Part 15

We crouched behind the houses amid a constant roar of shells bursting all round us, and firing some of the neighbouring huts. The telephones worked incessantly. Now each of the battalion commanders reported in turn--one, that his machine guns had been put out of action, another that there were gaps in his line, a third that he was holding good, but hard put to it. The Colonel explained that his last reserves were engaged. A message came that his right flank was open and was being turned. He seized the telephone and called to the reserve regiment: "Two companies forward at the double," reporting his action directly to the staff of the Division. There was a peculiar humanness about all these messages; in form they were just ordinary courteous conversation. The question which brought the most disquieting answers was "Connexions." The Z Colonel reported that his line was penetrated at more than one point, but was holding out. The R telephone gave no answer at all. Life there was unlivable, the trenches were destroyed, and on my way I had heard from soldiers a report that when taking ammunition to the R's they had seen the Austrians in our lines. Shells and shrapnel were crashing all round us, especially on our rear; a great cloud rose where I had sat at the top, and a hut that I had passed on the way down broke out in full flame. Nearer down there fell four black explosives at regular distances of fifty yards, "the four packets" as one officer called it. Our cover would all have gone with a single shot, and the men crouched to avoid the falling splinters from each shell. In this depressing atmosphere there went on the conversation between the Colonel and the divisional staff: "I can get no contact, with the R's. Cavalry is reported on both of my flanks. The R's have had to retreat." The answer was an order to retire at nightfall. Three hours at least had to run. The order was communicated in French over each battalion telephone. The Colonel apologised for his elementary French; anyhow it was the French of a brave man. As disquietudes increased, the permission came to retire at once; but the Colonel answered that this could not be done: he was in hot defensive action, and the enemy would follow on his heels; at present he was holding his own.

Twice on the telephone the fatal word "surrounded" had been used. My hosts urged me to go. "We have each a different duty," they said. It was with little heart that I faced for the slope, turning a few yards off to salute these brave men once more. They were some wounded struggling up the gullies, one with a maimed foot, whom we helped along but who had to sit down at times and smoke. As we began to approach shelter, we suddenly saw on the hills to the west of us men coming down the slope towards us. "Perhaps ours, perhaps the enemy," said my Cossack, who never turned a hair throughout the day. We got our lame man up the big hill, but as soon as we had passed the crest he said that his strength failed him, and sat down with several others round a well. The next thing was to look for the motor. We were now in comparative safety; for we were out of the line of fire, and the valley to the north of us was full of our own people. Officers galloped forward, looking at the line of our retreating field trains. In the valley there was a long train of wounded. I at last found our motor in the midst of it. We packed in the men with the worst wounds that we noticed; they lay without a groan, and one old soldier said: "Thanks to Thee, O Lord; and eternal gratitude to you." A young soldier with an eager face pressed forward with a letter, begging us to take his wounded officer, whom he had brought five miles from the distant lines of the R's. "Harchin"--that was his name, was like a loving son, with his captain, walking by our side or standing on our step for mile after mile and all the while helping to hold the litter in position. He told us that no living man could have driven the R's from their position: but that the whole area was covered with shells till trenches and men were levelled out of existence. The companies left comparatively intact had all joined on to the O's. Of the O's themselves we could only hear vague rumours; it was said that most of them had made their way back.

There was no panic, no hurry in the great throng, as it retired. Each was ready to help his neighbour. Crossing a long hill we had to transfer some of our wounded to an empty cart which we commandeered, the men moving without a word. In the night Harchin kept holding up his officer and giving any comfort that he could. "It's quite close now, your nobility, it's a good road now," he would say. We reached a hut where the kind Polish hostess showed us beds for our wounded; Harchin was constant and tender in his care, and I left the two together to await the arrival of the doctor. A private with a crushed face refused to lie on his bed for fear of spoiling it, and sat holding his bleeding head in his hands.

Through the darkness and past an incessant train of army carts, which without any shouting did all they could to give us passage, I made my way to the corps of the staff and to the next Division; where I slept long into the morning. It was only later that we knew the full scope of our losses. The Division had against it double its number of infantry and an overwhelming mass of heavy and light artillery. It had held its trenches till it was almost annihilated.

