CHAPTER VII STORIES FROM THE FIGHTING LINE

The Austrian Army in these Polish campaigns suffered under the serious disadvantage that, amongst the various nationalities serving in it, there were many men whose sympathies were with the enemy, or whose hearts were not on the Austrian side. The Slav soldiers felt they were fighting against their brother Slavs of Russia, and there were also in the Austrian army in Galicia Italian regiments from the Venetian border about Trieste and Fiume. It was a sagacious move on the part of the Tsar’s Government to make an offer in the first stage of the campaign to Italy “as an evidence of his friendship and sympathy,” to liberate and send to Italy all prisoners of Italian nationality taken in Galicia, on condition that the Italian Government would engage not to send them back to Austria. To this the Italian Prime Minister, Signor Salandra, formally replied that the rules of international law prohibited his acceptance of the offer. Commenting upon this, the Rome semi-official _Messaggero_ remarked that, “Whatever Signor Salandra’s answer may be, the Italian people are grateful to the Tsar, whose generous humanitarian proposal contains also the official, solemn, and precise affirmation that Russia recognises the right of Italy to the Italian provinces that are still under Austrian rule.”

General Rennenkampf took with him into East Prussia, as a kind of mascot or symbol that should be prophetic of the signal success ultimately destined to crown the Muscovite arms, the identical flag carried by the celebrated Skobelev on his momentous campaign of 1877. A small thing in itself, this was well calculated to make a direct appeal to the impressionable Slav temperament, to the young men who had heard from their fathers of the wonderful “White General” who in the great days of Plevna and the Balkans was perhaps more responsible than any other single factor for the triumph of the Cross over the Crescent.

It was an incident characteristic of the pervading spirit, and one well calculated to stimulate it. But there were thousands of incidents and scenes that have perforce to be dismissed in a line, or even not referred to at all. Among the many gallant spirits marked out for special distinction of the Tsar was the Captain Pleshkoff whose superb horsemanship had been acclaimed year after year at the Olympia Horse Show in London, where as recently as 1914 he carried off the King Edward VII Cup. Captain Pleshkoff received a nasty wound in one of the cavalry combats around Warsaw. He is a Cossack by descent, a pupil of the famous General Brussiloff, and is noted among his admiring countrymen as the “inventor” of a new system of riding. The captain shared the fate of most reformers when he attempted to bring his riding method to the notice of his colonel, an old-fashioned martinet commanding the Tsar’s Life Guard Cuirassiers. In fact, it led to Pleshkoff’s temporary severance from his beloved regiment when he became adjutant to one of the Grand-duke’s; but on the outbreak of the present struggle he returned to the Life Guard Cuirassiers.

But there are so many men of Pleshkoff’s stamp among the Tsar’s eight millions of fighters that his Imperial master might well be tempted to say, with a great leader of the past, “If I made all my brave soldiers generals, there wouldn’t be any privates left.” Such a one was the wounded warrior who averred, with crystalline sincerity and self-confidence, that if he had not been laid aside by a bullet the campaign for Russian Poland would have been a much more brief affair!

A parallel story to one coming from the western theatre of war--of the young girl who, by assuming masculine attire, managed to be accepted for service with the Flying Corps--is that of a young Russian lady who managed to smuggle herself into a cavalry regiment leaving for the front. Not only so, but this young Amazon, in addition to bearing herself bravely in the field--she was a fine horsewoman--assisted a trooper in rescuing a wounded comrade. The secret of her sex was only discovered when, a few days later, she herself was wounded. Again, two lads about fifteen years of age escaped from their parents’ home in Moscow, and, following the fortunes of a regiment belonging to that ancient city, were present at half a dozen battles of Rennenkampf’s campaign in East Prussia, “crawling on their stomachs with reserves of ammunition to the firing line.” Apparently these adventurous boys escaped unscathed.

A story with a delightful flavour of the hoax running through it was communicated during October by the Petrograd correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_. It betrays a sense of Slavonic humour which, it is to be hoped, was not entirely lost upon the victims of the ruse:

“A Russian airman, accompanied by an observation officer, was flying over the enemy’s territory, when he was obliged to descend, owing to engine trouble. The pilot and the officer were wearing leather clothes, without any distinctive mark. They were working on the motor when suddenly seven Austrian soldiers, in charge of an under-officer, appeared over the crest of a little hill and approached them. Resistance was impossible, for the Russians had no weapons but revolvers. Fortunately, the officer knew German. Calling loudly to the Austrian officer, he ordered him, in a peremptory manner, to come and help him mend the motor. The Austrian, believing he was in the presence of a superior officer, hastened with his men to obey, and soon the engine had been put right. The aeroplane started off, and as it ascended in spirals to the clouds a paper fell at the feet of the gaping Austrians. It contained a short message of thanks to the officer and his men for giving such timely aid to Russian aviators.”

