It was unfortunate that heavy rains again began to fall, as they prevented so close a pursuit as would otherwise have harassed the enemy. The country west of Suvalki, naturally a marsh, was rendered a huge lake. The water was not deep enough to prevent the advance of cavalry and infantry; but guns could not be dragged through the mud, and without them it would have been unsafe to advance very far. Many of those captured from the Germans were lost owing to the state of the ground, but I do not think they were recovered by the enemy. They sank into the morass and so disappeared.
I was very glad when a halt was called and we were ordered to find what shelter we could, the regiment being far in advance of the main body. The Germans had sadly devastated the country. We passed over many miles of country in which scarcely so much as the shell of a house was left standing: all were charred and blackened; and men, women and children were found murdered. The bodies of two young boys under twelve years of age lay on the roof of a low outhouse. They had been bayoneted and thrown there, nobody could surmise why. Some bodies were burnt to cinders, and others had been torn and partly eaten by swine and dogs. The dogs, by-the-by, were numerous, and very fierce brutes.
In some spots, where the Germans had bivouacked, the heads and offal of pigs showed that they had shot some of these animals, and also killed ducks and fowls, for food, and cooked them at open-air fires made of the belongings of the peasantry. Chairs and tables were left outside, just in the positions in which they had evidently been used. A dish-cover was left on one table, and when it was raised it revealed two pairs of human hands severed at the wrists. The men to whom these hands had belonged, and a woman, were found shot in the farm-house. All were old people, as nearly all the murdered persons were, except some young women and children. Besides the two boys already mentioned, a younger child and a little girl of about fourteen years were seen lying on the ground. The cause of the death of the girl did not appear, and it was probably caused by fright. A woman clasping her baby had been shot. The bodies had, in many cases, been treated with disgusting irreverence. Even a hunchbacked man had been shot, and a poor old fellow with beard and hair as white as snow. One sturdy dame seemed to have attempted to fight for her life, for she held a hoe in her dead hands. Her body was riddled by bullets.
To escape the rain I climbed up the half-burnt rafters of a cottage to a room in which a portion of the floor and a corner of the roof were still in position—I cannot say intact. Here, in imminent danger of a fall, I slept the instant I stretched myself on the boards. Below were a score of exhausted soldiers, too utterly weary to care a rap for danger from falling walls: and long and soundly we all slept.
No food had been served out for two days, and when a commissariat waggon came up only about half the men obtained biscuits. I was thinking of cooking a pig's head left behind by the Germans when a soldier generously gave me half a biscuit. Others followed his example, and in this way I obtained a breakfast. The pigs which had escaped the Prussians had all run away, but later in the day one was found and killed, and about two pounds of its flesh found its way into my hands. We resumed our march at 11 a.m., the enemy being known to be not far off. During the afternoon we came up with one of their abandoned waggons. It was full of champagne and hock! I am glad there were no teetotallers about to witness the capture. What King Jamie meant by being "fu'" I do not presume to know; but I am quite sure some of us were "tight" before that waggon was done with, and I should like to see the teetotaller, of exalted or humble rank, who would resist the temptation of a good "swig" after forty-eight hours of such misery as we had just gone through.
Apparently the Germans observed this capture; for they fired two shells at us from a range of about three miles. One shot fell 200 yards from us, the other came a little nearer, but neither interrupted the interesting work in hand.
Notwithstanding the preconceived opinions of book strategists, long-range firing does not seem to be productive of very destructive results, even with heavy artillery. It was certainly not much resorted to in this campaign. Even rifle shooting seldom took place at a longer range than 1,000 yards; and much oftener at not more than half that distance; while firing at point-blank range was frequent. The bayonet did as much work as in any war that ever took place; in some fights half the casualties were caused by its use. Cavalry, too, faced infantry fire boldly and successfully. We were to have no more charges of masses of cavalry according to the theorists. But on at least half-a-dozen occasions bodies of over 4,000 horsemen made most telling charges. In one case at least 10,000 cavalry took part in a charge, riding over the Prussian infantry as they might have ridden over stubble. The Cossacks, like the Uhlans, have hooks attached to the butts of their lances; and with these they whipped officers from their horses, and men from the ground in the most extraordinary way, sometimes pulling them up into their own saddles and bringing them in prisoners. How they liked the humiliation of this treatment may be gathered from the remark of one officer made to me in English, "D——n it! I would rather have been killed"; but he joined in the general laugh at his accident.
Perhaps I have no right to record mere impressions and ideas; and I intend to avoid doing so generally; but there are some opinions and beliefs which had a general bearing on what I did, and especially on what I recorded; and I think I may be excused if I sometimes refer to these.
