Chapter V: Part 5

It was now comparatively safe to traverse a bit of more open ground and visit some other positions. Here again the works were excellent, and George required some still further improvements. The men were in good heart and vigour; and across the plain we could hear how the younger soldiers of a neighbouring regiment were singing in lusty chorus one of their favourite war-songs.

A voice came across from the Austrian lines which were here only a few hundred yards off: "The Russians are singing--Peace." Answering shouts of song came from the Austrian trenches, but they were feeble and soon ended sharply as if by order. We made our way back in the dark to our central entrenchments.

After a half-hour's talk on the straw in our earth hut the moon had waned, though the stars were still shining bright all over the sky. With a guide I passed through some trees down the slope to the river and beyond the line of our trenches. It was reported that there were signals and signs of movement beyond the river, and all the men were ordered to be clothed and ready.

My guide was one of those native gentlemen who are so common among the Russian peasants and are to be met everywhere in the army, entirely selfless, indifferent to all danger except for others, and full of quiet, childlike intelligence of the great issues engaged. His hand, a strong and gentle one, was there to help my every movement with the instinct of the most devoted of family servants. The whispered talk came with a strange freshness, and the whole atmosphere of our excursion was that of another world more real than our own. We entered a dwelling where the watch sat round a smoky camp fire. There was a brisk salute, and the answer to my greeting from England was "Very pleasant." What they all liked to hear about was how we were preparing new armies. "Then we'll take him on both sides," whispered my companion as we left the watch, "and we'll surround him--the barbarian."

We crept slowly forward till we came up with the second of the two advanced sentries, a young man crouched on his knee with rifle loaded and ready. Here we stayed a little time, with now and then the lowest whisper, and in front of us the rushing river, beyond which were the sentries of the enemy; sky and air were clear. We crept on to the forward sentry on the bank, and were crouching beside him when a rocket went up in front of us beyond the river followed by a blaze of light and then a second and a third. "Lie down, your nobility," whispered my companion, and we lay as still as we could together while four rifle shots cracked at us. We could hear each other's breathing in the few seconds while the blaze hung above us. We had all crawled back to the second sentry when the rocket went up again followed by more shots, but this time we had some little shelter. We returned and bade "Good-night" to the Watch and lay for a while in a shelter close by, with a whispered talk of our joint task. On the way up the hill there were more rockets and more shots at us, but we were soon back at the earth hut with its welcome shelter and its friendly host, and the straw screen that served as a door shut on a good night and a sound sleep.

_February 23._

All day long we sat in our earth hut or passed crouching along the trenches visiting the different points of observation. What a difference a few inches make! At each more exposed point no care seemed enough. The whole day bullets passed above us, sometimes singing--or as George said "wailing"--about fifteen yards off, but most of them embedded themselves in our hill, sometimes kicking away with a ricochet or exploding. Often there were sharp salvos from several rifles at once aimed mostly at the loopholes where our sharpshooters lay ready; men were shot through the forehead in this way.

In the afternoon I saw a fire light up in some German trenches by the river, and it quickly spread along their lines. A figure like an insect stood out shovelling at the flames and some of our men shot at it; the German passed down the slope but came again, this time going back at a run. The flames spread further until they were at last extinguished from below. We ourselves got nothing except bullets, and none of our men were wounded. There was no excitement and practically no reply.

It was considered that the enemy was wasting his powder, in a nervous fear of attack.

But all the day we saw, from our vantage-point, shell after shell raining on neighbouring positions. At one time attention was given to the high ground behind us, and a large hut in which I had halted the night before went up in flames, and in a few minutes seemed to have disappeared altogether. However, only a cow was killed, and except for two huts I found the position unchanged when I passed back here in the evening. No wonder that our own artillery did not deign to reply till the evening, when it lighted up a big flame in a small town beyond the river.

Southward across the flat ground which we had traversed in the dark the cannonade was more furious and had more meaning. Here there was a projecting bluff where our front came close up to the river before receding sharply from it and taking an altogether different direction. This was doubly an angle. It was a salient landmark in the curve of the whole Russian line from a western front against Germany to a southern front against Austria, and was therefore one of the points from which the conquering Russian march through Galicia threatens the junction of the two allies. The lie of the ground made it still more a challenge to the enemy, as the advanced trenches on this side were opposed to a fire from both sides and even partly from the rear. On this devoted hill the enemy's artillery, strongly reinforced, poured an unending torrent of shells. We could see them burst almost without interruption--the heavy explosive shell for driving the men from their shelter followed by the two shrapnels for catching them in the open. In all some eight hundred shells must have been lodged on the hill on this day, and in the evening a large hut on the top lit up like an illuminated fairy castle.

No fewer shots were fired the next day, and when I was later able to get to this ground, it was all harrowed up with enormous holes even in the gullies that ran crosswise through the hill itself. The men crouched in the trenches where death threatened any exposed movement and the falling shells often carried the works away wholesale, wounding and killing large numbers.