At the time of General Rennenkampf’s severe reverse near Soldau after his first brilliant incursion into East Prussia, it had been generally inferred that the brave General Samsonoff and other leading officers had been killed in the practical surrounding of a large Russian force of two army corps. A gleam came out of the fog of war when it was semi-officially announced that this was not the case. It was the deadly explosion of a chance shell that killed General Samsonoff, General Martos, and other officers of the Staff. The former was particularly beloved by his men, but he had a fatal facility for exposing his life unduly and recklessly. In reply to all remonstrances he would simply say, “My place is where my soldiers are”--and to this trait, not less than to his care for the comfort of his men, was due the remarkable popularity that he enjoyed among the rank and file. No officer was more universally regretted on the Russian side.

The Tsar took the unusual but intensely popular course of conferring all four Classes of the Order of St. George, the Russian Victoria Cross, upon a humble trooper of Hussars. This man--a type of the many who honestly cannot see that they have done anything out of the common in performing a deed of the purest and most unselfish heroism--was orderly to an officer. The latter fell dangerously wounded, when this brave fellow rescued him from a storm of shot and carried him a distance of _four miles_. During that long and wearisome tramp with his helpless burden the soldier had to dodge the enemy’s patrols a number of times. Not only so, but in their path lay several canals, all of which he swam, supporting his officer in the water as best he could.

Another soldier, brought into the field-hospital at Druskeniki, had received _twenty-four bullets_ in his legs. He was not aware that many of them had even struck him--an intensely interesting point this, and not wholly unreminiscent of Mr. Winston Churchill’s testimony of his and others’ experience in the great Dervish rush at Omdurman, when they were scarcely conscious of wounds or of tumult. Well, when this Russian soldier recovered consciousness after having one of his feet torn off, he found himself lying in a depression of the ground, with shrapnel and rifle-bullets whistling over him. The undulating ground unquestionably saved him from death, as six bullets passed through his pail and four through his water-bottle! He lay thus for some twenty-four hours before being discovered and carried into safety, having spent this agonising period in praying for a passing projectile to put an end to his sufferings.

A visitor to the scene of the desperately sustained struggle for the line of the river San points to the melancholy fact that at one point alone where 200,000 men were locked in a death-grapple for upwards of a week (numbers larger than those engaged either at Gettysburg or Waterloo), the name of the wretched little village would not be known to one in a thousand who looked at the map. Yet the reaper Death found fearful employment during those seven or eight days of pitiless slaughter. “At the summit of and just beyond the crest of the hill is the line where stood the Austrian artillery in their efforts to encounter the hell of heavier fire let loose on them by the Russians. The heaps of brass cartridge-cases show how stubbornly the Austrians contested this ridge. Here and there one sees where a big shell landed true. Splinters and bits of wheels scattered in every direction spell the end of this particular gun-crew. Behind this the Austrians seem to have had a cavalry support of some kind, for in a little hollow just over the ridge we come upon a mass of cavalry accoutrements. The large metal helmets of the Austrian dragoons are scattered everywhere, some of them twisted by bits of shell, others punctured with the single bullet-hole which, coupled with the deep brown stain on the inside, tells what happened to the unfortunate who owned it. We find one on which the name and regiment of the wearer is written, a name no doubt that when published as among the dead will bring misery and suffering to some home in the beautiful valley of the Danube, where even now perhaps the wife or mother anxiously awaits news of this very one who sleeps now in a great trench with hundreds of his fellows.”

It is a relief to turn momentarily from such scenes of horror and bloodshed to the humorous aspect--grimly so, perhaps, but none the less humorous--of war. Thus, for example, there is something of a Gilbertian touch about the “interchange” of the Kaiser’s hunting-box and the Tsar’s hunting-box (the latter’s at Spala, near Tomascheff) in the two Polands. The Russians appear to have seized upon the one and the Germans upon the other, and to have thoroughly despoiled them. Still on the grimly humorous side (“the hostilities in Poland are taking on a very embittered and cruel form,” he says), the _Daily Telegraph’s_ Petrograd correspondent tells of the form of receipt(!) that the German troops would leave with the ignorant peasantry after commandeering all sorts of supplies. Two such written acknowledgments which were shown to the correspondent ran: “I am much obliged to you for your beautiful horse,” and “Whoever presents this at the end of the war will be hanged.”

This same _Telegraph_ correspondent states in definite terms of the Russians that “looting and licence are unknown, and everything taken is paid for in hard cash. They are welcomed as deliverers by the Polish peasantry, who bring them refreshments and cigarettes, for which payment is refused.”