As a case in point, I was generally very ignorant of what was taking place in other areas of the war. German newspapers were pretty plentiful in all our camps; but very few French or British found their way into our hands. German accounts were not reliable in my opinion, but some of their statements could hardly be altogether untrue. The news of the loss by submarine torpedoes of the three battleships, Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, perturbed me greatly. The reports in German newspapers, combined with other rumours which reached us, made it clear enough that the British Navy had met with a great disaster, though I was compelled to rely on the translations of Russian comrades of these German reports.
The Russian cavalry made some attempts to penetrate East Prussia, and get at the trains which were conveying troops from Koenigsberg southwards; but none of these attempts were successful so far as I have heard. A few isolated patrols got a long way into Prussia, but, I think, in no case did they succeed in wrecking a train.
For a time I was out of action, though I tried to reach the scenes of fighting I heard was in progress. The East Prussian frontier is a very difficult country for military operations, especially those of an offensive description. The marsh lands are very extensive, and there are numerous lakes and ponds which greatly aid the defending force, while much hindering those engaged in the attack. Lakes and marshes enable an army on the defensive greatly to extend its front; which those engaged in the assault cannot do without at any rate incurring great risks. The Germans often threw up batteries between two lakes, or a lake and a marsh situated near each other. As these could be approached only on a narrow neck of land, they could be defended by a mere handful of men, while the attacking force was not only compelled to advance a strong party, but had, also, to keep others in hand to prevent being outflanked.
Something of this kind of fighting I saw; but much of it occurred further south, near the Vistula river, in a district where I was not engaged at the time it took place.
These marshes and lakes greatly assisted the Germans and probably saved them from the rout which they are supposed by some people to have sustained. I do not know of any instance where they were forced to evacuate such a defensive position as that I have described. In fact the marshes of East Prussia saved the country from a serious invasion, and certainly checked the Russian advance into the heart of the country. If heavy siege guns could have been brought up they might have effected something; but as it was, not even light field artillery could be moved over the ground in any quantity. The amount of rain which fell was quite abnormal, and was often almost incessant for days together. Then there would be some signs of a clear up; but long before more than the surface of the ground was dry it would begin to pour down again. I never saw so much mud in any other country, nor such deep, tenacious stuff. Even men sometimes stuck fast in it and had to be hauled out of quagmires with the aid of ropes. I have recorded that the Germans lost many guns owing to their sinking into it; some also were lost by the Russians, even when they were not under fire; and the destruction of horses through being smothered to death or by exhaustion was deplorable. In fact the mud sometimes troubled the Russians far more than the foe did. It prevented the commissariat and reserve ammunition waggons from coming up; but, on the whole, lying in it, and being subjected to a continuous downpour of rain, did not seem to adversely affect the health of the men. The field hospitals were always crowded by wounded, but the sick from disease were singularly few in number.
Amongst other things about which there were rumours in our army was the destruction that airships and aeroplanes were causing. The Russians had aeroplanes; but they were not strong in this kind of military force, and we seldom saw one. The Germans, however, occasionally sent a few over our lines, and on the 5th October I saw one shot down. It swerved a good deal, and I expected to see it turn over and drop, but it came down slowly enough to prevent the airmen from sustaining much hurt. The "navigator" was one of the most irritable and arrogant rascals I ever met. He was very angry at his accident, and fumed and swore incessantly and had not the least fear of consequences before his eyes. He shook his fist in the faces of the Cossacks and officers who first came up to his wrecked machine, beat and kicked his unfortunate mechanic, and raved like a lunatic. Even his captors seemed to be in considerable awe of him. Some hours afterwards I saw this fellow eating a meal outside a tent. He was devouring the food like what he probably was—a human hog.
Another astonishing trait in the German Army was the remarkable way in which it frequently recovered lost ground. The Battle of Suvalki, and the operations further south, had the effect of causing a general retirement of the enemy's line; and amongst other places they abandoned was Radom; but in a week or ten days they were back in this place, and had even pushed much nearer to Warsaw. Our scouts ascertained that they were in force along the Vistula from Ivangorod to Varko; and their Uhlan patrols were seen at the hamlet of Vistikar, near Gora, not twenty versts from Warsaw. Whether they ever got nearer to the ancient city I do not know, but for a time we all expected and feared that it would fall. Nobody believed that the old capital of Poland could long stand against an investment by our powerful and cunning foes.
But, while recovering themselves in the south, the Germans did not, at this time, do so in the Suvalki district, or in those parts near the Spirding See where the recent severe fighting had taken place: Russian soldiers still remained on German soil.
