A SUMMER DAY ON THE RAWKA LINE
From:
A CERTAIN ARMY CORPS HEAD-QUARTERS NOT FAR FROM THE RAWKA.
_May 26, 1915._
The month of May in Poland, if this season is typical of the climate
here, is a period to dream about. When we turned out of our camp beds
early this morning, the sun was streaming into our little whitewashed
room, while the fragrance of lilacs blooming in a near-by garden
drifted in at the open window. In the little garden behind our house
are a dozen colonies of bees, and already they are up and about their
daily tasks. The sky is without a cloud and the warmth and life of
the early spring morning makes one forget the terrible business that
we are engaged in. The little street of the town is lined with great
horse-chestnut trees now in full bloom with every branch laden deep
with the great white pendent blossoms. For a moment one stands
drinking in the beauty of the new day and the loveliness of the
morning, with one’s mind drifting far, far away to other scenes where
flowers too are blooming at this season of the year. But as our eyes
wander down the street, the thoughts of gentler things are suddenly
dissipated, and with a jolt one’s mind comes back to the work-a-day
world whose daily task now is the destruction of an enemy in the line
of trenches not so many miles away.
What has broken the peaceful tremor of our thoughts is the sight of
some soldiers pulling into the town a half-wrecked aeroplane brought
down by artillery fire the day before near our lines. Its wings are
shattered and its propellers twisted into kindling, while its slight
body (if one can use that expression) is torn and punctured by a score
or more of shrapnel holes, with several gashes where bits of the shell
case had penetrated the thin metal frame. Here at least is one example
of artillery practice which has been able to cripple the bird of ill
omen on the wing. After a generous breakfast, provided by our kind
host the General, we are in our motor-cars again and in a few minutes
are speeding down one of the roads westward to the head-quarters of
a certain artillery brigade who over the telephone have consented to
show us particular choice sights that they have on exhibition on their
front.
Every village that we pass through is full of soldiers bestirring for
the day, while already the main arteries of travel to the trenches
are filling up with the activities of the morning. It is a perfectly
still day, and with each advancing hour it is growing hotter. There
has been no rain for a week or two, the dust is deep upon the roads,
and as our cars hum along the highways we leave volumes of the thin
cloud in our wake. Now and again we pass small columns of infantry
marching cheerfully along in the sunshine, each man in a cloud of dust.
Yet every face is cheerful, and almost without exception the men are
singing their marching songs as they swing along the highways. In the
villages and on the road everything suggests war, but now with quite a
different atmosphere from that of last autumn. Then it was war also,
but of war the novelty, the new and the untried. Then all faces were
anxious, some apprehensive, some depressed. They were going into a
new experience. Now, however, it is war as a tried and experienced
profession that is about us.
The conduct of the campaign has become as much of a business to the
soldiers and to the officers as the operating of a railroad to men
engaged in running it. The deaths and the wounds have become to these
men we see now simply a part of their profession, and they have seen
so much of this side of the business that it has long since been
discounted. The whole atmosphere of the front as we see it in May is
as that of a permanent state of society. These men look as though they
had been fighting for ten years and expected to be fighting for the
rest of their days. War has become the commonplace and peace seems the
unreality.
At brigade head-quarters we halt a few minutes and are directed to
proceed slowly along a certain road, and advised to stop in a cut just
before passing over a certain crest. When we learn that the enemy’s
guns command the road over the crest we inquire with the keenest
interest the exact location of the ridge mentioned, for something
suggests to us that this is a bit of interesting information that the
artillery officer is handing out to us so very casually. They are all
casual by the way; probably they have all got so used to sudden death
and destruction that they feel as nonchalant about their own fate as
they do about others. Half an hour’s run over very heavy and sandy
road, brought us on to a great white ribbon of a highway that ran due
west and dipped over the ridge.
This was our place, and stopping the cars we climbed out to meet a
few officers sauntering down the road. They seemed to be coming from
nowhere in particular, but as I learned later, they lived in a kind of
cave dug out of the side of the road, and had been advised by telephone
that we were coming and so were on the lookout for us. The ranking
officer was a colonel of artillery--one of the kind that you would turn
about in the street to look at and to say to yourself, “Every inch a
soldier.” A serious, kindly-faced man in a dirty uniform with shoulder
straps so faded and frayed that a second look was necessary to get his
rank at all. For six months he had been living in just such quarters
as the cave in the side of the road where we found him. He was glad to
show us his observation. One could see at a glance that his whole heart
and soul were wrapped up in his three batteries, and he spoke of all
his positions and his observation points with as much pride as a mother
speaking about her children.
The country here is a great sweeping expanse, with just a few ridges
here and there like the one that we have come up behind. The country
reminds one of the valley of the Danube or perhaps the Red River Valley
in North Dakota, except that the latter has less timber in it. We are
ourselves quite uncertain as to where the enemy’s position is, for in
the sweep of the valley there is little to indicate the presence of
any army at all, or to suggest the possibility of hostilities from any
quarter. I asked one of the officers who strolled along with us where
the German lines were. “Oh, over there,” he remarked, casually waving
his hand in a northerly direction. “Probably they can see us then,”
I suggested. Personally I felt a mild curiosity in the subject which
apparently my companion did not share. He stopped and offered me a
cigarette, and as he lighted one himself, he murmured indifferently,
“Yes, I dare say they could see us if they turned their glasses on this
ridge. But probably they won’t. Can I give you a light?”
