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THE FIGHTING UP TO THE 26TH AUGUST

There appeared to be nearly 300 men in Polchow's battery when we went into action: only fifty-nine remained with the four guns we saved at the close of the day, and not one of these escaped a more or less serious hurt, though some were merely scratched by small fragments of shell or bruised by shrapnel bullets. At least twenty of the men would have been justified in going to hospital; several ultimately had to do so, and one died. Even British soldiers could not have shown greater heroism. Chouraski, the non-commissioned officer who had attached himself to me, had a bullet through the fleshy part of the left arm, yet he brought me some hot soup and black bread after dark; whence obtained, or how prepared, I have no idea. I was much touched by the man's kindness. All the soldiers with whom I came in contact were equally kind: and I have noticed that the men of other armies with whom I have come in contact in the course of my life, even the Germans, seemed to see something in my personality which attracted them, and to desire to be friendly. Perhaps they instinctively realized that I am an admirer of the military man; or perhaps it was the bonhomie which is universal amongst soldiers. Certainly I got on well with them all, though some time elapsed before we could understand a simple sentence spoken on either side.

For two days I was not fit for much: then I went to the front with a detachment of sixty gunners which had arrived from Petrograd via Warsaw. I found the battery and the rest of the regiment encamped to the westward of Przasnysz.

Heavy fighting was going on somewhere in front; but the contending troops were not in sight. The whole country was full of smoke, and the smell of burning wood and straw was nearly suffocating. The Germans had set fire to everything that would burn, including the woods. During the night heavy showers of rain fell, and these extinguished most of the fires and saved a vast quantity of timber.

I could see that the Germans had been driven back a considerable distance; and the Russians claimed to have won great victories in the neighbourhood of Stshutchen and Graevo, and to have already passed 500,000 men across the German border. That they were making progress was obvious; and on the 20th August I witnessed some desperate infantry fighting.

The Germans came on, as they always did, in immense columns, literally jammed together, so that their men were held under fire an unnecessarily long time. The usual newspaper phrase, "Falling in heaps," was quite justifiable in this case. Thousands fell in ten minutes; and the remainder broke and fled in spite of the efforts of their officers to stop them. I was well in front and saw what took place. The German officers struck their men with their swords and in several cases cut them down; and I saw one of them fire his revolver into the crowd. I did not actually see men fall, but he must have shot several.

The Russians, too, adopted a much closer formation than was wise, and suffered severely in consequence, but they never wavered. The Germans came on again and again, nine times in all, and proved themselves wonderful troops. Four out of the nine charges they drove home, and there was some desperate bayonet fighting in which the Teutons proved to be no match for the Muscovites. The last named used the "weapon of victory" with terrible effect, disproving all the modern theories about the impossibility of opposing bodies being able to close, or to come into repeated action on the same day.

On the contrary, it may be taken as certainly proved that men's nerves are more steeled than ever they were, and that the same body of men can make repeated and successive attacks within very short periods of time. In the above attacks fresh bodies of troops were brought up each time, but the remnants of the battalions previously used were always driven on in front. I noticed this: on three occasions the 84th regiment (probably Landwehr) formed part of the attacking force.

"Driven on" is the correct term. The German officers invariably drove their men in front of them. Arriving in contact with their foes, the soldiers fought with fury. It was the preliminary advance that seemed to discompose them: and, indeed, their losses were dreadful. They certainly left at least 30,000 dead and wounded on the ground on the 20th. The greater number were dead, because those who lay helpless received a great part of the fire intended for their retreating comrades, and thus were riddled through and through.

The Russian artillery played on the masses both when they advanced and retreated; but the fight was chiefly an infantry one. The full effect of the guns could not be brought into play without danger of injury to our own men. In the end the Russians chased the enemy back and the artillery was advanced to support them. Considerable ground was gained; but four or five versts to the rear of their first position the Germans were found to be strongly entrenched. The day's fight was finished by a charge of a large body of Cossacks and Russian light cavalry. They swept away the force of German horsemen who ventured to oppose them, and also drove back several battalions of infantry. That part of the Russian Army which had been engaged bivouacked on the ground they had fought over.

