ON THE TRACKS OF THE RUSSIAN RETREAT

In the preceding chapters we have followed, day by day, the military events of the Russian retreat and of the German advance after the fall of Warsaw and Ivangorod. With admiration we have heard of the deeds of valor accomplished by the various armies of the three belligerents. The endurance that they displayed, the hardships that they had to bear, the losses that they suffered—both victor and conquered—have given us a clearer idea what war means to the men that actually wage it. Occasionally we have had glimpses of the devastation that it brings to the country over the hills and valleys and over the plains and forests of which it rages. Again and again we have been told of the horrible suffering and utter ruin which was the share of the civic population, rich and poor, young and old, man, woman, or child. But these latter features are apt to be overshadowed by the more sensational events of battle and siege, and in the excitement of these we easily lose sight of the tremendous drama in which not trained soldiers act the parts, but ordinary everyday beings, farmers and merchants, working men and women, students and scholars, people of every age, race, and condition, people just like we ourselves and like those with whom we come in daily contact throughout our entire life. And yet their numbers run into the tens of millions as compared with the hundreds of thousands or perhaps four or five millions of soldiers, and it is their suffering—bared as it is of the glory and excitement that usually lightens the life of the fighting man—that is the quintessence of war's tragedy.

No one who has not been himself a participant or an actual observer of these horrors can really and truly gauge their full extent or describe them adequately. But a clear record of them is as much an essential requirement of a war's history as a chronological narration of its various events. In the following paragraphs will be found gathered reliable reports based on the keen observation of men who in their capacity as special correspondents of various newspapers had opportunities to collect and observe facts at close range and the very vicinity where they transpired. They come from various sources, but chiefly from the narrative of a war correspondent published in the Munich "Neueste Nachrichten," who was himself an eyewitness of what he describes. Although they refer more especially to that part of Russia that is situated between the Galician border and the fortress of Brest-Litovsk—the region of the Bug River—they might have been written equally well of any part or all of the eastern theatre of war, for they are typical of what happened throughout that vast territory that stretches from the eastern front as it stood at the time of Warsaw's fall in the beginning of August, 1915, to that other line that formed a new front, much farther to the east, when the German advance into Russia came to an end in the latter part of October, 1915:

"The first anniversary of the war had just passed. Again summer was upon us, like in those days of mobilization. The atmosphere was full with memories of the beginning of the campaign. Out of Galicia an endless column rolled to the north into Poland. The old picture: the creaking road, overloaded with marching troops, with artillery lustily rolling forward, with caravans of supply trains. Repeating itself a thousandfold, the sum total of the mass deepened the impression and made the idea of the 'supreme command of an army' appear like a fairy tale. Supply wagon after supply wagon, mile after mile, in a long, never-breaking chain!

"The greater the distance of the observer, the deeper becomes the impression of the general impulse of advance, of the sameness of its direction and motion. Can we see a difference as compared with earlier times? Can we notice if the new class of soldiers are equal to the older; if the horses are in the same good condition as before? All in all, it is the same play, even if with new actors in its parts, which was acted before us during the very first days of the war, never to be forgotten: a variety of types, unified by the purpose that was common to all.... Of course, the close observer will always be able to make distinctions. To him all soldiers are not just soldiers. Through their uniforms he will recognize the farmer, the artisan, the factory hand, the slim young volunteer, the genial 'Landwehr' or 'Landsturm' man, the teacher, schoolboy, student, clerk, and professional soldier.

"Before them stretches a new country. Broader plains, lower ranges of hills than in Galicia. To the right and left, as far as the eye reaches, fields, meadows, and swamps. Here and there, windmills. Immense forests, different from those they knew at home: pines, oaks, and birches, all mixed together, with some ash-trees and poplars, only slightly cut down and low of growth. The retreating Russians have tried everywhere to burn down forest and field, but have destroyed in most places only narrow strips and small spots that look now like islands: there the trees have been bared of their foliage in the middle of the summer as if it were the early spring, and the pines are red and brown like beech trees in the winter time. Every few miles trenches and shelters had been cut into the landscape and ran across field and forest, hills and valleys, masterpieces of their kind, cunningly hidden, partly untouched. Alongside the road there were many, many soldiers' graves, singly or sometimes combined into small cemeteries. The Russians bury their dead with devotion. Double-armed Greek crosses betray their burial places.... But not always did they find time during their retreat. Occasionally a penetrating odor of decay announces the fact that some of their dead had to be deprived of burial. Then, very rarely only, indeed, one comes across black, swollen corpses, so terribly gnawed and disfigured by millions of small crawling animals, that all individuality, all humanity, has been destroyed.