A wounded officer, much loved by his men, was asked by them what they could do to pay the enemy back, and he answered, "Sit and Wait."

This time the cannonade was not, as so often with the Austrians, simply a nerve-stricken discharge of ammunition. When the hill, and especially the line of our trenches, had been covered with shell, and the defenders had been long enough reduced to a condition of paralysis and impotence, a whole division of the gallant Tirolese advanced on the projecting angle of the line. These are the best troops that Austria has left, and they were opposed to parts of two Russian regiments. They ensconced themselves at night in rifle pits on a lower ridge of the hill, and forcing their way up found lodgment in a small wood and even occupied some disused trenches only fifty yards from the Russians. They planted a flag; and the fire of their artillery, which was this day wonderfully accurate, continued to pound the Russians over the heads of the Tirolese infantry. An attempt was made to break through the Russian line at the point of the angle, which was also the junction of the two defending regiments.

And now came the reply. Standing up under the cannonade the Russian infantry, with the support of its machine guns, poured in such volleys that everything in front of it went down. The rush to break through was beaten out and backward, the trenches occupied by the Tirolese became a line of corpses; no attempt was made to resist the bayonet; Russian troops on the flank passed down towards the river and took the enemy in flank; the whole attack, or what was left of it, rolled down the hill, leaving 1300 corpses in the wood and in the open; a number of prisoners, wounded and Red Cross men were left behind; and next day retreating columns, without even their baggage, were seen marching off into the hills beyond the river.

Prisoners told me they had not eaten for four days, and that enteric and typhus were rampant in their trenches, which were often full of water. They gave no good account of their officers, and they said that both they and Tirol were sick of the war. I found many dead in the Russian trenches, all killed by the enemy's artillery. The fire was then intermittent, and we were still obliged to act on the defensive; but the men were perfectly unperturbed. As a Russian private put it when I asked him to compare the Austrian soldier with the Russian: "He is a man, too, but we have rather more vigour, rather more boldness, more inclination for it, and we are anyhow winning. It might be added that we are steadier." A modest and quiet estimate enough at the moment of a signal victory against odds and natural conditions.

_February 26._

In the bandaging-room every description of suffering is seen, and many ways of meeting it. What strikes one most is the difference between the Russians and the rest. In general the Russians have an altogether stronger physique and therefore a much firmer and sounder morale. Some of the younger men lie there under treatment as if they were not ill at all and were simply having football injuries patched up. Such was Alexey of Yaroslav, who kept a fine ruddy colour and chatted away jollily about the market gardeners at Lake Nero as he arched his broad back and had his numerous wounds attended to. He was wounded in a scouting expedition, but crawled back of himself to the Russian lines; and when he was carried out of the hospital he behaved like an ordinary traveller going on a journey. He had no intention of going to Russia and spoke of his return to the ranks as "a matter of course." Many of these wounded write begging their officers to keep their places open for them. Some lie glancing at their serious wounds as they are treated, with a healthy and indifferent eye. The head wounds are the most trying to the morale; they always make men look weak and unequal to things. But even here the Russian temper shows itself. Ivan, a married peasant, had two nasty holes in his head, but he talked all the while he was being treated with a loveable simplicity, and even his exclamations of pain were only little appeals to the sisters, full of a natural courtesy. Once when the knife was a long time in his head, he protested mildly, "Enough, gentlemen!" There was great alarm when he suddenly rolled off the dressing-table on to the stone floor; but this proved to be the turning-point in his recovery, and he was soon afterwards joining with the others in his ward singing peasant songs. The Armenians are sometimes a frailer people; but there was one man with a great heart, who had both his legs smashed while bringing in an officer from under fire; one leg had been amputated, and delay in first aid had induced a mass of gangrene; the man was doomed; but he held out for day after day, and nothing but a dull, strong groan escaped him until at last he succumbed under his sufferings; to the end he was always asking after the officer whom he had saved.

The Germans show a much greater consciousness of their wounds, but take a quiet pride in conquering them. Will and purpose are triumphant, and these men return sooner than others to a normal outlook on the little businesses of life. A Tirolese, badly wounded in the head, at first took a little too much trouble to keep up his self-respect before strangers, but later talked away freely, though he was very troubled that he would go back to his sweetheart with the brand of a prisoner of war. The Austrian Germans were frailer and more gentle. Two of them in particular, both officers, won golden opinions from all who met them. They were men of a happy disposition, of real culture and of great delicacy of mind. There was not the slightest difficulty in talking with them about the war, because they bore no grudge against any one, not even against the Emperor William, whose unwisdom they regarded as the main cause of their country's misfortunes. These two showed the greatest patience under treatment, talking meanwhile of their army, literature and music, and regarding their wounded limbs as children who were being gradually persuaded to be good.

