Chapter VII: Part 7

I started off from the General's on a journey of six miles, and I had an object lesson in the difficulties of movement in this region. My orderly, naturally, did not know the names of villages in this part, and thus we found ourselves at a neighbouring station eight miles from my destination. A train was due; but at any station on this line a long halt may be necessary for the collection of all that must be forwarded, whether troops or material. I spent the interval at a local Feeding Point, where I had some acquaintances. Only a soldier-caretaker was there, attending to a young scout-leader who had got a shrapnel wound.

At last the train moved off. I had made a couch of my wraps in a large goods wagon; but I was the only passenger who travelled in comfort. The others were private soldiers, and in the dark they talked freely, and were entirely themselves. One of them was telling sad things of the losses in his regiment, of how the telephone might have saved them, but had broken down. "You won't manage in war without loss," said one of the elder men. "No losses, no victory." Few as they were, his words summed up the difference between sitting in trenches and making ground by attack. They talked on; and as one often notices in these night talks of the Russian privates, there was a kind of sacred simplicity, which left one thinking. I recalled the Austrian private who did not care what country his home belonged to as long as he earned his own living.

Seven hours had passed since I left my starting-point, and I was still a mile and a half from my destination. I decided to walk, and set out along the railway. The night was dark, and the only light was from the enemy's projectors. There were bridges over deep gullies that called for caution; and every hundred yards or so I was hailed by a sentry; one of them asked naïvely whether I was a Magyar. Anyhow, I reached the station an hour and a half before the train; and in the half-smashed station building I found first an ambulance room, and above it a little band of devoted workers with whom I had lived at another part of the front.

This forward detachment of the Red Cross was always keen and united. It worked under fire during a time of retreat, and all its members had the George medal for courage. When I was with them it was a slack time; and the result was that one member of the band after another felt the effects of the previous stress and had to go off to Russia. Now they had struck another period of arduous work, and the absent ones were returning with a few new additions. Work pulls people together, especially out here, and they were making more effort than ever. When I reached their very modest quarters (two rooms: one for the sisters and one for the men), I could not make out where the ambulance rooms ended, because each member's bed in the detachment was occupied by a wounded man or invalid awaiting the evacuation train. Here was an old colonel (they had nursed several here); there was a private, who had won first the George Cross and then a commission. Judging by my own experience, I fully expected the train to be hours late, and thought the detachment would get no sleep till the morning. However, the train drew up, the officers thanked and kissed the gentlemen of the detachment, and the room was clear. I had a warm welcome from my friends, and a bed was found for me.

The next day I had an interesting talk with some cordial officers at the staff of a brigade which had taken 7000 prisoners, or almost the number of its own men, from the enemy since December. In all the regiments in the Austrian army the various nationalities were now hopelessly mixed up. They told me of a Serbian, an officer in an Austrian regiment, who had been court-martialled and transferred for not joining, at a banquet, in toasting the extermination of Serbia. All the Austrians, they said, are now for peace, and the military oath, to which, in this non-national state, the greatest significance is attached, is the only deterrent from wholesale surrender. As always elsewhere at the front, I found the greatest enthusiasm for the work of England in the allied cause.

I ended this journey in an ambulance train standing at Mezolaborcz, which is already Hungary. The chief of the train, though I did not know him, gave me a clear night's rest, with luxuries of every kind, including English tobacco, of which he insisted on making me up a packet for my journey. But the best of the evening was, as so often, a clever and fascinating conversation on the war and the future of Russia and England. There is matter in this subject for all sorts of interesting suggestion, but one seldom meets any difference of opinion on one point, namely, that after the war the relations of the two countries will assume a far wider importance, political, economic and, above all, social, and that they will be among the chief factors that make for the peace of Europe.

_April 19._

The staff of the Xth Division was housed in a white-walled cottage at the end of the little town. After the usual glasses of tea and talk of England, we set out with a small cavalcade for the front. The long street was very definitely Hungarian. It was not only the notices and the shops, with surname written first, among which I saw the historic name of Rakoczy, probably a Jew; but that the line of the houses, the river and the landscape were all new to one coming from Russia.