"The advance moves on for miles on curious roads. Are these still roads? There is no foundation. Just cuts have been made into the ground, which is sandy here and muddy there and again swampy. During dry weather they take turns in being dusty like the desert, or hard as stone or gently yielding; during rain they are without exception unreliable, spiteful, dangerous. The burden of the uninterrupted transport traffic escapes to the left and to the right farther and farther into the edges of the fields, cutting off continuously new widths of wheel tracks so that roadways are formed 150 to 300 feet wide, which narrow down only at bridges or fords by sheer necessity. All bridges, even those that have been spared by the Russians, have to be solidly renewed and supported, for they had never been intended for such demands. Across furrows and deeply cut wheel tracks, across loose footbridges, through puddles that are more like ponds, and through deep holes, motorcars—fast automobiles and gigantic motor trucks—rush and rumble madly, from time to time helplessly sinking down into the mud and mire till relays of horses and the force of the next detachment pushing forward on its way rescues them and they are off again."

"The road is lined with a sad seam of dead horses. Still other cadavers poison the air and entice swarms of greedy crows. The Russians have killed all cattle which they were unable to carry along quickly enough or to eat upon the spot, and then left the carcasses on or alongside the road: cattle, pigs, sheep have been shot down in this fashion, so that the pursuer should find no other booty than ashes and carrion.

"At some distance from the line of march there may be left some untouched villages, sound, normal, human settlements. But one does not see them. Wherever the fighting has been going on, we pass by dÉbris and ruins. Big villages have been burned from one end to the other into empty rows of chimneys and blackened heaps of tumbled-down houses. "The churches alone sometimes have been shown some respect. As far as they have not been riddled by shells or have not lost their roofs, they are still standing, clean and almost supernatural with their white or pink wooden walls, their shrilly blue or deep red domes, and their shining gilt decorations. Everything else has gone up in flames or has been shot to pieces.

"Out of the general wreckage a few utensils and pieces of furniture stick out here and there: bent beds, crumpled-up sewing machines, half-melted pans and pots. Sometimes it is even possible to form an idea of the former appearance of a house from the design of its blackened wall paper or from a few remnants of some other decorations. Here and there small corners and nooks have been preserved as if by a miracle, and, in some unaccountable way, have survived the ruin that surrounds them on all sides: strips of a flower garden, or perhaps a summer-house with a table in it and a cover and breakfast dishes on the table.

"Up on a chimney, half of which has tumbled down, stands a stork, as if he were meditating over the ruin wrought by human hands; suddenly he pulls himself together, spreads out his wings with quick decision, floats down into his familiar pond and forgets the raving of maddened mankind in the enjoyment of a juicy frog. Through the labyrinth of a fallen-down barn limps a big black cat, tousled and scratched, already half-maddened from hunger, vicious like a wounded panther. Along what had been once streets run packs of dogs gone wild, restlessly smelling at dirt and corpses, growing bolder day by day until finally they have to be shot down.

"Only few people can stand it on this God-forsaken stage of misery. Occasionally a few thin Jews in their long coats walk across the ruins of the market place, which look like a stage setting. On their shoulders they carry in a bundle their few belongings, like pictures of the Wandering Jew. Their families live for a short time from whatever they can scratch together from the ruins or out of the trampled-down fields. They cook and bake on one of the stoves standing everywhere right out in the open road and offer their poor wares for exhibition and sale on a few boards, a last effort to support life by trade. In the case of the women, no matter what the nationality, it always seems as if they had saved out of the horrible destruction only their best and brightest clothes. At a distance their colors shine and smile as if nothing at all had happened. But upon coming up closer, one can easily see how little these unfortunate beings carry on their poor backs.

"More than once we stand perplexed before the touching picture of a short rest on the 'flight to Egypt.' A little family—is it the only one that has remained behind when everybody else wandered away, or have they already come back home because there was nothing better to be found out in the world? In the garden of a plundered farmhouse they have put up a poor imitation of a stable out of charred boards, and in it they live more poorly than the poorest gypsies. Their lean cow has been tied to a bush; among the trampled-down vegetables their equally lean mule grazes. The mother squats on the ground, nursing a child, while father and son are stirring up a heap of glowing ashes and roasting a handful of potatoes that they have dug up somewhere.

"The return pilgrimage of the natives has already begun at an extensive rate. The advancing Germans are met everywhere by long lines of them, on foot and in wagons, carrying with them carefully and lovingly the few remnants of their herds. What has been their experience?

"One nice day the Cossacks had appeared at their farms and had told them: 'Not a soul is allowed to remain here. The Germans are approaching and the Germans will torture you all to death if they catch you. Take with you whatever you can carry. Everything else must be burned and destroyed, so that the Germans won't find anything that they can use.' That was enough to make these poor, ignorant farmers take leave of their homesteads. By the thousands they wandered off quickly and without much hesitation. Some were driven away like so much cattle, day by day farther into an uncertain future. Others were carried in long columns of wagons to the nearest railroad and still others were led orderly by their own mayors and village elders. In the inland of the Empire they were to found for themselves new homes. The czar was going to look after them. Russia is powerful and rich. It will lure the Germans into its swamps so that they will drown there miserably. It will draw them all the way to Moscow and there they will experience the deadly fate of 1812. Just like Napoleon will the Germans suffer this time. This patriotic hope, however, did not compensate the farmers for their lost homes. It is true they get enough to eat every day. At their resting places they are fed from field kitchens supplied and equipped by the Russian army and administered by civil committees. Hunger they did not need to suffer. But for all that, their home-sickness will not down, and the dislike of the continuous wandering, the aversion to strange places, the loathing of the unorderly, irregular life of nomads strengthens their determination to turn off their road at the first opportunity and to seek the long way back to their village, in spite of the terrible Germans.