Much the saddest sight in the bandaging-room were the little Polish boys who had been wounded in villages during the operations, mostly by shrapnel. There were eleven of them in the hospital, and they almost filled one ward. They were all pretty little fellows, remarkably well made and with something martial in their bearing; all of them wore round their necks little silver religious medals. It was very painful to see them minus an arm or a leg, or still worse with some body wound which could only look natural on a full-grown soldier. Most of these children were from ten to thirteen years of age. They were bright and smiling in the bandaging-room, and seemed to have no more regret for themselves than they would have had for their own broken toys. But Poland will be covered with such after the war. There may be a renewed, there may be a united Poland, but anyhow there will be a Poland of cripples. That is why I continue to hear everywhere, like a burden that ever repeats itself, the beautiful Polish national air "In the Smoke of Fires." Its solemn tones meet one everywhere, now hummed by passers-by, now ground out endlessly by a barrel organ. I came one day on to the street humming it myself, when an old Pole at once, with the grace of his nation, took off his hat and solemnly bowed to me. It is the motto of the Polish population on whichever side of the Russian frontier; and may the purification of which it speaks lead to happier things: for no nationality has been tempered in a harder school than that of Poland.

Nothing could exceed the kindness of the Russian staff in dealing with all these various patients. There is, of course, no distinction of nationality or condition; the sisters play with the children, find all sorts of little questions or other interests to distract the attention of those under treatment, and bring them back to lighter mood, as soon as the actual pain is passed. A Russian hospital, even with all the afflictions of war, gives out an atmosphere of home of which there is frequent mention in the letters which the prisoners send off to their distant relations.

_March 1._

My friend "Wiggins" is a very remarkable person. Heaven knows what he doesn't manage, and it would be difficult to say what he doesn't know. Take England, though Wiggins has many other languages and knowledges. Wiggins's English, learnt in childhood, is of the most daring and comprehensive kind and runs to the writing of doggerel verse. The history of the English Church he knows far better than most English clergymen, and the development of the English Constitution he both knows and understands better than some English professors. He will write, for instance, "Please send me more books on the period of transition from Constitutionalism to Parliamentarism." Parliamentary procedure he has studied night after night in the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery; and his toast when he was dined in the House of Commons in 1909 was "to the glorious traditions of the Parliament of Great Britain." He is very well up in all the detail of our Army and Navy, is thought a good judge of English shorthorns, and hopes to send his son to Winchester.

Wiggins has done no end of work for the close friendship of his country with England. His quick resourceful mind and his ties with men in all departments of Russian politics and public life here have for years been mobilised to this object, which is the mainspring of all his great and untiring efforts. He has never lost heart when events went against him or when some favourite plan was blocked, and was always ready for another go. He is a good man and a brave man.

War has brought Wiggins and me together in novel surroundings. He has a liking for all that is venturesome and an innocent predilection for anything that partakes of conspiracy. Wiggins sits and collects all the military telegrams from the different fronts, including the western; Wiggins reads, answers and transmits private telegrams from Russia to other countries. Wiggins goes through the letters found in the enemy's trenches, and his staff is competent to deal with all the Babel of languages of Austria. Wiggins interrogates the prisoners and fixes the movements of the enemy's troops; there is a delightful caricature of him, standing like a wild boar at bay, among a crowd of gaping Austrians. Wiggins looks after the aeroplanes; and sometimes goes himself on the most perilous of scouting expeditions. On one of these I found with him a man of the most quaint simplicity, an artist, who used to sit down between the lines and sketch the enemy's positions. He described with an impersonal unconcern how the bullets passed him. "But what do you do when you have finished?" I asked. "Oh, I go on to another position." "But surely it is very dangerous work?" "Yes, I suppose there are about ninety-nine chances in a hundred of my getting killed; but I haven't any children. I should rather like to do my work from an aeroplane; I think that would be safer."

"Wiggins" asked my help in reading some of the letters from the trenches. One way or another, I have seen a good many of these. The great thing that strikes me is that they are so good--that the war after all brings out the best of every one. The Italian letters (of soldiers in the Austrian army) are particularly graceful and pretty; but then most Italians are gentlefolk. One writes: "I hear that T. is a prisoner and with the Russians and that they are much better off than in the line of fire." Another, hoping for the end of the war by Christmas, writes: "For the Babe Jesus we hope for peace." "Angelina" writing to "Carissimo Gustavo" ends thus: "If we are meant to be married, few letters are enough; and if we are not, no letters are any use."

