The General of the Staff was quartered at Radzivilow Castle, and I
explored the place while the Prince and Monsieur Goochkoff did their
business. The old, dark hall, with armor hanging on the walls and
worm-eaten furniture covered with priceless tapestry, would have made
a splendid picture. A huge log fire burning on the open hearth lighted
up the dark faces of the two Turkestan soldiers who were standing
on guard at the door. In one corner a young lieutenant was taking
interminable messages from the field telephone, and under the window
another Turkestan soldier stood sharpening his dagger. The Prince
asked him what he was doing, and his dark face lighted up. "Every
night at eight," he said, still sharpening busily, "I go out and kill
some Germans." The men of this Turkestan regiment are said to be
extraordinarily brave men. They do not care at all about a rifle, but
prefer to be at closer quarters with the enemy with their two-edged
dagger, and the Germans like them as little as they like our own
Gurkhas and Sikhs.
The next day the wounded began to arrive in Skiernevice, and in two
days' time the temporary hospital was full.
The Tsar had a private theater at Skiernevice with a little separate
station of its own about 200 yards farther down the line than the
ordinary station, and in many ways this made quite a suitable hospital
except for the want of a proper water-supply.
The next thing we heard was that the Russian General had decided to
fall back once more, and we must be prepared to move at any moment.
All that day we heard violent cannonading going on and all the next
night, though the hospital was already full, the little country carts
came in one after another filled with wounded. They were to only stay
one night, as in the morning ambulance trains were coming to take them
all away, and we had orders to follow as soon as the last patient had
gone. Another operating- and dressing-room was quickly improvised, but
even with the two going hard all night it was difficult to keep pace
with the number brought in.
The scenery had never been taken down after the last dramatic
performance played in the theater, and wounded men lay everywhere
between the wings and drop scenes. The auditorium was packed so closely
that you could hardly get between the men without treading on some
one's hands and feet as they lay on the floor. The light had given
out--in the two dressing-rooms there were oil-lamps, but in the rest of
the place we had to make do with candle-ends stuck into bottles. The
foyer had been made into a splendid kitchen, where hot tea and boiling
soup could be got all night through. This department was worked by the
local Red Cross Society, and was a great credit to them.
About eight o'clock in the morning the first ambulance train came in,
and was quickly filled with patients. We heard that the Germans were
now very near, and hoped we should manage to get away all the wounded
before they arrived.
The second train came up about eleven, and by that time a fierce rifle
encounter was going on. From the hospital window we could see the
Russian troops firing from the trenches near the railway. Soon there
was a violent explosion that shook the place; this was the Russians
blowing up the railway bridge on the western side of the station.
The second train went off, and there were very few patients left now,
though some were still being brought in at intervals by the Red Cross
carts. Our automobiles had started off to Warsaw with some wounded
officers, but the rest of the column had orders to go to Zyradow by the
last train to leave Skiernevice.
The sanitars now began to pack up the hospital; we did not mean to
leave anything behind for the enemy if we could help it. The few
bedsteads were taken to pieces and tied up, the stretchers put together
and the blankets tied up in bundles. When the last ambulance train came
up about 2 P.M. the patients were first put in, and then every
portable object that could be removed was packed into the train too.
At the last moment, when the train was just about to start, one of the
sanitars ran back and triumphantly brought out a pile of dirty soup
plates to add to the collection. Nothing was left in the hospital but
two dead men we had not time to bury.
The wounded were all going to Warsaw and the other Russian Sisters went
on in the train with them. But our destination was Zyradow, only the
next station but one down the line.