_May 4._

When I woke up in the morning, the deserted school where the staff had stretched their beds was alive with work and anxiety. The lines lay only a mile and a half outside the town of Biecz, and the Germans and Austrians were making a tremendous attack on them, pounding them with the heaviest artillery and advancing on them in close column again and again. The leader of this Division is a fighting General, robust, active and of great composure. The Staff was very close up to the front, and our own immediate movements depended on to-day's results. As we were being shelled, we went for lunch to a neighbouring Polish monastery, a pleasing white-walled building on a hill. It was deserted but for one or two monks; and its cloisters and wall-paintings and stations of the Cross were like an oasis far from the war. I lay down in one of the empty rooms and had some more hours of sleep. On my return to the school building I found that the situation was critical. From the balcony the General viewed the lines and gave some short directions. In the summer weather one watched groups of soldiers descending from the neighbouring hill and making for the bridge at the foot of our house. They were ours and were being relieved; and they formed up into order and were addressed by an officer before crossing the bridge. The enemy had been beaten off in every infantry attack, but many parts of the lines were now non-existent, having been reduced to a series of shell-pits by the German artillery.

With a young Cossack I started out for the D regiment. The picturesque little town--all the Polish towns are full of pleasing architecture--was crowded with troops, and the atmosphere was one of uncertainty. Men were sheltering from the hot fire all along the banks of the sunken road. On the top of the hill were a few huts through which we threaded our way, dodging an exposed area where shells burst continually. Further on we found to the right of us a deep valley thick with lofty trees. On the edge of this wood were a number of soldiers who had lost touch with their regiments. We stopped them to find our way. The D regiment, we learned, was no longer at the front; and indeed on this side we should not find any lines at all. We were told that the Austrians were already in the wood, which later proved to be true. The fire was heavy here, splinters falling upon us through the trees; and the stragglers hurried away.

Turning to the left I found myself at the head of a wide hollow in the hills. Over it soldiers were moving forward. Making my way to one of the huts, I found the Brigadier-General and got leave to accompany this advance. It was the first regiment of the famous Caucasian Corps just arrived after an all-night march, and going up to the attack. A battalion commander stood just below the hut, putting his men in position. He was a quiet little man, already elderly and with an old voice, that sounded vigorously, however, across the slope. "You shall come with me," he said. The men who had been sitting in groups, made their way by companies up the different clefts in the hollow and soon lined into the ridge beyond. The commander moved about among them at an easy walk, directing some, hurrying on others. The men went forward on their knees, separating off into what the Russians call a "chain," where any one with initiative, by finding cover a little further forward, gives a lead to all the rest. The officers walked upright throughout.

When the crest was lined, the commander went forward in different directions. On his return he gave a few orders to his officers; one of them was a little excited, and called out: "I have an instinct that it will go right; God grant that it is a true one," and turning to his men he shouted, "God is with us." Except for this, nothing broke the atmosphere of the evening stillness. "Well, children," said the commander, "what shall I say to you? With God! Forward!"

One company went off to the wood on the right, and after a few minutes another with the commander and myself moved forward over the bare hill, leaving two others to follow in reserve. Throughout the men advanced in little groups, creeping in line with each other; the officers walked about freely, often in advance of the men, or encouraging any that showed too much caution. We soon saw that the ground was clear in front of us, and we descended the hill a good deal more rapidly. The commander and I branched off into the edge of the wood; all the time he was calling out to keep touch with the company on our right; he turned and smiled to me as the shrapnel tore away some of the boughs.

At the bottom the machine guns were hurried up, and we ascended the further slope. We were now on a bare height, which was like a tongue projecting forward, and a hot musketry fire was opened on us. A man near me called out that he was wounded and rolled himself down to the hollow, where a bearer set about bandaging him; a shell burst beyond us and another called out. I could only see what happened to the men nearest to me. The commander continued to stroll about among the men, in the same way as he would have done out of action; several of the men begged him to lie down. We went round the outside of the height, and he brought his men everywhere to the edge of it and told them to entrench themselves, which they set about doing at once.

We could see where the bullets came from, on the low ground in front. To our left was a ridge with trees, along which we could see men on horseback coming from the direction of the enemy. To our right, beyond the wood, was a high ridge covered with men who appeared to be advancing upon us but did not open fire. Later it seemed that they were stationary, and we could not make out whether they were ours or theirs, so a scouting party was sent to find out. Suddenly a column of blue figures was seen coming up close on our front. In what seemed a minute, two of our machine guns had been moved to this side. Round some brushwood thirty yards away came the first rank of the column; one caught sight of a line of pale faces; I remember a slim fair-haired youth who peered anxiously forward. Our commander shouted orders; our machine-gun men, standing up and with indignation on their faces, ground out a shower of bullets, and the Austrian column disappeared into the wooded valley.

