Skiernevice is a small town, important chiefly as a railway junction,
as two lines branch off here towards Germany and Austria northwest and
southwest. The Tsar has a shooting-box here in the midst of beautiful
woods, and two rooms had been set apart in this house for our Column.
We arrived late in the evening, secretly hoping that we should get a
night in bed, and were rather rejoiced at finding that there were no
wounded there at all at present, though a large contingent was expected
later. So we camped in the two rooms allotted to us: Princess, Sister
G., and myself in one, and all the men of the party in the other. No
wounded arrived for two or three days, and we thoroughly enjoyed the
rest and, above all, the beautiful woods. How delicious the pines smelt
after that horrible Lodz. Twice a day we used to go down the railway
line, where there was a restaurant car for the officers; it seemed odd
to be eating our meals in the Berlin-Warsaw International Restaurant
Car. There was always something interesting going on at the station.
One day a regiment from Warsaw had just been detrained there when a
German Taube came sailing over the station throwing down grenades.
Every man immediately began to fire up in the air, and we ran much more
risk of being killed by a Russian bullet than by the German Taube. It
was like being in the middle of a battle, and I much regretted I had
not my camera with me. Another day all the débris of a battlefield had
been picked up and was lying in piles in the station waiting to be sent
off to Warsaw. There were truck-loads of stuff; German and Russian
overcoats, boots, rifles, water-bottles, caps, swords, and helmets and
all sorts of miscellaneous kit.
We often saw gangs of prisoners, mostly Austrian, but some German, and
they always seemed well treated by the Russians. The Austrian prisoners
nearly always looked very miserable, cold, hungry, and worn out. Once
we saw a spy being put into the train to go to Warsaw, I suppose to be
shot--an old Jewish man with white hair in a long, black gaberdine,
strips of colored paper still in his hand with which he had been caught
signaling to the Germans. _How_ angry the soldiers were with him--one
gave him a great punch in the back, another kicked him up into the
train, and a soldier on the platform who saw what was happening ran
as fast as he could and was just in time to give him a parting hit on
the shoulder. The old man did not cry out or attempt to retaliate; but
his face was ashy-white with terror, and one of his hands was dripping
with blood. It was a very horrible sight and haunted me all the rest of
the day. It was quite right that he should be shot as a spy, but the
unnecessary cruelty first sickened me.
There were masses of troops constantly going up to the positions from
Skiernevice, and as there was a short cut through the park, which they
generally used, we could see all that was going on from our rooms. On
Sunday it was evident that another big battle was pending. Several
batteries went up through our woods, each gun-carriage almost up to its
axles in mud, dragged by eight strong horses. They were followed by
a regiment of Cossacks, looking very fierce in their great black fur
head-dresses, huge sheep-skin coats, and long spears. There was one
small Cossack boy who was riding out with his father to the front and
who could not have been more than eleven or twelve years old. There are
quite a number of young boys at the front who make themselves very
useful in taking messages, carrying ammunition, and so on. We had one
little boy of thirteen in the hospital at Warsaw, who was badly wounded
while carrying a message to the colonel, and he was afterwards awarded
the St. George's Cross.
There were enormous numbers of other troops too: Siberians, Tartars,
Asiatic Russians from Turkestan, Caucasians in their beautiful
black-and-silver uniforms, Little Russians from the south, and great
fair-haired giants from the north.
The little Catholic Church in the village was full to overflowing at
the early Mass that Sunday morning with men in full marching kit on
their way out to the trenches. A very large number of them made their
Confession and received the Blessed Sacrament before starting out, and
for many, many of these it was their Viaticum, for the great battle
began that afternoon, and few of the gallant fellows we saw going up to
the trenches that morning ever returned again.
That afternoon the Prince had business at the Staff Headquarters out
beyond Lowice, and I went out there in the automobile with him and
Monsieur Goochkoff. We went through Lowice on the way there. The little
town had been severely bombarded (it was taken two or three days later
by the Germans), and we met many of the peasants hurrying away from
it carrying their possessions with them. You may know the peasants
of Lowice anywhere by their distinctive dress, which is the most
brilliantly colored peasant dress imaginable. The women wear gorgeous
petticoats of orange, red and blue, or green in vertical stripes and a
cape of the same material over their shoulders, a bright-colored shawl,
generally orange, on their heads, and brilliant bootlaces--magenta is
the color most affected. The men, too, wear trousers of the same kind
of vertical stripes, generally of orange and black. These splashes of
bright color are delicious in this sad, gray country.