AN AFTERNOON AT THE “POSITIONS”
Dated:
SOMEWHERE IN POLAND,
_June 2, 1915_.
Provided with carriages we left our hospitable Colonel for the front
trenches 4 versts further on. As we were near the Front when we were at
regimental head-quarters it was not deemed safe to take the motor-cars
any further, on account of the clouds of dust which they leave in their
wake.
The country here is spread out in great rolling valleys with very
little timber and only occasional crests or ridges separating one
beautiful verdant stretch of landscape from another. It struck one as
quite obvious in riding over this country that the men who planned
these roads had not taken war into consideration. Had they done so
they certainly would not have placed them so generally along ridges,
where one’s progress can be seen from about 10 versts in every
direction. As I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, this particular
army had not fallen back on its fortified and prepared line, but was
camping out about 25 to 30 versts in front of it in positions which
were somewhat informal. In riding through this country one has the
unpleasant sensation that every time one shows up on a ridge, an
enemy of an observing and enterprising disposition might be tempted
to take a shot at one just for practice. My friend the banker soldier
explained, however, that we should be difficult to hit, and anyway he
rather enjoyed shell fire. “It is a sort of nice game,” he told me with
a charming smile, “one finds it very entertaining and not altogether
dangerous.”
However his insouciance did not prevent him taking the precaution of
forbidding the use of motor-cars with their clouds of dust, and he was
quite content that we should take the carriages, which made less of a
target on the dry roads.
From regimental head-quarters we went up into a little gulch where we
again found that we were expected, and a genial Colonel of a howitzer
battery was waiting to entertain us. Five of our guns were sitting
along the road with their muzzled noses up in the air at an angle of
about 35 degrees waiting, waiting for some one to give them word to
shoot at something or other.
[Illustration: Howitzer battery in Poland.]
Batteries are always peculiarly fascinating to me; they always appear
so perfect in their efficiency, and capable of getting work done when
required. These five were of the 4-inch variety, with an elevation of
forty-five degrees obtainable.
At a word from the Colonel they were cleared for action and their
sighting apparatus inspected and explained. As usual they were equipped
with panorama sights, with the aiming point a group of trees to the
right and rear of the position, and with their observation point 3
miles away in a trench near the infantry line. The sixth gun was
doing lonely duty a mile away in a little trench all by itself. This
position the Colonel informed us was shelled yesterday by the enemy,
who fired thirty-five 12-centimetre shells at them without scoring a
single hit. After looking at the guns we spent an hour at tea, and
then in our carts pushed on up the valley, where we found a regiment
of Cossack cavalry in reserve. The hundreds of horses were all saddled
and wandering about, each meandering where its fancy led. Everywhere on
the grass and under the few clumps of brush were sitting or sleeping
the men, few of whom had any shelter or tents of any kind, and the
whole encampment was about as informal as the encampment of a herd of
cattle. In fact the Cossacks impress one as a kind of game who have
no more need of shelter or comforts than the deer of the forest. When
they settle down for the night they turn their horses loose, eat a bit
of ration and then sit under a tree and go to sleep. It is all very
charming and simple. Our guide informed us that when they wanted their
horses they simply went out and whistled for them as a mother sheep
bleats for its young, and that in a surprisingly short time every
soldier found his mount. The soldiers are devoted to their horses,
and in a dozen different places one could see them rubbing down their
mounts or rubbing their noses and petting them.
From this encampment the road went up to its usual place on the crest
of the hill. The soldier driver of our carriage did not seem to feel
the same amount of enthusiasm about the “nice game” of being shelled,
and protested as much as he dared about taking the horses further; but
being quietly sat upon, he subsided with a deep sigh and started up
over the ridge in the direction of a clump of houses beyond another
rise of ground at an astonishingly rapid speed. From the crest along
which we travelled we had a beautiful view of a gently undulating
valley lying peaceful and serene under the warm afternoon sun. A few
insects buzzing about in the soft air near the carriage were the
only signs of life about us. We drove up at a good round pace to
the little clump of trees which sheltered a group of farm buildings.
As we were getting out of our carriage there was a sharp report to the
road on our right, and looking back I saw the fleecy white puff of a
shrapnel shell breaking just over the road to the north of us. Like
the bloom of cotton the smoke hung for an instant in the air and then
slowly expanding drifted off. A moment later, almost in the same place,
another beautiful white puff, with its heart of copper-red, appeared
over the road, and again the sharp sound of its burst drifted across
the valley. The Austrian shrapnel has a bit of reddish-brown smoke
which must be, I think, from the bursting charge in the shell.