The weather grew worse, and seriously affected most of our important operations. Gloom began to settle on the troops; especially when accounts of adversity to our forces in Galicia reached us. These generally came from German sources; but some of our own officers brought news that progress was being stopped by floods, and the enormous reinforcement the enemy had succeeded in bringing up. Often we did not know what to believe; the reports were so contradictory that it was evident one side or another was telling deliberate lies. A comical side was once or twice given to the matter, owing to German, Austrian and Russian "unofficial sources" giving diametrically opposite accounts of the same circumstances. Willing as we were to believe our own side to be the most truthful, it was not always possible to ignore the circumstantiality of our opponents. It became evident that all three sides were a little given to exaggeration—not to give it a harsher designation.
The dreadful weather was more than I could endure, and I was obliged to fall out. I was taken by rail to a convent hospital at Grodno, and there so well and carefully nursed by the sisters, with whom were associated many of the ladies of the town, that I quite recovered and was fit for service again in less than a week.
I could not find my old regiment, however, and my adventures with the Russians might have terminated at this point had I not happened to run up against an officer with whom I had some acquaintance. Captain Shalkotoff belonged to the commissariat department; and as he was going south with a convoy he invited me to accompany him as far as Ostrolenka, his first destination; and I accepted his kind proposal.
CHAPTER X
THE FIGHTING ON THE VISTULA IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER, 1914
Shalkotoff had about eighty waggons and carts under his command, all loaded with provisions which had come from Vilna, where there was a magazine. He was travelling by march-route, the railway-lines being fully occupied by troop trains, and in the conveyance of wounded men and prisoners. Every night we camped in the mud by the roadside, unless buildings or houses were available, which was not often the case. For the Germans had destroyed so many of these that what were left were crowded by homeless people herded together in dreadful misery, starving, and possessed of nothing but what they stood in. We passed through some districts, however, in which a German had not been seen; and in others they had not been so brutal as the generality of their countrymen. Nor are all Germans equally cruel. At a place called Mirno, near Jedvabno, we met a band of 200 prisoners being marched to the railway-station at Setshutchin for conveyance into the interior. Several of them were officers, and one, a captain, expressed his disgust at the brutality of his countrymen. He said it came to him as a terrible revelation that Germans could be so cruel and wicked, and he was as much astonished at it as any person in the world. Others, of all ranks, at different times, expressed much the same opinion.
Perhaps nothing hurt Russian feeling more than the desecration of their churches. The Germans too often evinced a bigotry and irreverence for things that most people consider sacred similar to that which disgraced our own Cromwellians three centuries ago. They stabled their horses in the churches, littered the floors of the sacred edifices with filth, and broke the images. Such conduct is deplorable; nothing can be more revolting than to hurt a people through its religion, whatever we may think of its bigotry and idolatry. Besides, the indomitable bravery of the Greek and Romish priesthood in this deplorable war must ever command the admiration of all right-thinking men; and this alone should have protected them from insult.
It is about 120 miles from Grodno to Ostrolenka, and it took us nine days to march this distance, so defective was the state of the roads. During this time we fared pretty sumptuously; for the drivers and officers helped themselves liberally to the provisions under their charge. In addition to the coarse biscuit, cheese, tea, sugar and coffee, which form the bulk of the Russian soldiers' daily food, there was salt pork, rancid butter, potatoes, and a number of hampers destined for officers whom they never reached. The broaching of such goods is indefensible, but it is pretty general in all armies, not even excepting the British: those who have been soldiers know what "old soldiers" are; and, no doubt, I ought to admit that I require a brushful of white-wash myself. For a dish of bacon, or a cup of wine, being placed in front of one, what is one to do but relieve the craving of nature? The only defence I can make is that we all do it, as circumstances occasion.
At Ostrolenka we were ordered on to Pultusk; and here we found a division of infantry and another of Cossacks—about 14,000 men in all, the units being reduced by the ravages of war. Among the Cossacks was the celebrated 5th of the Don, with its woman colonel, who seemed to be not more than thirty years of age. She had adopted male costume, and rode astride like her troopers. She was a pleasant-faced woman, but not a beauty, in my opinion; and there was nothing fierce or commanding in her appearance. She was said to be of unflinching courage under any circumstances, and to be almost worshipped by her soldiers. So it may be surmised that her rule is gentle and just.
At Pultusk I had my first, and almost only, trouble with the people whom I was trying to serve. A fussy officer wanted to know, rather too minutely, who I was, and how the non-commissioned officer, Chouraski, came to be travelling with me. I had certificates, and Chouraski a permit, signed by a Staff Officer, and countersigned by General Rennenkampf himself; but it was a long time before the interfering colonel could be persuaded. He sent for a captain of the 40th Siberian regiment named Lofe who could speak English, and ultimately was persuaded to permit me to join the captain's company, and to retain Chouraski as a servant. I was given no position in the regiment, but simply served as a volunteer.