We rode fast along the double track of railway, and very quickly reached our first halting-place. Diverging to the high road, which was also fairly hard and dry, we soon left our horses and proceeded on foot. The road was so good and straight, the weather was so fine, and the beautiful hills so peaceful, that, though talking all the time about the war, we somehow forgot that we were in it, when suddenly, from a high hill that seemed quite close to us, there crashed a shell about thirty yards from us. The little lurid flame that preceded the explosion burned long enough to let us throw ourselves against the bank, which was bright with pretty blue flowers. We found we had exactly reached the front of our positions and made our way under shelter up a slope. The men were at work on their breastworks, which were very different from those of the Galician plain. On this higher ground, almost at any point the spade soon came on springs of water which filled the hole in a few minutes. In such places the breastworks are ordinarily what is called horizontal; they are constructed of brushwood and spruce fir, and give hardly any shelter. The earth-huts are replaced by little arbours of fir boughs, which are very much more difficult to warm, though from the captured Austrian trenches, unfortunately facing in the other direction, there have been taken quite a number of excellent little stoves. As the new Russian lines were only recently occupied, they were still in a very primitive state; in the wood that stretched in front, trees were still being cut to the stump to serve as posts for the wire-entanglements, and the lines themselves were not as yet at all continuous. Shells continued to fall at short intervals for some time, and a private, killed while at work, was brought up for burial. The colonel pointed the moral of getting the shelters finished as soon as possible.

When the firing died away, we walked along the outside of the lines; the task of sentries and scouts was a difficult one, for the trees stood close together. After a halt, I was taken further by a business-like officer with worn uniform and steely blue eyes, and, with his approval, I passed a word or two of greeting from the English army to the groups of soldiers at work. Several of the men asked me to send a like greeting back.

As we went forward, this little procedure became more detailed. The idea was taken up with enthusiasm by the commanders of companies, especially after I had been conducted, staff in hand, over a deep gully which separated us from the next regiment. Here each company was called outside its trenches and drawn up facing the enemy. I gave the salute, "Health, brothers"; and the usual answer came in a thundering peal. I told them how grateful we were for everything that they had sacrificed and everything that they had done for our common cause, and said that we wanted to be in time to do our full share on land, that our new big army was ready, and that we were going to advance as they had done. There is no difficulty in making simple things clear to Russian soldiers. They answered with their "Glad to do our best," and the "Hurrah!" which was so vigorous as to bring the Austrian machine guns into play; I am glad to say, without results. Several of the men came and talked to me in groups later; they felt the effects of their hard work and the heavy losses that go with attack, but their spirit was a conquering one, and all the more impressively so, because of the hardships in which I saw them. Later, when I saw the Commander of the Army, who had run a risk of being captured close to this very ground, he asked me to continue to give these greetings, "to hearten for the common cause," and arranged for me to get early news of any successes on the western front.

I slept with the usual brotherly group of officers in a little forester's hut, a hundred yards from the comparatively open front; on the outside of the door was chalked the word "Willkommen," which read like an amusing invitation to the enemy. We all slept on the floor, but I was accommodated with a litter, which made an excellent bed. The porch served as first-aid point, and when the firing was resumed in the morning, a wounded man was brought in here.

Before I went further, the Brigadier-General sent me by telephone a warm greeting, to be communicated to England.

_April 20._

The reader will remember "The Birds," a very tight place held by the L regiment beyond a river on another front. The L's had done no end of work and had suffered heavily long before I visited them at "The Birds." There, too, they lost many men--about 1500 out of 4000--in an action which followed on their occupation of those positions and in the weeks of cannonade which they endured there.

I was aware that the L's were now in the Carpathians and close to me. The two regiments whose lines I had traversed had lost many in this hill warfare. Where a hill is taken, the enemy's losses, though probably more than double the Russian, are rather in surrenders than in killed and wounded. A hill attack, which is beaten off by superior numbers, means heavy sacrifices.

I clambered over another of the steep intersecting gulleys. A group of S's stood waving their farewells. There was a bit of bare slope facing the Austrian plateau, and then I came on the first shelter of the L's, quite a comfortable mud hut. The young officer, who had come to meet me, was an acquaintance, and he sat down and told me about the men I knew. In a single night attack on the height in front of us, two-thirds of the officers that I had known had gone down, and about half the regiment. Name after name came up with the brief record, "He's killed." We lay on the straw--in nearly all other huts here there were only boughs of fir--and he told me the whole story. The hill was almost inaccessible, the works were long prepared and elaborate, the Germans had hurried up large forces here; yet the attack all but succeeded. "All but," and no results but losses. At Rava Russka and on the San the L's had given of their best, and decisive successes had followed. The hill opposite had cost more and still faced us. It is one of the saddest of thoughts, that the bravest of all, the men who go furthest, must lie where they fell. Yet the L's, who in the course of a few days have again been brought up to full strength by the enormous reinforcements which Russia continues to pour into the army, will have written their name on the Hungarian war in as lasting colours as on the Galician. We are over the crest; we are fighting in the main downwards; we touch a vital spot; and we are going forward.