I thanked him politely and also commended the sun for shining in the
enemy’s eyes instead of over their shoulders as happened last night
when the observer in the German battery spotted us at 6,000 yards
and sent five shells to tell us that we were receiving his highest
consideration. On the top of a near-by hill was a small building which
had formerly been the Russian observation point, but the Germans
suspecting this had quickly reduced it to a pile of ruins. Near by
we entered a trench cut in from the back of the hill, and worked our
way up to an observation station cut out of the side of the slope in
front of the former position.
[Illustration: A first-line trench in Poland.]
It was now getting on toward noon and intensely hot. The view from
this position as one could sweep it with the hyperscope was perfectly
beautiful. Off to the west twinkled the silver ribbon of the Rawka,
while the whole plain was dotted with fields of wheat and rye that
stretched below us like a chess board. Here and there where had been
houses were now but piles of ruins. The lines here were quite far
apart--perhaps half a mile, and in between them were acres of land
under cultivation. I think that the most remarkable thing that I have
seen in this war was the sight of peasants working between the lines
as calmly as though no such thing as war existed. Through the glasses
I could distinctly see one old white beard with a horse ploughing up a
field, and even as I was looking at him I saw a shell burst not half a
mile beyond him near one of the German positions. I mentioned it to one
of the officers. “Oh yes,” he said, “neither we nor the Germans fire on
the peasants nowadays. They must do their work and they harm neither of
us.”
On this part of the line the war seems to have become rather a listless
affair and perfunctory to say the least. I suppose both Germans
and Russians have instructions just now to hold themselves on the
defensive. At any rate I could distinctly see movements beyond the
German line, and I am sure they too must have detected the same on our
side. One man on a white horse was clearly visible as he rode along
behind the German trenches, while I followed with my glasses a German
motor-car that sped down a road leaving in its wake a cloud of dust.
Yet no one bothered much about either of them. Now and again one of our
big guns behind us would thunder, and over our heads we could hear the
diminishing wail of a 15-centimetre shell as it sped on its journey
to the German lines. Through the hyperscope one could clearly see the
clouds of dirt and dust thrown up by the explosion. One of these shells
fell squarely in one of the German trenches, and as the smoke drifted
away I could not help wondering how many poor wretches had been torn by
its fragments. After watching this performance for an hour or more, we
returned back through the trench and paid a visit to the Colonel in his
abode in the earth by the roadside. For half an hour or more we chatted
with him and then bade him good-bye.
A bit to the south-west of us lay a town which a few days ago was
shelled by the Germans. This town lies in a salient of our line, and
since the bombardment has been abandoned by all the population. As
it lay on the German side of the slope we had three miles of exposed
roadway to cover to get to it, and another three miles in view of the
German line to get out of it.
[Illustration: Russian General inspecting his gunners.]
As we sped down this three miles one felt a certain satisfaction that
one had a 95 horsepower Napier capable of doing 80 miles an hour. A
third of the town itself was destroyed by the German shell fire. The
rest was like a city of the dead. Not a human being of the population
was to be seen in the streets, which but a week ago were swarming with
people. Here and there a soldier from the near-by positions lounged on
an abandoned doorstep, or napped peacefully under one of the trees in
the square. The sun of noon looked down upon a deserted village, if one
does not count an occasional dog prowling about, or one white kitty
sitting calmly on a window ledge in the sunshine casually washing her
face. As ruins have long ceased to attract us, we did not loiter long
here, but turned eastward along the great white road that led back in
the direction of Warsaw.
There is one strip of this road which I suppose is not more than 4,500
yards from the German gun positions. Personally I am always interested
in these matters, and being of an inquiring turn of mind I asked my
friend the Russian officer, who was with me in the car, if he thought
the enemy could see us. “Oh yes,” he replied quite cheerfully. “I am
sure they can see us, but I don’t think they can hit us. Probably they
won’t try, as they are not wasting ammunition as much as they used to.
Won’t you have a cigarette?” I accepted the smoke gladly and concluded
that it is the Russian custom to offer one a cigarette every time one
asks this question about the German guns. Anyway, I got exactly the
same reply from this man as I did from the other in the morning.
Ten miles up the road we came on a bit of forest where the unfortunate
villagers who had been driven out by shell fire were camping. Here they
were in the wood living in rude lean-to’s, surrounded by all their
worldly possessions that they had the means of getting away. Cows,
ducks, pigs, and chicken roamed about the forests, while dozens of
children played about in the dust.
One picture I shall not forget. Before a hut made of straw and branches
of trees a mother had constructed a rude oven in the earth by setting
on some stones the steel top of the kitchen stove that she had brought
with her. Kneeling over the fire she was preparing the primitive
noonday meal. Just behind was a cradle in which lay a few weeks’ old
baby rocked by a little sister of four. Three other little children
stood expectantly around the fire, their little mouths watering for the
crude meal that was in preparation. Behind the cradle lay the family
cow, her soft brown eyes gazing mournfully at the cradle as she chewed
reflectively at her cud. In the door of the miserable little shelter
stretched a great fat sow sleeping sweetly with her lips twitching
nervously in her sleep. An old hen with a dozen chicks was clucking to
her little brood within the open end of the hut. This was all that war
had left of one home.
[Illustration: Telephoning to the battery from the observation
position.]
A hundred yards away a gang of labourers was digging in the forest.
It is no wonder that the mother looks nervously from her fire at
their work. Perhaps she wonders what they are about. We know. It is
another line of trenches. From what we have seen of the front line we
believe they will not be needed, but it is not strange that these poor
fugitives look on with anxious eyes with the question written large on
every face. Probably to them the war seems something from which they
cannot escape. They came to this wood for safety and now again they see
more digging of trenches going on.
Another hour on the road brings us back to the head-quarters of the
army and our day in May is over.
THE CHANGE OF FRONT IN POLAND AND THE BATTLE OF OPATOV