saw more than a few odd ones in the woods and forests we pa.s.sed through; but the dogs harboured in the ruined villages where once they had been owned by masters of some sort.

I have painted these scenes very faintly, for fear of exciting too much horror and disgust; but how people professing to believe in a righteous and sin-punishing G.o.d can tolerate the wickedness of war is astounding to a thinking man. A G.o.d-fearing (!) ruler goes on his knees, prays to G.o.d for the blessings of peace, and the honest prosperity of his people; then goes forth and issues an edict which causes the marring of G.o.d's image in hundreds of thousands! Perhaps he doesn't really believe that man is made in the image of G.o.d. I hope he does not. Better be an infidel than a wholesale murderer of the similitude of the Lord. I dwell not on the misery of widows and orphans and aged parents.

Walking over the field one evening I came upon a raven perched upon the face of what had once been a man. It had picked his eyes from their sockets, and torn away his lips, and portions of the flesh of his face, and turned leisurely as I approached, but did not fly away until I was quite close to it. Then it flapped off slowly, with a sullen croak.

CHAPTER XVIII

CHIEFLY GOSSIP

The 5th February, 1915, closed with the heavy booming of siege artillery used as field-pieces. What the artillery of the future will be we may foresee from the experiences of the present war. It will be limited in the size of the guns only by the endurance of the pieces, and the power of man to move them. The howitzers used to throw the "Jack Johnsons" are said to be pieces of 23-1/2-inch calibre: if they are so it is not likely that they can throw more than fifty or sixty sh.e.l.ls before it is necessary to reline them. Huge guns are very speedily worn out, and are not, therefore, of much value except for particular purposes--chiefly the smashing of forts in siege operations. But 6-inch, and even 8-inch, guns have been freely used in this campaign; and before such ordnance, driven by mechanical means, no field-guns can stand, no field-batteries exist. It is probable, therefore, that this is the last great war in which horsed batteries will take a part. It will be one of the "lessons of the war" that only heavy guns are of much use on the field of battle.

I am digressing a little. At first we thought the night cannonade of the 5th was a prelude to another attack; but about ten o'clock at night it ceased; and save for the groans and cries of the wounded the night was almost quiet. Our Red Cross men were out all night; and the German men until a couple of hours before daybreak. We removed all our wounded that we could find: the enemy left their worst cases to die on the field. The Russians saved all they could; but strict orders were given to our men not to approach near the German lines.

I should note, perhaps, that while in the West the Allies' and the German trenches are said to often be within a few yards of each other, this was seldom the case in the East. There was generally a considerable s.p.a.ce between the two lines: here near Skyermevice it amounted to 3,000 yards; but the Germans had advanced trenches in which they ma.s.sed their men when about to make an a.s.sault. Evidently trench warfare is not so highly developed or so much resorted to in the East as it appears to be in the West. The vast numbers of the Russians, and the circ.u.mstance that the scene of actual fighting is constantly shifting over a very long front, are the probable causes of this. Another cause was the extreme hardness of the earth, which made it impossible to dig fresh trenches during the winter-time.

It has been said that there is no such word as "impossible" in the military vocabulary; but the forces of Nature are frequently not to be overcome, even by military pluck and perseverance. Not even a soldier can dig holes in solid steel; and the ground in Poland was hardly less solid and difficult to work: hence trenches were not made after the early days of December, nor the dead buried as a rule.

Field-works were made in various ways. Abattis, covered with barbed wire, were very common; and batteries formed of sand-bags; but neither were very successful. High explosive sh.e.l.ls dashed the trees of the abattis to atoms, and drove the fragments back on the defenders, causing many casualties; and something similar occurred in the case of the sand-bags, which were torn to pieces, and dashed right and left, blinding many men. So during the winter, the rule was to stick to the old trenches; or occupy those naturally formed by hollows of the ground, or the deep banks of water-courses, the streams of which were usually firmly frozen. As wet could not soak away through the frozen ground the condition at the bottoms of those trenches which had been occupied for any length of time was filthy in the extreme. Dirty water, blood and refuse, was being continually added to the loathsomeness already existing, and this, and the constant trampling of the men, prevented the freezing of the ma.s.s; and I consider it simply wonderful that there was no serious outbreak of sickness amongst us. But Russian doctors and Russian officers are becoming fully conscious of the value of sanitation amongst troops; and the soldiers were kept as clean and well looked after as circ.u.mstances would permit. Moreover, the huge numbers of men admitted of frequent changes of those serving in the trenches; and they were never in these miserable burrows for any great length of time.

As the fighting seemed to be over for a time, I went to the rear with the intention of obtaining some rest. The tiring nature of the work in which we had been engaged may be inferred from the circ.u.mstance that in rear of the trenches I found an entire regiment bivouacked, lying on the snow fast asleep to a man, with their knapsacks for pillows. As they were huddled close together they probably enjoyed an amount of mutual warmth, though the day was a bitterly cold one.

