With every verst we moved forward the denser became the traffic,
and now the flow to the rear was as heavy in volume as that going
forward. Caissons that had sat beside their guns all night feeding
them the shells that had breached the Austrian lines came toiling
back through the deep-cut roads, the horses steaming and sweating with
their exertions and the mud-plastered drivers giving them the leash
and forcing them into a trot whenever it was possible to get the empty
caissons over the road more speedily.
One never realized what a number of characters it takes to make up the
great drama behind a battlefield. It would be possible to sit beside
the way for an hour and write a volume of the strange and curious
things one sees. Here a cartload of peasants that are still pushing
to the rear, unconscious, perhaps, that the battle has already gone
in the opposite direction. Just beyond lie the smoking embers of the
village we saw blazing last night. There is hardly a chimney standing,
and soon the roads will obliterate even the site of a group of what
but last night was a dozen thatched peasant cottages. I noticed in the
throng a Russian soldier leading a pack horse still in the Austrian
harness with the quaint blinkers that the enemy use on many of their
transport horses. The poor patient beast had been shot through the
nose, and little rivulets of blood streamed down his velvety cheek as
with plodding steps he followed the soldier who was leading him. No
doubt he would be patched up again. Certainly that was the intention of
the kindly peasant who now and anon looked back with a gently murmured
word of encouragement to his dumb and stricken friend and prisoner. The
road is narrow at that part, and we slowed down or took the side again
and again to let ambulances or carts of wounded pass us.
The General called out to the passersby, wishing them good morning, or
occasionally stopped to inquire of a soldier where he was during the
night or how he received his wound. There is an extraordinary spirit of
comradeship between them, all these Russians, as I have mentioned many
times in my records of this front.
The General stopped his car and in a few minutes was receiving news
of the action from his Chief of Staff, whom we left back at ----. He
listened intently, and then snapped back some directions, and we pushed
on out of the village on to another crest. Here we met a general of
cavalry with an orderly at his heels, both incrusted with mud and
dripping with wet from the brush through which they had been riding
across country. Spurring his hesitant horse up to the side of the
motor, he shook hands with his commander and told him gleefully that
the prisoners would run into the thousands and that already six guns
were in our hands. As he backed away, saluting, he narrowly escaped
collision with four stolid soldiers carrying a dead man on a stretcher
elevated above their shoulders. "Why this pains with a dead man?" one
wondered. "War is for the living and not the dead. Most of them lie
where they fall, until buried." But we were on the move again, coming
nearer and ever nearer to the guns.... We are now surrounded by columns
of unwounded Austrian prisoners winding back in droves that take up
a mile at a time on the road. Turning a bit off the narrow ribbon we
have been following, we motor up on to another crest, where is the
Commander of the Division and his staff. Here is the observation point
of a battalion, neatly dug out of the ridge, and men now stroll about
casually in the place where it would have been instant death to show
one's head four hours ago....