The cries of the wounded during the night were terrible to hear, and came from many different points and distances. Hundreds must have died from want of attention, and hundreds more, on both sides, were murdered. The Germans, who were hovering about in small parties, persistently fired on the Red Cross men, so little could be done for the dying; and the cruelties which were perpetrated, and which were revealed (so I was told) by the shouts, entreaties and imprecations of the sufferers, aroused a nasty spirit in the Russians, and particularly in the Cossacks, and led to fearful reprisals, so that in one part of the field I know that not a German was left alive. I am bound to add that after I had seen two Russians brought in with their eyes gouged out, and another with his nose and ears cropped, and his lacerated tongue lolling from his mouth, I had not a word of protest to utter against these reprisals. The Germans were finished fiends, and deserved all they got from a body of men notorious for their fierceness; and they did get it. I will say this, though: that throughout the campaign no instance of a Russian injuring a woman or a child came under my notice; nor did I hear of any such cases. But I was told that three Prussian girls, who were seen to be on friendly terms with some Russian soldiers, were nearly flogged to death by their own people; and the horrible treatment the Polish women received from the hands of the Germans has already been mentioned, and was ever recurring during the whole of the time I spent with the Russian Army.

I would here make mention of the quality of the Russian and German soldiery. Conscription sweeps into the ranks of an army numbers of men who are totally unfit for a military life and a still further number who abhor it. In the present war, hatred and vindictive feeling generally has run very high on the northern side of the fighting area; and this circumstance seems to have greatly increased the war-like instinct of the masses, and consequently decreased the number of what I may term the natural non-combatants. In the Russian ranks, and I believe in the German also, this class is weeded out as far as possible, and relegated to the organizations which have least to do with the fighting line—that is, the administrative services, and troops organized to maintain the lines of communication. But these fellows—the natural non-combatants, or haters of the soldier's life, I mean—are, when found in the fighting ranks, the most detestable scoundrels imaginable; and I believe the greater part of the atrocities committed may be laid to their charge. They lose no opportunity of indulging in lust and murder; and as in civil life they are mostly wastrels, thieves and would-be murderers, they find in war an opportunity to indulge in those vices which, practised in time of peace, would bring them to the prison and the noose. In other words, the scum of the big cities is brought into the army, and often proves as great a curse to its own administrative, as it does to that of the enemy. Not all the Germans were fiends—not all the Russians saints.

Early in the war many of the German regiments were composed of exceedingly fine-looking men. There was a decided deterioration later on, but this was more in appearance than quality: they still fought with determined, or desperate, courage; I am inclined to think, often the last-named. They were taught that the only way to escape the brutality of their officers was to face the courage of their foes. They chose the latter. Often hundreds—whole companies together—rushed over to the Russians, threw down their arms, and surrendered themselves prisoners of war. No such instance ever occurred in the Russian ranks. The Russian soldier is a very pious man, and, like the North Aryan stock from which he has sprung, is a great worshipper of ancestry and his superiors. His commanding officer, like his Czar, is a Father, or a Little Father—a sacred being—his priest as well as his temporal master. The consequence is that officer and soldier are one, a conjunction that is of great value from the military standpoint.

This is never the case in the German Army. The Teutonic officer is a brute and a slave-driver, and his soldiers fear him if they do not hate him. I doubt if any German soldier ever gets through his training without being repeatedly struck by all his superiors from the unter-officer upwards. Feathers show how the wind sets. A Prussian regiment (the Pomeranian Grenadiers) was route-marching. One of the musicians blew a false note: the bandmaster immediately turned and struck the man a stinging blow on the face. I believe the German Army is the only one in the world where such an incident could occur. Like master, like man. One brute breeds another.

Taken on the whole the old adage that "one volunteer is worth two pressed men" is true; but an army of ten or twelve millions could not be successfully met by one of a million or two. Numbers must count when they are excessive; though things militate against this rule sometimes. If an army has not its heart in a contest very inferior numbers may win. In the present case it soon became clear to me that both the great nations had their hearts in the war: the surprising thing is that Russia with her huge hordes has so far done so little—Germany hard pressed on all sides effected so much.

