CHAPTER XVII

THE FIGHTING NEAR SKYERMEVICE ON THE 3RD, 4TH, AND 5TH FEBRUARY

We rejoined headquarters in the early morning of the 30th, all much exhausted for lack of food and rest; but there was no respite. News was to hand that the Germans were closing in on us on all sides, and that we must fall back on Lovicz without a moment's delay. At the same time I learned that Lodz was in the hands of the Germans, had been for some time, and was called Neu-Breslau by them. This, and other items of information, tended to confirm what for some time I had suspected, that our division had been nearly surrounded by the enemy: and that, for some reason which did not appear, we had been kept in a position of grave danger for several weeks.

The old horse I had obtained from a Cossack, as related on a previous page, had disappeared--boiled down to soup by the men, I imagine; in which case I had my share of him, and can bear witness to his gamy flavour. In consequence of this little accident (or incident) of war, I was again numbered amongst the footmen, and had to trudge with the others to Lovicz. I started exhausted, and arrived nearly dead. All I can remember of that dreadful march was that the road was crowded with troops of all arms, and the snow which covered it was trampled and churned into a thick sludge of a nearly black hue; marching through which was a tormenting misery.

When we arrived in the vicinity of the town we were halted near a group of barns, and told we might billet in them. I entered one with about a hundred of the men, dropped on some dirty wet straw, and fell asleep on the instant. How long I slumbered I do not clearly know. I was awakened by the rough shaking and prodding of a soldier, who had a basin of steaming hot coffee in his hand, and a great hunch of coarse bread, which he offered to me. I swallowed them quite eagerly, for I was nearly starved, and went outside, where the men were falling in.

The battalion was now so reduced that there were only about 300 men on parade. What had become of the others I do not know; but I think that a good many prisoners were taken during our retreat. There was only one officer left with whom I could communicate, Lieutenant Sawmine; and only two other subalterns that were with the battalion when I joined it. A stranger, a Major in rank, had been put in command. He had been, I believe, a Staff Officer. We were still attached to a regiment which had lost one of its battalions _en masse_--as prisoners I heard.

Before we marched off the companies were equalized; which brought us up to a little over 400 per battalion, or about 1,700 for the regiment, so the losses had been terrible. Then another ration of bread, and 120 cartridges, were served out to each man, and we were marched to a railway-station on the outskirts of the town and entrained. Sawmine said that nobody in the regiment had the least idea where we were going; but one of those vague notions which seem to instinctively invade the minds of soldiers led the men to believe that they were destined for some great enterprise.

I was still so tired that I was no sooner in the train than I went to sleep again, as I believe most of the men did. When I awoke the train was merely crawling along, and the sound of heavy artillery firing came in through the open windows. For we were packed in so tightly that the men were compelled to keep the windows open for air, though the wind was icy cold. Almost immediately the train began to run back; and often it went on a few versts, stopped for half an hour, and then went on again. Sawmine who sat beside me said that the train had been going thus for many hours, sometimes advancing, then halting, retiring, and so on. He had been asleep himself, and did not know how far we had come, or where we were. Looking out of the windows we could see four long trains ahead of us, and one about half a verst behind us. There were also two pilot engines on the line, one of which had a large signal flag attached to it.

The distant firing was heavy enough to shake the train; but we could see nothing of the fighting. It was drawing towards dusk on the evening of the 2nd February when we saw the men in the trains ahead of us getting out: and presently our turn came. There was more than 1,000 men in each train, the officers riding with their men. We soon discovered that we all belonged to the same division; and we were formed up in the open fields beside the line. Before this manoeuvre was completed it was nearly dark; though as the moon was about the full it gave considerable light through the clouds--at least when it was quite up; and we could see dimly over the country across which we were marched.

We were kept on the march all night, with other columns ahead of us, a circumstance which led to many short halts, and a good deal of "tailing off." About four o'clock in the morning we were brought up into what seemed to be a line of battalion columns at deploying intervals. We could now see the bright red flashes of the guns; and occasionally a shell fell in front of us. An officer who was known to Sawmine passed along, and stopped to have a minute or two's chat with the Lieutenant; and thus I learned that we were near the town of Skyermevice, and on ground I knew something of. The Germans were said to be massing in vast columns; but so far the fight was confined to the artillery; and this, which we had supposed was on our front, was really on the left flank. We were ordered to lie down and wait.

