THE FIGHTING ON THE VISTULA IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER, 1914
Shalkotoff had about eighty waggons and carts under his command, all
loaded with provisions which had come from Vilna, where there was a
magazine. He was travelling by march-route, the railway-lines being
fully occupied by troop trains, and in the conveyance of wounded men and
prisoners. Every night we camped in the mud by the roadside, unless
buildings or houses were available, which was not often the case. For
the Germans had destroyed so many of these that what were left were
crowded by homeless people herded together in dreadful misery, starving,
and possessed of nothing but what they stood in. We passed through some
districts, however, in which a German had not been seen; and in others
they had not been so brutal as the generality of their countrymen. Nor
are all Germans equally cruel. At a place called Mirno, near Jedvabno,
we met a band of 200 prisoners being marched to the railway-station at
Setshutchin for conveyance into the interior. Several of them were
officers, and one, a captain, expressed his disgust at the brutality of
his countrymen. He said it came to him as a terrible revelation that
Germans could be so cruel and wicked, and he was as much astonished at
it as any person in the world. Others, of all ranks, at different times,
expressed much the same opinion.
Perhaps nothing hurt Russian feeling more than the desecration of their
churches. The Germans too often evinced a bigotry and irreverence for
things that most people consider sacred similar to that which disgraced
our own Cromwellians three centuries ago. They stabled their horses in
the churches, littered the floors of the sacred edifices with filth, and
broke the images. Such conduct is deplorable; nothing can be more
revolting than to hurt a people through its religion, whatever we may
think of its bigotry and idolatry. Besides, the indomitable bravery of
the Greek and Romish priesthood in this deplorable war must ever command
the admiration of all right-thinking men; and this alone should have
protected them from insult.
It is about 120 miles from Grodno to Ostrolenka, and it took us nine
days to march this distance, so defective was the state of the roads.
During this time we fared pretty sumptuously; for the drivers and
officers helped themselves liberally to the provisions under their
charge. In addition to the coarse biscuit, cheese, tea, sugar and
coffee, which form the bulk of the Russian soldiers' daily food, there
was salt pork, rancid butter, potatoes, and a number of hampers destined
for officers whom they never reached. The broaching of such goods is
indefensible, but it is pretty general in all armies, not even excepting
the British: those who have been soldiers know what "old soldiers" are;
and, no doubt, I ought to admit that I require a brushful of white-wash
myself. For a dish of bacon, or a cup of wine, being placed in front of
one, what is one to do but relieve the craving of nature? The only
defence I can make is that we all do it, as circumstances occasion.
At Ostrolenka we were ordered on to Pultusk; and here we found a
division of infantry and another of Cossacks--about 14,000 men in all,
the units being reduced by the ravages of war. Among the Cossacks was
the celebrated 5th of the Don, with its woman colonel, who seemed to be
not more than thirty years of age. She had adopted male costume, and
rode astride like her troopers. She was a pleasant-faced woman, but not
a beauty, in my opinion; and there was nothing fierce or commanding in
her appearance. She was said to be of unflinching courage under any
circumstances, and to be almost worshipped by her soldiers. So it may be
surmised that her rule is gentle and just.
At Pultusk I had my first, and almost only, trouble with the people whom
I was trying to serve. A fussy officer wanted to know, rather too
minutely, who I was, and how the non-commissioned officer, Chouraski,
came to be travelling with me. I had certificates, and Chouraski a
permit, signed by a Staff Officer, and countersigned by General
Rennenkampf himself; but it was a long time before the interfering
colonel could be persuaded. He sent for a captain of the 40th Siberian
regiment named Lofe who could speak English, and ultimately was
persuaded to permit me to join the captain's company, and to retain
Chouraski as a servant. I was given no position in the regiment, but
simply served as a volunteer.
The same night, the 14th October, we made a forced march to the railway,
a distance, I computed, of at least twenty-four English miles. We
arrived at a spot where there was no station, and found troops
entraining and going off in the direction of Warsaw. There seemed to be
miles of trains by the roadside, and we got into one at a level-crossing
and immediately steamed away south, as the others had done.
