In the Russian Ranks Part 3

At this moment we had only twelve sh.e.l.ls per gun left. These twelve cut great lanes deep into the advancing ma.s.ses, but did not stop them, and orders were given to retire. Two of our guns were drawn away by the prolonge (that is, by means of ropes manned by men on foot), and two were abandoned. We should certainly have been overtaken and destroyed; but about a thousand yards to the rear we found three regiments of infantry halted in a slight hollow of the ground. These 12,000 men suddenly rushed forward and opened a tremendous fusillade on the advancing ma.s.ses, bringing them down so fast that the appearance of falling men was continuous and had a very extraordinary effect. But they were not stopped, and our infantry was compelled to fall back with the guns, losing heavily from the fire which the Germans kept up as they advanced.

Our infantry, like that of the Germans, kept much too close a formation, and the losses were therefore appalling. Thus, early in the war, all the Russian units were at full strength; infantry four battalions per regiment--fully 4,000 men. The three regiments behind us lost half their strength, equal to 6,000 men, in twenty minutes; and the remnant was saved only by reaching a pine-wood about a mile in length and some 300 yards in depth. This enabled them to check the Germans; and two batteries of artillery coming up, evidently sent from another division to support us, they were compelled to halt, lying down on the ground for such shelter as it afforded, to wait for their own artillery. This did not come up until it was nearly dusk. Before it opened fire we began to retreat and we were not pursued.

We fell back on two small hamlets with a farm between them, and here we entrenched ourselves, putting the buildings into a state of defence.

Distant firing was heard all night, and we received a fresh supply of ammunition, and heard that 150 of the guns were saved. As we had thirty with us it was estimated that about twenty had fallen into the hands of the enemy besides twenty or thirty machine-guns.

Outposts reporting that the German division which had pursued us had retired northwards, I proposed, as soon as it was light enough for us to see our way, that a party should go out to look for the wounded men of our battery. These brave fellows had done their duty as only heroes do it--without a moment's hesitation, or the least flinching at the most trying moments; and with scarcely a groan from the horribly wounded, whose sufferings must have been excruciating.

Although unable to understand a word I uttered, all who stood by, when informed by Polchow of what was proposed, volunteered to accompany me. I took about thirty men with stretchers, which were mostly made of hurdles obtained at the farm.

It was about three English miles to the spot where the batteries had been first posted and the whole distance was thickly littered with dead bodies of Germans and Russians intermingled. All the wounded except those desperately hurt had been removed, but none of the enemy were about. They appeared to be kept off by strong patrols of our cavalry, which could be seen in the distance; and, doubtless, the German hors.e.m.e.n were in view, as desultory shots were fired from time to time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUSSIAN ARTILLERY GOING INTO ACTION]

Dying men made piteous appeals for drink. One poor fellow expired while we were in the act of attending to him. The horribly inhuman nature of the Germans was evinced by the circ.u.mstance that they had made prisoners of all the wounded who would probably recover, and count in their lists of capture; but had left the mortal cases (even their own) unattended, to linger out a dreadful and agonized end. Their lack of feeling was fiendish. They had not even endeavoured to alleviate the sufferings of the men thus abandoned: for we found one German groaning, and seemingly praying for succour, pinned down under a dead horse. He was not even dangerously hurt, and would, I think, recover under the treatment he would receive from the Russians. For though these northern men were often barbarous enough on the field of battle, they were never cruel to their prisoners, or to injured men, unless these were known to have been guilty of atrocities.

The sights of that battlefield, and others which I afterwards witnessed, will be a nightmare to the end of life. I had often read of rivers "running red with blood," and thought this simply poetic exaggeration; but when we went to a brook to obtain water for some gasping men, I noticed that it was horribly tinged with dark red streaks, which seemed to be partly coagulated blood. Some light fragments which floated by were undoubtedly human brains; yet at their urgent entreaty we gave of this water to poor creatures to drink, for no other was available.

