CHAPTER XII

AN INFANTRY RECONNAISSANCE

Once more I must refer to Germany's railways. A line runs parallel with the entire borderland at an average distance of about twenty versts--that is, one day's march for an army. This parallel line is connected with a highly elaborated railway system, extending to every part of the German Empire: and there are scores of short lines, running to towns on the actual frontier, where they terminate; with the very few exceptions where they run on into Russia. Of course, these short lines have a commercial importance; but their real value to Germany is that they permit a fighting battle-line to be rapidly reinforced at many points simultaneously. The Russians never successfully passed this parallel border railway: that is, they never held it in force, and for a considerable distance. It had, for Germany, a precisely similar value as a defensive line that the Vistula had for Warsaw and the interior of Russia. The railway-line stopped the Russian advance, as the Vistula did that of the Germans, yet in different ways. The actual railway could not stop the Russians; but the power of concentration it gave her opponents did. On the other hand, the River Vistula did stop the Germans. They could not force it, strongly held as it was by the Muscovite troops and their heavy artillery. The contributary streams, with their deep, steep banks, also hindered the attack, and greatly assisted the defence.

When I reached Lovicz I found the state of affairs much what it had been two months previously, when the Russians were defending the course of the great river against the Germans entrenched on the ground between it and the Pilica. What extent of country was now reoccupied by the enemy I had no means of learning with much exactitude; but it was certain that they were again on the left bank of the Vistula, on the Pilica: and were renewing their determined efforts to reach Warsaw. Lovicz was threatened; but as this place is a railway junction, and of great importance to Russia, preparations were in progress to defend the place as long as possible.

I was in something of a predicament. At Lovicz I could find nobody who knew me. The 40th Siberian regiment was said to be now in front of Przemysl; and the Cossacks with whom I had been most frequently in contact were departed, nobody knew whither. I could not see my way to trying to rejoin the 40th; but it was necessary that I should have some sort of official recognition, as it was contrary to regulation to have loiterers about camp, to say nothing of the danger one would run of being thought a spy and being dealt with accordingly. My friends, the Cossacks, would probably put a wrong interpretation upon my inability to give prompt and clear answers in their mother-tongue; and I should have a similar difficulty with any officer who should happen to interrogate me, besides running the risk of trouble with any civil officials I might chance to meet.

So I began to look about me. I had papers, testimonials and a permit. How could I utilize these?

Among the comrades with whom I had returned to the front was an officer of the Tomski regiment. I applied to him, and he introduced me to a Staff Captain named Muller. Muller, as we all know, is a very common German name; but many Russians are of German stock. Muller, in spite of his name, was a thorough Russian: and he stated my case to another Staff Officer, Colonel Simmelchok, who proposed that I should apply for recognition as a newspaper correspondent. The difficulty was that I could not name any paper to which I was a contributor, or potential contributor. Finally, the General commanding the troops at Lovicz was applied to. Having expressed the opinion that I had better go home, he refused to give me permission to join any Russian corps, and said that if I remained at headquarters I must do so at my own risk. In view of the excellent recommendations which I possessed from several Russian commanders he would not positively order my departure: and in view of my ignorance of the Russian language, he could not advise that I should be given a commission in any Russian unit. I might enlist as a private if I liked.

I saw at once that if I enlisted in a Russian regiment, my liberty of action would be stopped immediately; and I should see no more of the war than what the tip of my own bayonet could show: and I had serious thoughts of departing, and trying some other commander. Colonel Simmelchok came to the rescue. I might remain at my own risk. Very well: Colonel Krastnovitz, commanding the 2nd battalion of the Vladimir regiment was a friend of his, and would make me a member of their mess. Nothing could have met my views better, except a remittance of ready cash: but I was generously told that I need not trouble my head about that: we were soldiers on campaign, and would mostly enjoy campaign fare only; and so it proved. For we had few luxuries, except an occasional fowl, or duck, obtained from the country-people, a batch of eggs or a joint of pork. We never ran short of tobacco; but wine was almost unknown in the mess.