There is nothing which makes one feel all this better than to pass along the lines of a regiment so battered, still in position at the time when I visited it; nay, more, occupying for the moment far more than the natural extent for its full strength, and occupying it as a conqueror with swiftly thrown-up works that only provide for an elementary shelter. And the battle is not offered; the enemy sits on his heights and makes no counter-stroke to push his temporary advantage home.

I write of a time which has already passed; for the whole position is very different now. But I say the L's were conquerors. There were nothing like enough of them for a continuous line; so they had picked out all those sections which commanded any possible advance of the enemy, and held them as masters. For the intervals, the gullies, they detached large scouting parties which met any forward move halfway. The work which this meant for all will remain with me as giving a picture of a Russian regiment after a check. All the officers and men were alert and looking to the next move in the game. A soldier who guided me, confident and intelligent, stopped only for a moment in his conversation, to say: "But, as a matter of fact, sir, there are very few left of us." Regiments that can take punishments like this, communicate their spirit and tradition to those of the new recruits who are so fortunate as to join them.

From one occupied point to another, our little party of officers and men walked freely over the open, in face of the neighbouring Austrian plateau, till each of our cleverly chosen positions had fallen into its place in our survey. I had a long walk back; in fact, I did not get out of the range of the Austrian plateau till the next day. My two soldier guides and I sat down and smoked by a stream for a while, and they told me that of their fellow villagers who set out at the beginning of the war, the one had lost sixteen out of eighteen, and the other fifty out of sixty. One of them, with three comrades, had fought his way back, when the rest of his company was lost.

The position is changed now, but I feel that the more we know of this fighting, the more we shall understand of the Russian spirit and of the Russian sacrifices, and the clearer will be the picture of the Russian advance.

_May 1._

Waiting at a railway station, I met a young officer who was taking home the body of his brother. The young man met his death leading a night attack. He took his company further up than any, and even got through the wire entanglements and into the enemy's trenches. The deadly fire of the machine guns made it necessary to draw off the men, and this company got the order late. Some fought their way through, but their leader was mortally wounded. The brother was serving in the neighbouring artillery and was able to be with the dying man to the last. He said that his brother might easily have surrendered with others, but it would always be a satisfaction that he did not "hold up his hands and go into Austria."

At staff headquarters of the army I passed many funerals. Here the enemy's airmen make a visit almost every day. Two days ago, and again to-day, they appeared in force and dropped their bombs almost without a break. The air battery and picked riflemen kept up an incessant fire on them. Yesterday I watched an aeroplane under fire of Russian shrapnel. The shells burst all round it and evidently forced it to give up its intention of reaching the town: it sped away northwards. These raids have had hardly any success. Even the bombs which lodged where they were meant to, on the railway or on the aerodrome, did no real damage. The net result is a small number of wounded, including civilians and a sister of mercy.

An officer whom I met in the trenches, and of whom I wrote under the name of "George," has very appropriately been appointed one of the judges of recommendations for the George Cross. The soldier's George is given for any signal act of bravery, and the men thus honoured are always found to be the rallying points in further attacks. The officers' George is in four classes. Only some four individuals have ever received the first class, beginning with Kutuzov. The second class, which is for very definite achievements of generalship can only be given to Generals (Ivanov has it for the conquest of Galicia), and the third only to Generals and Colonels. The fourth, which is for any act of courage or initiative, can be won by any officer. The different achievements which can win the George are clearly set out. The two first classes are conferred only by the nomination of the Sovereign; for the other two there is in each army what is called a "Duma," or panel of selectors.

My friend, who is one of the bravest and simplest men that I have met, told me very interesting things about his work. His own standard of bravery is not striking acts of daring, but the maintenance of normal composure in the performance of dangerous tasks. It is, I think, a standard which will appeal to Englishmen. One of the most typical instances of Russian courage that I know is among the records of the battle of Borodino. An aide-de-camp galloped up to a commanding officer and, pointing towards a hill, said: "The Commander-in-Chief asks you to attack there." As he spoke, a cannon ball carried away his extended arm; he simply pointed to the hill with the other, and said, "There: be quick."

At many points of our line there has been a complete lull. One battery which I visited, standing on some thickly wooded hills, was building a wooden villa for the officers, and had already put up a camp theatre for the performances of short plays written by the men. There was little but the ordinary diversion of shooting at aeroplanes.

Prisoners continue to testify to the discontent in the enemy's armies. For instance, an Alsatian says that any Alsatian would come over at the first opportunity. A German says that the conditions in his regiment are such that he would have shot himself but for regard for his family. Czechs report further mutinies in their regiments which have been punished with military executions. The Ruthenian regiments, which cannot now be reinforced from Galicia, are rapidly melting away. Even the Hungarian soldiers are described as desirous of peace.

