We were left alone without faith listening to the far-away thunder of
cannon, the far-away moan of the wounded. Early in April the news came
that Potyebnya had been killed in battle at the Pyeskov Rock. In May
Padlewski was shot at Plotsk, and so it went on and on.
It was a hard, unbearably hard, time! And, to add to all the gloom, one
was the involuntary spectator of the stupidity, the senselessness of men,
the cursed recklessness destroying every force about one.