[Illustration: Cossacks on the Dniester. Officers’ quarters in the
woods.]
Our guide was quite delighted and smiled and clicked his heels
cheerfully as he ushered us into the little room of the officer
commanding the regiment in the trenches just ahead of us. Even as he
greeted us, the telephone rang in the little low-ceilinged room of the
cottage, and he excused himself as he went to reply to it. In a few
minutes he came back with an annoyed expression on his face. “These
unpleasant Austrians,” he said in disgust. “They are always up to their
silly tricks. They have been shelling some Red Cross carts on the road.
I have just ordered the howitzer battery in our rear to come into
action and we shall see if we cannot give them a lesson in manners.”
After a few pleasantries he asked what it was that we would most like,
and I replied in my stock phrases, “Observation points and trenches, if
you please.” He stood for a moment studying the tip of his dusty boot;
evidently he was not very eager about the job. However, he shrugged
his shoulders and went back to the telephone, and after a few minutes
conversation came back and said to us: “It is a very bad time to go
into our trenches, as we have no covered ways, and in the daytime one
is seen, and the enemy always begin firing. It is very unsafe, but if
you are very anxious I shall permit one of you to go forward, though it
is not convenient. When the enemy begin to fire, our batteries reply,
and firing starts in all the trenches. The soldiers like to fight, and
it doesn’t take much to start them.”
Put in this way none of us felt very keen about insisting. So we all
compromised by a visit to a secondary position, which we were told was
not very dangerous, as the enemy could only reach it with their shell
fire and “of course no one minds that,” as the officer casually put it.
We all agreed that, of course, we did not mind that, and so trooped off
with the Colonel to the trenches and dug-outs where the troops who
were not in the firing line were in immediate reserve.
The group of dug-outs was flanked with trenches, for, as the Colonel
informed us, “Who knows when this position may be attacked?” And then
he added, “You see, though we are not in the direct view of the enemy
here, they know our whereabouts and usually about this time of day they
shell the place. They can reach it very nicely and from two different
directions. Yesterday it became so hot in our house that we all spent a
quiet afternoon in the dug-outs.” He paused and offered us a cigarette,
and as he did so there came a deep boom from our rear and a howitzer
shell wailed over our heads on its mission of protest to the Austrians
about firing on Red Cross wagons. A few seconds later the muffled
report of its explosion came back across the valley. A second later
another and another shell went over our heads. The Colonel smiled, “You
see,” he said, “my orders are being carried out. No doubt the enemy
will reply soon.”
His belief was justified. A moment later that extremely distressing
sound made by an approaching shell came to our ears, followed
immediately by its sharp report as it burst in a field a few hundred
yards away. I looked about at the soldiers and officers around me, but
not one even cast a glance in the direction of the smoke drifting away
over the field near by. After wandering about his position for half or
three-quarters of an hour, we returned to the cottage. It consisted of
but three rooms. The telephone room, a little den where the officers
ate, and a large room filled with straw on which they slept at night,
when sleeping was possible.
Here we met a fine grey-haired, grizzled Colonel, who, as my banker
friend informed me, commanded a neighbouring regiment, the --
Grenadiers. He is one of our finest officers and is in every way
worthy of his regiment, the history of which stretches back over two
centuries. The officer himself looked tired and shabby, and his face
was deeply lined with furrows. We read about dreadful sacrifices in
the Western fighting, but I think this regiment, which again I regret
that I cannot name, has suffered as much in this war as any unit on any
Front. In the two weeks of fighting around Cracow alone it has dwindled
from 4,000 men to 800, and that fortnight represented but a small
fraction of the campaigning which it has done since the war started.
Again and again it has been filled to its full strength, and after
every important action its ranks were depleted hideously. Now there are
very few left of the original members, but as an officer proudly said,
“These regiments have their traditions of which their soldiers are
proud. Put a moujik in its uniform and to-morrow he is a grenadier and
proud of it.”
The Colonel, who sat by the little table as we talked, did not speak
English, but in response to the question of a friend who addressed him
in Russian, he said with a tired little smile, “Well, yes, after ten
months one is getting rather tired of the war. One hopes it will soon
be over and that one may see one’s home and children once more, but one
wonders if----” He paused, smiled a little, and offered us a cigarette.
It is not strange that these men who live day and night so near the
trenches that they are never out of sound of firing, and never sleep
out of the zone of bursting shells, whose every day is associated with
friends and soldiers among the fallen, wonder vaguely if they will ever
get home. The trench occupied by this man’s command was so exposed that
he could only reach it unobserved by crawling on his stomach over the
ridge, and into the shallow ditch that served his troops for shelter.