A hundred German cavalry entered the town of Turburg on September 29. They quartered themselves at the mansion of a prominent member of the Duma, M. Vasilchikoff, ill-treated his servants, and demanded 250 buckets(!) of brandy, beer, and schnapps. They then cleared the little town of all food and clothing, leaving slips of paper on which was scribbled, “The Russian Government will pay.” They wound up by carrying off a priest and the local Rabbi as hostages of war.

Another hundred German cavalry encountered twenty Russian cavalry, who incontinently fled with the loss of one wounded. As he lay on the ground, still able to use his carbine, he took careful aim and picked off three of the pursuing Prussians. The peasantry would have carried the wounded trooper to safety, but he resolutely replied, “No! I will never hide from Germans.” For this he paid with his life, for the enemy, who had abandoned their pursuit of his comrades because his good shooting had made them suspect an ambush, returned and promptly shot him dead. It is only fair to add that on an occasion when the Russians discovered that a number of peasants had been hanged by the enemy, they retaliated by hanging from trees three German officers and nineteen men. Of such acts of savage reprisal there are doubtless numerous unrecorded instances.

An “iron vineyard” is the slightly decorative description applied to a German position during the holocaust of Russian Poland, by a Russian War Correspondent who was not permitted to indicate the precise spot from which he was writing. He adds the grisly comment that the “vintage” of that iron vineyard was the blood of 6,000 German soldiers. The surrounding forests had been razed as if shaved by a gigantic razor. A large village that had occupied the scene of this unnamed battle had totally disappeared, as having proved an obstacle to the Russian advance and a support for the German retreat.

One of the episodes inseparable from a warfare in which members of the Royal Families of every one of the great Powers are playing a soldier’s part, took place on October 11. On that day Prince Olaf, son of the Grand-duke Constantine, received a wound in the leg “in a successful skirmish with a German patrol.” At first it was regarded hopefully as being but a trifling injury, but an operation became necessary and the young Prince died, pneumonia doubtless supervening. He passed away in the presence of the Grand-duke and Duchess and of his brother, Prince Igor. It is one of the bitterest ironies of war that this gifted young man’s leanings and aspirations had always been rather literary and musical than martial. At the Lyceum, which he left only in 1913, he enjoyed such a brilliant career as a student that his tutors did their best to dissuade him from overtaxing a constitution never too robust. He published an essay on the works of Pushkin which was acclaimed as a model of discerning and discriminating criticism. Prince Olaf’s natural inclinations were of the simplest kind, and he hated the rigidity of etiquette.

An author much admired by him, the Polish novelist Sinciewitz, took service with the Tsar’s Army. Apparently he was wounded and taken prisoner, though there seems still some confusion as to what really happened to him.

Had the Austrians in Galicia fared better or worse than their opponents believed they would at the outset? A difficult question to answer off-hand, but at all events the Russians had the best of reasons to be thoroughly delighted with the progress of the Tsar’s arms in three months of war, in the earlier stages of which the plucky Serbian resistance to the legions of Francis Joseph had proved of considerable utility. Says a well-informed critic of the Russo-Austrian campaign:

“Success at the outset of a campaign has an influence of the highest value upon the armies engaged. In this case the Russians had the prospect of securing fairly easy victories at the outset, and, at the very least, the certainty of being able to march far into hostile territory without having any very serious obstacle to overcome. It was not likely that the German armies, weakened as they were by the very conditions under which the war opened, would attempt any stubborn resistance in advance of the line of fortresses along the lower Vistula and at the extremities of the Frisches Haff. And it was quite certain that the Austrians would not make any prolonged resistance in Eastern Galicia. Their first serious stand would not be met until the neighbourhood of Przemysl was reached.”

A caustic criticism of British as compared with Russian effort in the world-war came from Petrograd about the end of October. It was pointed out that, although the Muscovite Empire might represent about one-sixth the area of the whole world, and although the Russian census papers were circulated in seventy languages, Great Britain reckoned three times as many subjects as her Ally. Yet what had Great Britain done by comparison? Her fighting force in the field represented not more than 5 per cent. of the total battling against the might of Germany and Austria. “This may be Government of a kind,” added the critic, whose subsequent remarks appeared to have proved too strong for the censor. He went on to complain of the colossal ignorance of Russia and Russian ideals possessed by this country, and entered an earnest plea for a more intelligent comprehension of existing conditions than at present obtaining. It is unquestionably true that Englishmen of all classes have still a great deal to unlearn concerning the Empire but for whose energetic and magnificently self-sacrificing initiative the crushing of German militarism would not have become a practically assured result.

Russia, it is added, has much to teach us; but _not the Russia known in England_.