A drizzling rain was falling, the day was close, and a grey mist
enveloped everything so that one could see nothing twenty yards beyond
the side of the line. In two hours we arrived at Praga, a suburb of
Warsaw, and found the line held strongly by infantry and field
artillery. We heard that heavy fighting was going on beyond Milosna, and
our train crawling on for another twenty miles, we could hear the sounds
of the battle ourselves. We were ordered to alight by the side of the
line, all the stations having been put into a state of defence and
turned into small fortresses.
The Staff Officer who posted us happened to be a friend of Lofe's, and
he told us that the Germans were making a strong effort to break through
to the line for a distance of at least ninety versts; and he believed
that fighting was going on at other points as far as Lublin. The troops
actually posted on the line were reserves; the fighting was taking
place at the passages of the Vistula sixteen versts away.
During the night the fog was so thick that one could not see the man
standing beside him. We bivouacked by the side of the line, which here
was laid on perfectly level ground. The next morning the weather was no
better; but when the rain began to fall faster the atmosphere cleared a
little, and we were ordered to advance about six versts and dig
trenches. We were engaged in this work all day, being assisted by 800
country people, half of whom were women, who displayed the utmost
anxiety to help us in resisting a hated enemy, from whose hands many of
them had received the deepest insult.
We saw nothing of the enemy, but heard the distant sound of battle; and
some carts bore a few badly wounded men past us. We were engaged in the
work of digging trenches and making emplacements for guns until the
20th, being assisted during this time by the peasantry: and fighting
went on continuously at the front. I was anxious to see something of it,
but loth to leave the side of Lofe, owing to the difficulty I had in
making myself understood by strangers; and after my dispute with the
officer at Pultusk I was a little nervous, being afraid I might be
seized and sent away.
Lofe was a very amiable fellow and I got on well with him, as I did with
all the Russians with whom I became well acquainted. Life in the
trenches was not to our taste. We applied for permission to go down to
the front to witness the fighting, but it was refused. So we had to
remain where we were and elaborate our defences. How many hundreds of
miles of wire we used in our entanglements I should not like to guess;
but if the Germans had ever reached them, I think they would have left a
good many dead in front of them. With the barbed wire "crow-nets," as we
called them, we intermixed a great many staked pits, and other amiable
devices for shortening the days of our enemies.
The battle was clearly for the possession of Warsaw; and more than once
rumours reached us that the foe had carried the city at the point of the
bayonet; but I do not think they ever got within sight of any part of
it, though many of their newspapers claim that they did, and even
occupied its suburbs. The last-named claim was evidently false; but the
place had a narrow escape of falling. The fight seems to have worn
itself out; or the Germans fell back: for all was quiet on the 21st,
though neither side had obtained a victory.
This was too frequently the sequence to a prolonged fight or series of
fights. The opposing force seemed to get tired out, and a lull ensued,
during which one would scarcely hear a stray rifle shot. On the 21st,
however, some of our troops at the front captured a German band! It
consisted of about forty musicians, though they said there had been
eighty of them when they first came to the front. Asked to give us some
music they played willingly enough, and very well. The Russian regiments
have bands, but I heard and saw very little of them during this war;
they seemed to have been sent to the rear to attend to wounded men. Some
of the Siberian regiments, and the foot Cossacks, have dancing men who
march at the head of the battalions, and dance, sing, and clash cymbals,
when moving from place to place.
It is hardly necessary to record that the Germans made desperate
attempts to cross the river during the fighting referred to just now. I
did not actually witness any of the fighting at this stage, but I know
that it all failed. I was told that they tried to pontoon the stream at
a place called Viegrod, abreast of Garvolin station. The pontoons were
smashed to pieces, and several hundreds of the enemy drowned. Small
detachments got over at various places, some in boats, others by means
of flying bridges; but they were all destroyed or captured. They did not
succeed in forcing any of the permanent bridges, which were defended by
_tetes-de-pont_. The Russians claimed that they completely wiped out
some of these detachments. I saw bodies lying together within very
narrow spaces of ground; and I have no doubt that the peasantry avenged
themselves by killing the wounded: and I know that the Russian infantry
bayoneted every man of one detachment of about 300. Still a good many
prisoners were taken, and sent by train to Warsaw.
