themselves in any force till the evening. Then and throughout the
night the tremendous cannonade that they had kept up all day became
more intense, and with the aid of the powerful German projectors the
area to the rear of the Russian lines was swept, especially at three
given points. Here in the evening the enemy crossed the narrow stream
in boats. The railway bridge was mined, but was left standing as long
as possible. An Austrian shell cut the train of the mine, without
exploding it, at a point forty yards on the Russian side of the river.
Masses of the enemy were already at the bridge when a Russian officer
and private went forward and made a new connexion, which they fired at
once. The bridge was blown into the air, and the two daring Russians
were sent flying by the shock, but remained alive.
At different points the enemy effected a lodgment on the eastern bank
and, where the Russian line was thinnest and held by regiments already
reduced to half or quarter strength in the previous fighting, the
trenches were partly occupied by the Germans or Austrians. Next morning
the Russians made vigorous counter attacks and recovered the ground
lost; but returning in overwhelming force, the enemy not only regained
his hold on the eastern bank but extended it on either flank and pushed
further eastwards.
There followed five days of very severe fighting. The issue at stake
was whether the enemy's successes could still be limited to western
Galicia--or, in other words, whether half or the whole of the territory
conquered by the Russians was now to be flooded by his armies. His
object was, of course, to find room eastward of the San for his
powerful forces and artillery. There were in all five German or
Austrian armies in the area chosen for the enemy's impact. Of these,
two were engaged with the Eighth Russian Army and three were opposed
to our Third Army; these last numbered nine army corps, including the
Reserve Corps of the Prussian Guard and two others which were drawn
from the French front. German heavy artillery, though apparently of a
different calibre from that employed at the beginning of the Galician
battle, took a prominent part in this fighting; and the Austrians
showed better marksmanship than at any period in the war.
The enemy's advance, however, had slackened before it reached the San;
and the Russians had had time not only to make good a very spirited
retreat but to give their men two days' rest on the eastern side of
the river. These two days were invaluable. Large reinforcements were
hurried up. In the shortest time entrenchments were thrown up of a kind
superior to those held by the Russians during their long occupation of
western Galicia, and very much better supported. The earlier ruinous
effects of the enemy's heavy artillery were now minimised or even
avoided; and the Russian artillery were in much greater force than
before. Above all, the men proved, if proof were needed, by the vigour
of their resistance and by beating off one German attack after another
that the earlier retreat had been due simply to the enemy's technical
superiority in artillery, and that even a half-annihilated Russian
regiment felt itself to be master as soon as the issue lay with the
bayonet.
The enemy daily sent aeroplanes to the Russian rear, in one day ten
at a time, but in at least five cases these were brought down and
in most instances by the fire of musketry and machine guns. In one
comparatively weak spot the Russian infantry was rescued by a few
timely discharges from our artillery, which sent the close column of
Germans running like hares.
Attempt after attempt of the enemy to break through in close column
failed. At certain points the Germans were able to push home their
blow, at others the Russians closed in on their flanks, driving them
back to the river and threatening even their success in the centre
with serious consequences. At one moment the enemy thought that he
was through; but the gap was filled at once from the large Russian
reserves. At another he even launched his cavalry through what seemed
an empty space, and it looked as if he might find room to develop the
favourite German cavalry advance, which has spread such terror among
peaceful inhabitants in other parts; but without delay the tide was
stemmed by Cossacks and Russian infantry.
The struggle is still going on; but one thing is certain--that the
Russian resistance east of the San has stopped the forward flow of
the German advance. It is a new chapter in the war, and different in
essentials from that which preceded it. News of successful resistance
or of advance comes from the Russian armies on either flank of our own.
_May 27._
The situation seemed to be changing rapidly and at the same time
clearing. There were reports of German attempts to break through at
various points, but all of them seemed to be stopped and our line was
apparently becoming more stable. As I have explained before, there is a
splendid ambulance organisation of the most complete kind managed by a
joint committee of all the Zemstva (or county councils) of Russia and
directed by Prince George Lvov. Apart from a wide system of hospitals
right away to the rear and all over Russia, it includes ambulance and
depôt trains which run almost up to the very front, and flying columns,
giving first aid to the wounded. These last have attached to them large
field transport trains, adapted to the local roads and working in close
touch with the generals at the front and the military surgeons.
It is always a pleasure to meet with any section of this organisation.
It possesses the free initiative characteristic of self-government,
for the Zemstva members and employés have everywhere volunteered for
this service; and there is in it the healthy sense of open air and a
practical experience at making the best of any conditions.