This horror was not comparable to what we witnessed when we arrived at the spot where the artillery slaughter had taken place. The ground was covered with dark patches--blood blotches. Fragments of flesh, arms, legs, limbs of horses, and scattered intestines, lay everywhere about that horrible "first position." On the ground lay a human eye and within an inch or two of it, a cl.u.s.ter of teeth; all that remained of some poor head that had been dashed away. Where the body was that had owned these relics did not appear. The force of impact had probably driven them yards and yards; and it was a mere chance that they met my view. Close to one of our guns, too badly broken to be worth carrying away by the enemy, were two brawny hands, tightly clasping the handle of the sponge with which their owner had been cleaning the piece when they had been riven from his body. The man was close by, a mere ma.s.s of smashed flesh and bones, with thousands of beastly flies battening on his gore, as they were on that of all the corpses. The sight was unbearable. Sick and nearly fainting, I had to lean against a broken waggon to recover myself.

Our wounded had been murdered. There could be no question of that. For we had not left any behind who were capable of fighting, yet a dozen had been finished off by bayonet wounds--and German bayonets make awful jagged wounds because their weapons have saw-backs.

One bayoneted gunner was not quite dead. At long intervals--about a minute it seemed to me--he made desperate efforts to breathe; and every time he did so bubbles of blood welled from the wound in his breast, and a horrible gurgling sound came from both throat and breast. There were two doctors in our party, but they looked at each other, and shook their heads when they examined this miserable man. Nothing could be done for him except to place him in a more comfortable position. War is h.e.l.lish.

We found another of our men alive. His plight was so terrible that it was hardly worth while to increase his suffering by carrying him away.

We did so: but he died before we had gone two versts. On that part of the field which the Germans had been compelled to cross without waiting to carry out their fell work, we found more survivors, and took back a dozen, of whom three were Germans. There happened to be no Red Cross men with our division just then; but we sent them to the rear in empty provision waggons.

This is what I saw of the battle of Biezum, if this is its correct designation. According to Polchow the Russian centre was at Radnazovo, a town, or large village, eleven versts further east; and the whole front extended more than thirty versts, though the hottest fighting was near Biezum. It was afterwards reported that 10,000 Russians were killed in this engagement, and 40,000 wounded. The Germans must have lost heavily too. I saw thousands of their dead lying on the ground near Biezum alone. The fight was not a victory for the Russians, and scarcely could be claimed as such by the Germans. The two forces remained in contact, and fighting continued with more or less intensity until it developed into what modern battles seem destined to be, a prolonged series of uninterrupted operations.

CHAPTER V

THE FIGHTING UP TO THE 26TH AUGUST

There appeared to be nearly 300 men in Polchow's battery when we went into action: only fifty-nine remained with the four guns we saved at the close of the day, and not one of these escaped a more or less serious hurt, though some were merely scratched by small fragments of sh.e.l.l or bruised by shrapnel bullets. At least twenty of the men would have been justified in going to hospital; several ultimately had to do so, and one died. Even British soldiers could not have shown greater heroism.

Chouraski, the non-commissioned officer who had attached himself to me, had a bullet through the fleshy part of the left arm, yet he brought me some hot soup and black bread after dark; whence obtained, or how prepared, I have no idea. I was much touched by the man's kindness. All the soldiers with whom I came in contact were equally kind: and I have noticed that the men of other armies with whom I have come in contact in the course of my life, even the Germans, seemed to see something in my personality which attracted them, and to desire to be friendly. Perhaps they instinctively realized that I am an admirer of the military man; or perhaps it was the _bonhomie_ which is universal amongst soldiers.

Certainly I got on well with them all, though some time elapsed before we could understand a simple sentence spoken on either side.

For two days I was not fit for much: then I went to the front with a detachment of sixty gunners which had arrived from Petrograd via Warsaw.

I found the battery and the rest of the regiment encamped to the westward of Przasnysz.

Heavy fighting was going on somewhere in front; but the contending troops were not in sight. The whole country was full of smoke, and the smell of burning wood and straw was nearly suffocating. The Germans had set fire to everything that would burn, including the woods. During the night heavy showers of rain fell, and these extinguished most of the fires and saved a vast quant.i.ty of timber.

I could see that the Germans had been driven back a considerable distance; and the Russians claimed to have won great victories in the neighbourhood of Stshutchen and Graevo, and to have already pa.s.sed 500,000 men across the German border. That they were making progress was obvious; and on the 20th August I witnessed some desperate infantry fighting.