The Germans used some aeroplanes for observation work; but on being
fired at these machines went out of range and kept there. It would have
been a great advantage to the Russians to have had some of these things;
but that they had few, or none, in this part of the field, shows that
aircraft cannot materially affect a foe who is without them. No doubt
aeroplanes have done splendid work for the Allies, and inflicted serious
losses on the enemy; but they do not often seem to be able to face an
army in the field.
It may give some idea of what is meant by "casualties" if I mention that
about 40,000 recovered wounded rejoined the Russian Army while we were
on the line of the Vistula. So a heavy list of losses does not
necessarily mean that a vast number of men are permanently disabled from
taking part in their country's services. Recoveries, too, are very rapid
when the men are attended by good surgeons and good nurses.
I obtained one glimpse of the enemy's position. Not a German was to be
seen; but puffs of smoke showed where their guns were placed. Smokeless
powder was used by both sides for their rifle cartridges; but not for
artillery; or at any rate, it was not efficacious when fired from heavy
guns.
Both sides entrenched themselves, according to reports, for a distance
of more than 300 versts. Afterwards I heard that trenches and earthworks
were made along the whole of the German and Austrian frontiers, a result
of both sides finding it impossible to make any material headway into
each other's territory. The battle degenerated into an artillery
engagement. The Russians brought up some heavy guns of about 6-inch
calibre, and a few that were a little larger, and with these bombarded
the German positions. The enemy, on their part, were similarly
provided; and so the see-saw went on--banging at each other without
noticeable results. Generally speaking, an artillery duel is the tamest
of all kinds of fighting from a spectator's point of view. The only time
when it becomes a little lively is when a shell happens to drop just
behind one. It usually causes a sudden start forward, or an Eastern
position of adoration, which is by far the safest to assume. The
wonderful "Jack Johnsons," of which I have heard and read so much, were
not used by the Germans in this region, though the nickname seems to
have been given to any large shell. The "Jack Johnsons," however, were
huge shells which appeared to have weighed from 1,600 to 2,000 pounds
each, when charged. It was useless waste to fire them against anything
but forts, and I much doubt if the Germans used them for any other
purpose. The guns, being howitzers, could fire about 100 of these before
needing retubing: so the shooting-power of the huge weapons was limited.
Every shot must have cost about L200, and it is not likely that the
Germans would waste them by shooting at trenches and small parties,
where the effect would be comparatively of little moment. Very high
explosives were used by the Germans, and some of their projectiles made
very large holes in the ground.
Watching the firing, I could not perceive that ours was doing much harm;
while that of the enemy certainly was not. Occasionally a few yards of
our trenches was blown in, and a man or two destroyed; but the
impression left on my mind was that trench warfare would go on for ever,
unless some more effective force than mere artillery fire were brought
to bear on an army so protected: and shelling a position is a very
expensive mode of warfare. I afterwards saw that to destroy a hundred
yards of trench cost 4,000 or 5,000 shells; and even then the defending
force nearly always contrived to make good a retreat to a second, or
third, line of defence. To shell an enemy out of a good defensive
position is, I believe, an impossibility; therefore permanent fortresses
should be constructed on the lines of a system of trenches, the guns
being placed in Moncrieff pits or other specially constructed
emplacements. I am quite convinced that unless guns are hidden, their
destruction is assured. Modern gunfire is as accurate as that of
rifle-shooting: it will, therefore, easily hit any mark which the
gunners can locate.
Everybody knows that patience is a virtue, and that it generally obtains
a reward. Our turn came. The 40th Siberians, better known to the men by
an unpronounceable name, which, never having seen it in print, I cannot
pretend to spell, were ordered to cross the Vistula on the morning of
the 20th October.
I expected that there would have been some fighting; but there was not.
The rain was falling in a steady downpour; and we could not see the
opposite bank of the river. Perhaps the wet damped the ardour of the
Germans. Certainly I should think that the autumn and winter of 1914-15
was the wettest ever known. The right bank of the river was bad enough,
but the left was the softest marsh we had so far experienced. No wonder
the Germans could no longer make much resistance: their trenches were
full of water. I slipped into one, and thought I was going to be
drowned. Fortunately for me a couple of the men stopped to assist me;
for there was six or seven feet of water in the wretched trench. Many of
our men met with similar accidents, and I am not sure that some of them
did not lose their lives. I saw the bodies of Germans floating in their
ditches, but these may have been men killed previously to the flooding.