I came out on the muddy little square and to my surprise caught the notes of a melody that was for many years prohibited in Poland. It was "Poland is not ruined yet," the battle-song of the Polish legions that fought under Dombrowski against Russia for Napoleon and for Polish independence. The words were different but not in spirit; they were the famous "Slavs come on." I was surprised, because I was in purely military surroundings at the staff of our army. But the men who were singing were all Slavs of non-Russian origin, they were a military unit in Russian uniform and marched round the square in front of Radko Dmitriev, who, with all others present, stood to the salute. To these troops he then distributed crosses and medals of the George for signal bravery, and they sang him another Slavonic air, a Bulgarian hymn in honour of himself. Behind him stood a number of Czech (Bohemian) prisoners; and the troops next played the Bohemian salute and the Czech National Hymn; some of the prisoners were in tears. Turning to them, the General said that as Slavs they could have no doubt as to the welcome that awaited them in Russia, where all that was possible would be done for their comfort, and that when the war was over they would return home, and he hoped that they would find their country free. The last words were, at his desire, repeated to them by the interpreter.

No wonder that the Slavs of Austria are coming over in great masses and begging for employment on the Slavonic side; while the fictitious unity of Austria, a mechanism for turning to German uses a country which is three-quarters Slavonic, is crumbling before the eyes. German ambitions are being reduced to count only on the services of instruments that are really German.

_March 9._

I crossed the river and followed the line of the entrenchments. The men were resting in the evening before their earth-burrows. I passed along to the corner of our positions; in the half-light one could stand on the earthworks and see without being shot at. The enemy, who were Hungarians, were only six hundred yards off. Between the two lines ran a broad causeway built in time of peace, part of a great dam of which sections are occupied by us and other sections by the enemy. Here, where for a short distance it becomes neutral, all sorts of queer things are possible. Our scouts can pass under partial cover along either side of it, and constantly do so. The enemy makes no counter-moves; his advance sentries stand only just outside his wire entanglements, and creep in and report the moment they see any movement outside; he does not even open fire. The Russian soldier, who here, as elsewhere, has a complete moral and physical superiority, goes out on little night raids, sometimes in small companies, sometimes alone, to hear the conversation of the enemy, which if Slavonic can be readily understood by him, or, still better, to catch a "tongue," that is, to bring home a captive sentinel for information. This is why the enemy's sentries retreat. If fire were opened, it would only tell the Russians just what they want to know, namely, in what strength the positions are occupied.

I should like to have stayed here, but there were other things to see; so, with a soldier guide, I passed over some flat, marshy ground to a forward angle of our lines. We found our way by passing the field telephone through our hands, which is also a good means of seeing that it is in order. In the dusk, with the sense of danger and mystery around us and stray bullets sometimes coming from the enemy, my companion spoke in short and simple sentences, of which one would like to have preserved every word. "He" (the German) must be having a bad time; why doesn't he see it? We are drawing in on him from all sides; the Austrians will be no use to him; they are nervous and fire at everything, and seldom hit anything; our people only fire to hit.

In a stone cellar with nothing above it, for the whole village was destroyed soon after it was taken, there are gathered the officers of the battalion. The commander, Lukich, is a genial, communicative man who has knit them all together into a little family; indeed, two of the captains are cousins, and the commander has living with him in his mud hut his nephew, a boy of fifteen, who has been allowed to spend his holidays at the war. Not many of those who set out for the war are left now, and that alone makes a closer brotherhood among the rest. They all smile at Lukich's inventiveness and resource, and are all very fond of him.

Lukich gives elaborate instructions for the night's scouting. Pavel Pavlovich, whose turn it is to go, is a splendidly built man with a great head and big brown eyes: "an ideal fighting man," I am told. He is down with a very bad chill, and reports himself quite unfit. Lukich says that he always has to send out sick scouts. "Don't laugh," says Pavel Pavlovich; "I can hardly keep on my legs." However, without further words he gets ready for his night's job. Half-an-hour later he appears in a long white dressing-gown which hangs carelessly over his huge figure, and with him are thirty picked men--for there are always plenty of volunteers for this work--drawn from different companies. All are clad in white, and when first I stumbled on them in the darkness, though I knew they were there, I took them for a row of posts. Lukich made them a little speech, telling them that some one from their English allies had come to see them and that he hoped they would do well.

Their job was to crawl some one thousand yards, to overhear the conversation in the enemy's trenches and judge of the numbers there, to catch a sentry if possible, to cut through some of the wire entanglements, and, above all, to throw some hand-grenades into the Austrian lines. Each man had a definite task; the bomb-throwers were trained men, and several carried huge scissors for cutting wire. As the Austrians sometimes pass an electric current through the wires, these scissors often have wooden handles.

The men passed at once into the darkness, and we waited on the line of our trenches. Nothing happened for some time. Various figures appeared from the neutral ground: sentries and patrols, who gave the impression that all this ground was Russian. At last, at the request of a soldier, we took cover (the soldiers are always trying to put their officers in greater safety than themselves), and directly afterwards there was a big thud, and flash went the first bomb. The next moment the Austrians were shooting wildly in all directions; but very soon after the firing had died down the second bomb went up, followed by another excited discharge from the enemy. This showed that our scouts had stayed close outside the Austrian lines; and among those around us, too, there was a sort of buoyant audacity. "They'll come away now?" I asked. "Oh no; they've several more bombs with them;" and soon after the calm of night had returned up went No. 3. We waited till six bombs had been lodged in this way, and each time there was the same nervous discharge of musketry, bullets flying everywhere, but no one being hit.

