CHAPTER XV

SMALL AFFAIRS AND PERSONAL ADVENTURES

Throughout the night there was cannonading at intervals, some of the shells weighing about 100 pounds. We had no guns so heavy in our lines; and I attribute the fact that the Russians were never able to fully push home their attacks to this cause. Their artillery, of all classes, was decidedly inferior to that of their foes, and there was a sad lacking of large pieces of siege ordnance, without which a modern army can hardly hope to beat its foes out of well-constructed trenches.

On the following day the Germans did not make a direct attack on our position; but they sent out a host of snipers and skirmishers, who fired on us, causing many casualties, from snow-pits, and heaps of the same material. At first sight it would seem that snow would not prove a very efficacious defence; nevertheless pits and trenches made of it afford splendid protection to infantry, and even to field-guns. We found it impossible to dislodge these skirmishers by artillery fire alone; and individually they offered no mark to our riflemen.

On the 14th January we attempted an assault of the German position, but were stopped at their wire entanglement and shot down in such numbers that we were compelled to retreat, leaving 1,000 men behind, mostly dead and dying, but a few of them prisoners of war. In this attempted assault we discovered that the enemy were using their iron shields, fixed upright in the ground, as a protection behind which to shoot from. At long range our rifle-bullets could not penetrate them; but they were an indescribably clumsy contrivance to carry about in the way the Germans first used them. They discovered that themselves, and abandoned their use, except in trenches; nor were they of much use at close quarters; for bullets would pierce them, sometimes at as great a range as 500 yards.

Several little adventures happened to us while we were in these trenches. For instance, one night I thought I saw several small pyramids of snow moving about; and watching carefully I presently saw a man clothed in white come right up to our trenches. He knew, or discovered, the spaces left in the wire entanglements to enable us to sally out. His movements were so regular and bold that I was afraid to shoot him, thinking he might be one of our men, but went at once to Colonel Krastnovitz's hut, and reported what I had seen. None of our men were, at this time, clothed in white, or furnished with white cloaks, and the Colonel at once went with me to the spot where I had seen the mysterious figure. It had disappeared; but in about ten minutes several men, scarcely distinguishable from the snow, were dimly discerned moving about, and evidently examining our network of barbed wire. One of them seemed to be looking for something among the dead (all the wounded were very quiet by this time), and was seen to turn a corpse over.

Our men, dead beaten with excessive fatigue, were asleep in the trench, a couple of sentries excepted; but several men were aroused, and the Colonel whispered his orders to them. Several angry spurts of fire, accompanied by sharp reports, and our prying Germans clothed in white raiment were hurrying away across the plain, leaving two of their number behind stretched on the ground. We went out to examine these fallen heroes. One was past help: the other was only wounded, and that not very seriously. He said he was willing to surrender, and hoped we would not murder him: rather comical, I thought; but the Russian mind is slow in perceiving a joke; and so his captors devoted all their attention to examining his white cloak, or overall, and making notes of the same. The young prisoner (he appeared to be no more than twenty years) was not "murdered," had his wounds seen to, and was sent to the rear. We saw no more of "the dashing white sergeants" that night, but afterwards became well acquainted with them, and imitated their tactics, for whole divisions of Russians wore white gaberdines when there was snow on the ground.

On the night of the 15th a regiment of infantry, with our battalion attached, and supported by a strong division of Cossacks, made an attack of the German trenches on our right. We captured one of their advanced positions, but were soon driven out by a shower of hand-grenades, not the first time I had seen these very destructive missiles used, though I never expected that they would be resorted to in modern warfare. That their use should have died out is remarkable; for they are a most effective weapon at close quarters. The poison-gas, of which, I am thankful to say, I saw nothing, is a diabolical development of the ancient "stink-pot," a contrivance to suffocate an enemy; but one that was not particularly cruel, or effective.

In this second sortie, which cost us 400 men, we captured several of the iron shields, before mentioned; and the Russian commanders thought it worth while to have some made of the same pattern; but as I have already stated, their use was soon considered to be a mistake and a failure, and they were set up as a kind of bulwark in the trenches. They were of some use in making barricades in narrow spaces where there was not room enough for an earthen parapet.

We were not so discouraged by these little reverses as we might have been had we not enjoyed a continual stream of good news. Great things were reported to be occurring on the Austrian front; and the cavalry in our own neighbourhood had several skirmishes with the enemy, in which the Germans, as usual, had the worst of it.

The weather was again very bad; though, really, there had not been much improvement in it for several weeks. Snow fell in immense quantities, in the form in which the Americans call blizzards: that is, as I understand the term, accompanied by storms of icy-cold wind. The snow lying on the ground, however, was frozen hard, and therefore more easily passed over. We could march with tolerable ease and rapidity. We were often moved from one part of the trenches and back again, for no perceivable reason; and on one occasion we were marched forty versts in the direction of Plock, probably because a great battle was expected. There was heavy fighting in this direction; but it was all over before we arrived. By the pronoun I mean the body of infantry to which the Vladimir battalion was attached, and which consisted of a division under General Berenstoff. It was made up largely of battalions and detachments which had lost a part of their effective force, or got separated from their regiments.