The Germans came on, as they always did, in immense columns, literally jammed together, so that their men were held under fire an unnecessarily long time. The usual newspaper phrase, "Falling in heaps," was quite justifiable in this case. Thousands fell in ten minutes; and the remainder broke and fled in spite of the efforts of their officers to stop them. I was well in front and saw what took place. The German officers struck their men with their swords and in several cases cut them down; and I saw one of them fire his revolver into the crowd. I did not actually see men fall, but he must have shot several.

The Russians, too, adopted a much closer formation than was wise, and suffered severely in consequence, but they never wavered. The Germans came on again and again, nine times in all, and proved themselves wonderful troops. Four out of the nine charges they drove home, and there was some desperate bayonet fighting in which the Teutons proved to be no match for the Muscovites. The last named used the "weapon of victory" with terrible effect, disproving all the modern theories about the impossibility of opposing bodies being able to close, or to come into repeated action on the same day.

On the contrary, it may be taken as certainly proved that men's nerves are more steeled than ever they were, and that the same body of men can make repeated and successive attacks within very short periods of time.

In the above attacks fresh bodies of troops were brought up each time, but the remnants of the battalions previously used were always driven on in front. I noticed this: on three occasions the 84th regiment (probably Landwehr) formed part of the attacking force.

"Driven on" is the correct term. The German officers invariably drove their men in front of them. Arriving in contact with their foes, the soldiers fought with fury. It was the preliminary advance that seemed to discompose them: and, indeed, their losses were dreadful. They certainly left at least 30,000 dead and wounded on the ground on the 20th. The greater number were dead, because those who lay helpless received a great part of the fire intended for their retreating comrades, and thus were riddled through and through.

The Russian artillery played on the ma.s.ses both when they advanced and retreated; but the fight was chiefly an infantry one. The full effect of the guns could not be brought into play without danger of injury to our own men. In the end the Russians chased the enemy back and the artillery was advanced to support them. Considerable ground was gained; but four or five versts to the rear of their first position the Germans were found to be strongly entrenched. The day's fight was finished by a charge of a large body of Cossacks and Russian light cavalry. They swept away the force of German hors.e.m.e.n who ventured to oppose them, and also drove back several battalions of infantry. That part of the Russian Army which had been engaged bivouacked on the ground they had fought over.

The cries of the wounded during the night were terrible to hear, and came from many different points and distances. Hundreds must have died from want of attention, and hundreds more, on both sides, were murdered.

The Germans, who were hovering about in small parties, persistently fired on the Red Cross men, so little could be done for the dying; and the cruelties which were perpetrated, and which were revealed (so I was told) by the shouts, entreaties and imprecations of the sufferers, aroused a nasty spirit in the Russians, and particularly in the Cossacks, and led to fearful reprisals, so that in one part of the field I know that not a German was left alive. I am bound to add that after I had seen two Russians brought in with their eyes gouged out, and another with his nose and ears cropped, and his lacerated tongue lolling from his mouth, I had not a word of protest to utter against these reprisals.

The Germans were finished fiends, and deserved all they got from a body of men notorious for their fierceness; and they _did get it_. I will say this, though: that throughout the campaign no instance of a Russian injuring a woman or a child came under my notice; nor did I hear of any such cases. But I was told that three Prussian girls, who were seen to be on friendly terms with some Russian soldiers, were nearly flogged to death by their own people; and the horrible treatment the Polish women received from the hands of the Germans has already been mentioned, and was ever recurring during the whole of the time I spent with the Russian Army.

I would here make mention of the quality of the Russian and German soldiery. Conscription sweeps into the ranks of an army numbers of men who are totally unfit for a military life and a still further number who abhor it. In the present war, hatred and vindictive feeling generally has run very high on the northern side of the fighting area; and this circ.u.mstance seems to have greatly increased the war-like instinct of the ma.s.ses, and consequently decreased the number of what I may term the natural non-combatants. In the Russian ranks, and I believe in the German also, this cla.s.s is weeded out as far as possible, and relegated to the organizations which have least to do with the fighting line--that is, the administrative services, and troops organized to maintain the lines of communication. But these fellows--the natural non-combatants, or haters of the soldier's life, I mean--are, when found in the fighting ranks, the most detestable scoundrels imaginable; and I believe the greater part of the atrocities committed may be laid to their charge.

