Part 14

I started off from the General's on a journey of six miles, and I had an object lesson in the difficulties of movement in this region. My orderly, naturally, did not know the names of villages in this part, and thus we found ourselves at a neighbouring station eight miles from my destination. A train was due; but at any station on this line a long halt may be necessary for the collection of all that must be forwarded, whether troops or material. I spent the interval at a local Feeding Point, where I had some acquaintances. Only a soldier-caretaker was there, attending to a young scout-leader who had got a shrapnel wound.

At last the train moved off. I had made a couch of my wraps in a large goods wagon; but I was the only passenger who travelled in comfort. The others were private soldiers, and in the dark they talked freely, and were entirely themselves. One of them was telling sad things of the losses in his regiment, of how the telephone might have saved them, but had broken down. "You won't manage in war without loss," said one of the elder men. "No losses, no victory." Few as they were, his words summed up the difference between sitting in trenches and making ground by attack. They talked on; and as one often notices in these night talks of the Russian privates, there was a kind of sacred simplicity, which left one thinking. I recalled the Austrian private who did not care what country his home belonged to as long as he earned his own living.

Seven hours had passed since I left my starting-point, and I was still a mile and a half from my destination. I decided to walk, and set out along the railway. The night was dark, and the only light was from the enemy's projectors. There were bridges over deep gullies that called for caution; and every hundred yards or so I was hailed by a sentry; one of them asked naïvely whether I was a Magyar. Anyhow, I reached the station an hour and a half before the train; and in the half-smashed station building I found first an ambulance room, and above it a little band of devoted workers with whom I had lived at another part of the front.

This forward detachment of the Red Cross was always keen and united. It worked under fire during a time of retreat, and all its members had the George medal for courage. When I was with them it was a slack time; and the result was that one member of the band after another felt the effects of the previous stress and had to go off to Russia. Now they had struck another period of arduous work, and the absent ones were returning with a few new additions. Work pulls people together, especially out here, and they were making more effort than ever. When I reached their very modest quarters (two rooms: one for the sisters and one for the men), I could not make out where the ambulance rooms ended, because each member's bed in the detachment was occupied by a wounded man or invalid awaiting the evacuation train. Here was an old colonel (they had nursed several here); there was a private, who had won first the George Cross and then a commission. Judging by my own experience, I fully expected the train to be hours late, and thought the detachment would get no sleep till the morning. However, the train drew up, the officers thanked and kissed the gentlemen of the detachment, and the room was clear. I had a warm welcome from my friends, and a bed was found for me.

The next day I had an interesting talk with some cordial officers at the staff of a brigade which had taken 7000 prisoners, or almost the number of its own men, from the enemy since December. In all the regiments in the Austrian army the various nationalities were now hopelessly mixed up. They told me of a Serbian, an officer in an Austrian regiment, who had been court-martialled and transferred for not joining, at a banquet, in toasting the extermination of Serbia. All the Austrians, they said, are now for peace, and the military oath, to which, in this non-national state, the greatest significance is attached, is the only deterrent from wholesale surrender. As always elsewhere at the front, I found the greatest enthusiasm for the work of England in the allied cause.

I ended this journey in an ambulance train standing at Mezolaborcz, which is already Hungary. The chief of the train, though I did not know him, gave me a clear night's rest, with luxuries of every kind, including English tobacco, of which he insisted on making me up a packet for my journey. But the best of the evening was, as so often, a clever and fascinating conversation on the war and the future of Russia and England. There is matter in this subject for all sorts of interesting suggestion, but one seldom meets any difference of opinion on one point, namely, that after the war the relations of the two countries will assume a far wider importance, political, economic and, above all, social, and that they will be among the chief factors that make for the peace of Europe.

_April 19._

The staff of the Xth Division was housed in a white-walled cottage at the end of the little town. After the usual glasses of tea and talk of England, we set out with a small cavalcade for the front. The long street was very definitely Hungarian. It was not only the notices and the shops, with surname written first, among which I saw the historic name of Rakoczy, probably a Jew; but that the line of the houses, the river and the landscape were all new to one coming from Russia.

