dinner, started on the short remainder of our journey; but we were by
no means at the end of our troubles, and this, I was told, was to be
expected, because a hare had run across our track. We were going along,
dodging the huge and deep ruts in the _chaussée_, when, close up to one
of the hugest and deepest, a cart coming the other way compelled us to
make a sudden turn, and we were landed on a kind of plateau between two
deep holes with our wheels almost off the ground in them.
We had tried almost all the ordinary expedients in vain, when a
long train of soldiers began to pass us with artillery. Appeals of
"Brothers, come and help us," brought about a dozen of them to our
aid, and they performed prodigies of strength, pushing forwards or
backwards, and at one point even raising the whole motor from the
ground. Sometimes they counted "one, two, three," sometimes they
sang a bargee's chanty, and each of them put the best of his wits to
our service; but at last, just after one of them had said "Let's do
something a bit more together," the officer in command felt it his duty
to call them back to their work, and our brown-coated brothers left us
in the semi-darkness while the guns boomed a few versts away.
The chauffeur meanwhile had set himself like a hero to raise the motor
out of the ruts. V. S. and I found a cottage with a pile of bricks
outside, which we took with the explanation "Needed." After several
journeys to and fro we collected a little brickyard; and V. S., though
his back was paining him, came dragging a huge log and a tree stump to
use for leverage. He still found a free hand to shake mine with the
words: "A Happy New Year; it finds us hard at work but full of spirits
in spite of everything." The new year began well: the lever acted, the
chauffeur made a sort of macadam of his own, and we sailed over the
obstacle and on to our destination, which we reached at 1.30 a.m.
These are the conditions of weather and roads under which Russia has to
press back the enemy; but she never lets him alone, for she knows that
on persistent pressure depends the issue on the allied front.
_January 3._
Yesterday I walked out to the lines, which are about four miles out of
Tarnow. The railway runs quite straight to the little river which is
the Russian front at this point; so I followed the railway embankment,
meeting small bodies of troops on the way and a few sentries guarding
the bridge over the Biela. It was a beautiful crisp December day, with
a blue sky, distant views and a good foothold. To the left lay a long
low plateau abutting on the river and crowned with a wooded village
and a little church. In front was flat ground, rather marshy, with
scattered villages close up to the broken railway bridge. The smoke
from burning houses rose at different points to either side of the
foreground, and high rugged hills bounded the view. Making my way to
some rising ground, I for a time sat in an arbour beside a dismantled
and deserted house, with the panorama of plain and villages stretched
in front of me, listening to the swirl of the enemy's shrapnel and to
the booming replies of a Russian battery. I made my way round to this
battery; the men were engaged in improving their underground shelters,
which were lined with straw, well heated, and furnished with shelves
for a few belongings, including even books, and, anyhow, provided a
refuge against frost and bullets. Water was near, and the soldiers'
washing was hanging out to dry outside. We couched in the straw and
talked of the western front till the word was given to fire. The
officer gave the directions and the guns were discharged smartly. A
German shell, which broke near us, was greeted with a cry of "Bravo!";
and when the officer announced that the practice was "excellent" the
men all cheered. I had more talk in the telephone pit and in the
officers' shelter; there was absolute composure, and the men were
anxious to move forward again, having been here for over two weeks; I
was asked to share any little delicacies that these hermits possessed.
[Illustration: THE FRONT OF THE THIRD ARMY]
Exchanging good wishes "for health and success" I made my way on
through the villages toward the broken bridge. One of a group of
soldiers, when I asked the way to the lines, simply pointed, saying
"Here, close by." A long line of high earthworks ran close to the
stream, on the other side of which were the Germans, their sentry being
about 1000 yards away. I entered a hut and drank tea with the battalion
commander, an old gentleman in a jersey, who, with charming apologetic
gesture, offered me some white bread and chocolate. The telephone gave
word of my coming to the staff of the regiment, to which I was piloted
over the marsh by a soldier. The Germans shoot at almost any mark, or,
even, at hazard, in the darkness; but very few are wounded in this
way--this day none, and the day before only one. Scouts go out from
time to time and sometimes find a searchlight turned on them. It is a
waiting position.