The same night, the 14th October, we made a forced march to the railway, a distance, I computed, of at least twenty-four English miles. We arrived at a spot where there was no station, and found troops entraining and going off in the direction of Warsaw. There seemed to be miles of trains by the roadside, and we got into one at a level-crossing and immediately steamed away south, as the others had done.
A drizzling rain was falling, the day was close, and a grey mist enveloped everything so that one could see nothing twenty yards beyond the side of the line. In two hours we arrived at Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, and found the line held strongly by infantry and field artillery. We heard that heavy fighting was going on beyond Milosna, and our train crawling on for another twenty miles, we could hear the sounds of the battle ourselves. We were ordered to alight by the side of the line, all the stations having been put into a state of defence and turned into small fortresses.
The Staff Officer who posted us happened to be a friend of Lofe's, and he told us that the Germans were making a strong effort to break through to the line for a distance of at least ninety versts; and he believed that fighting was going on at other points as far as Lublin. The troops actually posted on the line were reserves; the fighting was taking place at the passages of the Vistula sixteen versts away.
During the night the fog was so thick that one could not see the man standing beside him. We bivouacked by the side of the line, which here was laid on perfectly level ground. The next morning the weather was no better; but when the rain began to fall faster the atmosphere cleared a little, and we were ordered to advance about six versts and dig trenches. We were engaged in this work all day, being assisted by 800 country people, half of whom were women, who displayed the utmost anxiety to help us in resisting a hated enemy, from whose hands many of them had received the deepest insult.
We saw nothing of the enemy, but heard the distant sound of battle; and some carts bore a few badly wounded men past us. We were engaged in the work of digging trenches and making emplacements for guns until the 20th, being assisted during this time by the peasantry: and fighting went on continuously at the front. I was anxious to see something of it, but loth to leave the side of Lofe, owing to the difficulty I had in making myself understood by strangers; and after my dispute with the officer at Pultusk I was a little nervous, being afraid I might be seized and sent away.
Lofe was a very amiable fellow and I got on well with him, as I did with all the Russians with whom I became well acquainted. Life in the trenches was not to our taste. We applied for permission to go down to the front to witness the fighting, but it was refused. So we had to remain where we were and elaborate our defences. How many hundreds of miles of wire we used in our entanglements I should not like to guess; but if the Germans had ever reached them, I think they would have left a good many dead in front of them. With the barbed wire "crow-nets," as we called them, we intermixed a great many staked pits, and other amiable devices for shortening the days of our enemies.
The battle was clearly for the possession of Warsaw; and more than once rumours reached us that the foe had carried the city at the point of the bayonet; but I do not think they ever got within sight of any part of it, though many of their newspapers claim that they did, and even occupied its suburbs. The last-named claim was evidently false; but the place had a narrow escape of falling. The fight seems to have worn itself out; or the Germans fell back: for all was quiet on the 21st, though neither side had obtained a victory.
This was too frequently the sequence to a prolonged fight or series of fights. The opposing force seemed to get tired out, and a lull ensued, during which one would scarcely hear a stray rifle shot. On the 21st, however, some of our troops at the front captured a German band! It consisted of about forty musicians, though they said there had been eighty of them when they first came to the front. Asked to give us some music they played willingly enough, and very well. The Russian regiments have bands, but I heard and saw very little of them during this war; they seemed to have been sent to the rear to attend to wounded men. Some of the Siberian regiments, and the foot Cossacks, have dancing men who march at the head of the battalions, and dance, sing, and clash cymbals, when moving from place to place.
It is hardly necessary to record that the Germans made desperate attempts to cross the river during the fighting referred to just now. I did not actually witness any of the fighting at this stage, but I know that it all failed. I was told that they tried to pontoon the stream at a place called Viegrod, abreast of Garvolin station. The pontoons were smashed to pieces, and several hundreds of the enemy drowned. Small detachments got over at various places, some in boats, others by means of flying bridges; but they were all destroyed or captured. They did not succeed in forcing any of the permanent bridges, which were defended by têtes-de-pont. The Russians claimed that they completely wiped out some of these detachments. I saw bodies lying together within very narrow spaces of ground; and I have no doubt that the peasantry avenged themselves by killing the wounded: and I know that the Russian infantry bayoneted every man of one detachment of about 300. Still a good many prisoners were taken, and sent by train to Warsaw.