_May 3._

The advance of the Russians over the Carpathians was sure to draw a counter-stroke, and it has come just where many have expected it, but with tremendous force. This is because it is not so much the work of the tired Austrians, but rather the biggest effort that Germany has yet put forth in her attempts to bolster her ally. We have all been preparing for May, and Germany and even Austria have evidently made great preparations. The food supply in the Austrian army has been much improved; the proportion of Germans on the Austrian front has been enormously increased; heavy artillery has been concentrated; and the Emperor and Hindenburg have been reported to be here.

I set out with a nice bright-eyed chauffeur who did a splendid day's work with me. We had the main road for some distance, and none of the varieties later seemed to trouble him. We went along a valley, and in a house standing high by a church we found the staff of the Division. I had friends; and I was soon dispatched with a tall determined Cossack to the point where the road climbed the hill. Here we left our machine, and in a hundred yards or so we had the whole scene before us.

There was a hut on the top of the hill; sitting in front of it one could see for at least ten miles in either direction. The Division was holding a front of eight miles with the Z's on the left, the O's in the middle, the R's on the right and the I's in reserve. The O's, who were just beyond a hollow, occupied a low line of wooded heights a thousand yards in front of me. The Z's held a lower wooded ridge, the R's connected with the O's over a valley and were posted along a less defined line, of which the most marked feature was a village with a little church tower. Against these three regiments were nine, mostly German, and backed by the most formidable artillery. Beyond each of the flanks of the Division one could see at intervals black clouds of smoke; one thick stream of smoke that stretched into the skies came from some distant petroleum works. The whole line of the R's was being pounded with crash after crash, sometimes four black columns rising almost simultaneously at intervals along it; under each would break out little angry teeth of sparkling flame; the only thing that seemed not to be hit was the church tower, which, as each cloud died down, came out simple again in the bright sunshine. The Z's were in patches of smoke that sometimes disappeared for a time.

What was happening to the O's was not so clear; so after watching the shells and shrapnel bursting along the line and on the slope for some hours, we descended by some winding gullies, drawing a shrapnel as we passed over a low shoulder, and soon reached the staff of the O's. Under the nearer wall of a hut, a group of officers was working the telephones, while a number of soldiers lay on logs around. The Colonel came forward to me with a preoccupied smile: "A convoy for the flag," he explained, and turning to his men; "you have the flag there?" Then he took me into the open and pointed at the ridge some six hundred yards away: all his left was at grips with the enemy who had come through at several points, and on the right his men were fighting at the close range of two hundred yards in the wood beyond the crest.

We crouched behind the houses amid a constant roar of shells bursting all round us, and firing some of the neighbouring huts. The telephones worked incessantly. Now each of the battalion commanders reported in turn--one, that his machine guns had been put out of action, another that there were gaps in his line, a third that he was holding good, but hard put to it. The Colonel explained that his last reserves were engaged. A message came that his right flank was open and was being turned. He seized the telephone and called to the reserve regiment: "Two companies forward at the double," reporting his action directly to the staff of the Division. There was a peculiar humanness about all these messages; in form they were just ordinary courteous conversation. The question which brought the most disquieting answers was "Connexions." The Z Colonel reported that his line was penetrated at more than one point, but was holding out. The R telephone gave no answer at all. Life there was unlivable, the trenches were destroyed, and on my way I had heard from soldiers a report that when taking ammunition to the R's they had seen the Austrians in our lines. Shells and shrapnel were crashing all round us, especially on our rear; a great cloud rose where I had sat at the top, and a hut that I had passed on the way down broke out in full flame. Nearer down there fell four black explosives at regular distances of fifty yards, "the four packets" as one officer called it. Our cover would all have gone with a single shot, and the men crouched to avoid the falling splinters from each shell. In this depressing atmosphere there went on the conversation between the Colonel and the divisional staff: "I can get no contact, with the R's. Cavalry is reported on both of my flanks. The R's have had to retreat." The answer was an order to retire at nightfall. Three hours at least had to run. The order was communicated in French over each battalion telephone. The Colonel apologised for his elementary French; anyhow it was the French of a brave man. As disquietudes increased, the permission came to retire at once; but the Colonel answered that this could not be done: he was in hot defensive action, and the enemy would follow on his heels; at present he was holding his own.