Except perhaps in Austria, with which I have nothing to do, as my experiences did not extend to that area of the war, there was little progress made, and but slight reverses suffered, during the early part of the year. The weather and the state of the ground may have had something to do with this; but I think both sides were suffering considerably from exhaustion. The men had been worked incessantly and unmercifully, yet no great numbers had fallen out on account of breakdown. Frostbites are not common amongst Russian troops, even in the severest weather; but I had some trouble from this complaint myself. The soldiers were provided with good warm clothing; but furs were not in general use; and a few regiments, which had seen a great deal of hard service, were almost in rags; yet their sufferings did not seem to be greater than those of their comrades. The Russian soldier never grumbles, by-the-by. Boots are the great desideratum of an army in the field. Nothing will break an army up sooner than a lack of foot-wear: and in respect of this necessary the Russians were generally well provided, though I occasionally met detachments, if not larger bodies, who had completely worn out their boots, and resorted to tying their feet up in pieces of hide, or sheep's skin. These cases were so rare that they scarcely deserve notice; but as the winter wore on the clothing of the troops certainly began to show signs of wear.

Personally I had some difficulty in providing necessaries. Boots were given to me; but underclothing was both difficult to obtain and to keep clean. No article was scarcer than soap in the Russian camp--it never found its way to the trenches, which were in a shockingly insanitary condition. It could not be otherwise: for once in our position we could not leave it, even for a few moments, until regularly relieved at the appointed hour. In some instances the troops were in the trenches for a week without intermission. There are said to be no fleas in Russia. There are abundance of another kind of vermin, which revels in dirt; and mice were so numerous in the fields that things had to be closely watched to prevent them from being destroyed. The knapsacks of the Russians, like those of the Germans, are made of undressed sheep's skins; and these, and other leather articles, were often nibbled by the mice; while food was sure to be spoiled if left in a tent, or hut, for a few hours. Winter did not rid us of these pestiferous little rodents, which lived, and prospered, in the snow.

I usually did my own washing and mending, taking advantage of the facilities to be found in some of the deserted houses, where tubs and pails and many other things had been left behind on the flight of the inhabitants, and hot water was easily procurable, though I never found any soap.

Baths are much in use in Russia, but more as luxuries and sources of enjoyment than as means of cleanliness. The so-called "Turkish bath" seems to be of Russian origin. It was made extemporaneously by the soldiers in various ways. Sometimes they closed up a small room of a house, and filled it with steam by sprinkling water on stones previously heated to a white heat; but the favourite way was to make a small hut with branches, and render this impervious by covering it with turf. In such a hovel a soldier could pretty nearly suffocate himself in ten minutes, the stones being heated in a wood fire outside. When a man had parboiled himself to the hue of a lobster, he would rush out and roll about, naked as he was, in the snow; the operation being finished off by a good rub down.

The steam once raised, an occasional hot stone would keep it up for any length of time; and man after man would use the same "bath." I tried this curious operation myself, and found it both refreshing and strengthening; and it is a fine remover of the pain and exhaustion occasioned by excess of physical exertion. The snow, by-the-by, at this time of year is what is called in Russia "dry snow." That is, it is frozen so intensely that it does not readily thaw, may be brushed from the clothing, does not cling to anything, and blows about with the breeze like dust. I preferred this state of things to the fogs, which in the autumn and early part of the winter were very troublesome, and prejudicial to the general health.

During the latter part of January there was not much downfall of snow, but the cold was intense, and the winds such as, to use a common expression, "cut through one." The snow that was on the ground got a crust that would easily have borne a man on snow-shoes; but these useful inventions were not employed by the Russian troops.

Sometimes, when there were blizzards, the trenches were nearly filled with drifted snow; and more than once, the men were buried above their waists. This was an inconvenience from the military point of view; but the men did not object to it as it kept them warm; and snow-huts were much used during the winter, both because they were difficult to be discerned by a distant enemy, and because they make remarkably warm sleeping-places. The only inconvenience is that the heat of the body causes the snow on the inside of the hut to melt and drip on the sleeper until he is, sometimes, pretty well wet through, the Russian, as a rule, being a sound sleeper.

The Germans, also, adopted these snow-huts, and their reconnoitring-parties must have discovered ours; for one fine morning, just as the sun was rising clear and bright, they opened fire on a small village of these hovels which we had constructed behind our trenches. The result was not pleasant; and I saw several poor fellows blown clean into the air amidst clouds of frozen snow. On the evening of that day we trotted out for a retaliatory expedition; but nothing much came of it. We found the German position too strong to be meddled with; and after the exchange of a few rifle-shots we fell back, and retired to our own position. Fortunately for us, the Germans did not follow us; and we lost only two men killed, and a dozen wounded, which we carried away with us.

We often displayed great temerity in attacking with small bodies of infantry, and were seldom counter-attacked on these occasions, because, we supposed, the enemy feared a trap. They had some grounds for these fears. On one occasion, two companies of the 189th regiment, believing that a trench of the enemy's was weakly manned, made an attack on it. They caught a Tartar, and were chased by about 2,000 Germans, who, fully believing that they were about to penetrate our lines, followed the fugitives right up to the edge of the trench. It chanced, however, that the officer commanding that section had his doubts about the wisdom of the rash attack, and had moved up a full regiment to meet a possible accident. So when the Germans arrived they were received with an unexpected fusillade, which killed the greater number of them, and terrified the others so much that they surrendered at once. Two men only ran back; and, strange to say, they both escaped, though hundreds of shots were sent after them. But in war I have noticed that temerity and cowardice are often self-punished, and bravery rewarded. Not always so, alas! I hate the Germans like sin; but I was not sorry to see these two plucky fellows escape.