We rode fast along the double track of railway, and very quickly reached our first halting-place. Diverging to the high road, which was also fairly hard and dry, we soon left our horses and proceeded on foot. The road was so good and straight, the weather was so fine, and the beautiful hills so peaceful, that, though talking all the time about the war, we somehow forgot that we were in it, when suddenly, from a high hill that seemed quite close to us, there crashed a shell about thirty yards from us. The little lurid flame that preceded the explosion burned long enough to let us throw ourselves against the bank, which was bright with pretty blue flowers. We found we had exactly reached the front of our positions and made our way under shelter up a slope. The men were at work on their breastworks, which were very different from those of the Galician plain. On this higher ground, almost at any point the spade soon came on springs of water which filled the hole in a few minutes. In such places the breastworks are ordinarily what is called horizontal; they are constructed of brushwood and spruce fir, and give hardly any shelter. The earth-huts are replaced by little arbours of fir boughs, which are very much more difficult to warm, though from the captured Austrian trenches, unfortunately facing in the other direction, there have been taken quite a number of excellent little stoves. As the new Russian lines were only recently occupied, they were still in a very primitive state; in the wood that stretched in front, trees were still being cut to the stump to serve as posts for the wire-entanglements, and the lines themselves were not as yet at all continuous. Shells continued to fall at short intervals for some time, and a private, killed while at work, was brought up for burial. The colonel pointed the moral of getting the shelters finished as soon as possible.

When the firing died away, we walked along the outside of the lines; the task of sentries and scouts was a difficult one, for the trees stood close together. After a halt, I was taken further by a business-like officer with worn uniform and steely blue eyes, and, with his approval, I passed a word or two of greeting from the English army to the groups of soldiers at work. Several of the men asked me to send a like greeting back.

As we went forward, this little procedure became more detailed. The idea was taken up with enthusiasm by the commanders of companies, especially after I had been conducted, staff in hand, over a deep gully which separated us from the next regiment. Here each company was called outside its trenches and drawn up facing the enemy. I gave the salute, "Health, brothers"; and the usual answer came in a thundering peal. I told them how grateful we were for everything that they had sacrificed and everything that they had done for our common cause, and said that we wanted to be in time to do our full share on land, that our new big army was ready, and that we were going to advance as they had done. There is no difficulty in making simple things clear to Russian soldiers. They answered with their "Glad to do our best," and the "Hurrah!" which was so vigorous as to bring the Austrian machine guns into play; I am glad to say, without results. Several of the men came and talked to me in groups later; they felt the effects of their hard work and the heavy losses that go with attack, but their spirit was a conquering one, and all the more impressively so, because of the hardships in which I saw them. Later, when I saw the Commander of the Army, who had run a risk of being captured close to this very ground, he asked me to continue to give these greetings, "to hearten for the common cause," and arranged for me to get early news of any successes on the western front.

I slept with the usual brotherly group of officers in a little forester's hut, a hundred yards from the comparatively open front; on the outside of the door was chalked the word "Willkommen," which read like an amusing invitation to the enemy. We all slept on the floor, but I was accommodated with a litter, which made an excellent bed. The porch served as first-aid point, and when the firing was resumed in the morning, a wounded man was brought in here.

Before I went further, the Brigadier-General sent me by telephone a warm greeting, to be communicated to England.

_April 20._

The reader will remember "The Birds," a very tight place held by the L regiment beyond a river on another front. The L's had done no end of work and had suffered heavily long before I visited them at "The Birds." There, too, they lost many men--about 1500 out of 4000--in an action which followed on their occupation of those positions and in the weeks of cannonade which they endured there.

I was aware that the L's were now in the Carpathians and close to me. The two regiments whose lines I had traversed had lost many in this hill warfare. Where a hill is taken, the enemy's losses, though probably more than double the Russian, are rather in surrenders than in killed and wounded. A hill attack, which is beaten off by superior numbers, means heavy sacrifices.