Twice on the telephone the fatal word "surrounded" had been used. My hosts urged me to go. "We have each a different duty," they said. It was with little heart that I faced for the slope, turning a few yards off to salute these brave men once more. They were some wounded struggling up the gullies, one with a maimed foot, whom we helped along but who had to sit down at times and smoke. As we began to approach shelter, we suddenly saw on the hills to the west of us men coming down the slope towards us. "Perhaps ours, perhaps the enemy," said my Cossack, who never turned a hair throughout the day. We got our lame man up the big hill, but as soon as we had passed the crest he said that his strength failed him, and sat down with several others round a well. The next thing was to look for the motor. We were now in comparative safety; for we were out of the line of fire, and the valley to the north of us was full of our own people. Officers galloped forward, looking at the line of our retreating field trains. In the valley there was a long train of wounded. I at last found our motor in the midst of it. We packed in the men with the worst wounds that we noticed; they lay without a groan, and one old soldier said: "Thanks to Thee, O Lord; and eternal gratitude to you." A young soldier with an eager face pressed forward with a letter, begging us to take his wounded officer, whom he had brought five miles from the distant lines of the R's. "Harchin"--that was his name, was like a loving son, with his captain, walking by our side or standing on our step for mile after mile and all the while helping to hold the litter in position. He told us that no living man could have driven the R's from their position: but that the whole area was covered with shells till trenches and men were levelled out of existence. The companies left comparatively intact had all joined on to the O's. Of the O's themselves we could only hear vague rumours; it was said that most of them had made their way back.

There was no panic, no hurry in the great throng, as it retired. Each was ready to help his neighbour. Crossing a long hill we had to transfer some of our wounded to an empty cart which we commandeered, the men moving without a word. In the night Harchin kept holding up his officer and giving any comfort that he could. "It's quite close now, your nobility, it's a good road now," he would say. We reached a hut where the kind Polish hostess showed us beds for our wounded; Harchin was constant and tender in his care, and I left the two together to await the arrival of the doctor. A private with a crushed face refused to lie on his bed for fear of spoiling it, and sat holding his bleeding head in his hands.

Through the darkness and past an incessant train of army carts, which without any shouting did all they could to give us passage, I made my way to the corps of the staff and to the next Division; where I slept long into the morning. It was only later that we knew the full scope of our losses. The Division had against it double its number of infantry and an overwhelming mass of heavy and light artillery. It had held its trenches till it was almost annihilated.

_May 4._

When I woke up in the morning, the deserted school where the staff had stretched their beds was alive with work and anxiety. The lines lay only a mile and a half outside the town of Biecz, and the Germans and Austrians were making a tremendous attack on them, pounding them with the heaviest artillery and advancing on them in close column again and again. The leader of this Division is a fighting General, robust, active and of great composure. The Staff was very close up to the front, and our own immediate movements depended on to-day's results. As we were being shelled, we went for lunch to a neighbouring Polish monastery, a pleasing white-walled building on a hill. It was deserted but for one or two monks; and its cloisters and wall-paintings and stations of the Cross were like an oasis far from the war. I lay down in one of the empty rooms and had some more hours of sleep. On my return to the school building I found that the situation was critical. From the balcony the General viewed the lines and gave some short directions. In the summer weather one watched groups of soldiers descending from the neighbouring hill and making for the bridge at the foot of our house. They were ours and were being relieved; and they formed up into order and were addressed by an officer before crossing the bridge. The enemy had been beaten off in every infantry attack, but many parts of the lines were now non-existent, having been reduced to a series of shell-pits by the German artillery.

With a young Cossack I started out for the D regiment. The picturesque little town--all the Polish towns are full of pleasing architecture--was crowded with troops, and the atmosphere was one of uncertainty. Men were sheltering from the hot fire all along the banks of the sunken road. On the top of the hill were a few huts through which we threaded our way, dodging an exposed area where shells burst continually. Further on we found to the right of us a deep valley thick with lofty trees. On the edge of this wood were a number of soldiers who had lost touch with their regiments. We stopped them to find our way. The D regiment, we learned, was no longer at the front; and indeed on this side we should not find any lines at all. We were told that the Austrians were already in the wood, which later proved to be true. The fire was heavy here, splinters falling upon us through the trees; and the stragglers hurried away.

Turning to the left I found myself at the head of a wide hollow in the hills. Over it soldiers were moving forward. Making my way to one of the huts, I found the Brigadier-General and got leave to accompany this advance. It was the first regiment of the famous Caucasian Corps just arrived after an all-night march, and going up to the attack. A battalion commander stood just below the hut, putting his men in position. He was a quiet little man, already elderly and with an old voice, that sounded vigorously, however, across the slope. "You shall come with me," he said. The men who had been sitting in groups, made their way by companies up the different clefts in the hollow and soon lined into the ridge beyond. The commander moved about among them at an easy walk, directing some, hurrying on others. The men went forward on their knees, separating off into what the Russians call a "chain," where any one with initiative, by finding cover a little further forward, gives a lead to all the rest. The officers walked upright throughout.