They lose no opportunity of indulging in l.u.s.t and murder; and as in civil life they are mostly wastrels, thieves and would-be murderers, they find in war an opportunity to indulge in those vices which, practised in time of peace, would bring them to the prison and the noose. In other words, the sc.u.m of the big cities is brought into the army, and often proves as great a curse to its own administrative, as it does to that of the enemy. Not all the Germans were fiends--not all the Russians saints.

Early in the war many of the German regiments were composed of exceedingly fine-looking men. There was a decided deterioration later on, but this was more in appearance than quality: they still fought with determined, or desperate, courage; I am inclined to think, often the last-named. They were taught that the only way to escape the brutality of their officers was to face the courage of their foes. They chose the latter. Often hundreds--whole companies together--rushed over to the Russians, threw down their arms, and surrendered themselves prisoners of war. No such instance ever occurred in the Russian ranks. The Russian soldier is a very pious man, and, like the North Aryan stock from which he has sprung, is a great wors.h.i.+pper of ancestry and his superiors. His commanding officer, like his Czar, is a Father, or a Little Father--a sacred being--his priest as well as his temporal master. The consequence is that officer and soldier are one, a conjunction that is of great value from the military standpoint.

This is never the case in the German Army. The Teutonic officer is a brute and a slave-driver, and his soldiers fear him if they do not hate him. I doubt if any German soldier ever gets through his training without being repeatedly struck by all his superiors from the unter-officer upwards. Feathers show how the wind sets. A Prussian regiment (the Pomeranian Grenadiers) was route-marching. One of the musicians blew a false note: the bandmaster immediately turned and struck the man a stinging blow on the face. I believe the German Army is the only one in the world where such an incident could occur. Like master, like man. One brute breeds another.

Taken on the whole the old adage that "one volunteer is worth two pressed men" is true; but an army of ten or twelve millions could not be successfully met by one of a million or two. Numbers must count when they are excessive; though things militate against this rule sometimes.

If an army has not its heart in a contest very inferior numbers may win.

In the present case it soon became clear to me that both the great nations had their hearts in the war: the surprising thing is that Russia with her huge hordes has so far done so little--Germany hard pressed on all sides effected so much.

These words will reveal that I do not take the general view that Russia is progressing as fast and as well as she might reasonably be expected to do.[1] Yet I am unable to point out very clearly where her princ.i.p.al defect lies. She brought up troops very rapidly; and by the 20th August she had an enormous army in the field on the East Prussian frontier. At this time, and later on, I learned that her lines extended throughout the German border and far along that of Austria to the Bug; and she was said to have at least 5,000,000 men ma.s.sed in these lines. The Germans had not nearly so many--probably not more than 2,500,000 or 3,000,000; but they had the power, by means of their railways, to concentrate on a given point very rapidly, and so equal, or more than equal, the Russians, who, being without adequate railway communication, could not take advantage of their superior numbers. If the last-named saw a weakness in any part of the German defensive and attempted to take advantage of it, before they could bring up an adequate number of troops the Germans had discovered their intentions and rushed up a sufficient force to secure the threatened point: and this they did by bringing men from positions so numerous, and so distant, that they nowhere materially weakened their line; or, if they did so, they were enabled to conceal the fact.

[1] This paragraph was written four or five months ago.

Europe, Austria and Germany, is surrounded by a ring of armed men, extending, roughly, a distance of 1,500 miles, and defended by a force of about 14,000,000 men, or some five men to the linear yard. This is, in modern war, a sufficient number for effective attack or defence, on ordinary ground; but it is not too many, and in prolonged operation may prove to be too few on some descriptions of terre-plein. Yet, after ten months of the fiercest and most destructive fighting the world has ever seen, this ring of armed men has not been broken, though persistently attacked by three of the most powerful military nations on earth.

My estimate of the number of German and Austrian troops actually in the fighting-line at the beginning of the war is much in excess of the numbers stated in English newspapers. I note this; but do not think that 14,000,000 is an exaggeration. I have information, and am not merely guessing. Nor are the losses of the enemy overstated by me.

