[9] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the
book.
"THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE"--AN AMERICAN WITH THE SLAVS
_Experiences With the Russian Generals_
_Told by Stanley Washburn, Special Correspondent of the "London Times"
with the Russian Armies_
Mr. Washburn was the only American (with the exception of the
American Military Attaché, Lieut. Sherman Miles, and Robert R.
McCormick) to have access to the Russian fighting lines at the time
this was written. He met on friendly terms the Czar, Grand Duke
Nicholas, and all the Russians in high authority in the War. He was
decorated by the Czar with the Cross of St. Anne. He has described
the anguish of Warsaw and the Russian retreat in his book entitled:
"Victory in Defeat," an authoritative account of his experiences
in the campaign of Galicia and the retreat through Poland. In his
second book, called "The Russian Advance," he tells how Russia, when
overwhelmingly defeated, managed her colossal offensive drive. The
chapters here given are by permission of his publishers, _Doubleday,
Page and Company_.
[10] I--STORY OF THE RUSSIAN GENERAL STAFF
One hears a lot in war about the "man behind the gun," but there is
another individual, and a lot of them just as important, and that is
the "man behind" the "man behind the gun," or, more briefly stated,
the one higher up. I have known scores of Russian generals since the
beginning of the war, and have written a good deal about the men at
the greater staffs who play the intellectual end of the game in their
distant offices, but, I think, far too little of the generals who
sit in rough peasant cottages at the front, just behind the lines
where the roar of the artillery and the rattle of the machine gun
tells them of their troops in action even before the field telephone
buzzes through its raucous message from the trenches. I spent June
23d (1915) with a division commander who may be taken as the type of
scores of others who are directing the tactics of the war to-day. And
when I write of General Monkevitch I write, I think, of many more who
are almost identical in character and mould. This General I call my
"Russian godfather," because he was the first one I met when I came to
Russia, and it was he who, sitting in a luxurious office in Petrograd
in September, 1914, arranged the first permits that enabled me to
join the army in the field. In those days he was an important member
of the Petrograd General Staff and with his smart uniform and silver
_aiguillettes_ with his resplendent shoulder straps he was a picture
of a city officer. Even in that early day he bemoaned his fate at
being detained on staff work at the distant capital when the real work
was going on at the front. When I came back from my first trip I was
told that my friend had gone to the front "somewhere in Bukovina," and
gradually the recollection of his kindly features drifted back among
the memories of the past.
That afternoon I was ushered into the low-ceilinged room of a humble
peasant's cottage, where a tired-looking man in war-worn uniform,
tarnished shoulder straps, and muddy boots, was leaning over a
hand-hewn table strewn with maps. He looked up as we entered, and I
discovered in the commander of the division my erstwhile friend of
Petrograd. Half of the house was still occupied by the peasants, while
the General's sleeping apartment was in a rough shack outside, where he
slept on a camp bed, with hardly any adornment in the room save a low
bench on which was placed a battered old tin basin, if one may call it
an ornament.
"The luxurious establishment of a Russian General of Division," he
told me laughingly as he showed me over his place of residence. In the
trellised vestibule of the cottage were the telephones and telegraphs,
while from all directions came the field wires from the positions six
versts beyond.
Sitting round the rough table, we listened to the General's account
of his divisions fighting against the advance, an achievement that I
have already alluded to in a previous chapter, and then, at his advice,
we paid a visit to the front, as I have also mentioned elsewhere. The
generals higher up are so far away that it is only by chance that they
see their men or come in actual contact with their wounded. These
divisional commanders are the ones that stand between the intellectual
end of the game and the men in the trenches. The moment a shot is fired
unexpectedly, their telephone from the trenches tells them what is the
cause. An hour after a fight starts, the wounded (if the positions be
near) begin to drift back here. In this headquarters the General could
look out of the window and see the price in human suffering that the
plans he made on the map before him were costing Russia....
After dinner I accompanied General Monkevitch on a walk about the
town. With a long, swinging gait he paced down the primitive little
street, with a nod and a word for every soldier that he passed. With
scrupulous courtesy he returned the bows of the peasants who smilingly
greeted him, for it was easy to see that he was a favourite in the
village. Even the little children came in for a pleasant word and a bit
of chaff, and several times he stopped with his officers about him to
joke with the kiddies, and the littler they were the more happily they
responded to his pleasant words.
A bit down the street we turned into the great shed where first come
the wounded from the smaller units of the divisions. Yesterday, the
General told us, his face suddenly going very sad, had resulted in
heavy losses. For a moment he stood in a reverie, and then, throwing
off his mood of melancholy, shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, let
us look at those within."