It was entirely an infantry fight. We had crossed the river on rafts
towed by boats, and could bring no guns; while those of the enemy which
could be moved they were anxiously striving to save, and did not stop to
fire. Many of their heavy guns they destroyed to render them useless to
us, but a number of machine-guns were brought into action on each side.
For many miles the left bank of the Vistula is a deep morass, with
extensive woods, and a few scattered houses and hamlets. The inhabitants
of these were all gone, fled or murdered; and the Germans had pierced
the walls of their homes with loop-holes, and piled the furniture, carts
and farm implements together to form barricades. They failed, however,
to stop our advance. Position after position was carried, sometimes by a
withering rifle-fire, sometimes at the point of the bayonet. Brave as he
is, the German soldier is not ashamed to plead abjectly for his life
when he is driven into a corner. I saw men clinging to the bayonets that
were about to terminate their existences; and many actually screamed for
mercy. It was not much use making such petitions; the women and old men
who had been driven in, leaving a toll of murdered behind, had stories
to tell which inflamed the fiercest passions of the soldiers. I
contrived to save the lives of one or two of these wretched Germans; but
my own safety required that I should not interfere too strenuously; and
though, I hope, I should not fear to give my life in a just cause, or to
save a just person, I was not prepared to throw it away on behalf of
ravishers and child-stabbers.
In this fight I crossed swords with a German officer of the 2/94th
regiment (probably Landwehr), a portly gentleman who thought fit to
finish the encounter by an unconditional surrender. He took advantage of
my remissness in watching him, and tried to escape back to his own men.
Some of our fellows noticed this, and--well, he had not time to suffer
much. Dishonourable acts, and breaches of word, were very common amongst
the Germans; but it often got severely punished.
The enemy suffered most, I heard, at places called Sandomir and
Kozyniece. The latter place is close to Ivangorod, which was, for some
days, our headquarters, and the centre of our line. Further north, near
Bloni, and Vishgo, and at Novogeorgevsk, they suffered more severely,
and gave way sooner. By the evening of the 21st they were retiring at
many places along the entire line; but at some spots they stood firm
with remarkable tenacity, and suffered themselves to be almost
surrounded.
We passed the night in a hamlet of a dozen houses which had been
defended by a company of jagers (riflemen). Only forty-eight of them
survived our attack with the bayonet; and these we captured. They slept
in the same rooms with their captors, played cards with them, and sang
jovial-sounding songs, apparently quite unmoved by the fact that 120
dead bodies of their comrades lay in the gardens and courtyards outside.
Both the Germans and Russians are great card-players and inveterate
gamblers.
In the morning, before it was daylight, we made our prisoners dig graves
and bury the dead--129 of theirs, sixty-two of ours: we then sent them
to the rear under an escort, while we advanced towards Chinlin, and
began skirmishing with the enemy, who were only 600 or 700 yards in
front of us.
Both sides took shelter behind pine-trees; and very little execution was
done, though the firing went on nearly all day. At last the Germans took
post in a thick wood, and it became clear they had been playing with us
all these hours while their sappers placed this copse in a state of
defence. The discovery was rather humiliating; but these things occur in
war, and it was not the only occasion on which our cunning opponents
"came the old soldier" over their denser, slow-thinking foes. But in
spite of their slyness they were beaten. Some Russian battalions got
behind the wood, and its defenders were compelled to run for their
lives. They ran very well, but most of them were captured; and we
passed the second night in the nice, nest-like little hovels they had
prepared for their own accommodation.
The German dearly loves his comfort and good cheer. They never seemed to
be short of food, and we took carts laden with wine that had been made
in France and must have been sent hither at much trouble and expense
only to find its way down Russian throats in spite of the Czar's
teetotal proclamation. I think the German troops must be taught to make
bivouacks and huts, they are such adepts at the work; and render their
dens so comfortable by a hundred little devices that show they have
previously studied the art of adapting everything to their own welfare
and ease. Needless to say, the plunder of houses and cottages was
utilized for furnishing these temporary abodes.
