By Perceval Gibbon.
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
ZYRARDOW, Poland, Jan. 3, via London, Jan. 8, (Dispatch to The London
Daily Chronicle.)--The lines of trenches, the position of which I am
able to observe from here, are those extending south from Sochaczew, and
to the west of Msczonow. The chief German efforts are being directed
against the centre of this line.
They have made a concentration of their best troops opposite our
positions west of the village of Guzow, against the trenches of the
second army at a point where an army corps of veterans have turned their
position into an earthen fortress. Here within the last few days the
Germans have brought up guns of all but the largest calibre and
generally displayed considerable increases in their artillery. Here also
their infantry attacks, those tragic and wasteful assaults in force
which send so many thousand German corpses down the streams of the Rawka
and Bzura to the Vistula, and so home, are most intense.
During the last few days a certain lull in the frequency of these
attacks has been observable and has been construed by the Russians as
prefatory to renewed endeavors to force the line and advance a short
stage on the dangerous road to Warsaw. This premonition was justified on
New Year's Day when the enemy's attacks were renewed east of Guzow. The
armies are facing each other across their breastworks at a distance
varying from 200 to 300 yards. The dawn of 1915, the Germans roused
themselves again to the dreary energy of the hopeless battle. I watched
the shelling from the headquarters of a regiment which is occupying a
trench in the centre of the front line.
It was impossible to approach the trench more nearly during daylight, as
the grassless brown flats were noisy with bullets from the German lines.
They shoot with wasteful prodigality shrapnel and even heavier shells on
any single figure that is discernible; but when early dark came down the
attempt was made successfully and the first line held by the Bielojevsky
Regiment was reached. I had the advantage of the company up to the zone
of fire of Prince Peter Volkonsky, who is leader of a Red Cross motor
column. Throughout our journey the Germans were firing rockets. A slow,
green ball of fire ascends as gradually into the air as a loaded
balloon, seems to poise aloft for a moment, then sinks slowly to earth,
lighting the country for a long way around with a ghastly green
illumination. Each rocket is followed by a prompt fire from the field
batteries and a short spurt of rifle fire.
The trench to which I finally came at midnight was that in almost the
mathematical centre of the Guzow positions. Here behind an
eight-foot-high breastwork the famous regiment, which invariably has
been in the front line during the five months of the war, has made
itself efficiently at home. Since the war began the regiment, whose
normal strength is 4,000 men, has lost 5,500, making good its losses out
of the reserves, so that now again it is at its full strength.
The Germans have made a routine of their attacks, always making them at
night and always ineffectually. They advance as far as the barbed wire,
30 yards in front of the trench. There they encounter the full force of
the Russian rifle fire and fall back again. The Germans shell without
ceasing. All the Russians speak of their profuse expenditure of
ammunition. The commander of the trench told me that at the lowest they
fired over 3,000 shells on a single day.
Although intermittent firing continued through the night, no attack was
made. With the morning the German guns resumed their exhaustive questing
along the rear of the trenches, and a big factory to the southward once
more became their target. Its great chimney began to acquire a kind of
sporting significance, it was so obviously the object of fire in that
direction; and bets were going in the trench backing the chimney against
the German gunners.
I counted in an hour thirty-six shells directed at the factory, but the
chimney, like the steeple of a persecuted but triumphant religion, was
cocking its unbowed head to the skies.
Now began the shelling of the trench, while the German rifle bullets
searched along the front. This, however, is a game at which the Russian
riflemen are specially proficient. They can in a few moments organize a
combined murderous fire which forces every German who is not weary of
life to keep his head down. After a few minutes the German rifle fire
goes wild, their bullets no longer striking about our loopholes.
Toward late afternoon their fire increased, and the Russian long-range
battery came into position behind us. The gun out of sight astern of us
roared grandly. A shell traveled over us, whistling in its flight, then
splashed in brief fire, and a great cloud of smoke arose a hundred yards
ahead of us and the same distance short of the German trenches. A second
shell burst about the same distance beyond the German line. Then, after
careful sighting, and the position having been verified, came a third
shell and landed superbly and within easy sight upon the very lip of the
trench, blowing a great gap in the earthwork. It was gunnery of the most
exact and expert kind.
Shell after shell under our eyes, timed to a fraction, raked the trench;
then came the reply to it. A German heavy battery out of sight in a dip
toward the river came into action. From horizon to horizon the world was
noisy with the stupendous drum of artillery, while at each brief
interval the rending reverberation of rifle fire from trench to trench
tore at one's ears.
The dreary, icy night darkened over the desolate fields which in this
war have seen their crops trampled and have been sown with dead men. The
darkness was lit by gun flashes and brief moons of shrapnel winking
aloft, while from the opposite trench issued a ghostly, flickering blaze
of rifles at their work.
The attack developed after all to the left of the trench in which we
were. It was part of a great attack along a line which extended from
near Gradow southward to Rawa, and was unsuccessful everywhere.
When dark came I made my way out of the trench in the same way I had
previously entered it--under fire; but this time the moon was showing
frostily clear over the horrible levels, so that as we went we were
silhouetted against her vacant face. We obviously were plainly visible
to the Germans, for besides bullets, which were beginning to become
commonplace and unremarkable, a shrapnel shell came screaming up and
burst on the ground about twenty feet away.
We gained the road to Chervonaneva. The road was white and straight,
bare as one's empty hand. Here I endured the most curious experience of
my life. Myself and companion, John Bass, correspondent of The Chicago
Daily News, were walking in our heavy furs between the glaring moon and
the German gunners, who will fire extravagantly at anything. Their guns
got to work along the road and a shell came screaming up and burst
perhaps twenty feet away, followed by three or four others.
Our attempt to take to the fields, where we would not be so conspicuous,
was thwarted by the Russian barbed wire and other preparations for the
enemy. There was nothing for it but to continue along the naked road
till we got out of range. Further on low trees began at the side of the
road. We hastened toward them, hoping to make them serve as cover, but
shell after shell arrived, each bursting close by. The trees were of no
use.
There was not another soul upon the road for over two miles. Each time
we heard a shell coming toward us we cowered with our arms covering neck
and face. After each shot we inquired of each other if either had been
hit. The shooting of the gunners with such a small and distant target
appeared to me superb.
At last a shell exploded overhead, smashing the branches and sending a
load of metal flying. I felt blows of flying earth and twigs on my back.
Bass asked, "Have they got you?"
"Are you all right?" I inquired.
"Think they have got me in the face," was the reply.
I had an electric pocket lamp, with which I made an examination. He was
cut across the jaw with a fragment of shell and bleeding freely. I
bandaged him with our handkerchiefs, Bass, as always, uncomplaining and
treating the wound humorously.
Several shells followed, each too near for comfort, but we were now
reaching the limit of the guns' range, and we came without further
incident clear of their fire.