There was a flying column which I met at the beginning of our retreat,
and which took charge of my baggage. The same column was now quite
near me, and they kindly gave me a lift to the front. I set out in one
of their sensible "two-wheelers" adapted for carrying the wounded,
and travelled a good part of the night to where they had their park:
there I had a splendid sleep in the two-wheeler. The next day we went
on in a long train of carts through pine-woods and sand, sometimes
almost losing our bearings, until we found the flying column at work
in a wood: among the sisters was an English lady, Miss Hopper, and in
a neighbouring flying column of the Zemstva is another English sister,
Miss Flamborough; the others call them "our allies."
[Illustration: THE FIGHTING EAST OF THE SAN
(May, June, 1915)]
I was told that one of the military doctors wondered whether I was a
spy. As he was going to the staff of the LL Corps, I asked him to take
me with him. Here I had a kind welcome, though I happened to be without
all my papers. Everything seemed to be going better. The General in
command, a man of decision and much humour, was evidently in good
spirits; business was barred at meals; but the position was explained
to me, and it was clear that the enemy was being held.
I was sent on to one of the Divisions, which had been in action for
about five days. Here, in spite of the rapid changes in the _personnel_
of the officers, there was the same feeling of confidence and hope. In
the evening I rode out with the General of Division on his visit to one
of the regiments. Everywhere we passed fresh troops coming up. We found
the regimental staff in a wood; though there were huts quite near, the
Colonel preferred a series of elaborate burrows which had been made in
the sand among the trees. Near these burrows we sat round a table in
the twilight, while orderly masses of grey figures kept passing us in
their march forward. This Colonel, a big genial man with a composure
that inspired confidence, soon dropped into a conversation about old
comrades. The General had commanded the O regiment, and it was painful
to hear his inquiries about one after another of his officers: almost
all were gone.
The next day I again visited this regiment and went forward to the
front. The rear was being shelled by the enemy with a good deal of
shrapnel, and this seemed to be going on every day. As I got further
forward I passed line after line of entrenchments and shelters, and
eventually came on the front line, which was admirably complete and
much more detailed than most of the positions which I had yet seen. The
battalion, which was in a wood, was commanded by a fine young fellow,
still a lieutenant, who exposed himself freely but took the greatest
thought for his men. The enemy was only a few hundred yards off and
suddenly opened a hurricane of musketry fire; practically none but
explosive bullets were used; this was quite clear as they kept crashing
into the trees all around us. The men, who were in fine strength
and spirits, did not suffer; and such measures have been taken that
the losses inflicted earlier by the German heavy artillery are very
unlikely to be repeated.
At no time have I seen so marked a difference in the course of a few
days. When I visited the San there was still the atmosphere of the
preceding operations, heroism against odds. Now there was a quiet
confidence for which one could everywhere see the reason--in the troops
that had come up, and the lessons that had been learned.
_May 29._
Matters here continue to take a better complexion. Yesterday in the
staff of the LL Corps I was given the sketch-map of the day, which
showed an advance at more than one point. The regiment which I had
last visited had now crossed the little brook in front of its trenches
and also the larger stream which runs at some distance almost parallel
with it. Of this I had painful evidence just outside headquarters. A
man with face bound up had just been brought in and came forward to
me making signs. On the paper which I gave him he wrote: "I am the
Commander of the second battalion of the Y regiment. Where are you off
to now?" It was the fine young lieutenant whom I had seen a few days
back, so proud of his new command and so brisk and vigorous in all his
dispositions. He wrote that he had been wounded during the attack by an
explosive bullet, such as I had heard crackling against the trees when
I was with his regiment. His mouth was shattered, but he was quite cool
and gave no sign of pain. My companion sent him off at once by motor to
the ambulance.
At another point there had been a more definite advance, which, coming
as it did just where the enemy had made a great effort to break
through, seemed to promise results all along the line. This was the
point that I decided to visit; so I was directed to a cavalry division
from the Caucasus which was stationed there. I experimented in a new
means of conveyance, namely a hand-truck which worked between our last
station and the front. It was a sporting ride, and we went faster than
a good many trains. Just before I started I was asked to carry word to
a badly wounded officer that a motor was being sent for him. Alighting
at a signal-box, I made my way to the place, and the poor fellow was
delighted; but alas! no motor could make its way over this road, and
the young man died before there were other means of moving him.
Headquarters staff of the Division was a farm building crowded with
fine horses and soldiers. The men wore the long black busbies and the
picturesque flowing uniform of the Caucasus, with decorated sabres and
bandoliers. The General was a patriarchal man with bald head and long
beard, easy of manner and short and conclusive in speech. He kindly
put me up in his own room, and through the night he seemed to be doing
business at a great rate with the minimum of exertion. Next morning the
whole position was shortly and plainly explained to me; in the night
we had taken another village, and levelled up the line of our advance
rightwards. I was sent to see the corresponding movement on the left.