The colonel, a good-looking young man of great simplicity and vigour,
entertained me at supper, and we talked late into the night. Everywhere
one feels the winning spirit. After the last great halt, on the San,
the men went forward with a tremendous rush, and the enemy's rifle pits
were filled with dead. Again the talk turned chiefly on the French
and English front, and on the necessity of carrying the war to a real
settlement. No one can understand why the Germans challenge such
enormous losses by their attacks in close columns. Late at night I
made my way back to the town; every now and then a few isolated shots
rattled in the darkness.
_January 5._
I set out late in the evening for a forward ambulance post attached
to a famous fighting division. Our party consisted of two soldiers,
a niece of Count Bobrinsky, who took such a notable part in the Duma
visit to England, and myself. The young Countess, who was enveloped
in tarpaulins, is one of the hardest workers in the ambulance. Our
cart was stacked with necessaries for the soldiers; on the wall of the
courtyard German soldiers had scribbled in large letters expressions
of their self-satisfaction, such as "Austria and Germany fear God, and
nothing else in the world," and sundry contemptuous allusions to "der
Nikolai, der Georg und der Französe."
From the time when we left the lights of the town we had to go mostly
on foot, negotiating difficult bits of road and ploughing our way
through fluid mud. We passed over high ground and close to the front;
all round us was the glare of camp fires and in the distance the flash
of projectors. In the darkness we were constantly meeting trains of
carts.
At last, on the slope of a hill, we turned into a Polish hut. It had
two fairly large apartments, with a big stove and an earthen floor. In
the inner room lived the six sisters of mercy: in the outer we were
an interesting and strange collection; along one side lay a big bed,
on which, crosswise, sat or slept the Polish peasant, his wife, two
daughters and little son; in a corner, on a heap of boxes which he had
to arrange each night, slept the young priest, the monk, whom I had
met before, and one of the most spiritual men whom I have known; the
two sanitars and myself made our beds each night beneath the windows
(one of which was smashed), removing them each day to make room for
the dinner-table. By the stove, or anywhere else, our soldier servants
slept on straw.
Not two hundred yards off, but only to be reached by crossing two
deep gullies of mud, lay the lazaret of the division, quartered in a
white-walled village school. These quarters, I was told, were luxury
compared to most of the ordinary stopping places; but we were in a very
different atmosphere from the admirably equipped hospitals further
back. The wounded arrive all day in large carts or on foot; they come
straight from the First Aid stations, which are close up to the actual
fighting line; there are no beds, only pallets of straw, on which the
men lie down while waiting their turn. They have not yet lost the
sense of the battlefield or reached the stage where they are fully
conscious of their wounds. They take their places one after another in
the cottage chair--in which one of them died yesterday as soon as he
had sat down--and the young divisional doctor, with the help of the
sisters, removes their first rough-and-ready bandages, and gives them
such quick treatment as may enable them to be sent further. It is, of
course, the seriously wounded of whom one sees most here, for many of
these get no further, dying here, or on the road. From one of them the
doctor removed an enormous splinter of shrapnel completely embedded
in the body; the largest bombs of all, which the soldiers call
"portmanteaux," make terrible wounds.
Here all day and all night the doctors and sisters work at the wounded
as they come in. The senior sister, a lady of the most remarkable
capacity, takes about one night's sleep in five, but is always as fresh
and bright as can be. Her husband, a member of the Duma, travels over
Russia for the better organisation of the Duma field hospitals. The
transport is in charge of one of the sanitars, the son of a Moscow
business man, who has a particularly clear head for work. The whole
party, three of whom talk excellent English, are drawn close together
by their work; and there is the atmosphere of complete unselfishness
which one feels so strongly in anything connected with the Russian
soldier. As to our soldier servants, it is clear that their constant
preoccupation is to make themselves useful to anyone.