When the crest was lined, the commander went forward in different directions. On his return he gave a few orders to his officers; one of them was a little excited, and called out: "I have an instinct that it will go right; God grant that it is a true one," and turning to his men he shouted, "God is with us." Except for this, nothing broke the atmosphere of the evening stillness. "Well, children," said the commander, "what shall I say to you? With God! Forward!"

One company went off to the wood on the right, and after a few minutes another with the commander and myself moved forward over the bare hill, leaving two others to follow in reserve. Throughout the men advanced in little groups, creeping in line with each other; the officers walked about freely, often in advance of the men, or encouraging any that showed too much caution. We soon saw that the ground was clear in front of us, and we descended the hill a good deal more rapidly. The commander and I branched off into the edge of the wood; all the time he was calling out to keep touch with the company on our right; he turned and smiled to me as the shrapnel tore away some of the boughs.

At the bottom the machine guns were hurried up, and we ascended the further slope. We were now on a bare height, which was like a tongue projecting forward, and a hot musketry fire was opened on us. A man near me called out that he was wounded and rolled himself down to the hollow, where a bearer set about bandaging him; a shell burst beyond us and another called out. I could only see what happened to the men nearest to me. The commander continued to stroll about among the men, in the same way as he would have done out of action; several of the men begged him to lie down. We went round the outside of the height, and he brought his men everywhere to the edge of it and told them to entrench themselves, which they set about doing at once.

We could see where the bullets came from, on the low ground in front. To our left was a ridge with trees, along which we could see men on horseback coming from the direction of the enemy. To our right, beyond the wood, was a high ridge covered with men who appeared to be advancing upon us but did not open fire. Later it seemed that they were stationary, and we could not make out whether they were ours or theirs, so a scouting party was sent to find out. Suddenly a column of blue figures was seen coming up close on our front. In what seemed a minute, two of our machine guns had been moved to this side. Round some brushwood thirty yards away came the first rank of the column; one caught sight of a line of pale faces; I remember a slim fair-haired youth who peered anxiously forward. Our commander shouted orders; our machine-gun men, standing up and with indignation on their faces, ground out a shower of bullets, and the Austrian column disappeared into the wooded valley.

Night was closing in, the enemy's cannonade was slackening, and the time was approaching when the physical superiority of man to man would put the balance firmly on the Russian side. The men were entrenching themselves; and the commander wished to send a message to the brigade about the undefined troops on his right. I was going with this message and had not got more than two hundred yards from the front when I heard shouts of hurrahs, which marked the beating off of another Austrian attack. A few more shells burst on our way back, but my companion muttered to the enemy: "It's getting dark, brother"; for, once technique does not dominate, the Russian feels that he is master.

On the road we found a large batch of Austrians (Poles) taken in the wood. I was invited to examine them; they had had no food that day; there was much disaffection in Austria; they were strongly against the Germans and were glad that for them the war was over. Our report was delivered; the troops on our right were Russians. Later there came other and sadder news. The little commander was brought back into the town wounded in the head in the last Austrian attack.

In the evening I rode with the Divisional Staff several miles to our new quarters. All along the road he stopped any straggling soldiers and asked closely what had happened to their regiments. This was all extremely well done; he was really severe only to one batch who told him an obvious lie. Altogether the retreat, for it was that, was unattended by any panic. Going at a sharp trot, we reached our new quarters at three in the morning.

_May 6._

I woke in a farmhouse, in a village that was filled with the divisional field train. The Divisional General had gone off early to the front to rectify the new positions. The news that came in was uncertain and anxious. The first hut which the General and his staff had entered had been made untenable by the enemy's artillery. The second hut that he visited was also set on fire. No further news of him came till late in the evening that he had barely escaped capture.

Word came that the staff would be moved further back. The field trains were set in motion, and we travelled without any kind of confusion across a beautiful range of wooded hills. We stopped more than once to see the fight that was going on below us. It was a blazing line of fire and smoke, the twin yellow and white bursts of the Austrian shrapnel being almost lost in the white or black smoke of the German artillery. We travelled very slowly and for a good part of the day; officers and men were full of vexation at having to retire before troops which they felt themselves capable of beating with any equal conditions: among themselves there prevailed a simple good humour.

I rode at different times with the adjutant, the chief of the field train, and the divisional doctor, all of whom were perfectly cool and collected. We made different wayside halts, and in the afternoon drew up in a large village also full of field trains. Here we took rest and refreshments, while different rumours came in from all quarters: and in the evening I drove in for news to the staff of the army at Jaslo, which was now close to the enemy.