The General took me with him to one of his Brigadiers, and on the
way in a few vigorous words put renewed heart into two brisk-looking
batteries that lay on our road. The soldier who took me forward had the
day before got a skin wound on the face from shrapnel, while carrying
a message to the staff; it had not prevented him from returning to the
front. The General jocularly told him that to-day he would probably get
one on the other cheek.
As we came out of the wood, we saw a man dodge past us, and the next
minute came the explanation in the shape of a shell. The railway
ran straight forward up the bare slope; and the enemy was shelling
all along this line. A few hundred yards on, behind the lightest of
shelters, was a hole in the ground with a telephone, which served
during action for the staff of the regiment. I asked for the Colonel,
and they pointed to a splendidly built man lying stretched out on the
ground. I thought for a moment that he was dead, but he was only lying
fast asleep under the shrapnel, after the ceaseless and arduous work
of the attack. He stood up and shook himself like some noble animal,
standing in the open, much against the wish of his officers.
We sat and talked for some hours. The ground where we were had all
been won in the night. Our present positions, temporary and little
developed, were about five hundred yards further up. Our men were only
six hundred yards from the Germans and had orders to advance by short
stages. Some of them had already crept forward two hundred yards and
were throwing up head cover on the ridge of the slope. Other parts of
the ridge were still in the hands of the Germans; their trenches were
plainly visible, and they were firing down on us, aiming at anything
which stood upright.
A soldier was sent by the railway ditch up to the front, so I went
with him. The best plan after all was to walk forward, stepping out
but without hurry. A little beyond the level of our lines I found some
breast-high shelters on the edge of the railway ditch. Here we posted
the bearers, who would wait to attend to the wounded.
One got a near view of all our front. A group of some twenty men had
gone forward together and were entrenching themselves; others at
intervals crept forward on their own initiative on different sides;
it was rather like men at a Salvation meeting, coming in, one by one,
for conversions. As one was halfway up to his comrades, a shrapnel
burst with a flare just above him; he lay still for a few minutes and
then crawled slowly back, evidently wounded. The twenty had hardly
established themselves when three shrapnels and a shell burst at
intervals all along their little line. However, the slow process went
on, and the line was being gradually levelled up to those who were
furthest forward.
This slow advance, inevitable in daytime, is very trying. The moment of
greatest danger was when the men came in full view of the enemy, who
from his trenches could direct his artillery fire with precision on
to the Russian advance. As our men came closer in, this danger would
disappear, for the German artillery in the rear would be afraid of
hitting its own infantry; but this stage was still far off.
I came back to the staff, and when close to it I was noticed and
followed with a little shower of explosive bullets which burst near me.
Beyond the railway, much the same movement was in process, except that
here machine guns were at work. I made my way back to the wood; shells
travelled overhead far to our rear; as each passed, the wounded men
whom I was supporting jerked instinctively away from me and wished to
lie down or seek any shelter.
I had a long walk back, passing on the way groups of those wounded who
were able to go on foot, and followed for some distance by two soldiers
who were on the lookout for spies.
_May 31._
I have had an interesting talk with a German officer, commander of a
battery which was cut off by the Russians in a recent advance on our
side. He comes from the Rhine and has lived long in Hamburg, and he
inspired in his captors the greatest respect by his breeding and good
feeling.
We talked first of Hamburg: he described it as a dead town; trade
there is, but it goes by other roads and most of the profits remain in
neutral countries. The short rations in Germany he insisted were simply
a measure of precaution, and latterly prices had been lowered; he had a
poor opinion of potato bread. Next we talked of the Rhine Universities,
which are practically emptied of students by the war. There are in the
army many volunteers from the age of sixteen to that of forty-eight,
but this is no indication of the depletion of material for the Army.
