Wilkowiszky, and at the same time General Lieutenant Boulgakew's 20th
Army Corps--its communications with the 10th corps cut--was retreating
pell mell from Goldap to Suwalki, two other German movements were
developing. From north of Ragnit as far as the Baltic and east of the
line of the Memel, the Russians were being driven back across the
frontier. This important operation protected Von Eichorn's flank and
allowed him to sweep down from the north, enfielding the Russians on
Suwalki. And with this General von Buelow's 8th army had rolled up the
Russians at Lyck, driving them back on a terrific frontal attack to the
strongly entrenched line of the Bobr. So they battled from February 10th
to the 21st, the crumbling Russian right, composed of the entire Army of
East Prussia, under Russky's command, was hurled down from the north
against the victorious troops of Von Buelow on the south. The flying
Russians pouring out of East Prussia, plunged headlong across the snowy
open plains, into Suwalki, where they attempted to make a stand at
Suwalki. Fighting as they ran down the road to Augustowo, they were met
by Von Eichorn's army, which had marched from Augustowo 120 kilometers
through snow in two days. Then Von Buelow, coming across from Lyck, made
a junction with Von Eichorn, and pursued them into the forests and
frozen swamps--an army of 240,000 men utterly annihilated, its few
remaining corps still bravely fighting for seven days in the Augustowo
Wald until on the day we saw them, the day the rout was completed,
their scattered, hungry remnants laid down their arms--sixty thousand
men.
The most important engagement of the war since Tannenberg,--the battle
of Augustowo Wald will be written in history beside the charnel fields
of other wars. A terrific blow for Russia, for while she can lose
thousands of those sullen conscripts, she cannot stand the loss of 350
cannon and countless machine guns, rifles and stores. One hundred and
twenty thousand Russians dead and wounded lay in the snows, while a
hundred thousand of their comrades shuffled back to Germany under armed
guard. Whether one looks at it with the cold eyes of the strategist or
appalled at its horror, one can only think of Augustowo in terms of
Waterloo, Gettysburg or Sedan.
XII
THE WAR ON THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER
In the East, the war is different. With Hindenburg's army against the
Russians, I saw a kind of warfare utterly different from the solid lines
of the West. To portray to the most minute detail what is daily
transpiring there, I wrote down all the impressions gained in a single
day and night. It was near Tauroggen, a stricken village across the
Russian frontier that I saw this war of the East; it was at Tauroggen
that Prince Joachim, the youngest of the Emperor's sons, led the Germans
in the storm.
The diary follows:
* * * * *
11:50 A. M., Tilsit--We have slept late, for we came to Tilsit in the
small hours, a weary ride across the snow swept plains from Suwalki.
Back there in the pine woods of Augustowo, Von Eichorn's young troops
are hammering away at the new army that the Grand Duke has rushed to
brace the crumbling front. But we have seen the fighting there, and this
morning Rittmeister Tzschirner has promised to show me the war in the
north, where the Memel line is protecting Von Eichorn's northern flank.
"We shall journey to one of our outposts in Russia," proposes
Tzschirner, and his eyes light hopefully. "There may be fighting there."
Our motor goes barking through the pretty streets of Tilsit, which, by
two hours' fighting in the fall, the German soldiers saved from the
Russian torch. We cross the winding Memel, where a century ago Napoleon
and the Czar met on a canopied pontoon to sign the Peace of Tilsit,
while the hills behind us at Engelsberg bristled with the cannon of
France; we cross vast river-plains shimmering with snow and mount to the
pine fringed hills beyond, where now are strewn the soldiers of another
Czar, who thought to march the road to Berlin; and chugging along a
wayside strewn with their smashed entanglements, we come to Piculponen.
Across the silent stretches of snow there comes the clear scattering
cracks of carbines.
"A Russian patrol!" remarks Tzschirner, and he unbuttons his holster,
while our red haired mechanician removes the caps from the rifles. "One
can never tell," continues Tzschirner, "down which road their patrols
may ride."
This puzzles me. "But how can they get through the German lines?" I
asked him.
"There is no line, as in the West. We have driven the Russians from East
Prussia, but there are many roads down which their patrols can sneak
from a frontier village and run back to the troops."
"Could they come down this road?" I asked.
"We hold it to Tauroggen, where we must go, but we have no trenches from
Tauroggen to Woynuta, and between these points are cross roads by which
they could raid this highway. But if those shots we heard were Cossacks,
I do not think they will come here. They are not brave, the Cossacks."