These words will reveal that I do not take the general view that Russia is progressing as fast and as well as she might reasonably be expected to do.[1] Yet I am unable to point out very clearly where her principal defect lies. She brought up troops very rapidly; and by the 20th August she had an enormous army in the field on the East Prussian frontier. At this time, and later on, I learned that her lines extended throughout the German border and far along that of Austria to the Bug; and she was said to have at least 5,000,000 men massed in these lines. The Germans had not nearly so many—probably not more than 2,500,000 or 3,000,000; but they had the power, by means of their railways, to concentrate on a given point very rapidly, and so equal, or more than equal, the Russians, who, being without adequate railway communication, could not take advantage of their superior numbers. If the last-named saw a weakness in any part of the German defensive and attempted to take advantage of it, before they could bring up an adequate number of troops the Germans had discovered their intentions and rushed up a sufficient force to secure the threatened point: and this they did by bringing men from positions so numerous, and so distant, that they nowhere materially weakened their line; or, if they did so, they were enabled to conceal the fact.

[1] This paragraph was written four or five months ago.

Europe, Austria and Germany, is surrounded by a ring of armed men, extending, roughly, a distance of 1,500 miles, and defended by a force of about 14,000,000 men, or some five men to the linear yard. This is, in modern war, a sufficient number for effective attack or defence, on ordinary ground; but it is not too many, and in prolonged operation may prove to be too few on some descriptions of terre-plein. Yet, after ten months of the fiercest and most destructive fighting the world has ever seen, this ring of armed men has not been broken, though persistently attacked by three of the most powerful military nations on earth.

My estimate of the number of German and Austrian troops actually in the fighting-line at the beginning of the war is much in excess of the numbers stated in English newspapers. I note this; but do not think that 14,000,000 is an exaggeration. I have information, and am not merely guessing. Nor are the losses of the enemy overstated by me.

Down to the present date the losses of the Germans and Austrians amount to about 3,000,000 men; but it must be remembered that quite two-thirds of these would be wounded men who would recover, and go back to their respective fighting-lines; so that the actual number of men permanently put out of action is about 1,000,000, including those accounted for by the French, British, and Belgian armies. The losses of the Russians are nearly 2,000,000 men. Of these the greater part fell in the fighting I have described and am about to describe, fighting which may be called a prolonged battle for the possession of Warsaw on the one side and its defence on the other. The importance of this combat will be recognized when it is considered that the taking of Warsaw is the first necessary step towards the occupation of Petrograd.

The vision of one man, especially in war, is limited; and I did not see everything that took place in the region in which I was. I heard a good deal, and was ever on the watch to learn and verify, but it could not be otherwise than impossible to be always sure—always correct; and without doubt there are many errors in my narration. What I saw, I saw, and this may be relied on: what I guessed, or was told, I have advanced with caution. Taken as a whole I think my account of the fighting in Poland and East Prussia is as reliable as that of any one man can be: and let it be remembered that I held no official position which could help me in gaining knowledge.

On the evening of the 20th, and morning of the 21st, many rumors reached our corps of Russian successes in the neighbourhoods of Gumbinnen and Suvalki, places which were said to be but little more than 100 versts from our position. The first-named is an open town in East Prussia twenty-five versts over the border; and the news gave great joy to our troops, as it proved that Germany was actually invaded. My informants of the details were Major Polchow and two or three officers who spoke a little English and French and were able to make themselves understood to me.

There was said to have been desperate fighting, with heavy losses, the capture of many German prisoners, and the complete annihilation of a whole division of the enemy.

The occupation of Gumbinnen was of great importance because it is on the Prussian direct line to Vilna, one of the most important railway centres in this part of Russia and perhaps in the whole empire. Although the Russians could not maintain their hold of it, its temporary occupation, no doubt, had an important effect, and possibly helped more than seems to have been seen in saving Warsaw from the enemy's hands. For had they succeeded in seizing Vilna, the Russian force in Poland would have been deprived largely, if not entirely, of reinforcements and supplies in general. It was one of the peculiarities of the war in Poland and East Prussia that neither side seemed able to keep an important position for any length of time. Places were seized which had a telling effect for the moment, and which one would have thought would have greatly influenced the fate of the campaign; and yet they were soon retaken or rendered untenable and the advantages of their seizure lost. In fact the fighting swayed to and fro. Here to-day, there to-morrow, the battle was lost or won. It was all a question of railways.