I clambered over another of the steep intersecting gulleys. A group of S's stood waving their farewells. There was a bit of bare slope facing the Austrian plateau, and then I came on the first shelter of the L's, quite a comfortable mud hut. The young officer, who had come to meet me, was an acquaintance, and he sat down and told me about the men I knew. In a single night attack on the height in front of us, two-thirds of the officers that I had known had gone down, and about half the regiment. Name after name came up with the brief record, "He's killed." We lay on the straw--in nearly all other huts here there were only boughs of fir--and he told me the whole story. The hill was almost inaccessible, the works were long prepared and elaborate, the Germans had hurried up large forces here; yet the attack all but succeeded. "All but," and no results but losses. At Rava Russka and on the San the L's had given of their best, and decisive successes had followed. The hill opposite had cost more and still faced us. It is one of the saddest of thoughts, that the bravest of all, the men who go furthest, must lie where they fell. Yet the L's, who in the course of a few days have again been brought up to full strength by the enormous reinforcements which Russia continues to pour into the army, will have written their name on the Hungarian war in as lasting colours as on the Galician. We are over the crest; we are fighting in the main downwards; we touch a vital spot; and we are going forward.

There is nothing which makes one feel all this better than to pass along the lines of a regiment so battered, still in position at the time when I visited it; nay, more, occupying for the moment far more than the natural extent for its full strength, and occupying it as a conqueror with swiftly thrown-up works that only provide for an elementary shelter. And the battle is not offered; the enemy sits on his heights and makes no counter-stroke to push his temporary advantage home.

I write of a time which has already passed; for the whole position is very different now. But I say the L's were conquerors. There were nothing like enough of them for a continuous line; so they had picked out all those sections which commanded any possible advance of the enemy, and held them as masters. For the intervals, the gullies, they detached large scouting parties which met any forward move halfway. The work which this meant for all will remain with me as giving a picture of a Russian regiment after a check. All the officers and men were alert and looking to the next move in the game. A soldier who guided me, confident and intelligent, stopped only for a moment in his conversation, to say: "But, as a matter of fact, sir, there are very few left of us." Regiments that can take punishments like this, communicate their spirit and tradition to those of the new recruits who are so fortunate as to join them.

From one occupied point to another, our little party of officers and men walked freely over the open, in face of the neighbouring Austrian plateau, till each of our cleverly chosen positions had fallen into its place in our survey. I had a long walk back; in fact, I did not get out of the range of the Austrian plateau till the next day. My two soldier guides and I sat down and smoked by a stream for a while, and they told me that of their fellow villagers who set out at the beginning of the war, the one had lost sixteen out of eighteen, and the other fifty out of sixty. One of them, with three comrades, had fought his way back, when the rest of his company was lost.

The position is changed now, but I feel that the more we know of this fighting, the more we shall understand of the Russian spirit and of the Russian sacrifices, and the clearer will be the picture of the Russian advance.

_May 1._

Waiting at a railway station, I met a young officer who was taking home the body of his brother. The young man met his death leading a night attack. He took his company further up than any, and even got through the wire entanglements and into the enemy's trenches. The deadly fire of the machine guns made it necessary to draw off the men, and this company got the order late. Some fought their way through, but their leader was mortally wounded. The brother was serving in the neighbouring artillery and was able to be with the dying man to the last. He said that his brother might easily have surrendered with others, but it would always be a satisfaction that he did not "hold up his hands and go into Austria."

At staff headquarters of the army I passed many funerals. Here the enemy's airmen make a visit almost every day. Two days ago, and again to-day, they appeared in force and dropped their bombs almost without a break. The air battery and picked riflemen kept up an incessant fire on them. Yesterday I watched an aeroplane under fire of Russian shrapnel. The shells burst all round it and evidently forced it to give up its intention of reaching the town: it sped away northwards. These raids have had hardly any success. Even the bombs which lodged where they were meant to, on the railway or on the aerodrome, did no real damage. The net result is a small number of wounded, including civilians and a sister of mercy.

An officer whom I met in the trenches, and of whom I wrote under the name of "George," has very appropriately been appointed one of the judges of recommendations for the George Cross. The soldier's George is given for any signal act of bravery, and the men thus honoured are always found to be the rallying points in further attacks. The officers' George is in four classes. Only some four individuals have ever received the first class, beginning with Kutuzov. The second class, which is for very definite achievements of generalship can only be given to Generals (Ivanov has it for the conquest of Galicia), and the third only to Generals and Colonels. The fourth, which is for any act of courage or initiative, can be won by any officer. The different achievements which can win the George are clearly set out. The two first classes are conferred only by the nomination of the Sovereign; for the other two there is in each army what is called a "Duma," or panel of selectors.