We see that beyond, to the left, an old brick church hides among the
pines.
"We shall go there," suggests the Rittmeister. "Do you wish?"
I am wondering why we should waste time on a church when Russian patrols
are shooting up the countryside, when Tzschirner says:
"This church is where Queen Louise of Prussia took refuge from Napoleon
in 1807."
With the dutiful air that one assumes upon examining an historical
landmark, we scramble up the bank toward the church.
"Walk slowly," the Rittmeister said, as we picked our way through a snow
covered graveyard, "or you may not see and kick a _grenat_. They explode
very easily."
At once we cease thinking of the church of Piculponen as Queen Louise's
retreat. We are walking amid a charnel patch of opened graves and tombs
that are the gaping craters of shells.
"The Russians tried to hold a position here," remarks Tzschirner.
We turn the corner of the church and see the Russian trenches dug
between the graves. We see the great windowed walls shattered with
shrapnel and shell. We gaze down into an awful hole where a _grenat_ has
plunged into a grave. The fragments of the casket are blown into the
black mud, and there are other fragments too, fragments a chalky white,
for the grave is old; and fragments of brown Russian coats. Nearby
stands a white marble cross. "_Ruhig sanft_," it says, "Rest in Peace."
The plains of the Memel, as we leave the churchyard, brooding in the
white peace of the snow and under the Engelsberg lies Tilsit, vaguely as
in a mirage, its slender steepled churches, the spires of a dream.
* * * * *
1:08 P. M. We are climbing a long brown slope of road that has been dug
from out of the drifting snow. A kilometer from Piculponen we turn out
to pass a clanking column of gray transports, plodding on toward the
front. Noticing a wagon loaded with barbed wire, I said to Tzschirner:
"What will you do, make this position at Tauroggen permanent? The
entanglements are going up."
"Ah, yes, for a time. It is best always to be prepared," and he smiles.
In this clear, cold air our exhaust is barking in loud exaggeration, but
as we crest the hill near the huddled houses of Kamstpauriken, we hear a
foreign sound. Somewhere across the snows rifles are firing.
"The Russian patrols are very active this morning," Tzschirner is
saying.
"How far off is that shooting?" I ask.
"About a mile. On a road which is parallel to this."
"How many in a patrol?" I was thinking that we were five--Gelbricke,
who must drive the car; Seyring, the red-haired mechanician, who could
use a carbine; Tzschirner, with his Browning automatic; Corey, with a
fountain pen, and I with a camera.
"They are very many, the Russians," Tzschirner was saying. "They never
ride a patrol under twenty men. It is dangerous," continues Tzschirner
with the air of one doing his duty by saying that, although I knew he
was spoiling for a scrap.
"We may be surrounded; but I do not think. _Naturlich_, there is the
chance. You wish?"
"Rittmeister, these Russians would have to use the road and we could see
them coming in time."
"Oh, no," Tzschirner says quickly. "They often ride over the fields; it
is very good for patrol, the country here."
"What grand little comforter," I murmur.
Tzschirner looks around and grins. "I will protect you."
I feel he has been quietly laughing at me, until from behind a distant
snow capped ridge I see a black belch of smoke.
"They have burned a village," exclaims Tzschirner.
Together we run through the snow in the direction of the smoke, until a
hillock gives us a vantage point of the surrounding country. We can see
the flames now, streaking through the smoke and above the snowy hills,
black clouds stain the cold blue sky.
"Remain here," calls Tzschirner, who is fumbling with his map. "It is
little more than a kilometer from here to the village." And while he
studies his map I watch the flames through my binoculars.
"That is the village of Robkojen," he presently announces. "See," and he
points to it on the Staff map, where even the little summit upon which
we stand is marked.
The glasses bring to me a huddle of cottages in flames. It reminds me of
a moving picture I have seen--a Western picture with tiny horsemen on a
distant ribbon of road. I can see the Russians; their uniforms are
different from the brown coated droves I have seen. They are dark
uniforms and the horsemen wear tall dark hats. Tzschirner has put his
glasses on them. "Cossacks," he mutters. "Soon our men will be there."
Taking the hint, I swing the glasses down the road, that twists like a
black swing through the snow to Robkojen. And even then I can discern a
tiny movement. It grows to a rush of horses. "They are coming!"