There was a very decided change in the weather. The mud had disappeared and the ground was frozen hard: the trees sparkled with frost particles, and the ground was coated, every morning, with rime. The air was "shrewd and biting," and we had some boisterous north winds which chilled me to the marrow. Meanwhile desperate fighting was going on, and the Russians seemed to be giving ground in several places. The ground was becoming so hard that trench-making became difficult, and a good deal of the fighting was in the open under old-fashioned conditions: the losses, therefore, were exceptionally heavy, especially in killed and wounded. More prisoners are taken in trench warfare than in any other form of military action owing to the fact that if the men do not escape before an assault takes place they have no chance of doing so when the enemy is actually amongst them. The broad hind-quarters of a Deutschman crawling over the crest of a trench affords a remarkably fine butt for a bayonet thrust: and Huns usually prefer surrender to cold steel.

For several days we were left in doubt of what was taking place in our neighbourhood, though daily glowing accounts reached us of the progress of Russian arms in the Austrian area of the war. The general impression seemed to be that matters were not going on so well in the West Polish district as they should be.

On the 20th we made a night march to a village, the name of which did not transpire. It was deserted, with the exception perhaps of a dozen miserable starving creatures, and had been partly burnt down. We arrived about four o'clock in the morning, at which time it had been snowing heavily for two hours.

We remained hiding in the village all day, fires and even smoking being strictly forbidden. There were about 800 of us: and I do not know if there were other infantry detachments near us, but I heard from the Colonel that a force of Cossacks was reconnoitring some eight or nine versts in front of us; and we could hear the distant booming of heavy guns, a sure sign that the contending parties were in contact, as artillery do not fire at nothing.

The greater part of the day snow was falling, and though it cleared up in the evening it was only for a few hours. We had brought three days' rations in our haversacks. The food consisted of biscuit, and fat boiled mutton, which is excellent diet for marching men. Our drink was water only, which we had to procure where we could find it; not an easy task, as the rivers were full of putrid bodies and carcasses of horses, and the Germans had polluted many of the wells.

On the 21st we made another night march over an open plain on which were many small pine-woods. We kept under cover as much as possible, and finally halted in a pine-wood, where we hid ourselves all day, not seeing a soul of any kind. In the afternoon a Cossack arrived, and delivered a written message to the Colonel, the contents of which he did not divulge; but at night he called for a dozen volunteers who, he said, must be men of enterprise, not afraid to sacrifice themselves if necessary. These men were placed under the command of a young officer, Captain Folstoffle, and proceeded along the bed of a frozen brook, our feet being muffled with pieces of sheep's skin. Naturally I supposed that we were near the enemy; but Folstoffle spoke not a word of either French or English, and no communication of any kind was made to me or to the men: we were left to glean information from the "march of events."

The booming of the guns continued, at intervals, all night, and to the north-west the sky was crimson with the reflection of a large fire--a burning town, I imagined. The only sign of life I saw was a large animal (a wild boar, I think), which rushed out of the cover of some rushes when disturbed by our approach.

The whole country was covered with snow, which was loose, and about a foot deep. This was a drawback, as we must have shown up darkly to an enemy: at the same time it increased our chances of seeing the approach of persons or soldiers, not clothed in white, though this hue was often used by the Germans to conceal themselves when the country was snow-clad. We had left our bivouac at about nine o'clock, and marched on until 2 a.m., when Folstoffle decided to halt for a rest. The spot chosen for this purpose was a clump of bushes with a small two-storied farm-house about 300 yards distant. It was necessary to examine this house, and I volunteered for the service, making myself understood by signs and the few words of Russian I was now master of. I started alone, but one of the men followed close behind me, holding his rifle at the "Present," ready to fire instantly if need should require it, though it seemed improbable that any of the enemy were in the house. As we approached, however, I was astonished to see a man hanging out of one of the windows, and another leaning over him from behind. Both were partly covered with snow, and it hardly required more than a glance to show that they were dead. A few yards nearer, and I could see that their clothing was in tatters, and fluttering in the night breeze.