From nearly all the regiments of the corps which I had accompanied, great losses were reported; on the other hand, practically every infantry attack had been driven off with great loss to the enemy. The trenches had been left only when the enemy's artillery had made them untenable. In some parts the systematic ploughing up of whole given areas had gone so far behind our lines that even approach to the trenches had been made impossible.

The game was not lost even on this ground, and immediate measures had been taken for counter-attacks the following day. Meanwhile Jaslo was under an intermittent but violent bombardment of aeroplanes; and all the hospitals were being moved to the rear.

I learned that the enemy were making a similar artillery attack on Tarnow, where I had spent several of my periods of Red Cross work at the hospitals. The Russian workers in the local Civil Spital had stayed on to the last and were now under a hot fire, and it was desired that they should be moved without delay. The Red Cross authorities had been told that this detachment could be guaranteed "against capture for the present, but not against artillery fire." I was commissioned to go and move it.

I found the General of the Transport at the railway station full of work, but cool and business-like. His was one of the most difficult tasks, but there was no better head in the Third Army. At three in the morning he came to tell me that a motor was at my disposal at once.

At my first stop I was asked to take with me an official of the Red Cross who had been deprived by contusion of his voice and hearing. He was in full possession of his senses and wrote down his wishes. He had been under fire with three hundred wounded in the village where I had slept the night before. There were other reports more disquieting. In one advanced bandaging point the German soldiers had burst in, full of drink and rage, and had bayoneted the staff and, as we were told, the doctor.

In the early morning I reached an ambulance point managed almost entirely by the members of one family, the father (who was a retired divisional doctor), the mother, and their son. To them I handed over my unhappy companion. Here I had anxious news of the hospital for which I was making. Tarnow was four miles from the front; on the German advance nine shells had been fired on the hospital in one day, and one of them had struck the operating-room and wounded the lady doctor.

I drove on to the staff of the neighbouring corps to see about transport, and thence to my destination. There was an ominous absence of troops, other than retreating field trains. The inhabitants were all in the streets, alive as it seemed to me with excitement and expectation. As I drove up, I saw the five plucky sisters waiting on their balcony. They had already sent away all their Russian wounded and were ready to start. The wounded civilians, who were Austrian subjects, and some wounded Austrian soldiers had been housed in the cellars and would be left to the care of their own people.

This work had all been done in two hours directly after the last bombardment. The sisters had been given a second George medal for bravery. They spent the evening on a hill watching the artillery attack on our troops. It was a ring of fire that simply demolished the trenches. Attack after attack of the enemy's infantry was beaten off. One detachment, sent to the support of a neighbouring regiment, found some of the defenders asleep under the cannonade: they had beaten off eight attacks. The N Regiment was decimated, but full of spirit.

All this I learned later. Without any kind of haste or commotion, the sisters said good-bye to the Austrian wounded and to the kind Polish sisters who had worked so long with them, and we all started in my motor. We were soon out of the range of fire, and continued our journey until we had reached the new headquarters of the Red Cross, where we were joined a day later by the staff of the army.

_May 9._

The details of the Austro-German advance on the Third Army are now clearer. The Russian advance over the Carpathians was not met directly, but by a counter-advance on its flank. Here five army corps were concentrated, some of the fresh troops being drawn from reserve divisions on the French front, especially in the neighbourhood of Verdun. The journey across Germany is reckoned at three to five days, according to whether or not one includes the mountain marches at the end of the railway journey. Prisoners of the Prussian Guard tell me that they were given special training in hill climbing before they started.

Meanwhile, the long months of comparative inaction had been employed in bringing up the heaviest German and Austrian artillery, both of which were last summer concentrated on the western front, and getting the range not merely of the Russian lines, but of squares which covered a good part of their rear. This was a long and toilsome operation, as these guns cannot be moved except by railway or, with great efforts and under good weather conditions, on roads which have a certain consistency. The potentialities of these guns are in any case limited; they cannot easily follow up an advance or get away in case of a rout. They can force the evacuation of a given area, but it may be possible to manoeuvre in such a way that the general position is but little changed.

It will be remembered that the Austrians during the idle months have been covering the Russian lines in front of them with a ceaseless cannonade. This counted for little at the time. The Austrian artilleryman has only lately developed any accuracy; for a long time they continued in the most stupid errors of detail; they hardly ever placed a Russian battery, and evidently the process of range-finding has been long and very expensive. The Austrians rarely attempted infantry attack, knowing that they always met their masters; thus their ceaseless cannonade was not a preparation for an infantry offensive; and the Russians might even, if necessary, leave their trenches only partially occupied during the day, keeping less in those parts which were under the hottest fire and holding the whole line in force only by night.