About six o'clock we were again ordered to advance; and after marching six versts occupied a line of shallow trenches. These trenches had recently been held by other troops--there could be no mistaking the nature of the dull stain-patches on the snow: and though our dead and wounded had been removed, there were hundreds of the enemy's slain lying in front, as far as the eye could see them, when daylight came.

And when light did come the Germans were not long in discovering us; nor were we in perceiving that there was a strong line of entrenchments in front of us occupied by our forces. No doubt the men whose places we had taken had gone forward to strengthen this line. The enemy was shelling it vigorously, and devoting no small part of their attention to us; and some of the projectiles which fell amongst us were enormous in size, and terrific in sound when they exploded; but they did not cause very appalling casualties. Sometimes a huge cloud of dust and black smoke rose to a great height, and obscured the view; but when it cleared away, though there might be a large hole in the ground, or 20 yards of trench blown clean away, there were never more than two or three dead and wounded. Once or twice an unfortunate man disappeared entirely, blown to atoms. I should scarcely have realized what the fate of these men was had not one of them stood close to me; and I noticed, directly after the explosion, that I was covered with minute spots of blood, none of them bigger than a pin's head. This man's body acted as a shield to me and saved my life. The hot blast of the shell momentarily stopped my breathing, and gave me a tremendous shock; but I was not much hurt. Two men on the other side were instantly killed, one of them being shockingly mutilated. Strange how these things are ordained! If I had not been bending at the moment to insert a cartridge in my rifle, I should probably have made a fourth victim.

These big shells were certainly more than a foot in diameter. One which fell outside the trench, and did not explode, appeared to be about 15 inches in diameter, and a yard long. A good many of these big shells were fired at us; but most of the projectiles were from field artillery, each weighing 16 or 18 pounds only.

On the side of the Russians I did not see any gun bigger than a 6-inch; but our artillery was well served, did great execution, and put many of the German guns out of action. Motor-driven batteries were used on both sides; and from what I saw of the action of guns so mounted, I think they must soon largely supplant horse-drawn batteries, in open, flat countries at least. People who love horses will be glad of this: for artillery horses suffer frightfully in action; and it is not always possible to put them out of their misery quickly.

When men are in trenches they see little of one another except their immediate neighbours; but one gets to know the signs which indicate anything unusual, even in these rat-burrows; and about ten o'clock we became aware that the men in the advanced trenches were on the alert. We could see nothing; but the terrific rifle-fire told its own story; and above the almost deafening rattle of the musketry we could hear the shouts of the Germans, and the counter-cheers of our own men as the enemy retired. The firing did not last longer than ten minutes. In the excitement of the moment many of the men in the second line crowded out of their trenches to endeavour to see what was going on; and the officers (much reduced in number, as I have already hinted) had great difficulty in getting them to return to cover. The Russian soldier is usually a most docile and obedient creature; but I never saw him in a state of so great excitement as on this day. Rumour travelled from rank to rank, that on the issue of the fight depended the fate of Warsaw: and Warsaw is to the Poles, of whom there were thousands in this part of the field, almost a sacred place. But Pole, or Russ, all were alike in their eagerness to save the capital of Poland from the humiliation of the hated German's tread. I do not know if the fact is quite realized in England; but the Russian (including the Pole, and, especially, the Cossack) is Asiatic in everything except his birth; and, like all Asiatics, is extremely devout and extremely bigoted: therefore he is a fanatic: and this present war, affecting, as it does, the liberty of his country, is to him a sacred war--a contest for the safety of his religion, and sanctified by the blessings of his priests. I emphasize this point: so far as the Russian is concerned the war now devastating Europe is a religious war. He will fight till he wins: and I am confident that the victory will greatly strengthen and consolidate the Muscovite Empire. Never before have the Pole and the Russ stood side by side as they are standing now: never before have they fought for a common cause and bled together for it; never before stood up to face a danger as brethren. This war will make Russian and Pole _one people_. I am quite convinced of it. Fifty years ago Polish women stood up with the men to fight the Russian oppressor: in this present desperate struggle they have fought side by side with the former oppressor. Not twenty yards from me, in the trenches before Skyermevice, two sturdy Amazons handled rifle and bayonet (weapons dropped by dead soldiers) with the strength and skill of old soldiers; and others in the rear attended Russian wounded with the same care and attention they lavished upon their fathers and brothers.