There was now no doubt that the Germans were retreating; but they were
doing so in that leisurely way which indicated that their retirement was
anything but a rout; and I foresaw that it would not be long before they
turned again with renewed ferocity. I do not think that the troops we
had been opposed to were some of the best that Germany could put in the
field. In some battalions there did not appear to be a man under forty
years of age: in others they were all boys: and these last named were
amongst the best fighters. I passed over ground strewn with the dead of
one of these battalions, and not a lad of them seemed to be much over
twenty years; some were not more than sixteen or seventeen.
Many stories were brought to us of what had taken place in other
districts. All agreed that the Germans had not succeeded in entering
Warsaw; but it was reported that a fleet of aeroplanes had sailed over
the city and dropped bombs. Only private houses had been wrecked; not
much damage done, and the "hostile aircraft" had soon been driven away.
As nothing was said about the bringing down of any of these aeroplanes,
I felt pretty sure that they had all escaped the Russian fire. The
Germans had not left much for them to destroy in their retreat; and I
never learned from whence they had come, or whither they went when they
had completed their fell work. We saw nothing of them in our district.
On the 23rd we still continued to follow the enemy, keeping in touch
with them, and exchanging shots. About the middle of the day we were
joined by a large force of artillery and cavalry. Where these troops
came from I cannot tell. They were a welcome reinforcement; but as we
were moving through a wooded country they could not make much impression
on the enemy, except when the latter attempted to make a stand. The
trees were mostly pines, and the ground beneath them free of
undergrowth; and the destruction of them, after a few hours' cannonade,
was enormous. Whole forests looked as if they had been blighted, or
blasted by lightning.
The German jagers often took post in the trees, as affording a
favourable place for marksmanship; but when our gunners discovered them
we had an extraordinary sight as a small crowd of arms and legs came
tumbling through the air in every imaginable position. Those of the men
who were not killed by the shrapnel usually lost their lives by the
shock of the fall. Sometimes big trees were snapped clean in two when
the shell had made a direct hit before bursting. More generally the
branches were ripped to shreds by the flying shower of bullets. I saw
the dead body of one rifleman lodged amongst the boughs of a large pine.
He must have been killed instantly, for he was still clasping his rifle
in his hands.
There were some painful scenes. We came across a fine, handsome young
fellow raving over the body of another boy. It was ascertained that they
were brothers, and, "What will mother do? This will kill her," was all
he could say. I never saw a man more grief-stricken. A few hours
afterwards we found a man shot through the body. Blood was bubbling from
his mouth and nose, and he was dying fast; but he had struggled to his
knees, and leaning against a tree-trunk was praying--not for himself,
but for his wife and four little children. By chance I discovered that
this man could speak English. He had been a clerk in Liverpool. He was
distressingly anxious about his family, and begged we would not destroy
a letter addressed to his wife which he had in his pocket. "For," he
said, "I knew I should not come through this"--the war, I suppose, he
meant.
I assured him that nothing found upon him should be disturbed, and that
the letter should be sent to the German commander on the first
opportunity. We did what we could to relieve his suffering, and sent a
man back for the Red Cross men who were following behind; but the poor
fellow died before they arrived. War is a curse.
The rain ceased only for a few hours at a time. It generally commenced
to fall as evening came on, and continued to pour down steadily the
greater part of the night. Sometimes it rained night and day without
cessation, and the thickest overcoats became saturated with wet. I made
a kind of cloak from the remains of a rick-cloth which I found in the
outhouse of a burnt farm; and this was a great protection.
The country we were passing through was deserted. The Polish peasantry
are very poor, and what would become of the miserable people, who, like
the Irish of a former day, depended on their pigs, fowls and
potato-crops, it was painful to think. We supposed they had fled to the
towns; but every now and then we came across the bodies of some of them,
and it is certain that hundreds had been wantonly destroyed by their
cruel enemies.
For many miles we marched through a flooded country, and passed the
Pilica River by means of a bridge which was partly under water, the
reason, perhaps, that the Prussians missed it. We were guided to it by
an old peasant who had been in hiding; but the banks of the river were
quite hidden under water, and on this account many of our men, as well
as Germans, floundered into it and were drowned. Horses and waggons were
swept away, and some guns captured. Our own guns were forced to go
higher up the stream and were, I believe, passed over a pontoon bridge.