After a time Pavel Pavlovich came back, as if from a football match. He had left a reserve in the rear, sent watchers in various directions, and taken the rest forward. Not a man was hurt, and every detail of his instructions had been carried out. Pavel Pavlovich was a different man, full of life and spirits; and, to complete his satisfaction, there appeared in our cellar at this very moment his nearest friend, a brother officer wounded earlier in the war through the head and only to-night returned to the regiment. "We must leave those two alone," said Lukich; "they are like man and wife, and no one will get a word out of either of them."

_March 11._

The staff of the V regiment was in the usual hut, clean, comfortable and decorated with religious pictures, as most of these Polish cottages seem to be. It was the usual family party, the little colonel being a sort of paterfamilias, the major a kind of uncle, and the younger men like cousins of different degrees. It was very interesting when the reports came in from other parts of the huge front and the day's changes were filled in on the maps--as usual, on the whole satisfactory.

The colonel of artillery was a bronzed man whose face was a mixed suggestion of a raven and of a kind Mephistopheles. He was a strong Conservative, and had friendly discussions with the chronicler of the regiment, a highly cultivated Liberal with a beautiful voice and the features of a youthful Mr. Pickwick. The war brings all sorts of political views together, and the exchange is always free, equal and without rancour.

When I got to know these good people, I told them I thought they spent a lot of time in copying out verses. "Position warfare"--standing in the trenches--is not an eventful life; and while I was with the regiment three sets of verses were put on the machine and circulated to the battalions. One of these, with a number of jokes about "Wilhelm," was written by a soldier in the ranks; and another was the composition of a non-commissioned officer, also of this regiment. This second was headed by the word which is in every one's thoughts here, "Forward," and contained one verse which had almost the smoothness and simplicity of Pushkin, and is, therefore, not for translation. The third set came from Pickwick Junior, and I give a rough rendering of it which, I am afraid, only spoils it--

Now in this year of heavy trial
Happy is he who for his land
Has passed at price of self-denial,
Into the heroes' shining band--

Who of his hopes and love the whole
On his dear country has bestowed,
With all the ardour of his soul,
His highest aims, his mind, his blood.

'Twill pass, the battle and its blare;
'Twill sink, the endless crash of guns;
And, in their place, the burning prayer
Of mothers orphaned of their sons.

The meadows will be green again,
The corn will ripen on the plain.
The spite of war will pass away,
And happy peace once more will reign.

These are the simple thoughts that are in most people's minds here--the more so the nearer one is to the front. There one finds least of all doubt of the blessings of peace, and least of all doubt of the need to go to the end, and of the certainty of the final result. But Russia has done and is doing a giant's task, and one will meet cripples at every turn for many a year to come.

My friends possessed an interesting little book in a black paper binding which they kindly lent to me. It was the song-book of the German army, which, with a soldier's Prayer-book, is carried in every German knapsack. It is called "War Song-book for the German Army, 1914," and was issued by the Commission for the Imperial Book of Folk-songs. Roughly, about the ten best things in German patriotic and military song are to be found here, with a few of the best-known folk-songs and a number of inferior ditties which vainly attempt to be light. Prussia has more than her share, for there are very few good Prussian songs, though such as there are are military. "Fredericus Rex" and "Als die Preussen marschirten vor Prag"--surely an unfortunate reminiscence in the present war--are both historic and have the merit of plainness. The year 1813, a year of liberation and not of aggression, gives three magnificent songs: "The God that bade the iron grow," by Arndt, and "Lützow's wild hunt" and the "Sword Song" of Körner, the latter written a few hours before the author of "Lyre and Sword" met his death in a cavalry charge at the battle of Dresden. But, of course, I expected also to find--and am sure that I should have found in God-fearing 1870--the same writer's "Prayer in Battle," one of the most real and masculine of hymns, and his soul-stirring "Landsturm." As to the omission of the "Landsturm," an Austrian prisoner explained it to me by saying, "This is no war of liberation." Of the less specially national songs there is Schiller's magnificent picture of the soldier of fortune, "Wohlauf Kameraden aufs Pferd, aufs Pferd," some of the verses of which have certainly been too faithfully followed in Poland. One finds also the top thing in German war lyric, "I had a trusty Comrade" of Uhland--a word-perfect poem which I shall always associate with the Saxon grave outside Saint-Privat where I heard it sung by veterans of 1870. There is also the simple trooper's song "Morgenrot"; I should have put in "Die barge Nacht," but one verse is certainly too plain-spoken for present German hopes. Martin Luther's "Safe stronghold"--"Now thank we all our God," sung by Frederic's soldiers on the battlefield of Lützen--and the Evening Prayer--these are the other best things in the collection; but it is spoilt by the unnecessary and improbable allusions to the successful wooing of French and Russian damsels, and beer is too much mixed up with Bible.