About an hour after the first attack, a second was made on our position by the Germans: and this was even more fierce and determined than the previous affair. Forced on by pressure from the rear, the first ranks of the enemy were actually precipitated into the trenches, and promptly bayoneted by our men. So great was the number thus destroyed that the trench was actually filled up in several places, a thing that occurred more than once on previous occasions.

This was one of the most determined efforts the Germans made to break the Russian line by sheer weight of numbers. The rear columns of the enemy determinedly forced the leading companies on. I saw several entire companies absolutely forced on to the Russian bayonets where they perished to the last man. As on other similar occasions, it was not a fight, but a massacre. The imprisoned Germans, sandwiched between their own men and ours, and unable to escape, threw down their arms in sections and begged for mercy. They put their hands above their heads; went down on their knees, in some cases flung themselves prostrate, and in others clung convulsively to the legs of their destroyers; but in every case met the same fate: they were stabbed through and through. Some few of them, including most of the officers, fought madly for their lives: it only delayed their fate a few moments.

The first company down, that which had forced it forward was compelled to take its place, and meet a similar tragical end. At least three companies of one battalion were destroyed one after another in this way: and I think the fourth company was very nearly annihilated; but I had my own affairs to look after just at that moment, and did not see the finish of that particular fight. The Germans were successful for a few minutes; and hurried men so fast into the gap they had made that we of the second line had to rush forward in parties without waiting for orders; and we saved the day by a hair's-breadth only.

I had kept close to Lieutenant Sawmine from the moment of our leaving Lovicz. As we closed with the enemy one of them forced the officer down, and was only prevented from bayoneting him by his clinging to the man's rifle. I sprang forward to save him, and was at once knocked down by a big German. I saw the point of the bayonet poised over me as he kept me down with his foot: my teeth closed tightly to meet the impending death: then suddenly I was free of that iron foot, and for the fifth time during this war covered with blood and brains which were not my own. One of the Russian soldiers who had followed us very closely had blown out the fellow's brains in the very nick of time. There really must be a little cherub who sits up aloft!

Sawmine was badly bruised, but not dangerously hurt; and together we pressed forward with seven or eight of our most devoted soldiers. There are always some men in a company who have more heart in their work than the others; and these are generally found close to their officers at critical moments: indeed, these are the men who do most of the hand-to-hand fighting, and to whom the victory is really due. One of the heroic fellows who formed our little band slew at least twenty of the enemy, I know; and very possibly double that number. I am sorry that I cannot record the name of this brave man, an honour to his country; nor that of others not his inferiors in bravery and self-sacrifice. Alas! none of them answered the roll-call when the three days desperate fighting was over. The bravest and the best--this is the treasure that war costs a country.

An English officer I am not going to name--I have the greatest respect for his name and his memory--wrote that two armed bodies of hostile men cannot remain on the same ground longer than sixty seconds at most. He made a mistake. Russians and Germans, on the occasion I am recording, fought like bulldogs for two solid hours without a break: and it was all bayonet work, scarcely a shot being fired. Then the Germans broke and fled, as I had seen them fly on previous defeats. There was no equivocation about it: they broke and ran, "bellowing like bull-calves."

Every nation, I suppose, has its peculiarities. I do not depreciate the Germans. They can fight, and fight bravely--but not with the generous bravery that most soldiers exercise one to another. They are cruel in their desperation, vicious in the moment of victory; and they yell for mercy in the hour of their defeat; the only soldiers I have known to exercise this form of--I will not call it cowardice--Hudibrastic caution.

In this battle the wonderful iron shields reappeared; and about 700 of them were taken by the Russians, and used to form a breastwork; which the next day was knocked to pieces by the German artillery.

The enemy was followed half-way to their own lines, and many of them killed as they ran. Unfortunately no Cossacks were at hand, as there was here a fine opening for their peculiar form of ability, which I have no doubt they would have exerted to the utmost.

The number of killed in proportion to wounded was very great: I should think quite one in every three, which is more than double the normal number, even when many casualties are caused by artillery fire; but bayonet work is the most deadly form of military execution.

The prisoners taken are not worth mentioning: the total of German casualties was about 8,000 on a front that did not exceed two versts (2,333 yards English measurement). They lay thickest in and about the trenches. In the bottom of the advanced trenches there was a foot depth of blood which had drained from the corpses. The holes dug at measured intervals for the convenience of the troops (latrines) were full of it; and the men occupying the position were compelled to stand in it half-leg deep for several days until an opportunity came to clean the trenches, when the congealed horror was removed in the camp tumbrels, and buried by the ton in holes dug for the purpose. In one part of the trench I helped to remove a heap of sixty-nine corpses, lying eleven deep in the middle. No one of them had a breath of life left, though some were not mortally wounded. They had been smothered under the weight of their dead comrades, or trampled to death. Outside the trenches there lay heaps of dead bodies, six or seven deep, and innumerable scattered dead and wounded.