Hundreds of Cossacks swam their horses across, and gathered up some
prisoners. They sent a far greater number to their long account, and
seized an immense booty in food, stores, etc. For the Germans always
stripped the country they passed through of everything that was worth
carrying away. That which was too cumbersome to be moved they destroyed.
I never actually heard who commanded the Germans, or our own force. At
one time rumour asserted that the Kaiser himself was chief of our
enemies, and was personally directing their movements. When this surmise
exploded, we were repeatedly told that the Crown Prince was the
Commander-in-Chief. All that was known with certainty was that we were
immediately opposed, for a week at least, by a divisional commander
named Swartzenberg. On our own side Major Beke was the battalion
commander under whom I served. He was killed soon after we crossed the
Vistula, and was succeeded by an officer who was wounded and sent to the
rear on the same day he was appointed. His successor only held the
command two days when he was blinded by a piece of wood driven into his
face by the explosion of a shell. Krischelcamsk then became our leader.
Colonel Tunreshka was the regimental commandant. He disappeared the
night after we crossed the Pilica. The general opinion was that he was
drowned in the river; but he may have been taken prisoner.
One reason of the unusually rapid retreat of the Germans on this
occasion was that they had expended nearly all their ammunition, and
were unable to bring up more on account of the dreadful state of the
country--knee-deep in mud, and covered with water. It is an ill wind
that blows nobody any good; and the rain, which hampered the Russian on
one hand, helped to save Warsaw on the other.
We reached Skyermevice on the 24th. It is a town of some size, and the
people had not abandoned it. They crowded the streets to see us pass
through, and loudly cheered us. Flags sprang from somewhere, and
decorated all the windows and shop doors; and the women brought us food
and drink, which had been hid away. The inhabitants of the town had
suffered a good deal, and had been compelled, as usual when the Germans
occupied a place, to pay a heavy war-tax, or fine. A number of the
principal men had been dragged away as hostages; I never learned their
fate. Everywhere the Germans behaved like a band of brigands and
murderers. One instance of their paltry-mindedness may be recorded. At a
house where Captain Lofe and I spent the night, and from which some
billeted Germans had run away on our approach, these miserable creatures
had killed the little girl's canary, and she was inconsolable for the
loss of her pet. It was not the only occasion on which birds, cats and
pet dogs were wantonly and cruelly destroyed to vex their owners.
On the 25th while we were marching towards Lowvitz we encountered a
Prussian battalion which had been driven towards us by three sotnias of
Cossacks. They could not escape, and we charged them with the bayonet.
I must give them the credit due to them: on this occasion the Germans
fought well and determinedly. But our men had become very expert in the
use of the bayonet, and when the enemy had lost half their number the
remainder broke and fled. The Cossacks were waiting for them, and I do
not think that any of them escaped. No prisoners were taken: and this
often happened during the campaign. Both sides were equally guilty of
this cruelty--if cruelty it was. But really the Germans were so
fiendishly brutal, that, as I have previously said, I think reprisals
were justifiably resorted to. Be this so or not, and whatever may be
thought of the act, it is certain that, on many occasions, bodies of
both Germans and Russians were exterminated when they had the mischance
to become isolated and surrounded.
There was a great deal of bayonet work during this campaign. It is a
favourite weapon of the Russians; and proportionately disliked by the
Germans. The bayonet of the Russian soldier is never unfixed, except for
cleaning purposes. He marches with it, eats, works and sleeps with it
always ready for instant action. The German soldier is not so
particular; and I saw more dirty weapons amongst our prisoners than I
ever thought existed in any army in the world. Wounds from German
bayonets are peculiarly fatal, as the backs of them are serrated to
enable them to be used as cutting implements. For this reason the
soldier often has great difficulty in withdrawing his weapon after
stabbing a victim: and we found that in some cases, where the point of
the bayonet was forced through the body and embedded in the backbone, it
had been unfixed and left sticking in the wound.
As we approached the Prussian frontier the German resistance became
sterner, and they made more frequent attempts to rally. As I have said,
their retreat never assumed the character of a rout--very far from it.