The weather had cleared up, and was now bright; and the reflection from the snow enabled one to see objects with considerable distinctness, though some distance away; and I noticed several curious-looking heaps, or mounds, near the house, from which a horrible stink emanated, as it did from the building itself.

The place had been subjected to a bombardment; all the windows were smashed out, and one door lay flat on the ground; the other hung by a single hinge only, and we had no difficulty in entering. The soldier had a pocket-lamp, and he struck a light by means of flint and tinder, a contrivance which is still in use in Russia. The body of a huge man lay at the foot of the stairs. He was nearly naked, and much decayed; and we could not tell if he had been friend or foe. The whole place was in much confusion. There had evidently been hand to hand fighting in all the rooms; and upstairs there were the remains of about a dozen men heaped together in the apartment where the two corpses first noticed were hanging out of the window. All were in an advanced state of decay, and must have been dead weeks, if not months. The horrible fetor of the place was unendurable, and we were glad to return into the fresh air, the soldier being greatly upset. I thought it advisable to return and report before making a further search of the house and its environs; and Folstoffle decided to wait until the morning before examining the neighbourhood.

The spot where this discovery was made was between Klodava and Krasuyvice. No doubt there had been fighting all over this district, but none of those composing our party had taken a part in it. In the morning we found nearly a hundred bodies scattered about, and lying in two heaps in what appeared to have been the garden and orchard of the farm: but the place was completely wrecked. The sight was, on a small scale, as dreadful as any I witnessed during the war. Many of the dead were skeletons, or nearly so: animals, probably dogs and pigs, had been at work on others; and all were pretty well in the last stage of putridity. Many retained the positions in which they had died and stiffened. One man, with no eyes left in the sockets of his skull, was holding one arm straight up in the air; another had both arms and legs raised as he lay on his back--a position which would have been comical if it had not been so dreadful and tragical. In one heap were two men clasping each other in what had evidently been a death struggle. Another still grasped the bayonet with which he had killed a foe: and an officer had his sword raised and his mouth wide open as if giving an order at the instant of his death. The appearance of all was so extremely ghastly that it cannot be described. Though mostly covered with snow I saw many faces which were blue, green, black in hue, and had lost all resemblance to human features. Russians and Germans lay there in about equal proportions; and there we were compelled to leave them: for we had no tools, nor was the ground in a condition for rapid grave-digging. There may have been more bodies in some of the neighbouring ravines and woods; but we had no time to look for them. From what I afterwards saw, I have no doubt that the dead were often left unburied; a dreadful thing, for there is always a host of ravenous dogs in Russian villages; and as many of these were now ownerless, they had run wild. Besides these there were wild boars and wolves, always ready to take toll of the battlefield; to say nothing of the crow and the raven.

Folstoffle's orders had been to return before midday on the 23rd; but it was after that hour before we turned to rejoin our main body. About four o'clock we met a section coming to look for us, as Colonel Krastnovitz had become anxious.

The object of the reconnaissance was said to be accomplished; we had found that there were no enemies in that district; or, at any rate, in our immediate neighbourhood; and this information was corroborated by that of half a sotnia of Cossacks, who, it seems, had been acting in conjunction with us, though we had seen nothing of them since starting on our little expedition.

But our leaders must have had a belief that the enemy was at hand: for we received orders to fall back on our deserted village, and put it into a state of defence, which we did by loopholing what remained of the walls, and digging trenches round the outskirts.

In cases like this the trenches are held and defended while the enemy is using his artillery; but when the actual assault takes place, and he can no longer use his guns for fear of injuring his own troops, the defenders retire to the loop-holes as a second line of defence; and as they can fire into the trenches, these are seldom tenable by the enemy.