All the fighting that day was over before 2 p.m., and our Red Cross men, and hundreds of volunteers, went out to succour the wounded. They were immediately fired on by the German artillery and about twenty of them killed or injured. A flag of truce was then sent out to inform the enemy our sole object was to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded; and that the German injured were receiving the same attention as our own men. The flag was received at a farm used as an outpost by the Germans; and the commander, a big, swarthy-faced man, declared he did not care a curse what our intentions were, he would fire on anybody he saw walking about the field of battle. I inquired the name of this officer and was told it, and that he was a chief Staff Officer to Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who, it was declared, had personally directed the day's fighting.

I believe a protest was lodged with this military churl, but, of course, nothing could be done under his threat. After nightfall volunteers again went out, and nearly a thousand wounded were brought in to the surgeons, quite two-thirds of them being Germans. The total Russian losses were, I should think, about 6,000 men.

While accompanying the flag of truce I used my eyes. About thirty officers were receiving first-aid, or undergoing what seemed to be preliminary operations, in the farm-house and yard; and I heard very pitiful groans in some barns and outhouses, while down the road a string of twenty Red Cross waggons was coming up. I concluded therefore that the enemy had carried back a number of his wounded when he retreated. There were pools of blood everywhere on the road: for the snow had been trampled down so hard that it could not soak away; and it speedily coagulated into great clots. Many horrible mementoes of the fight lay about. Seeing what I thought was a good sound boot lying on the road, I picked it up. There was a foot in it. I could fill pages with such little stories. There were some collections lying about suggestive of the Germans turning out their dead comrades' pockets. Several letters, the photograph of a woman nursing a baby, and an elder child leaning against her knee; a lock of fair hair--a little girl's, I thought--and less pathetic objects: a pack of cards, a broken pipe, a bent spoon, and some disgusting pictures, suggested many men of many minds--some of them none too clean.

The night of the 4th February was very quiet until about four o'clock a.m., when the steady rush of thousands of feet alarmed all who were awake. The Germans were attempting a surprise. A few straggling shots from the sentries along our front, accompanied by shouts of warning; a blaze of rifle fire; the heavy booming of artillery, and, in one minute from the alarm being given, the hell of battle was again in full fury. Our engineers threw search-lights over the trenches and in front of them, so that we could see what we were doing. The effect was very weird, and heightened the horror of the scene; but it helped the enemy as much as it did us.

The Germans used hand-grenades, or trench bombs, as I understand they call them on the Eastern front of the war, but we were not provided with these troublesome and destructive little weapons. However, there was again much bayonet fighting, a species of combat which the Germans did not relish, and in which they always got the worst of it. The Russians had the advantage in the length of their bayonets--a trifle, but trifles are not trifles in close fighting. Moreover, our men have a genius for bayonet-fighting, and keep these weapons always ready for use: that is, they are never unfixed, as I have previously explained, except to be cleaned, and not always for that purpose. The Russian soldier shoots with his bayonet fixed, which is not conducive to first-class marksmanship; but then the German also is not a good rifle-shot. Still, I wish I could induce the Russians to adopt the practice of unfixing bayonets when shooting at long ranges.

This night fight was short and sharp. It cost the Germans another 2,000 men, and a good licking; and our men about half that number of casualties, and the increased confidence engendered of another victory.

The Germans had no sooner run back to their own lines than their artillery sought to inflict on us the punishment which their infantry could not do. They opened a tremendous cannonade; it being calculated that 500 guns were playing on our trenches for nearly six hours. Shells were exploding twenty or thirty at a time, and sometimes quite in showers. The effect was terrific. The air was full of smoke, and clouds of dirt and mud from the trenches blown to pieces; but the loss of life was not great. The section of trench which the enemy had made their objective did not, as I have said, exceed a breadth of two versts; and on this narrow front they concentrated all their efforts and all their fire, though some of the last-named came from flanking batteries situated a long way off. Each gun fired, on an average, a shot a minute: consequently a shell fell on every seven linear yards of our position sixty times an hour. Of course some fell short, others went over the trenches, and some burst high in the air; but still the fact remains that every minute a shell came in a section of our lines which was less than seven yards wide. During the six hours that the bombardment lasted the scene was like that of an inferno: and the noise so great that the men were glad to stop up their ears with any substance they could find. Many pulled grass from beneath the snow and used it for this purpose. The wire entanglement was pretty well blown to pieces, curled up and rolled into heaps which were knocked right over the trenches, and sometimes into them, where it entangled our own men, and gave them much trouble. The number of men killed by this apparently terrible bombardment was fifty, and twice that number wounded.