Only straggling or isolated parties ever fell into disorder. Their
retirement was steady and orderly as far as their military movements
were concerned; but in the towns and villages they behaved like beasts.
We had plenty of evidence that nearly all their junior officers, and
thousands of their men, never lost an opportunity of getting drunk. The
Kaiser was said to be a teetotaler: the Crown Prince was often as drunk
as a lord--a German lord; and it is said that when in this condition he
beat his wife so badly that she left the palace, and took refuge in the
house of a nobleman. The story was told on excellent authority;
otherwise I should not run the risk of being thought a gossip-monger by
repeating it. I have, myself, seen the man in the company of courtesans;
and, apparently, under the influence of drink.
Though the Germans made attempts to beat back our pursuit, and to some
extent checked it, they could not altogether stop it; and I think the
gradual slackening of our endeavours to beat them quite out of Poland
was the outcome of the men's exhaustion.
The country was in a terrible state. The Germans had no time or
opportunity to bury many of their dead, and the whole district, for
hundreds of miles, was strewn with the bodies of men and horses,
sometimes half covered by water, often floating in it. Though the
weather was changing, and becoming colder, especially at night-time,
portions of the days were hot, close, or muggy. Consequently the corpses
soon began to decay, and the whole land stank revoltingly; and the men
kept their pipes constantly alight to counteract the offensiveness.
Owing to the state of the ground it was scarcely possible to bury many
of these bodies, and they were left to rot away where they lay, or
floated. Our own dead were conveyed to the cemeteries and
burying-grounds; but the people would not tolerate the desecrating
Germans in "God's acre." Amongst the enemy's dead were some Austrians,
showing that the troops of their nation had been engaged in this region.
On the afternoon of the 26th we came to a standstill near the River
Warta. The headquarters of the 40th were at a small village the name of
which I never clearly heard. Very few people were left in it; but others
arrived when they heard that it was in our hands. All those who had most
to fear from the enemy (that is, all those who possessed a rouble's
worth of property) had been in hiding in the woods, where some of them
had been living in underground burrows wherever they could find a spot
dry enough to construct them in.
Of the 40th not 800 effectives remained; and as the regiment had
commenced the war with a strength of 4,000 men, it will be seen how
terribly it had suffered. I heard the band of the regiment for the first
time in our bivouac on the 26th. It consisted of twenty-seven musicians:
three months previously there had been eighty of them. They had been
under fire many times, collecting and assisting the wounded, the chief
work of the bandsmen during fighting. The Russian bands of music, like
the Prussian, are much stronger than ours, and are formed on German
lines, as far as numbers and instruments are concerned. I cannot give
much praise to their style of playing.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN OFFICERS NOTING MOVES OF THE ENEMY]
On the 27th and 28th the enemy appeared to be massing on our front, and
the regiment was ordered to fall back towards Lodz. We were halted again
on the 29th, and joined by the Preobujensky regiment, at nearly full
strength, and the Troizki rifle battalion. With them came a battery of
eight field guns, which had been got through the marshes in our rear.
It would seem that our regiment, and a body of Cossacks, had been pushed
too far to the front, and had to be drawn back. As far as I could
understand the position, the Russian troops formed a crescent with the
horns at, or near, Radom and Lowicz. Beyond these points the lines
continued for hundreds of versts, right and left, but were, more or
less, thrown back. It was very difficult to learn the exact position,
because the enemy so frequently regained the ground he had lost only a
few hours previously. The Russians showed great bravery and considerable
dash; but they did not carry things before them quite so rapidly or
decisively as they sometimes claimed to have done. In the fighting
described in these October days, the Germans got very much the worst of
it. I am not sure that it would be safe to say much more than this.
Their losses were heavy, and their retreat beyond a doubt; but it is
ridiculous to talk of routs, as some newspapers seem to have done. I did
not see these accounts until after my return to England; and I have not
read very many of them. I am afraid a good deal of error was fallen into
by a too ready acceptance of first accounts.
I would also note that owing to the immense extension of the fronts of
the two armies, a victory in one place was often quite independent of
operations going on at a distance on either flank, and often led to a
dangerous advance, exposing the wings of the victorious force: and I am
surprised that neither side seems to have, on any occasion, taken
advantage of these too rapid advances and pursuits.