The Germans used some aeroplanes for observation work; but on being fired at these machines went out of range and kept there. It would have been a great advantage to the Russians to have had some of these things; but that they had few, or none, in this part of the field, shows that aircraft cannot materially affect a foe who is without them. No doubt aeroplanes have done splendid work for the Allies, and inflicted serious losses on the enemy; but they do not often seem to be able to face an army in the field.
It may give some idea of what is meant by "casualties" if I mention that about 40,000 recovered wounded rejoined the Russian Army while we were on the line of the Vistula. So a heavy list of losses does not necessarily mean that a vast number of men are permanently disabled from taking part in their country's services. Recoveries, too, are very rapid when the men are attended by good surgeons and good nurses.
I obtained one glimpse of the enemy's position. Not a German was to be seen; but puffs of smoke showed where their guns were placed. Smokeless powder was used by both sides for their rifle cartridges; but not for artillery; or at any rate, it was not efficacious when fired from heavy guns.
Both sides entrenched themselves, according to reports, for a distance of more than 300 versts. Afterwards I heard that trenches and earthworks were made along the whole of the German and Austrian frontiers, a result of both sides finding it impossible to make any material headway into each other's territory. The battle degenerated into an artillery engagement. The Russians brought up some heavy guns of about 6-inch calibre, and a few that were a little larger, and with these bombarded the German positions. The enemy, on their part, were similarly provided; and so the see-saw went on—banging at each other without noticeable results. Generally speaking, an artillery duel is the tamest of all kinds of fighting from a spectator's point of view. The only time when it becomes a little lively is when a shell happens to drop just behind one. It usually causes a sudden start forward, or an Eastern position of adoration, which is by far the safest to assume. The wonderful "Jack Johnsons," of which I have heard and read so much, were not used by the Germans in this region, though the nickname seems to have been given to any large shell. The "Jack Johnsons," however, were huge shells which appeared to have weighed from 1,600 to 2,000 pounds each, when charged. It was useless waste to fire them against anything but forts, and I much doubt if the Germans used them for any other purpose. The guns, being howitzers, could fire about 100 of these before needing retubing: so the shooting-power of the huge weapons was limited. Every shot must have cost about £200, and it is not likely that the Germans would waste them by shooting at trenches and small parties, where the effect would be comparatively of little moment. Very high explosives were used by the Germans, and some of their projectiles made very large holes in the ground.
Watching the firing, I could not perceive that ours was doing much harm; while that of the enemy certainly was not. Occasionally a few yards of our trenches was blown in, and a man or two destroyed; but the impression left on my mind was that trench warfare would go on for ever, unless some more effective force than mere artillery fire were brought to bear on an army so protected: and shelling a position is a very expensive mode of warfare. I afterwards saw that to destroy a hundred yards of trench cost 4,000 or 5,000 shells; and even then the defending force nearly always contrived to make good a retreat to a second, or third, line of defence. To shell an enemy out of a good defensive position is, I believe, an impossibility; therefore permanent fortresses should be constructed on the lines of a system of trenches, the guns being placed in Moncrieff pits or other specially constructed emplacements. I am quite convinced that unless guns are hidden, their destruction is assured. Modern gunfire is as accurate as that of rifle-shooting: it will, therefore, easily hit any mark which the gunners can locate.
Everybody knows that patience is a virtue, and that it generally obtains a reward. Our turn came. The 40th Siberians, better known to the men by an unpronounceable name, which, never having seen it in print, I cannot pretend to spell, were ordered to cross the Vistula on the morning of the 20th October.
I expected that there would have been some fighting; but there was not. The rain was falling in a steady downpour; and we could not see the opposite bank of the river. Perhaps the wet damped the ardour of the Germans. Certainly I should think that the autumn and winter of 1914-15 was the wettest ever known. The right bank of the river was bad enough, but the left was the softest marsh we had so far experienced. No wonder the Germans could no longer make much resistance: their trenches were full of water. I slipped into one, and thought I was going to be drowned. Fortunately for me a couple of the men stopped to assist me; for there was six or seven feet of water in the wretched trench. Many of our men met with similar accidents, and I am not sure that some of them did not lose their lives. I saw the bodies of Germans floating in their ditches, but these may have been men killed previously to the flooding.
It was entirely an infantry fight. We had crossed the river on rafts towed by boats, and could bring no guns; while those of the enemy which could be moved they were anxiously striving to save, and did not stop to fire. Many of their heavy guns they destroyed to render them useless to us, but a number of machine-guns were brought into action on each side.