We now got on to the main questions; he was very ready to discuss them
and spoke perfectly frankly. I asked on what side Germany could hope
for any deciding success. He admitted at once that no such point,
of the kind that Napoleon used to look for, was to be found on any
side, and he maintained that from the outset, both militarily and
politically, Germany was fighting a purely defensive war, of course by
frequent counter-offensives. In that case, I suggested, Germany could
only have peace by our offering it, that is, by our getting tired of
the war; and surely it was unfortunate that she had all of us against
her at once. In reply he reminded me of the German word _Streber_,
which means a restless pushing person who is always disturbing and
annoying others. Economically, he said, the struggle for life in
Germany had become almost impossible, of which he himself had seen many
instances. Some outlet was essential, and this England and the other
Powers had united to prevent. I said that for us English the issue was
whether Germany should have things which we at present possess, and
that we were not likely to give them up without fighting. He quite
accepted this. Germany, he said, was like the troublesome boy of the
school, who was dissatisfied and had a grievance, and was always making
things unpleasant for all the rest, so that there was no wonder if
he was not liked. I suggested that this went too far, if his own old
allies, such as Italy, turned against him. He expressed a natural
resentment against Italy, and said that anyhow here right was on the
side of Germany, who would continue to defend herself to the end. I
answered that we might disagree as to the question of right, but that
I could not understand how any successful issue could be hoped for
under such conditions. He was of my opinion, and twice spoke of the
war as a "catastrophe." I asked, then, why Germany should persist in
a policy which had obviously, especially in the case of Italy, proved
to be a misguided one; we all felt admiration for the magnificent
fighting power of the German army, which might have dealt successfully
with us separately; but it had been set an impossible task. He replied
that England had a long experience as a state and that policy with her
was well thought out; Germany had only some forty years of a united
existence behind her, and the policy which had led to "the catastrophe"
could not, as a policy, be defended. I asked whether it was likely to
be changed, and to this I neither expected nor got any answer. But
it was interesting that, in spite of the great successes in western
Galicia, he described the present mood of the army as nothing like the
first great outburst of enthusiasm at the beginning of the war.
I was later given an opportunity of examining a German private (a
Hanoverian). This man had been asleep when the Russians stormed his
trenches. I was interested both in the readiness of his answers, which
he gave with a smiling face, and in the answers themselves. The German
heavy artillery was all beyond the San, and troops were being sent away
to the Italian front. Food was poor in Galicia; all the soldiers were
for peace, and there was the same refrain in all the letters received
from home. He had been on the western front near Reims and had made
the railway journey to Neu-Sandec (Nowy Sacz) in five days. He spoke
with especial respect of the first English troops, of the Russian field
artillery and of the accuracy of the French heavy artillery.
_June 7._
I had a talk with a staff officer of the E E Corps on the fortunes of
his corps and on the German methods of advance. The corps had not been
hit so hard as some others by the Austro-German impact; it helped to
cover the retreat to the San, and stood to its ground beyond the river
until one of its neighbours retired. When the enemy had thus got a
footing beyond the river, the E E Corps made a counter-attack vigorous
and successful. But the enemy pushed the next corps still further
back, so that the E E's had also to rectify their line. However, they
continued to make counter-attacks, at one point gaining about a mile
of ground, and they were still holding good. They had at least the
satisfaction of holding the forces of the enemy which were opposed to
them, so that these troops could not move further along the Russian
line to complete their offensive movement. This record is typical of
very much of the Galician fighting, which is full of such ups and downs
of attacks and of counter-attacks, and only reached decisive results by
the employment, at given points, of an overwhelmingly superior heavy
artillery.
The German method is to mass superior artillery against a point
selected and to cover the area in question with a wholesale and
continuous cannonade. The big German shells, which the Russian soldiers
call the "black death," burst almost simultaneously at about fifty
yards from each other, making the intervening spaces practically
untenable. The cannonaded area extends well to the rear of the
Russian lines, and sometimes it is the rear that is first subjected
to a systematic bombardment, the lines themselves being reserved for
treatment later. On one of my visits the divisional and regimental
staffs were being so shelled that the former had to move at once and
one of the latter was half destroyed; but meanwhile there was hardly
a shot along the actual front. In this way confusion is created, and
reinforcements and supply are made difficult. It is the wholesale
character of these cannonades that make their success, for there is
nowhere to which the defenders can escape. The whole process is, of
course, extremely expensive.
When a considerable part of the Russian front has thus been
annihilated, and when the defenders are, therefore, either out of
action or in retreat, the enemy's infantry is poured into the empty
space and in such masses that it spreads also to left and right,
pushing back the neighbouring Russian troops. Thus the whole line is
forced to retire, and the same process is repeated on the new positions.
When success in one district has thus been secured, the German impact
is withdrawn and again brought forward at some further part of the
Russian front. In other words, the German hammer, zigzagging backwards
and forwards, travels along our front, striking further and further on
at one point or another, until the whole front has been forced back.
The temper of this corps, as of practically all the others, is in no
sense the temper of a beaten army. The losses have been severe; but
with anything like the artillery equipment of the enemy, both officers
and men are confident that they would be going forward.
_June 10._
I rode over dull country on my way to the SS Corps, one of whose
divisions I had visited a week or so before. While I sat lunching in a
wood, regiments of cavalry swept past me, filling the air with dust;
sometimes one could not see a horseman until he was upon one. Not far
from the Staff there was a sick soldier lying by the road, with some
peasants looking after him; we sent him forward on a passing army cart.