Night was closing in, the enemy's cannonade was slackening, and the time was approaching when the physical superiority of man to man would put the balance firmly on the Russian side. The men were entrenching themselves; and the commander wished to send a message to the brigade about the undefined troops on his right. I was going with this message and had not got more than two hundred yards from the front when I heard shouts of hurrahs, which marked the beating off of another Austrian attack. A few more shells burst on our way back, but my companion muttered to the enemy: "It's getting dark, brother"; for, once technique does not dominate, the Russian feels that he is master.

On the road we found a large batch of Austrians (Poles) taken in the wood. I was invited to examine them; they had had no food that day; there was much disaffection in Austria; they were strongly against the Germans and were glad that for them the war was over. Our report was delivered; the troops on our right were Russians. Later there came other and sadder news. The little commander was brought back into the town wounded in the head in the last Austrian attack.

In the evening I rode with the Divisional Staff several miles to our new quarters. All along the road he stopped any straggling soldiers and asked closely what had happened to their regiments. This was all extremely well done; he was really severe only to one batch who told him an obvious lie. Altogether the retreat, for it was that, was unattended by any panic. Going at a sharp trot, we reached our new quarters at three in the morning.

_May 6._

I woke in a farmhouse, in a village that was filled with the divisional field train. The Divisional General had gone off early to the front to rectify the new positions. The news that came in was uncertain and anxious. The first hut which the General and his staff had entered had been made untenable by the enemy's artillery. The second hut that he visited was also set on fire. No further news of him came till late in the evening that he had barely escaped capture.

Word came that the staff would be moved further back. The field trains were set in motion, and we travelled without any kind of confusion across a beautiful range of wooded hills. We stopped more than once to see the fight that was going on below us. It was a blazing line of fire and smoke, the twin yellow and white bursts of the Austrian shrapnel being almost lost in the white or black smoke of the German artillery. We travelled very slowly and for a good part of the day; officers and men were full of vexation at having to retire before troops which they felt themselves capable of beating with any equal conditions: among themselves there prevailed a simple good humour.

I rode at different times with the adjutant, the chief of the field train, and the divisional doctor, all of whom were perfectly cool and collected. We made different wayside halts, and in the afternoon drew up in a large village also full of field trains. Here we took rest and refreshments, while different rumours came in from all quarters: and in the evening I drove in for news to the staff of the army at Jaslo, which was now close to the enemy.

From nearly all the regiments of the corps which I had accompanied, great losses were reported; on the other hand, practically every infantry attack had been driven off with great loss to the enemy. The trenches had been left only when the enemy's artillery had made them untenable. In some parts the systematic ploughing up of whole given areas had gone so far behind our lines that even approach to the trenches had been made impossible.

The game was not lost even on this ground, and immediate measures had been taken for counter-attacks the following day. Meanwhile Jaslo was under an intermittent but violent bombardment of aeroplanes; and all the hospitals were being moved to the rear.

I learned that the enemy were making a similar artillery attack on Tarnow, where I had spent several of my periods of Red Cross work at the hospitals. The Russian workers in the local Civil Spital had stayed on to the last and were now under a hot fire, and it was desired that they should be moved without delay. The Red Cross authorities had been told that this detachment could be guaranteed "against capture for the present, but not against artillery fire." I was commissioned to go and move it.

I found the General of the Transport at the railway station full of work, but cool and business-like. His was one of the most difficult tasks, but there was no better head in the Third Army. At three in the morning he came to tell me that a motor was at my disposal at once.

At my first stop I was asked to take with me an official of the Red Cross who had been deprived by contusion of his voice and hearing. He was in full possession of his senses and wrote down his wishes. He had been under fire with three hundred wounded in the village where I had slept the night before. There were other reports more disquieting. In one advanced bandaging point the German soldiers had burst in, full of drink and rage, and had bayoneted the staff and, as we were told, the doctor.

In the early morning I reached an ambulance point managed almost entirely by the members of one family, the father (who was a retired divisional doctor), the mother, and their son. To them I handed over my unhappy companion. Here I had anxious news of the hospital for which I was making. Tarnow was four miles from the front; on the German advance nine shells had been fired on the hospital in one day, and one of them had struck the operating-room and wounded the lady doctor.

I drove on to the staff of the neighbouring corps to see about transport, and thence to my destination. There was an ominous absence of troops, other than retreating field trains. The inhabitants were all in the streets, alive as it seemed to me with excitement and expectation. As I drove up, I saw the five plucky sisters waiting on their balcony. They had already sent away all their Russian wounded and were ready to start. The wounded civilians, who were Austrian subjects, and some wounded Austrian soldiers had been housed in the cellars and would be left to the care of their own people.