For many miles the left bank of the Vistula is a deep morass, with extensive woods, and a few scattered houses and hamlets. The inhabitants of these were all gone, fled or murdered; and the Germans had pierced the walls of their homes with loop-holes, and piled the furniture, carts and farm implements together to form barricades. They failed, however, to stop our advance. Position after position was carried, sometimes by a withering rifle-fire, sometimes at the point of the bayonet. Brave as he is, the German soldier is not ashamed to plead abjectly for his life when he is driven into a corner. I saw men clinging to the bayonets that were about to terminate their existences; and many actually screamed for mercy. It was not much use making such petitions; the women and old men who had been driven in, leaving a toll of murdered behind, had stories to tell which inflamed the fiercest passions of the soldiers. I contrived to save the lives of one or two of these wretched Germans; but my own safety required that I should not interfere too strenuously; and though, I hope, I should not fear to give my life in a just cause, or to save a just person, I was not prepared to throw it away on behalf of ravishers and child-stabbers.
In this fight I crossed swords with a German officer of the 2/94th regiment (probably Landwehr), a portly gentleman who thought fit to finish the encounter by an unconditional surrender. He took advantage of my remissness in watching him, and tried to escape back to his own men. Some of our fellows noticed this, and—well, he had not time to suffer much. Dishonourable acts, and breaches of word, were very common amongst the Germans; but it often got severely punished.
The enemy suffered most, I heard, at places called Sandomir and Kozyniece. The latter place is close to Ivangorod, which was, for some days, our headquarters, and the centre of our line. Further north, near Bloni, and Vishgo, and at Novogeorgevsk, they suffered more severely, and gave way sooner. By the evening of the 21st they were retiring at many places along the entire line; but at some spots they stood firm with remarkable tenacity, and suffered themselves to be almost surrounded.
We passed the night in a hamlet of a dozen houses which had been defended by a company of jagers (riflemen). Only forty-eight of them survived our attack with the bayonet; and these we captured. They slept in the same rooms with their captors, played cards with them, and sang jovial-sounding songs, apparently quite unmoved by the fact that 120 dead bodies of their comrades lay in the gardens and courtyards outside. Both the Germans and Russians are great card-players and inveterate gamblers.
In the morning, before it was daylight, we made our prisoners dig graves and bury the dead—129 of theirs, sixty-two of ours: we then sent them to the rear under an escort, while we advanced towards Chinlin, and began skirmishing with the enemy, who were only 600 or 700 yards in front of us.
Both sides took shelter behind pine-trees; and very little execution was done, though the firing went on nearly all day. At last the Germans took post in a thick wood, and it became clear they had been playing with us all these hours while their sappers placed this copse in a state of defence. The discovery was rather humiliating; but these things occur in war, and it was not the only occasion on which our cunning opponents "came the old soldier" over their denser, slow-thinking foes. But in spite of their slyness they were beaten. Some Russian battalions got behind the wood, and its defenders were compelled to run for their lives. They ran very well, but most of them were captured; and we passed the second night in the nice, nest-like little hovels they had prepared for their own accommodation.
The German dearly loves his comfort and good cheer. They never seemed to be short of food, and we took carts laden with wine that had been made in France and must have been sent hither at much trouble and expense only to find its way down Russian throats in spite of the Czar's teetotal proclamation. I think the German troops must be taught to make bivouacks and huts, they are such adepts at the work; and render their dens so comfortable by a hundred little devices that show they have previously studied the art of adapting everything to their own welfare and ease. Needless to say, the plunder of houses and cottages was utilized for furnishing these temporary abodes.
There was now no doubt that the Germans were retreating; but they were doing so in that leisurely way which indicated that their retirement was anything but a rout; and I foresaw that it would not be long before they turned again with renewed ferocity. I do not think that the troops we had been opposed to were some of the best that Germany could put in the field. In some battalions there did not appear to be a man under forty years of age: in others they were all boys: and these last named were amongst the best fighters. I passed over ground strewn with the dead of one of these battalions, and not a lad of them seemed to be much over twenty years; some were not more than sixteen or seventeen.
Many stories were brought to us of what had taken place in other districts. All agreed that the Germans had not succeeded in entering Warsaw; but it was reported that a fleet of aeroplanes had sailed over the city and dropped bombs. Only private houses had been wrecked; not much damage done, and the "hostile aircraft" had soon been driven away. As nothing was said about the bringing down of any of these aeroplanes, I felt pretty sure that they had all escaped the Russian fire. The Germans had not left much for them to destroy in their retreat; and I never learned from whence they had come, or whither they went when they had completed their fell work. We saw nothing of them in our district.