_January 6._
We lie at the head of a little valley, some few miles from the
Divisional Staff. As the troops move forward new questions are
constantly arising; and our transport sanitar, Nikolay Nikolayevich,
discusses the possibilities of getting better access for the wounded
to the hospitals. We are pressing back the enemy into the Carpathians,
and there are halts in front of difficult hill positions. The advance
through swamps of mud makes tremendous demands on the men, who have to
lie for days in rifle pits full of water; at times a well-chosen and
well-entrenched position holds the Russians at bay at a distance of a
few hundred yards or less, in one case fifty, and yet they will not go
back. "Und auf den Carpathen sind die wege beschneit," often recur to
me, these lines of one of the laziest of German student songs, which is
a kind of renunciation of all effort.
Nikolay Nikolayevich and I rode over through the snow to the Staff of
the Division. He is a charming and simple man, very like one of our
own best-known Generals both in face and manner. He lives in a small
hut, which is kept very clean. We lunch and discuss transport, and I
am asked to carry certain suggestions to the town. On our way back,
accompanied by two Cossacks, we pass through Tuchow, a little township
half in ruins, and I notice that, as on our way out, some one is still
strumming on a piano in a house of which only the walls are standing.
The cannon has carried away a large tree and left deep pits near the
road.
Driving in the evening to the town, I find groups of wounded, for whom
there is no place on the carts, wandering forward in the darkness. The
men choose among themselves which I shall take with me: "Let him with
the nose go," for one of them has had his face smashed up; the rest
move on contentedly, and my passengers give me a word of thanks, which
would make any one feel ashamed of himself. This is their Christmas Eve.
It is very wonderful, this self-denying patience of the Russian
soldier, and it is too big a thing that one should get tired of
speaking of it. A doctor at work here tells me how constantly it is
impressed upon him. A man whose chin he has had to remove simply says:
"Thank Heaven, now you've tied me up, and I am all right." Another,
after his leg has been taken off, as soon as he is able to speak,
says: "Ah, but it was a fine fight at Krasny; they gave it us, but we
gave it to them too." Another, when he is brought in for operation, is
only taken up with the thought that he meets in the operating room an
Austrian officer to whom he has attached himself as guide and friend.
Anything else that is human comes before any thought of self. I am
quite certain that one of the greatest things that this war is doing is
its revelation to Europe of the simple goodness of the Russian peasant
in the person of the Russian soldier. He is more than the unconscious
hero of the moment. The qualities of the real Russian people are going
to take their proper place among the best factors in the future of
European civilisation.
_January 8._
In our _halupa_ (hut) we had those intimate and speculative
conversations which seem so natural to Christmas Eve. Monk and
Intelligents were on common ground. Only once Father Tikhon put down
his foot when one of the party expressed indifference as to the other
life. "No," he said, "joking apart, that's not good, least of all in
time of war"; and the rebuke was accepted as gently as it was given.
Our Russian Christmas began with the burial of a wounded soldier who
had died in the night. In a little waste patch in the snow, near the
lazaret, the priest stood in his gorgeous vestments and bowed deep over
the new grave, while two soldier choristers sang the beautiful prayers
for the dead.
In the evening there was a Christmas Eve service in a room of the
lazaret, which Father Tikhon and the soldiers had spent no end of
trouble in turning into a chapel. The room was crowded with soldiers,
and there was an improvised choir. The simple directions of the
priest and the strangeness of the surroundings only added to the deep
atmosphere of reverence.
I completed the night service in our hospital in the town. Here the
first-floor landing had been turned into a chapel. A matronly sister
from Moscow, one of the simplest souls in this work-a-day gathering,
served as clerk. The leader of the choir was a young Social Democrat
doctor, who had suffered for his convictions at the time of the second
Duma; and among the choir were all who had had a training in church
singing, which reaches such a high standard in Russia. The singers
included sisters, sanitars, soldiers and several of the convalescent
wounded, who were wrapped in their long grey dressing-gowns; and one
wounded man had been laid on his stretcher among the choir in order
that he might take part in the singing. Afterwards we all had cakes and
tea; and a conversation as to what England could do, and what would
follow in Europe, lasted well into Christmas Day.