Down to the present date the losses of the Germans and Austrians amount to about 3,000,000 men; but it must be remembered that quite two-thirds of these would be wounded men who would recover, and go back to their respective fighting-lines; so that the actual number of men permanently put out of action is about 1,000,000, including those accounted for by the French, British, and Belgian armies. The losses of the Russians are nearly 2,000,000 men. Of these the greater part fell in the fighting I have described and am about to describe, fighting which may be called a prolonged battle for the possession of Warsaw on the one side and its defence on the other. The importance of this combat will be recognized when it is considered that the taking of Warsaw is the first necessary step towards the occupation of Petrograd.

The vision of one man, especially in war, is limited; and I did not see everything that took place in the region in which I was. I heard a good deal, and was ever on the watch to learn and verify, but it could not be otherwise than impossible to be always sure--always correct; and without doubt there are many errors in my narration. What I saw, I saw, and this may be relied on: what I guessed, or was told, I have advanced with caution. Taken as a whole I think my account of the fighting in Poland and East Prussia is as reliable as that of any one man can be: and let it be remembered that I held no official position which could help me in gaining knowledge.

On the evening of the 20th, and morning of the 21st, many rumors reached our corps of Russian successes in the neighbourhoods of Gumbinnen and Suvalki, places which were said to be but little more than 100 versts from our position. The first-named is an open town in East Prussia twenty-five versts over the border; and the news gave great joy to our troops, as it proved that Germany was actually invaded. My informants of the details were Major Polchow and two or three officers who spoke a little English and French and were able to make themselves understood to me.

There was said to have been desperate fighting, with heavy losses, the capture of many German prisoners, and the complete annihilation of a whole division of the enemy.

The occupation of Gumbinnen was of great importance because it is on the Prussian direct line to Vilna, one of the most important railway centres in this part of Russia and perhaps in the whole empire. Although the Russians could not maintain their hold of it, its temporary occupation, no doubt, had an important effect, and possibly helped more than seems to have been seen in saving Warsaw from the enemy's hands. For had they succeeded in seizing Vilna, the Russian force in Poland would have been deprived largely, if not entirely, of reinforcements and supplies in general. It was one of the peculiarities of the war in Poland and East Prussia that neither side seemed able to keep an important position for any length of time. Places were seized which had a telling effect for the moment, and which one would have thought would have greatly influenced the fate of the campaign; and yet they were soon retaken or rendered untenable and the advantages of their seizure lost. In fact the fighting swayed to and fro. Here to-day, there to-morrow, the battle was lost or won. It was all a question of railways.

On the 21st the Russians crossed the frontier between Janow and Chorzellen, and advanced towards Ortelsberg, driving in a force of Uhlans and smas.h.i.+ng a battery.

The next day they were met by a force of Villenberg, which partially outflanked us. Desperate fighting ensued, the Germans suffering terrible losses: but they had an object to effect--to hold the Russians until reinforcements arrived. These were run down rapidly from Koenigsberg and the Russians outnumbered and forced back. The fight was lost because the Germans had a network of railways behind them, while the nearest Russian line was 45 versts away. These facts require no comment. A Russian railway at Chorzellen would have saved the day, and led to the investment and probable fall of Koenigsberg. It would have made the occupancy of Tilsit and Memel permanent, and would almost certainly have changed the results of the campaign in this region.

As it was, we had to fall back; but we did so fighting stubbornly, and giving ground very slowly, reinforcements hourly arriving by march-route. Finally we made a stand at Chorzellen, and the Prussians tried their usual tactics of repeated attacks in ma.s.ses. They left 10,000 dead before the town (it is scarcely more than a big village), and then entrenched themselves at a hamlet called Straffenberg, several miles in a south-westerly direction towards Unterberg: and then a terrific artillery duel commenced. I calculated that 30,000 shots an hour were fired from both armies. The air, the ground, everywhere and everything, seemed to be alive with bursting sh.e.l.ls. The roar of guns and explosions was incessant and quite drowned the sound of the infantry firing. Afterwards many men were deaf; I myself could hear no sounds for two days.