On the 21st the Russians crossed the frontier between Janow and Chorzellen, and advanced towards Ortelsberg, driving in a force of Uhlans and smashing a battery.

The next day they were met by a force of Villenberg, which partially outflanked us. Desperate fighting ensued, the Germans suffering terrible losses: but they had an object to effect—to hold the Russians until reinforcements arrived. These were run down rapidly from Koenigsberg and the Russians outnumbered and forced back. The fight was lost because the Germans had a network of railways behind them, while the nearest Russian line was 45 versts away. These facts require no comment. A Russian railway at Chorzellen would have saved the day, and led to the investment and probable fall of Koenigsberg. It would have made the occupancy of Tilsit and Memel permanent, and would almost certainly have changed the results of the campaign in this region.

As it was, we had to fall back; but we did so fighting stubbornly, and giving ground very slowly, reinforcements hourly arriving by march-route. Finally we made a stand at Chorzellen, and the Prussians tried their usual tactics of repeated attacks in masses. They left 10,000 dead before the town (it is scarcely more than a big village), and then entrenched themselves at a hamlet called Straffenberg, several miles in a south-westerly direction towards Unterberg: and then a terrific artillery duel commenced. I calculated that 30,000 shots an hour were fired from both armies. The air, the ground, everywhere and everything, seemed to be alive with bursting shells. The roar of guns and explosions was incessant and quite drowned the sound of the infantry firing. Afterwards many men were deaf; I myself could hear no sounds for two days.

I do not know how many guns were in action, nor the calibre of them. On our side only field guns were used, and if the Germans had any of larger size they were, at this time, few in number. Hundreds of machine-guns were used on both sides, and yet the slaughter was not at all in proportion to the amount of ammunition expended. As in all battles, according to my experience, the principal part of the destruction was due to infantry fire. Of course the loss of life was very great. I can only say the ground was heaped with dead and dying. At each successive assault the Germans mounted the heaps of corpses to get at our men and, falling on their comrades, caused the slain to lie in heaps and ridges in an extraordinary and dreadful way. The wounded in the underlying layers must have been suffocated; and the blood ran down the slopes in streams.

This fearful form of fighting went on from the 22nd to the 28th August without any intermission, except occasionally a few hours in the night-time, rarely even then. I, like others, sometimes slept the sleep of utter exhaustion; but during the wakening hours I do not remember that the firing ever entirely ceased. Generally the sound of it was a continuous roar. The heavens were lit up by the reflections of discharged guns and bursting shells, and the pandemonium was dominated by a shrieking sound, probably occasioned by the rush of projectiles through the air. The terrific noise affected my brain so that for weeks afterwards I was afflicted with a head-noise resembling a loud hissing, almost intolerable to bear as it interfered with necessary rest.

The front of this terrific battle was very extensive—200 versts I was told; and the Russians claimed to have had 3,000,000 men in action. At the same time fighting was going on in Galicia, and there were some isolated contests, south and west of our position. The fortune of the contending parties varied greatly; in some places the Prussians were forced back, in others the Russians. Neither side had a decided victory in any part of the field, and the ground lost or won never exceeded a verst or two in extent and was often less than a hundred yards. So it is proved that close and hand-to-hand fighting are not things of the past, as many have thought them to be. On the contrary, close fighting is more often and more extensively resorted to than ever it has been previously, even in the open field; and I think, more fiercely contested. At any rate I saw several battalions on each side so nearly destroyed that they were practically wiped out. A battalion of the 9th West Siberian regiment on our side, and a territorial battalion of the 59th Prussians met with such a fate. Not fifty of the Russians nor more than a dozen of the Germans came out of the scrimmages. They were greatly outnumbered, and some of those lost were probably taken prisoners; but I can say, from actual sight of the incidents, that in each case the men fought with desperate bravery and evinced no desire to surrender.

There was some cavalry fighting too; but, generally, the Russians were numerically superior to their foes; and the Germans, more often than otherwise, avoided proffered battle. In a few instances squadrons and regiments charged one another, the Germans always getting the worst of it, and in one case at least being much cut up. The Russian cavalry even attacked infantry, but though they got away without serious loss, it is pretty evident that only in exceptional instances can cavalry now successfully contend with modernly armed foot soldiers.