I left my friends singing. The Raven, with a plaintive and sentimental look, was with bent head putting in his bass to the admirable tenor of Pickwick Junior. My own contribution was about the "leaders" who "marched with fusees and the men with hand-grenades" (British Grenadiers). One scout, who usually works alone, had taken an unexploded Austrian shell back into their very lines, made a small bonfire round it, and was waiting outside for it to explode; but the result, when I left, was not yet known.

_March 13._

I have just visited "The Birds," a very tight place for the Russian soldier to sit in. I was in this part once before, for it was here that Dr. Roshkov set up his tent, or, to be more exact, his earthwork bandaging room in the foremost trenches.

The divisional general was kindness itself; for I stumbled on him in the darkness by opening a wrong door, and his revenge was to ask me in and offer me a bed. The next day I visited the divisional lazaret, where an English lady, Miss Kearne, is working with admirable skill and devotion for the Russians. Nearly all the wounded came from "The Birds," and nearly all had been wounded while sitting in the trenches or looking through the embrasures--that is, without taking any risks, which in "The Birds" all are strictly forbidden to court.

One soon felt one was coming to a warm place. The driver of my army cart explained that the open space over which we were passing was often covered with stray bullets, and there, sure enough, were the Austrian trenches just across the river. The village on our side had a high church, now smashed by the Austrian fire into an imposing ruin. Around it the shells continue to fall freely, and women and children going for water along the village streets are sometimes hit by stray bullets. Roshkov and his comrades have been sent to another part of the front; but a Red Cross "flying column" from the Union of Russian towns is working here under fire, and I met one of its students on horseback taking wounded to the rear.

I delivered a greeting from England to the scouts who were drawn up in the village, and then set off with their leader for the advance posts across the river--as I may say, "The Birds Proper." The chief scout was almost a boy, who had joined the army as a volunteer only at the beginning of the war. He was a Musulman, with a most determined face and a manner of complete ease and indifference. He explained that we were passing over ground often swept by the fire, and added casually, "You've a bad coat; it is fur-lined; the fur might stick in your wound and give you lockjaw, so that you would probably die." Whether he was right or not I have no idea. The soldiers who accompanied us insisted on walking above the covered way, until we told them that we should join them unless they came down to us.

At last we passed some trenches and came out into the open above the river. It is the peculiarity of "The Birds" that we hold a strip of land across the river a mile and a half long, but nowhere more than 300 yards deep. When the Russians rectified their line after the advance to Cracow, they decided to retain certain vantage-points of this kind; however cramped the position and however difficult the conditions of defence, the advantage will be felt when, as on the San earlier, the time comes for another move forward. These advanced lines are connected with our side by bridges which are constantly under fire, as the favourite offensive of the Austrians is a hail of artillery; yet they have never succeeded even in endangering the communications, and their frequent musketry fire is disregarded.

We were able this time to cross the bridge at a walk, and passed along the lines, guesting with different officers, and ultimately taking up our quarters in a spacious earth hut ten yards from the front, which was protected by a high line of excellent earthworks. One advanced post which we visited was only sixty yards from the enemy, and in general the distance from trenches to trenches was 400 to 200 yards. Artillery fire is seldom brought effectively to bear here, but a shower of bullets is kept up, mostly explosive, as one can tell from their splutter; and the enemy have made machines for lodging bombs of various kinds at this short range within our trenches. There is little work for scouts here; the distance is too short, and the opposing sentries are often not more than twenty-five yards from each other. My young host reassuringly mentioned that shrapnel would penetrate our roof, and in the night there was the constant thud of bullets striking against our shelters, while often our door was lit up by the reflection of the frequent rockets sent up by the enemy. Inside, however, our accommodation was first-rate, and we soon slept soundly.

Next morning we went along the front line. The men were everywhere in their places, this line being fully occupied day and night. I had been told I must not stand anywhere behind an embrasure, so we took our view in peeps, mostly from the side. At one point we looked over the top of the works, with the result that there was an immediate volley. One man had been wounded by a bomb in the night, and another was shot through an embrasure, as the shadow made by a head at once draws fire. Some soldiers were busy making little mirrors, so as to see from the side; another had made a bomb-throwing machine out of an Austrian shell, which he fired off in front of us, the officer first calling out to two exposed soldiers, "Here, Beard and Black Collar, get out of the way!" One man's hand was shot through an embrasure.

The most difficult part of the lines was on one of the flanks, where they passed close to the river and were separated from the Austrians at one point by a distance of only twenty-five yards. Earlier it was worse. The two lines were eight yards apart, the bayonets actually crossed over the earthworks, and the Austrians held their rifles over their heads in order to fire down into the Russian trenches. At that time a flank fire also swept these trenches, which were now protected by many transverses. Yet I found the men perfectly cool and natural, just going about the work as they would have done any other.