Leaving the little farm we drove back over the road above which we had
seen the bursting shells on our arrival, but our own batteries, no
doubt, had diverted the enemy from practice on the road, for we made
the 3 versts without a single one coming our way.
It was closing twilight when we started back for the head-quarters that
we had left in the early morning. The sun had set and the peace and
serenity of the evening were broken only by the distant thunder of an
occasional shell bursting in the west. From the ridge over which our
road ran I could distinctly see the smoke from three different burning
villages fired by the German artillery. One wonders what on earth the
enemy have in mind when they deliberately shell these pathetic little
patches of straw-thatched peasant homes. Even in ordinary times these
people seem to have a hard life in making both ends meet, but now in
the war their lot is a most wretched one. Apparently hardly a day
passes that some village is not burned by the long range shells of the
enemy’s guns. That such action has any military benefit seems unlikely.
The mind of the enemy seems bent on destruction, and everywhere their
foot is placed grief follows.
The next morning for several hours I chatted with the General and
his Chief of Staff, and found, as always at the Front, the greatest
optimism. “Have you seen our soldiers at the Front?” is the question
always asked, and when one answers in the affirmative they say, “Well,
then how can you have any anxiety as to the future. These men may
retire a dozen times, but demoralized or discouraged they are never.
We shall win absolutely surely. Do not doubt it.”
[Illustration: The Polish Legion.]
One forms the opinion that the place for the pessimist is at the Front.
In the crises one leaves the big cities in a cloud of gloom, and the
enthusiasm and spirit increase steadily, until in the front trenches
one finds the officers exercising every effort to keep their men from
climbing out of their shelters and going across the way and bayoneting
the enemy. The morale of the Russian Army as I have seen it in these
last weeks is extraordinary.
We left head-quarters and motored over wretched roads to the little
town of Ilza where the quaintest village I have seen lies in a little
hollow beneath a hill on which is perched the old ruin of a castle,
its crumbling ramparts and decaying battlements standing silhouetted
against the sky. We halted in the village to inquire the condition
of the road to Radom, for the day we came this way the enemy had
been shelling it and the remains of a horse scattered for 50 feet
along the highway told us that their practice was not bad at all. We
were informed that the artillery of the Germans commanded the first
4 versts, but after that it was safe enough. Somehow no one feels
much apprehension about artillery fire, and in our speedy car we
felt confident enough of doing the 4 versts in sufficient haste to
make the chance of a shot hitting us at 6,500 yards a very slight
one. As soon as we came out of the hollow, and along the great white
road which stretched across the green fields, I saw one of the great
sausage-shaped German Zeppelins hanging menacingly in the sky to the
west of us. It was a perfectly still day and the vessel seemed quite
motionless.
At the end of the 4 versts mentioned there was a long hill, and then
the road dipped out of sight into another valley where the omniscient
eye of the German sausage could not follow us. It was in my own mind
that it would not be unpleasant when we crossed the ridge. We were just
beginning the climb of the hill when our own motor-car (which had been
coughing and protesting all day) gave three huge snorts, exploded three
times in the engine, and came to a dead stop on the road, with that
indescribable expression on its snubby inanimate nose of a car that
had finished for the day. The part of the road that we were on was as
white as chalk against the green of the hill, with only a few skinny
trees (at least they certainly looked skinny to me) to hide us. Frantic
efforts to crank the car and get it started only resulted in a few
explosions, and minor protests from its interior.
So there we sat in the blazing sun while our extremely competent
chauffeur took off his coat and crawled under the car and did a
lot of tinkering and hammering. He was such a good and cool-headed
individual and went about his work so conscientiously that one did
not feel inclined to go off in the one good car and leave him alone
in his predicament. So we all sat under the skinny tree and smoked
while we watched three shells burst on the road over which we had
just passed. I must confess to a feeling of extreme annoyance at this
particular moment. One can feel a certain exaltation in hustling down
a road at seventy miles an hour and being shot at, but somehow there
is very little interest in sitting out in the blazing sun on a white
road hoping that you can get your car started before the enemy gets
your range. About the time the third shell landed on the road, our
car changed its mind and its engines suddenly went into action with
a tumult like a machine gun battery. We climbed in our cars and the
driver threw in the clutches and our motor made at least fifty feet in
one jump and went over the crest of the hill in a cloud of dust. The
man who sold it to me assured me that it once did 140 versts on a race
track in one hour. My own impression is that it was doing about 150 an
hour when it cleared the ridge and the Zeppelin was lost to sight.
An hour later we were in Radom, and by midnight back once more in
Warsaw.
HOW THE RUSSIANS MET THE FIRST GAS ATTACK