We have here with us Bishop Tryphon, of Moscow, who, like the Bishop
of London, asked leave to accompany the army, and is now the Superior,
or Rural Dean, of one of our Divisions. The Russian army has a staff
of army chaplains with an Arch-Presbyter or Chaplain General, as in
England; but many priests have enrolled specially for the war. Some
have been killed, others wounded, others taken prisoner; some have been
specially honoured for serving the Liturgy to regiments under fire. I
am told that Father Tikhon's first sermon under fire was wonderfully
simple and impressive. One regimental priest told me how a shell burst
in his quarters, blowing a medical attendant to bits and leaving
himself with a bad contusion.
Bishop Tryphon took a prominent part in the entertainment of our
Bishops in Moscow, and sends them by me a message of greeting and
good wishes. He arranged a solemn Christmas Day service, with trained
singers who were serving in the army. He later visited the hospitals,
giving short and plain addresses, and his blessing to each branch of
the Red Cross work in turn. There was a great Christmas tree in the
station, where presents were distributed to four hundred wounded.
Gifts were also distributed under fire by the hospital workers to the
soldiers in the trenches some miles from the town.
In the evening I took part in a Christmas gathering in one of the big
hospitals. Everyone's health was drunk in turn by Christian name, the
whole being woven into a long song. Afterwards we sang songs of the
Volga, and some stayed on talking till five in the morning, resuming
their work a few hours later.
_January 10._
Returning to our _halupa_ in the little village, I rode over in the
night to the General to convey the results of my journey. It was almost
pitch dark and the road was in most places a simple swamp of mud,
sometimes with gaping holes in the causeway or with beams or trunks
of trees lying about; and though I had a soldier and a lantern, the
ten miles took over four hours. Next morning we left the _halupa_: the
dismantling process made the hut look more desolate, and while our
things were being packed, the peasant family sat on their bed, looking
on like moony spectators at some rustic entertainment. They showed more
than satisfaction with their payment, which they expressed after the
local fashion by kissing every one's hands; but they had now to expect
the arrival of a fresh batch of strangers.
Our forward move of a few miles was carried out with great expedition;
but our carts made quite a long train, and the movement of even a
small ambulance section is in itself, under such conditions, almost an
exploit. Just in front of me went our Austrian field kitchen with three
separate cauldrons, which is found very useful. In a few hours we were
installed in our new quarters, a great improvement on the _halupa_,
within a stone's throw of the divisional lazaret and the now reopened
railway station. From beyond a near wooded hill came the sound of
almost continuous firing.
We were now close behind the line of the front ambulance points. At
the station, which we put in order for their reception, there was a
constant dribbling stream of soldiers who had come almost straight from
the front. Most of them had walked in with their kits, and many seemed
almost unconscious of their wounds. Their conversation was of comrades
who stood at other points in the line, of the relative distance of the
enemy and of the conditions of work in the rifle pits.
Through the thick mud the Russians are driving the Austrians upward
over the deeply indented country of the Carpathian region. The enemy
entrenches himself strongly, making much use of complicated wire
entanglements which can only be carried with a rush. Thus, the heavily
clad Russians, whose efforts have pushed the enemy all this way, have
sometimes to dig themselves in as best they can at a few paces from the
enemy--1000, 500, 100 or even 50. The rifle pits are full of water,
straw makes hardly any difference, and as soon as a head is shown it is
shot at; many of the wounded have fallen at the moment of rising from
the trenches. The Austrians continue a rumbling fire nearly all night.
