In the Russian Ranks Part 7

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 pa.s.sed 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 coa.r.s.e biscuit, cheese, tea, sugar and coffee, which form the bulk of the Russian soldiers' daily food, there was salt pork, rancid b.u.t.ter, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances, and to be almost wors.h.i.+pped 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sisted 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 _tetes-de-pont_. The Russians claimed that they completely wiped out some of these detachments. I saw bodies lying together within very narrow s.p.a.ces 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 sh.e.l.l 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 a.s.sume. 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 sh.e.l.l. The "Jack Johnsons," however, were huge sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ling 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 sh.e.l.ls; and even then the defending force nearly always contrived to make good a retreat to a second, or third, line of defence. To sh.e.l.l 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 a.s.sured. 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 unp.r.o.nounceable 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 a.s.sist 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 mora.s.s, 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 pet.i.tions; the women and old men who had been driven in, leaving a toll of murdered behind, had stories to tell which inflamed the fiercest pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sed 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 skirmis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 furnis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 marksmans.h.i.+p; 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 sh.e.l.l 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 a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed through of everything that was worth carrying away. That which was too c.u.mbersome to be moved they destroyed.

I never actually heard who commanded the Germans, or our own force. At one time rumour a.s.serted 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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.