My friend, who is one of the bravest and simplest men that I have met, told me very interesting things about his work. His own standard of bravery is not striking acts of daring, but the maintenance of normal composure in the performance of dangerous tasks. It is, I think, a standard which will appeal to Englishmen. One of the most typical instances of Russian courage that I know is among the records of the battle of Borodino. An aide-de-camp galloped up to a commanding officer and, pointing towards a hill, said: "The Commander-in-Chief asks you to attack there." As he spoke, a cannon ball carried away his extended arm; he simply pointed to the hill with the other, and said, "There: be quick."

At many points of our line there has been a complete lull. One battery which I visited, standing on some thickly wooded hills, was building a wooden villa for the officers, and had already put up a camp theatre for the performances of short plays written by the men. There was little but the ordinary diversion of shooting at aeroplanes.

Prisoners continue to testify to the discontent in the enemy's armies. For instance, an Alsatian says that any Alsatian would come over at the first opportunity. A German says that the conditions in his regiment are such that he would have shot himself but for regard for his family. Czechs report further mutinies in their regiments which have been punished with military executions. The Ruthenian regiments, which cannot now be reinforced from Galicia, are rapidly melting away. Even the Hungarian soldiers are described as desirous of peace.

_May 3._

The advance of the Russians over the Carpathians was sure to draw a counter-stroke, and it has come just where many have expected it, but with tremendous force. This is because it is not so much the work of the tired Austrians, but rather the biggest effort that Germany has yet put forth in her attempts to bolster her ally. We have all been preparing for May, and Germany and even Austria have evidently made great preparations. The food supply in the Austrian army has been much improved; the proportion of Germans on the Austrian front has been enormously increased; heavy artillery has been concentrated; and the Emperor and Hindenburg have been reported to be here.

I set out with a nice bright-eyed chauffeur who did a splendid day's work with me. We had the main road for some distance, and none of the varieties later seemed to trouble him. We went along a valley, and in a house standing high by a church we found the staff of the Division. I had friends; and I was soon dispatched with a tall determined Cossack to the point where the road climbed the hill. Here we left our machine, and in a hundred yards or so we had the whole scene before us.

There was a hut on the top of the hill; sitting in front of it one could see for at least ten miles in either direction. The Division was holding a front of eight miles with the Z's on the left, the O's in the middle, the R's on the right and the I's in reserve. The O's, who were just beyond a hollow, occupied a low line of wooded heights a thousand yards in front of me. The Z's held a lower wooded ridge, the R's connected with the O's over a valley and were posted along a less defined line, of which the most marked feature was a village with a little church tower. Against these three regiments were nine, mostly German, and backed by the most formidable artillery. Beyond each of the flanks of the Division one could see at intervals black clouds of smoke; one thick stream of smoke that stretched into the skies came from some distant petroleum works. The whole line of the R's was being pounded with crash after crash, sometimes four black columns rising almost simultaneously at intervals along it; under each would break out little angry teeth of sparkling flame; the only thing that seemed not to be hit was the church tower, which, as each cloud died down, came out simple again in the bright sunshine. The Z's were in patches of smoke that sometimes disappeared for a time.

What was happening to the O's was not so clear; so after watching the shells and shrapnel bursting along the line and on the slope for some hours, we descended by some winding gullies, drawing a shrapnel as we passed over a low shoulder, and soon reached the staff of the O's. Under the nearer wall of a hut, a group of officers was working the telephones, while a number of soldiers lay on logs around. The Colonel came forward to me with a preoccupied smile: "A convoy for the flag," he explained, and turning to his men; "you have the flag there?" Then he took me into the open and pointed at the ridge some six hundred yards away: all his left was at grips with the enemy who had come through at several points, and on the right his men were fighting at the close range of two hundred yards in the wood beyond the crest.