It was a very different story when the initiative on this side was undertaken by the Germans, who use artillery as a preparation for desperate attacks in close column. The difference in accuracy between the German and Austrian artillery fire was very soon discovered to the Russian regiments in front of them; and it was known that the Prussian Guard Reserve was here. The trenches were, therefore, occupied in full and held until they became untenable.

The enemy's advance was at first directed against what was thought to be the weakest part of the Third Army, namely its right flank, which had sent a number of reinforcements to the Carpathian wing; but the alertness of the Russian general on this side produced an alteration in the plan, and the attack was diverted to the next army corps eastwards. This corps contained regiments which had had heavy losses in the previous hill-fighting. A gap was forced between the two army corps; and the right flank of the threatened corps (the R Regiment) was crushed by the pounding fire which I have described under May 3. The regiment retreated in good spirit, but with the heaviest losses, the O Regiment, holding its ground to the end, retired with its colonel and some 300 men: the Z Regiment was severely cut up. In all this fighting practically every infantry attack of the enemy was beaten back. The next day the impact fell mainly on the troops which I described on May 4. They held their ground to the evening and then executed an orderly retreat, coming into line with the broken forces to the right of them. But on both days a tremendous cannonade was directed on the division still further eastward, with the result that some regiments suffered terribly. The next day a fresh corps, the Caucasians, one of the most famous in the Russian army, had arrived and went forward boldly to the attack on the flank of the enemy's advance. The prisoners cannot speak too highly of the courage of this corps; and it did succeed in stemming the tide, with such effect that the broken army corps to its right had in two days reformed and come again into position. But it did not get as far as the enemy's heavy artillery, and retired fighting rearguard actions--not much further than the point from which it had started.

I have explained that the whole advance of the enemy was a counter-stroke to the Russian advance over the Carpathians further eastwards. The right wing of that advance was now outflanked and had to retire. Half of this corps succeeded in rectifying its positions without serious loss; but the other division had the greatest difficulty in fighting its way through, and lost heavily.

Meanwhile the enemy's attack was extended also westwards, including the area against which it had been originally directed. Here the cannonade was furious and the trenches were in many parts wiped out, all approach to them of reinforcements from the rear being made almost impossible. But here, too, practically all hostile infantry attacks were repulsed with heavy loss. Ultimately a retreat was ordered by the Russians on this side. Results are indefinite unless they bring one side or the other to a definite line of defence.

The situation resulting from all this fighting was as follows: The present area of conflict is a square lying between two rivers west and east (Dunajec and San), with the Vistula on the north and the Carpathians on the south. The square may now be divided by a diagonal running from north-west to south-east. On the one side are the Russians and on the other are the enemy; but the diagonal is not any natural line of defence, and the operations must be continued till one side or the other occupies the whole of the square.

The enemy has made a special concentration by depleting other parts of his line. The respective forces are now at close grips in a great battle which is likely to last for several days. The enemy's heavy artillery is not likely to have the same effect as before; and a successful Russian advance may even endanger its retreat.

There are two obvious deductions from this fighting. The Germans are risking more and more of their forces in the support of Austria, or, to speak more accurately, in the defence of Hungary, and in order to do this they must surely have weakened their western front. They must secure definite results on the Russian side if their attack here is to be of value to them, as they may again have to throw their forces westwards ere long.

_May 10._

What a picture these days will leave on the minds of those who have lived through them. It is only the simple things that count; but they keep coming back on one in new forms again and again, and that is why one must repeat oneself so often.

The staff is in no way downhearted; it is sometimes preoccupied, sometimes cheerful, but always full of vigour. The cause of our losses has been localised; and there is no sign of panic or hurry in the search for the necessary remedies. At the bottom of all is this wonderful confidence of the men and officers who come back wounded from the front. The Commander of the Army is full of spirit and energy, and we all consider that we are only halfway through this battle.

The other hospital institutions have mostly been sent to the rear; but this period of movement is a time of small advance ambulance points which dispatch their wounded to the rear at once and themselves are ready to move at short notice, whether forward or backward; and the Russian sisters who returned with me from the front organised at once such an ambulance at the station, going on duty the same night, and working sometimes fifteen hours or more at a stretch.

Enemy aeroplanes threw bombs at them every day, and we picked up several badly wounded at the station, but none of the workers in the bandaging-room took any notice of the explosions.

The station is a wonderful place--as wonderful as the great station in Lvov, which I described several months ago. It is crowded with wounded, lying close together in the family manner of the Russian peasant. Most are wounded in the hands or the head; this means that they were under a devastating fire in the trenches which hit anything that was at all exposed. But there are also many signs of advance or of infantry attacks beaten off, in wounds of all kinds all over the body. Every night hundreds of wounded are given clean bandages and fed with anything that can be bought in a place where all is movement.