On the 23rd we still continued to follow the enemy, keeping in touch with them, and exchanging shots. About the middle of the day we were joined by a large force of artillery and cavalry. Where these troops came from I cannot tell. They were a welcome reinforcement; but as we were moving through a wooded country they could not make much impression on the enemy, except when the latter attempted to make a stand. The trees were mostly pines, and the ground beneath them free of undergrowth; and the destruction of them, after a few hours' cannonade, was enormous. Whole forests looked as if they had been blighted, or blasted by lightning.
The German jagers often took post in the trees, as affording a favourable place for marksmanship; but when our gunners discovered them we had an extraordinary sight as a small crowd of arms and legs came tumbling through the air in every imaginable position. Those of the men who were not killed by the shrapnel usually lost their lives by the shock of the fall. Sometimes big trees were snapped clean in two when the shell had made a direct hit before bursting. More generally the branches were ripped to shreds by the flying shower of bullets. I saw the dead body of one rifleman lodged amongst the boughs of a large pine. He must have been killed instantly, for he was still clasping his rifle in his hands.
There were some painful scenes. We came across a fine, handsome young fellow raving over the body of another boy. It was ascertained that they were brothers, and, "What will mother do? This will kill her," was all he could say. I never saw a man more grief-stricken. A few hours afterwards we found a man shot through the body. Blood was bubbling from his mouth and nose, and he was dying fast; but he had struggled to his knees, and leaning against a tree-trunk was praying—not for himself, but for his wife and four little children. By chance I discovered that this man could speak English. He had been a clerk in Liverpool. He was distressingly anxious about his family, and begged we would not destroy a letter addressed to his wife which he had in his pocket. "For," he said, "I knew I should not come through this"—the war, I suppose, he meant.
I assured him that nothing found upon him should be disturbed, and that the letter should be sent to the German commander on the first opportunity. We did what we could to relieve his suffering, and sent a man back for the Red Cross men who were following behind; but the poor fellow died before they arrived. War is a curse.
The rain ceased only for a few hours at a time. It generally commenced to fall as evening came on, and continued to pour down steadily the greater part of the night. Sometimes it rained night and day without cessation, and the thickest overcoats became saturated with wet. I made a kind of cloak from the remains of a rick-cloth which I found in the outhouse of a burnt farm; and this was a great protection.
The country we were passing through was deserted. The Polish peasantry are very poor, and what would become of the miserable people, who, like the Irish of a former day, depended on their pigs, fowls and potato-crops, it was painful to think. We supposed they had fled to the towns; but every now and then we came across the bodies of some of them, and it is certain that hundreds had been wantonly destroyed by their cruel enemies.
For many miles we marched through a flooded country, and passed the Pilica River by means of a bridge which was partly under water, the reason, perhaps, that the Prussians missed it. We were guided to it by an old peasant who had been in hiding; but the banks of the river were quite hidden under water, and on this account many of our men, as well as Germans, floundered into it and were drowned. Horses and waggons were swept away, and some guns captured. Our own guns were forced to go higher up the stream and were, I believe, passed over a pontoon bridge. Hundreds of Cossacks swam their horses across, and gathered up some prisoners. They sent a far greater number to their long account, and seized an immense booty in food, stores, etc. For the Germans always stripped the country they passed through of everything that was worth carrying away. That which was too cumbersome to be moved they destroyed.
I never actually heard who commanded the Germans, or our own force. At one time rumour asserted that the Kaiser himself was chief of our enemies, and was personally directing their movements. When this surmise exploded, we were repeatedly told that the Crown Prince was the Commander-in-Chief. All that was known with certainty was that we were immediately opposed, for a week at least, by a divisional commander named Swartzenberg. On our own side Major Beke was the battalion commander under whom I served. He was killed soon after we crossed the Vistula, and was succeeded by an officer who was wounded and sent to the rear on the same day he was appointed. His successor only held the command two days when he was blinded by a piece of wood driven into his face by the explosion of a shell. Krischelcamsk then became our leader. Colonel Tunreshka was the regimental commandant. He disappeared the night after we crossed the Pilica. The general opinion was that he was drowned in the river; but he may have been taken prisoner.
One reason of the unusually rapid retreat of the Germans on this occasion was that they had expended nearly all their ammunition, and were unable to bring up more on account of the dreadful state of the country—knee-deep in mud, and covered with water. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; and the rain, which hampered the Russian on one hand, helped to save Warsaw on the other.