This work had all been done in two hours directly after the last bombardment. The sisters had been given a second George medal for bravery. They spent the evening on a hill watching the artillery attack on our troops. It was a ring of fire that simply demolished the trenches. Attack after attack of the enemy's infantry was beaten off. One detachment, sent to the support of a neighbouring regiment, found some of the defenders asleep under the cannonade: they had beaten off eight attacks. The N Regiment was decimated, but full of spirit.

All this I learned later. Without any kind of haste or commotion, the sisters said good-bye to the Austrian wounded and to the kind Polish sisters who had worked so long with them, and we all started in my motor. We were soon out of the range of fire, and continued our journey until we had reached the new headquarters of the Red Cross, where we were joined a day later by the staff of the army.

_May 9._

The details of the Austro-German advance on the Third Army are now clearer. The Russian advance over the Carpathians was not met directly, but by a counter-advance on its flank. Here five army corps were concentrated, some of the fresh troops being drawn from reserve divisions on the French front, especially in the neighbourhood of Verdun. The journey across Germany is reckoned at three to five days, according to whether or not one includes the mountain marches at the end of the railway journey. Prisoners of the Prussian Guard tell me that they were given special training in hill climbing before they started.

Meanwhile, the long months of comparative inaction had been employed in bringing up the heaviest German and Austrian artillery, both of which were last summer concentrated on the western front, and getting the range not merely of the Russian lines, but of squares which covered a good part of their rear. This was a long and toilsome operation, as these guns cannot be moved except by railway or, with great efforts and under good weather conditions, on roads which have a certain consistency. The potentialities of these guns are in any case limited; they cannot easily follow up an advance or get away in case of a rout. They can force the evacuation of a given area, but it may be possible to manoeuvre in such a way that the general position is but little changed.

It will be remembered that the Austrians during the idle months have been covering the Russian lines in front of them with a ceaseless cannonade. This counted for little at the time. The Austrian artilleryman has only lately developed any accuracy; for a long time they continued in the most stupid errors of detail; they hardly ever placed a Russian battery, and evidently the process of range-finding has been long and very expensive. The Austrians rarely attempted infantry attack, knowing that they always met their masters; thus their ceaseless cannonade was not a preparation for an infantry offensive; and the Russians might even, if necessary, leave their trenches only partially occupied during the day, keeping less in those parts which were under the hottest fire and holding the whole line in force only by night.

It was a very different story when the initiative on this side was undertaken by the Germans, who use artillery as a preparation for desperate attacks in close column. The difference in accuracy between the German and Austrian artillery fire was very soon discovered to the Russian regiments in front of them; and it was known that the Prussian Guard Reserve was here. The trenches were, therefore, occupied in full and held until they became untenable.

The enemy's advance was at first directed against what was thought to be the weakest part of the Third Army, namely its right flank, which had sent a number of reinforcements to the Carpathian wing; but the alertness of the Russian general on this side produced an alteration in the plan, and the attack was diverted to the next army corps eastwards. This corps contained regiments which had had heavy losses in the previous hill-fighting. A gap was forced between the two army corps; and the right flank of the threatened corps (the R Regiment) was crushed by the pounding fire which I have described under May 3. The regiment retreated in good spirit, but with the heaviest losses, the O Regiment, holding its ground to the end, retired with its colonel and some 300 men: the Z Regiment was severely cut up. In all this fighting practically every infantry attack of the enemy was beaten back. The next day the impact fell mainly on the troops which I described on May 4. They held their ground to the evening and then executed an orderly retreat, coming into line with the broken forces to the right of them. But on both days a tremendous cannonade was directed on the division still further eastward, with the result that some regiments suffered terribly. The next day a fresh corps, the Caucasians, one of the most famous in the Russian army, had arrived and went forward boldly to the attack on the flank of the enemy's advance. The prisoners cannot speak too highly of the courage of this corps; and it did succeed in stemming the tide, with such effect that the broken army corps to its right had in two days reformed and come again into position. But it did not get as far as the enemy's heavy artillery, and retired fighting rearguard actions--not much further than the point from which it had started.

I have explained that the whole advance of the enemy was a counter-stroke to the Russian advance over the Carpathians further eastwards. The right wing of that advance was now outflanked and had to retire. Half of this corps succeeded in rectifying its positions without serious loss; but the other division had the greatest difficulty in fighting its way through, and lost heavily.