The finish of a Derby has not this thrill. Can the Germans come up fast
enough? Through the smoke I can see a sudden panic. Between two flaming
cottages a horse is pivoting; one seems to be rearing. The Germans are
drawing nearer. "They are Uhlans!" And then as in a stampede there
breaks from behind the smoking village a line of horses that go
galloping in black silhouette across the snow. The Uhlans are taking up
the pursuit.
Tzschirner's air is one of intense disgust.
"I say, you the Cossacks would not fight. They ended their fighting when
they burned the village. They always sneak across the frontier, burn the
homes of a few poor people, terrify old men, women and their children by
killing a few, and then running like dogs."
"Do they always run, Rittmeister?"
"_Immer_, unless they are greater than our cavalry by six to one," with
a sneer, he adds. "I think Russia needs them best for murdering the
Jews."
Behind us the dried cottages are flaming like tinder and across the
fields from Robkojen a woman, her arms filled with bundles, and leading
a child, sinks almost to her knees in the snow. It seems as if she has
fled a hell of fire to gain an empty world.
* * * * *
1:45 P. M. "Only a few days ago the Russians ran down this road, taking
their dead with them."
We have caught up with the awful refuse of battle. Near Szillutten we
see that which no longer horrifies--the slain dead; and then the bloody
road of retreat, where German shells split the Russian ranks, and lumped
the road with things in brown that only the wheels of the heavy guns can
flatten down; a furrowing of frozen ruts, shining with the pounding of
transports, the packed snow broken, here and there, to reveal stiff
objects, bits of brown cloth matted with flesh.
Burned Laugszargen shows its black walls, and as we cross the frontier
we see the red and black striped white posts lying shattered in a ditch
beside. And it seems a symbol of these days when frontiers seem but
things to be smashed. We are passing through Posheruni, the silent
houses echoing back our motor in a hollow, dismal sound.
We enter a woods, the tall pines crowding close to the road; and it
seems as though the road has been the path of a storm, as if lightning
has struck one upon another of the trees here, for torn white they seem
to have fallen into each other's branches, leaning like stricken things,
while finding those whom they sought, the shells have daubed them red
and flung up bits of torn cloth into their shattered boughs, there to
hang, perhaps, as a signal that the black winged birds might see. And
passing through the forest of death, we come upon a German battery,
hidden behind mounds of clay that are covered with evergreen. The
soldiers are fussing about the long, gray barrels. And we have not gone
half a kilometer further, when we smile at the guile of this German
army; for there in a field to the right of the road is a dummy battery.
We count four black logs lying between four sets of farm cartwheels, and
each with its little circular shield of earth--a shield deliberately
built low, though, so that from afar the Russian observer would not fail
to see what seemed to be a gun; and signaling his batteries waste
thereafter the ammunition. The road slopes down toward the sunken stream
of the Eserina. The burned bridge lifts its skeleton posts in a warning.
We get out and see that the German engineers have bent the road to the
right, leading it down over a bed of wire-lashed saplings, across a
string of planks, and thence up over more dirt-covered saplings to the
main road again.
"It is better," suggests Tzschirner, "that we leave the auto." And as
the motor bounces over the lashed saplings and takes the bridge, a
company hurrying to Tauroggen comes swinging on its heels; for we are
getting into Russia now, and near the line of battle, and there can be
no delay. We hurry after the car.
"Please, that bridge," and Tzschirner indicates the charred piles; "it
saved the Russians. By burning it, they delayed our advance an hour."
"Your engineers changed the course of the road, bending it around that
burning bridge, in one hour?"
"Oh, yes," and Tzschirner is almost apologetic; "our pioneers would have
finished the work in much less than an hour, but the Russians fired on
them with shrapnel," and then as if remarking the weather, he added,
"Fifteen were killed."
The car chugs on. A great blue bulbed cupola shows above the trees and
we rattle across the Jura.
"The Russians tried to destroy this bridge, too," Tzschirner is
explaining, "but we came too fast for them and drove them up into
Tauroggen, where they endeavored to stand." ... Our motor is panting up
the hill past the Russian church and turns into the village of
Tauroggen.
"We put the artillery on them," continues Tzschirner, and we pass rows
of narrow, squalid houses, chipped with shrapnel, "and they took
Tauroggen by storm. There was street fighting and then, picking up their
dead, they ran with them through the village, across the field to the
woods," and Tzschirner waves his hand down the road toward a patch of
pines, "and they're in the woods now."