We reached Skyermevice on the 24th. It is a town of some size, and the people had not abandoned it. They crowded the streets to see us pass through, and loudly cheered us. Flags sprang from somewhere, and decorated all the windows and shop doors; and the women brought us food and drink, which had been hid away. The inhabitants of the town had suffered a good deal, and had been compelled, as usual when the Germans occupied a place, to pay a heavy war-tax, or fine. A number of the principal men had been dragged away as hostages; I never learned their fate. Everywhere the Germans behaved like a band of brigands and murderers. One instance of their paltry-mindedness may be recorded. At a house where Captain Lofe and I spent the night, and from which some billeted Germans had run away on our approach, these miserable creatures had killed the little girl's canary, and she was inconsolable for the loss of her pet. It was not the only occasion on which birds, cats and pet dogs were wantonly and cruelly destroyed to vex their owners.
On the 25th while we were marching towards Lowvitz we encountered a Prussian battalion which had been driven towards us by three sotnias of Cossacks. They could not escape, and we charged them with the bayonet. I must give them the credit due to them: on this occasion the Germans fought well and determinedly. But our men had become very expert in the use of the bayonet, and when the enemy had lost half their number the remainder broke and fled. The Cossacks were waiting for them, and I do not think that any of them escaped. No prisoners were taken: and this often happened during the campaign. Both sides were equally guilty of this cruelty—if cruelty it was. But really the Germans were so fiendishly brutal, that, as I have previously said, I think reprisals were justifiably resorted to. Be this so or not, and whatever may be thought of the act, it is certain that, on many occasions, bodies of both Germans and Russians were exterminated when they had the mischance to become isolated and surrounded.
There was a great deal of bayonet work during this campaign. It is a favourite weapon of the Russians; and proportionately disliked by the Germans. The bayonet of the Russian soldier is never unfixed, except for cleaning purposes. He marches with it, eats, works and sleeps with it always ready for instant action. The German soldier is not so particular; and I saw more dirty weapons amongst our prisoners than I ever thought existed in any army in the world. Wounds from German bayonets are peculiarly fatal, as the backs of them are serrated to enable them to be used as cutting implements. For this reason the soldier often has great difficulty in withdrawing his weapon after stabbing a victim: and we found that in some cases, where the point of the bayonet was forced through the body and embedded in the backbone, it had been unfixed and left sticking in the wound.
As we approached the Prussian frontier the German resistance became sterner, and they made more frequent attempts to rally. As I have said, their retreat never assumed the character of a rout—very far from it. Only straggling or isolated parties ever fell into disorder. Their retirement was steady and orderly as far as their military movements were concerned; but in the towns and villages they behaved like beasts. We had plenty of evidence that nearly all their junior officers, and thousands of their men, never lost an opportunity of getting drunk. The Kaiser was said to be a teetotaler: the Crown Prince was often as drunk as a lord—a German lord; and it is said that when in this condition he beat his wife so badly that she left the palace, and took refuge in the house of a nobleman. The story was told on excellent authority; otherwise I should not run the risk of being thought a gossip-monger by repeating it. I have, myself, seen the man in the company of courtesans; and, apparently, under the influence of drink.
Though the Germans made attempts to beat back our pursuit, and to some extent checked it, they could not altogether stop it; and I think the gradual slackening of our endeavours to beat them quite out of Poland was the outcome of the men's exhaustion.
The country was in a terrible state. The Germans had no time or opportunity to bury many of their dead, and the whole district, for hundreds of miles, was strewn with the bodies of men and horses, sometimes half covered by water, often floating in it. Though the weather was changing, and becoming colder, especially at night-time, portions of the days were hot, close, or muggy. Consequently the corpses soon began to decay, and the whole land stank revoltingly; and the men kept their pipes constantly alight to counteract the offensiveness. Owing to the state of the ground it was scarcely possible to bury many of these bodies, and they were left to rot away where they lay, or floated. Our own dead were conveyed to the cemeteries and burying-grounds; but the people would not tolerate the desecrating Germans in "God's acre." Amongst the enemy's dead were some Austrians, showing that the troops of their nation had been engaged in this region.
On the afternoon of the 26th we came to a standstill near the River Warta. The headquarters of the 40th were at a small village the name of which I never clearly heard. Very few people were left in it; but others arrived when they heard that it was in our hands. All those who had most to fear from the enemy (that is, all those who possessed a rouble's worth of property) had been in hiding in the woods, where some of them had been living in underground burrows wherever they could find a spot dry enough to construct them in.
Of the 40th not 800 effectives remained; and as the regiment had commenced the war with a strength of 4,000 men, it will be seen how terribly it had suffered. I heard the band of the regiment for the first time in our bivouac on the 26th. It consisted of twenty-seven musicians: three months previously there had been eighty of them. They had been under fire many times, collecting and assisting the wounded, the chief work of the bandsmen during fighting. The Russian bands of music, like the Prussian, are much stronger than ours, and are formed on German lines, as far as numbers and instruments are concerned. I cannot give much praise to their style of playing.