An hour before dawn the Germans attempted an assault, rushing towards us in great strength, and in their usual close formation; but they were stopped by our artillery fire, and turned before they reached the edge of the first trench, and fled in a panic. I saw our guns cutting great lanes in the wavering masses; but they were soon out of sight, and the dimness of the light probably saved them from more considerable losses.

We had reasons for thinking that the commanders of this host were unable to get their men to make a second assault, and were obliged to send to another part of their line for fresh troops. There was some commotion in their ranks; and afterwards we could hear their bands playing merry tunes, probably to keep up the spirits of the men.

It was after noon when they made their second advance; and our troops finding they could not stop them with a withering fire, sprang from their trenches, and met them with the bayonet. The fight was a short one. At least ten thousand of the Germans were destroyed, and a thousand prisoners were taken. We followed them right up to their lines; and for a short time some portions of their positions were in our hands: but they brought such a devastating artillery fire to bear on us that our gains could not be maintained, and we had to retire; but we did so slowly and stubbornly and with parade-like precision, the men firing in alternate skirmishing lines, and completely stopping an attempted pursuit. The Germans made two more assaults in the course of the day, but could not drive either of them home; nor had they the pluck to stand up to another bayonet fight. Their losses were appalling, and greatly in excess of those of the two previous days: and certainly exceeded 20,000 men, besides nearly 3,000 unwounded prisoners. It was reported at the time that no fewer than thirteen of their General Officers were killed or badly injured.

The total losses of the Russians on this day alone was 7,000 men: 8,000 of the enemy's wounded, and all our own, were brought in after nightfall, and many more were removed by the Germans; for this day they admitted, and respected, a flag of truce. But the dead on both sides, except in the case of officers, and a few others, were left to rot where they fell. Some regiments buried their own dead, but only under the snow; for the ground was frozen so hard, that it was most difficult to dig graves. A number of bodies were burnt in pine-wood fires; but an officer of high rank was so disgusted with the ghastly sight, that he gave orders that no more were to be disposed of in this way; yet it would have been better than leaving them to be mutilated and partly devoured by the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. Amongst these dreadful creatures were large numbers of those savage and semi-wild dogs which infest all the Polish villages, and flocks of crows and ravens; also wolves and wild swine. All these animals must have scented the carrion from a great distance: and nobody could tell precisely where they came from. The firing frightened them away for a time; but an hour's quietude would always be followed by their reappearance. In the early grey dawn, and in the twilight of evening, I have seen the birds of prey pulling out the eyes of the slain men, or contending for the entrails which the dogs had torn from the rotting bodies. It is hardly credible that such horrid scenes should be witnessed on a modern battlefield; but my own eyes were witnesses to it; and I shot several wolves and many dogs that were engaged in such dreadful repasts. All these animals became so used to the noises of battle, even to the thunderous discharges of artillery, that they never retired very far, though how they contrived to hide themselves is a puzzle. I never saw more than a few odd ones in the woods and forests we passed through; but the dogs harboured in the ruined villages where once they had been owned by masters of some sort.

I have painted these scenes very faintly, for fear of exciting too much horror and disgust; but how people professing to believe in a righteous and sin-punishing God can tolerate the wickedness of war is astounding to a thinking man. A God-fearing (!) ruler goes on his knees, prays to God for the blessings of peace, and the honest prosperity of his people; then goes forth and issues an edict which causes the marring of God's image in hundreds of thousands! Perhaps he doesn't really believe that man is made in the image of God. I hope he does not. Better be an infidel than a wholesale murderer of the similitude of the Lord. I dwell not on the misery of widows and orphans and aged parents.

Walking over the field one evening I came upon a raven perched upon the face of what had once been a man. It had picked his eyes from their sockets, and torn away his lips, and portions of the flesh of his face, and turned leisurely as I approached, but did not fly away until I was quite close to it. Then it flapped off slowly, with a sullen croak.