The Commander of the Division, whom I knew last year at Warsaw, told
gleefully of the prowess of his troops and pointed with riding-crop
to the point beneath us where his men forced the river and broke the
Austrian line. Everybody was in high spirits and congratulations were
exchanged between the General and his officers. In a near-by wheat
field were a couple of hundred blue-coated prisoners, waiting for
guides to take them to the rear, while a hundred yards away were fifty
sour-looking Germans, also waiting developments....
An approaching shell sang through the air and a big six-inch German
shell landed in the field a few hundred yards away, throwing up
clouds of dirt and heavy volumes of the greasy black smoke of the
German high-explosive shell. Every one was surprised, but no one even
mentioned it. I suppose it is bad taste to allude to such things....
I must say, however, that these events do not bother the Russians in
the least. Nowadays generals in high command are constantly going to
the positions and studying out the situation personally, regardless of
risks.
After a dozen shells the firing ceased, but suddenly broke out again on
a farther ridge where I suppose some observer thought he saw something
moving. The General himself sat quietly down on the crest of the
trench and with map spread out on his lap began to dictate orders to
an orderly who, crouching at his feet, transmitted them through the
field telephone. Here one saw the real control of a battle. Over the
ridge there our infantry was pushing forward, each regiment unrolling
behind it its field wire and every unit constantly in touch with this
man lying in the wheat field who with finger on map was directing the
following up of the retreating enemy. Wherever one could see a road it
was black with traffic moving forward, and wherever one looked over
the ridges beyond us one saw the puff of shrapnel and heard the boom
and reverberations of our heavy guns and the sullen report of bursting
German shells. The map with its many blue and red lines was the key to
the puzzle of sound, and the streams of men and horses moving in every
direction. This one individual quietly smoking his cigarette on the
hilltop, quite unperturbed by bursting shells, could by a single word
divert or halt all of those endless columns that we saw. Truly is war a
great and fascinating game for those whose post is not in the trenches.
As for them--well, war is war.
(This American War Correspondent describes in his stories: "The Fall
of Warsaw"; "The Escape from Villna"; "The Defense of Petrograd"; "The
Lemberg Front," and the other Russian battle lines, with his visits to
the "village of horrors," and summaries of the Russian campaigns.)