We turn into a muddy street where the fighting must have been hot, for
the way is littered with cartridge belts and guns and on a pale blue
picket fence Russian accouterments dangle like unclean things hung out
in the sun.
"If you will excuse me," says the Rittmeister, "I shall speak with
Ober-Lieutenant Hoffman."
We find Ober-Lieutenant Hoffman quartered in a clean looking hut,
distinguished by a shingle, hand-lettered with that official looking
KOMMANDO. After he has conversed with the Ober-Lieutenant, Tzschirner
brings him into the motor and we drive through Tauroggen in the
direction the Russians have fled. We have put the last outlying house
behind us and at a suggestion from Ober-Lieutenant Hoffman the motor is
stopped. "It is better," explains Tzschirner, "that the auto remain
here. It gives too large a target."
With a strange feeling, almost of superiority, for not thirty feet
ahead, what appears to be a first line trench is filled with soldiers,
we walk towards them down the road. Over there, a quarter of a mile,
across the barren field where the Russians dragged their dead, are the
woods, and skulking there are the Russians--the soldiers maintain a
nervous vigil. Not a sound breaks the strain, only the clatter of axes,
as far to the right the soldiers are clearing a zone for the enfilading
fire of the machine guns. And as we walk past the trench and approach
the last outpost this tension is communicated to us. We walk through the
barricade--a ladder tangled with wire, that slides between two broken
carts on either side of the road. We scarcely notice the two sentries
who walk twenty paces from the barricade toward the woods, wheel and
return. We are watching the woods--that great green semicircle across
the field where the Russians are hiding.
Apparently that thought never occurs to Tzschirner. Being a good
soldier, he does not indulge his imagination when he is in uniform. He
and Ober-Lieutenant Hoffman are walking along, chatting easily as they
might on some fine February day along the Linden. As the sentries stride
by I catch the words, "_Wagner ist mehr wichtig_," and a little excited,
the sentry with the beard cries: "_Quatch! Strauss ist wunderbar_!"
Apparently to decide the merits of Wagner and Strauss is more absorbing
than the Russians.
A little bewildered, I walk on. Down where the road divides the woods
into a limitless vista of green, I think I see something move. It is
about 600 meters away and I focus my glass. Four Russian soldiers
sitting on a log, a little fire, and in the middle of the road something
that, while indistinguishable, suggests a menace. And even as I watch I
see a tree sway and I can _hear_ it fall as it crashes across the road,
falling like a barricade.
"Look! Look! The Russians!"
And the Rittmeister turns with an amused smile. How commonplace are the
Russians, anyway! How incidental to those officers who have seen so many
dead that even the living are not to be feared.
"In the middle of the road," I announced, "there is a machine gun. It is
pointed this way."
Tzschirner and Ober-Lieutenant Hoffman are discussing some military
problem. Tzschirner begins to trace in the road with his sword some
formation that is beyond my pen.
"Those Russians," I am saying without putting down the glasses, "appear
to be leaving their seats on the log. I think they are showing sudden
interest in the gun."
Demonstrating his problem in the mud, Tzschirner turns to me.
"This is the road to Riga. Follow it and we reach that fortress. As we
are now midway between the German and Russian lines, I do not think it
wise that we go further. Of course, if you would care to storm the
Russians in the woods, we shall go on. Do you wish?"
I do _not_ wish. Nervy little Tzschirner, one of the gamest men to
straddle a horse in this war, has taken us quite far enough. We begin
our walk back to the German lines, turning our backs with difficulty
upon those silent woods.
"If the Russians should fire," Tzschirner says seriously, "throw
yourself at once on the road. The balls will pass over you."
A simple remedy, indeed!
"Strauss," the passing sentry is objecting, "is all chaos."
"Why not?" his bearded comrade defends. "Salome is the music of
destruction."
Glancing back toward the woods, I see a flock of black birds fly
leisurely across the field, and alighting, wait. Wait for what? Had the
Ober-Lieutenant told them that darkness would bring the Russian attack?
"And now, if you like, we shall go to my quarters," says the
Ober-Lieutenant, to whom Tzschirner has delivered me. "I am sorry you
will not find them very comfortable."