The bridge on our return was only under a partial fire; but the enemy was again heavily shelling the village.

_March 15._

From "The Birds" I passed on to a rather similar position occupied by another regiment. In this case only a small section beyond the river was held, and the Austrian trenches were at a distance of 800 to 1000 yards. This meant a good deal of difference. The enemy was not pestering the advance posts with bombs at short range and incessant musketry fire. The approach was again over a plain bare except for some patches of trees, and there was again a lofty church, this time of particularly handsome outlines, ruined by the Austrian artillery fire. From afar its two towers looked like severed and half-twisted stalks. The Austrians evidently feel sure that all churches are observation points for the Russian artillery. In this they are quite wrong. The Russians in general avoid all such use of churches; I know of many cases in this war in which churches have figured as points of vantage, but always for the Austrians. In more than one case, after the Austrian retreat, telephones for spy's communications have been found attached to the altars, and once a priest was caught at this work.

We left our horses at a ruined building and crossed the bridge. The advanced works were deep and well constructed but, as at "The Birds," the trenches were often full of water, and one had to walk along them frog-wise with a foot pressed against each side. This did not affect the actual shelters of the officers and men, which were dry and fairly comfortable, with lots of straw. One could look through the embrasures or even in some parts over the top of the works, without being likely to confuse the Austrian lines with the Russians as one did at "The Birds." At one place, however, there was an unusual sight. A covered way actually ran without interruption direct from the one line to the other and was often used by the scouts of either side. At the Russian side it came right up to the wire entanglements and the rampart, and here there were always stationed sharpshooters with loaded rifles commanding it for about fifty yards. The enemy's lines were, of course, very plainly visible.

In January a considerable action took place within this narrow compass. The Austrians came out in force and tried to storm the trenches. They swarmed up to the wire entanglements--over which the Russians in general took less trouble than the enemy, as they ordinarily have the confidence of the aggressive--but they were beaten off with terrible loss. Blue uniforms covered all the space between the two lines. Those who fell nearest to the trenches were buried by the Russians without delay; but the Austrians made no attempt to bury their dead lying between, and their fire makes it quite impossible for the Russians to come out for this purpose. Thus, two months after the engagement, I saw these bodies still rotting there; it will soon be spring; and with the two lines so close the danger of infection is pressing for both sides. It would only need a truce of three hours to remove it, and the Russians would gladly make this arrangement and do the work. It seems to me one of those matters which even in this war could be dealt with by some international association, and I have communicated the details, through Prince Dolgorukov, to the Peace Society of Moscow.

As usual in the regiments, and more especially in the trenches, I delivered with the wish of the colonels a greeting to the men from England; and it is one of my chief interests, in making these visits, to see how warmly it is returned, usually with some variant of the Russian military response, "We are glad to do our best"--such as, for instance, "We'll have a try together and finish him." Here the men were particularly cordial. There was the usual interchange of news with the officers as to the eastern and western fronts. I think I may repeat that there is nowhere a more generous appreciation of England's work in the war than in the front lines of the Russian army. The attack on the Dardanelles, which promises to be the most decisive blow that has yet been dealt, arouses the greatest enthusiasm; and the military preparations of England, their wholeheartedness and thoroughness, are a tremendous source of confidence to the Russians. How many times it has been said to me: "With England with us, we know we shall make a clean job of it." Here an officer quoted his father, who had always told him, "Where England is, there things go right," The support is not only moral. The spirit in the two countries is so identical that I frequently find in my letters from England the same phrases, word for word, as I am hearing in conversation here. But it is much more than that; and when it becomes known how close, detailed and far-reaching is the co-operation between the three chief Allies, I am sure that it will be found that no alliance was ever more close or more effective.

Our reappearance on the bridge drew a few bullets. In general all this firing has very little result, and our people do not take the trouble to reply to it. As to artillery, I am sure they fire more than twenty shells to every one of ours. They do it in a routine way at fixed times for an hour, two hours or three at a time. Our artillery lets it pass till it becomes a nuisance and then, with infinitely superior precision, plumps a few shells straight into their lines. This sight I have witnessed more than once from our infantry trenches, which might be miles from our guns but were only a few hundred yards from the marks that they aimed at. It was interesting to see the immediate rebound of spirits among our infantry, who had been sitting almost without reply under the aimless crash and roar of the enemy's fire. By instinct they at once looked freely over the ramparts as privileged spectators, and called out to each other "Got him again," as the smoke of our shells rose from the enemy's line. At such times, indeed, the Austrian fire stops almost immediately; and in one place, after the first Russian shell, a commanding voice came to us from the other side: "Corporal, cease firing."

_March 26._

The bombardment of Tarnow has continued. It is now nearly three months that it has gone on intermittently. Yesterday I was walking along a street when the heavy bustling goods-train sound of a big shell came rattling close overhead. There was a crash somewhere near, and a few soldiers who were close to us laughed and picked up a jagged segment. The street seemed full of people at once, and all moving toward where the shell had fallen. An old soldier with a cut face came moodily toward me, so I took his arm and walked with the crowd, as it was taking the direction of the chief local hospital, in which I often worked.