I sought more comfortable quarters, and found them in an old broken-down waggon and a handful of straw. Here I slept as only the utterly weary can sleep, and did not awake until twenty-one hours had pa.s.sed away.

When I did open my eyes I found myself wedged in between three soldiers who had not seen letting me enjoy such splendid accommodation all to myself.

I got up, shook myself together, and went in search of the battalion and breakfast. Sawmine, not knowing what had become of me, had thought I must be killed. He was rather downhearted: for the loss of the best men and officers had been enormous; the survivors, however, were generally cheering themselves with the hope that the Czar would shortly pay us a visit, and distribute rewards to those who thought they had earned them.

He was known to be journeying along the front; and it was confidently expected that he would appear amongst us within the s.p.a.ce of a few days.

The scenes behind the trenches were simply awful. Transport was much congested, and the majority of the wounded were still unremoved to hospital. The field-tents were crowded to excess, the surgeons hardly able to move about, and much impeded in their operations. Outside one tent a great heap of arms and legs which had been amputated lay on the ground; and I saw several men carried away who had died under the operator's knife. Many of the injured men lay on straw in the open air; others were stretched on the bare ground. These were considered to be the milder cases, the most badly injured being allotted the first attention and the best accommodation. But many of these mild cases were bad enough to shock anybody with a tender heart; and I particularly noted the great number of men who were suffering from injuries to the head and eyes. Several had both eyes shot out, and scores had lost one.

These had received temporary dressing; but were mostly in great pain. Of course I did what I could for them; but that was not much, as I was without materials and instruments. Fortunately, in one of the tents there was a doctor whom I knew by sight. I made motions to indicate what I required, and he did not raise any objection to my taking a quant.i.ty of bandages and other things. With the aid of these I succeeded in making some of the waiting men more comfortable, being greatly a.s.sisted by two countrywomen who were also helping these unfortunate men.

It evidently puzzled these people that a foreigner, who could not speak their language, should be amongst them; but they soon decided that I was an Englishman; I had acquired Russian enough to understand that; and they were all very grateful, those that did not require attention not the least so: for they all realized that what was done was done for their beloved Russia--a holy land in the opinion of every true Muscovite.

Some days elapsed before all the wounded could be removed, and sent back to base hospitals. All, Russians and Germans, received precisely similar treatment, and were seen to as they came to hand, without any preference, national or otherwise.

One of the surprising events of this time was that several Russian aeroplanes appeared over our lines, and troubled the minds (though, I am afraid, not the bodies) of the enemy a good deal. They were useful for two reasons, if for no other--they distracted the Germans, and caused them a great waste of ammunition. I am sure tens of thousands of rifle-cartridges were fired at them, and hundreds of rounds of big-gun sh.e.l.ls. They all missed the pigeon, and did not even hit the crow! It is fair to add that I do not think that our dropped bombs did much hurt. It is true we heard a good deal about wrecked troop-trains, blown-up tumbrels, and half-annihilated battalions; but all these incidents occurred at such great distances from our trenches that I was unable to verify them.

For some days little occurred near our position, except a daily bombardment at long range, mostly by the heavier guns on both sides.

What the object was I cannot tell: it seemed to me to be a mere waste of big sh.e.l.ls. If any advantage was derived from it, it was certainly on the side of Russia, whose artillerymen made much the best practice. The shooting was slow and the aim deliberate; but we lost only two men: while a heavy explosion in the German lines seemed to show that we had blown up one of their magazines. I watched their position long and carefully through a good gla.s.s, but saw nothing except puffs of smoke and an occasional flash of fire.

I was out several nights with reconnoitring parties; but the enemy was well on the alert, and we gained no information; while a well-directed volley from some hidden jagers knocked half a dozen of our men off the roster. On the night of the 8th we captured a miserable old Polish hag, busily engaged in robbing the dead who lay unburied. She had an ap.r.o.n full of watches, rings and money, and was, I believe, shot in the morning. I cannot say she did not deserve her fate; but I thought at the time that not much good could come of terminating the existence of such a wretched old creature. She could say, in her defence, that the Germans had robbed her and destroyed her home, and perhaps murdered her relatives.

The 10th was an exciting day for us. We received certain information that a large force of the enemy was nearly surrounded by our troops; and we were ordered to get ready to march immediately to an unknown destination: but everybody was satisfied that it was intended that we should take a part in the encircling operation; and it seemed like it: for we marched off at two o'clock in the afternoon, a very unusual hour in which to commence such a movement.

The force thus detailed was about 40,000 infantry and 150 guns; and there was probably cavalry and more artillery on our right flank: but of this I know nothing with certainty.

The enemy on our front was so quiet that in all probability he had detached a strong force in aid of the threatened troops, and possibly had vacated his position.

In my opinion, however, there were indications that the Russian Commander was being out-generalled, or was rushing his troops into a precarious position.