It is as ever, the diffidence of these Prussian officers, putting you a
little ill at ease. Self-consciously assuring the Ober-Lieutenant that
to be comfortable is my last desire, we walk down a lane of the bluish
walled cottages, turning in at the frame structure which is denoted
headquarters. As we enter a rather barren room, three orderlies, who
appear to be transcribing reports, briefly stiffen in their chairs and
go on writing. The gray, iron-bound officers' chest by the window makes
a good seat and the Ober-Lieutenant in telling me that having had
conscience, many of the natives of Tauroggen fled with the coming of the
Germans, leaving their loot behind.
"Loot!" I interrupted. "I do not understand."
"Pardon me, but I forgot," and the Ober-Lieutenant called an orderly.
"Here in Tauroggen," he said after consulting the report, "we recovered
household belonging to the German frontier villages of Laugszargen,
Meddiglauken and Augswilken."
"No matter how fast his flight," I observe, "the Russian soldier still
has time to transport his loot."
The Ober-Lieutenant smiles. "But in this time it was not the soldiers.
We have learned that the civilians of Tauroggen followed the Russian
soldiers across the frontier, stealing from houses, and then sneaking
back with their booty to Tauroggen."
Clicking his heels in a salute a young lieutenant comes in. He and the
Ober-Lieutenant begin speaking; such hurried German is too much for me.
I note the monocle the young lieutenant is wearing. What affectation on
the firing line! Clicking his heels to the Lieutenant, bowing to me, the
young lieutenant hurries out. The Ober-Lieutenant is drumming his
fingers on the table top.
"Ober-Lieutenant," I remark with a smile, "will that young lieutenant
wear his monocle if there's a battle?"
The Ober-Lieutenant's gravity dispels a jest. "I imagine he will always
wear that monocle," he says. "The Lieutenant had his eye shot out in
Belgium." He reaches for a map. "Please pardon me," he smiles. Quite
distinctly now I can hear the shots.
"I had hoped," says the Ober-Lieutenant, studying the greenish black
dotted patch that means on his map, the woods, "that there would be no
engagement here until to-morrow. I wanted to finish our entanglements
to-day."
I wonder if our going past the outposts has brought forth the Russians'
nervous fire. That seems also to have occurred to the Ober-Lieutenant.
"They might have thought that we were reconnoitering for a night
attack," and then abruptly, "Let us go out."
As we pass between the houses a bullet goes snaggering off a roof. It
would seem to be a last wild shot for as we turn up the road to the
outpost, everything is still. In the little cemetery to the left of the
barricade, I see soldiers, squatting behind the tombstones; the great
wooden cross suggests an incongruous peace. Calling the sentries who but
a time ago, we heard discussing Wagner and Strauss, the Ober-Lieutenant
taxes them with questions. They salute and hurry behind the cart, which
they have turned blocking the road. "Any wounded?" calls the
Ober-Lieutenant down the trench.
"_Nur Russlanders!_" The soldiers laugh and slip fresh clips into their
guns.
"_Alles ruhig_," the Ober-Lieutenant is saying as we walk along the
line, apparently scornful of the Russians that the pines will not let
him see. "Only nervousness, that shooting."
"You do not believe there will be an attack?"
He shakes his head. "I think not."
But across the belt to the woods, I see the black winged birds, slowly
flying and waddling over the ground.
* * * * *
7:30 P. M. During dinner the Ober-Lieutenant has avoided all shop talk.
No such food as in the West, here--just a stew of white beans and beef
and thick bread, carved off a big black loaf. The thoughtful looking
Colonel produces a flask of cognac, and we are finishing with
cigarettes, when an under officer reports.
"Both lights are in position," I heard the Colonel say and dismissing
the under officer, he seems absorbed in the end of his cigarette. In
this barren room, where the candles are scattering strange shadows on
the unpainted walls you become conscious of an unspoken army. The
Ober-Lieutenant who is talking Nietzsche with me; seems not to have his
mind upon it; when appealed to, the Colonel joins in with monosyllables.
The orderlies who this afternoon were making reports, are gone but in
the corner by the window, a soldier sits with a field telephone in his
lap; slowly he writes upon a pad.
"In America," the Ober-Lieutenant is saying, "you have taken too
seriously our academic thinkers. Will you believe it, that until we
heard about the book from England, not a thousand of my countrymen had
read Bernhardi. Suppose we were to judge America by some of the things
published there?"
I can see his point. A mad buzz from the telephone jerks us up with a
start. With the air, of something expected, fulfilled, the Colonel rubs
the fire off his cigarettes.
"What is it?" he calls.
The soldier's manner is decisive. "Patrols report men massing from the
woods in the road."