On the other hand, some of our men have seen the shells from the heavy
Russian artillery falling plump in the middle of the enemy and have
seen how they scatter under the fire of the Russian machine guns. The
Russians use less ammunition with much more effect. I have met several
Russians who have had at different points fifteen or seventeen days
on end of this soaking trench work. One officer, who had had two long
doses of it, had contracted rheumatism in one place and bronchitis in
another and was resting in a hospital with the hope of getting back
as soon as possible. A wounded soldier asked Father Tikhon to write
a request that he should be sent back to his regiment as soon as
possible. One man at the station, twice wounded in hand and in chest,
asked that this time he should be sent to recover in his native town.
The station was very soon in order. One of the sisters went round
distributing clean underwear. "Change while you can, children," she
said; "we shall give you some tea and soup, and pack you into the
train, and send you straight off to Russia"; and in a few hours the
first train had arrived and the station was cleared for further work.
In the dusk, the military ambulance men set out again to collect more
of the wounded under fire.
What is happening is, shortly, this. The Russians, who had first to
deal mainly with the Austrians, leaving the Germans to us, have now
got within sight of the end of this part of their task. A first-class
military power has been so pounded and smashed and has been repulsed
in so many vigorous counterstrokes that it is coming to have only a
secondary importance. Meanwhile the bulk of the Russian forces is
now devoted to meeting the incessant and desperate initiative of the
Germans. Russia's new defensive front on this side runs in a straight
line to the point where it covers the Russian conquest in Galicia.
It is now being extended further south to the natural barrier of the
Carpathians. The interval made necessary by the operations in the north
is not being wasted by the victorious troops in the south. When we
get to the end of the Austrian efforts and have a mountain barrier to
safeguard us on that side, these forces will be able to act with much
more effect against the Germans. Russia, by accounting for Austria and
concentrating her attack on Germany, will have done more than her full
share of the work in the common cause. "Honour is not to be divided,"
said Ney when he stormed the heights of Elchingen; and it is in this
spirit of generous rivalry that the Allies move forward.
_January 15._
By a little arrangement room was made in our small quarters for a New
Year's feast, to which the divisional doctors were all invited. Father
Tikhon had turned the local hall of the Sokols into a Russian church,
and the evening service was crowded with soldiers. There was great
delight in unpacking the gifts and delicacies received from Petrograd,
and soon the guests began to arrive. It was all the simple talk of men
accustomed to great privations: some of it turned on a comparison of
unpleasant bivouacs; for instance, one told of a night spent in driving
wind and rain on an open slope by the light of a burning village; he
hoped the wind would blow over some of the warmth from the flames, till
at last shelter and sleep were found in a ditch. Another officer was
drowsing in a hovel when the door was opened, there entered a strong
smell of coarse tobacco and a heavy weight fell on him; he woke in
the morning to find a soldier asleep across his knees. An artillery
officer, a fine-looking man, told of the tremendous work of the
mobilisation and of the strain which war life puts upon the hardest
nerves. Regimental doctors have, of course, had to work under fire
for weeks on end. Every one discounts the heavy German mortars which
in the field do very little damage in comparison with their expense.
As to the Austrian bullets, one doctor says that it takes a man's
weight of bullets to wound a man. When the trenches are near they come
pouring in a sort of continuous rain. One man who insisted on standing
up had thirty-six bullets through him directly. When the distance is
a hundred to two hundred yards, especially where there is no natural
cover, continuous sniping goes on. The line not being straight, but
varied by all sorts of indentations, due to the lie of the ground and
to the Russians' desire to get as close as possible to the enemy,
the former at many points crouch in the temporary and flooded holes
which they have scratched out for themselves, perhaps all the while
under a cross fire. Men are killed going out with long scissors to cut
the Austrian wire entanglements. Many a man has fallen in a crawling
excursion to dig up a potato. The sniping becomes a kind of game, and
it was described as such by two Russian soldiers, of whom one had
knocked over nine Austrians and the other sixteen. The Austrians fire a
lot of random shots in the night which are in most cases a sheer waste
of powder; but it was hard on a man who was relieved after a week's
rifle pits to be hit by a bullet in the night on his way back, as far
as a mile from the front.