I was afraid that the hospital itself was hit. Far as it was from the railway or anything of military importance, it had more than once had the attention of the German heavy artillery. In January, while I was in this hospital, a shell passed over us so near as to take the breath of the heavily-wounded Austrians who were lying there, and lodged about two hundred yards off, reducing a house to ruins. Some weeks later another shell lodged on an open space about 150 yards off. The Russian sisters of mercy, under Miss Homyakov, never lost their heads for a minute and set about reassuring the wounded; but these last, who were themselves entirely helpless and could not distract their attention by helping any one else, were very agitated. No one was more indignant than the wounded Austrian officers, especially a colonel from Hungary, who regarded the German shot as without any kind of justification. The Russian Red Cross staff were urged from some sides to move the hospital to a safer place, but the sisters absolutely refused, because to transport many of the wounded would have meant death to them. The Commander of the Army conferred the George medal on them for their courage.

As I now neared the hospital, I saw a huge rent in the building in front of it, which was mostly unoccupied. A whole wall of this huge building was torn out, and the iron staircase within was twisted into fantastic shapes. At the door of the hospital, nearly all the windows of which were broken, stood a crowd of townspeople, mostly women and children bringing in wounded. The operating-room was full; on one side an old man, on another a wounded girl with blanched face, and in an ante-room a woman with a wounded baby. Here the local Polish medical staff works hand in hand with the Russians; and with remarkable expedition the wounded all received first aid within half an hour.

Twenty minutes, however, had hardly passed when a second shell banged into something else close to us. I found a little Polish boy, previously amputated here, crouching in the corridor and shivering with fear: I had to carry him back to his ward. Not more than 250 yards off there was a large crowd looking at the new big shell pit (the shell came from a 12-inch gun). In a garden lay the corpse of a girl of twenty, terribly mangled, so that no head was to be distinguished; and her father, running up, cried as if his heart would break and fell beside her. The people, who are of course Austrian subjects, were furious.

Two days later the Commandant put up posters announcing that, on the statement of a captured Austrian officer, these guns are served by a native of Tarnow.

Throughout the bombardment there have been hardly any Russian troops in the town, and it is the local population that suffers. The closeness of so many shell pits near the hospital suggests that this is one of the regular "numbers" or aims of the German artillery.

_March 30._

The fall of Przemysl, which will now no doubt be called by its Russian name of Peremyshl, is in every way surprising.

Even a few days before, quite well-informed people had no idea that the end was coming so soon. The town was a first-class fortress, whose development had been an object of special solicitude to the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand. Of course it was recognised that Peremyshl was the gate of Hungary and the key to Galicia; but, more than that, it was strengthened into a great point of debouchement for an aggressive movement by Austro-Hungary against Russia; for the Russian policy of Austria, like her original plan of campaign, was based on the assumption of the offensive. It was generally understood that Peremyshl was garrisoned by about 50,000 men, that the garrison was exclusively Hungarian, and that the commander, Kusmanek, was one of the few really able Austrian commanders in this war. The stores were said to be enough for a siege of three years. The circle of the forts was so extended as to make operations easy against any but the largest blockading force; and the aerodrome, which was well covered, gave communication with the outside world. An air post has run almost regularly, the letters (of which I have some) being stamped "Flieger-Post." As long as Peremyshl held out, the local Jews constantly circulated rumours of an Austrian return, and the Russian tenure of Galicia remained precarious. The practical difficulties offered to the Russians by Peremyshl were very great; for the one double railway line westward runs through the town, so that all military and Red Cross communications have been indefinitely lengthened.

My friend "Wiggins" did his part toward the taking of Peremyshl. The air-postmen, on their long journey to the fortress, are often shot at and sometimes brought down. An Austrian airman found himself compelled to descend on our ground; "Wiggins" sent a cart to be ready for him as he alighted, and that night all his papers were worked through. Among them was the now well-known army order of Kusmanek, announcing that the only way of safety lay through the enemy's lines, and that the men must conquer or die. But side by side with it was a letter from an Austrian staff officer to his wife. He explained that he took this opportunity of eluding the military censor, that a sortie was determined on, but that it was not likely to succeed, and that as to danger his wife need not feel anxious, as the staff did not go into the firing line. Word was sent off at once to the blockading army to expect the sortie.

For weeks past the fortress had kept up a terrific fire which was greater than any experienced elsewhere from Austrian artillery. Thousands of shells yielded only tens of wounded, and it would seem that the Austrians could have had no other object than to get rid of their ammunition. The fire was now intensified to stupendous proportions and the sortie took place; but, so far from the whole garrison coming out, it was only a portion of it, and was driven back with the annihilation of almost a whole division.