"But in the meantime the world has been turned upside down, their homes are unrecognizable; nothing, absolutely nothing, is as it used to be. Wherever there is the smallest nook that has remained inhabitable, some stranger has built a nest. The new authorities speak German, rule German, and run things in a German way. The need to protect themselves against epidemics, and political prudence, demand that these homeless wanderers should not be permitted to wander around any longer at will. Into cities they are not allowed to enter, or even to pass through them. Out in the country, the field police watch them carefully, for more and more frequently adventurous groups are formed—states in a very small way and without any regard for anybody else. Strong fellows with plenty of nerve use this rare opportunity, make themselves leaders and dictators of these groups, organize new communities, which they rule with a strong hand, make laws, inflict punishments, and impose their will just as they please. That makes it necessary for the German authorities to interfere promptly and to bring order and authority to bear on these insecure conditions. The population is registered and no one is allowed to immigrate or to emigrate without the proper papers.

"Of course, there are also good, carefully tended main roads besides the bad country paths, and some of them are even paved for miles. One of these runs right straight from the south toward the Polish city of Cholm. For miles one can see this road, which looks like a ribbon that grows narrower and narrower all the time; in the background is a forest, through and beyond which the road runs. At the farther end of the forest, on the shoulders of a hill, are the white buildings of the monastery of the Russian bishopric of Cholm. Only when one comes within a few hundred steps of these buildings does one see the low, long, stretched-out little town in line with the ridge of the hills that drop away to the north....

"A little farther on, to the northwest of this little country town, is the larger, rich city of Lublin. There all the advantages of civilization are in evidence: street cars, electric lights, department stores, coffee houses. But here, too, war, want, and misery have left their impression on everything: old men, women, children in rags, asking for shelter and stretching out their thin arms for bread. On all the squares troops pass and cross each other, delaying the traffic. There are Germans and Austro-Hungarians in long columns and then again a long line of Russian prisoners of war, marching to work. Among the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen only rarely some figures remind one of the fact that this is Eastern Europe: tall, thin Jews in their long caftans and Jewish women with their unnatural wigs; male and female beggars there are in great numbers, and they are so hungry looking and ragged, so deep-eyed and sickly, that one can hardly manage to swallow one's food in their vicinity, if one happened to have chosen a seat on the terrace of one of the hotels.

"A few days later Brest-Litovsk was taken. Behind the troops that stormed the fortifications during the night and thus forced the fall of the city, pressed from early morning great masses of the Austro-Hungarian and German armies. They came on over all the roads: infantry, artillery, cavalry, engineering troops, supply detachments, and in between, impatiently puffing, the automobiles of the higher staff officers, everybody eager to enter the big fortress and to get hold of the big booty.

"But what a disappointment! From far off clouds of dust and smoke announced the fate of this famous fortress. The bridges across the Bug had all been destroyed, those of steel blown up and the wooden ones burned. Only slowly separate small units managed to cross on temporary narrow bridges to the citadel. Everything else crowded together on both sides of the road and spread out into the fields, filling the flat surrounding country as far as the eye could reach with one single, immense, many colored war camp: groups of horses, field kitchens, resting infantrymen, innumerable white backs of wagon after wagon.

"Whoever managed to enter Brest-Litovsk saw for the first time a big city devastated and ruined as pitilessly as formerly only villages had been made to suffer. Hundreds and hundreds of houses, once human habitations, now smashed down to their very foundations, or mangled so as to have lost all meaning, ruins containing nothing but broken stones and ashes and at the best here and there a stair banister, suspended in midair. And all destruction had not been wrought as a result of a long siege and its continuous assaults of gunfire and shells. In one night, at the command of the Russian authorities, this Russian city had been laid waste. Only about one-quarter of it had remained entirely or partly habitable. Only in the citadel were there left supplies of any great amount. There quite some quantities of flour and canned food, weapons and munitions, war and railroad equipment, had escaped the well-prepared explosion, and had been saved only because there had not been enough time to complete the work of destruction and to explode all the mines that had been laid. A happy exception among this horrible riot of wholesale destruction was found occasionally in the case of some few estates of the Polish nobility. In some way they escaped here and there and were passed by without suffering demolition and despoliation in spite of the fact that the villages near which they were usually located were almost always masses of smoking ruins. The manor houses of some of these estates often became the temporary lodging of some division or even some army corps staff. For they filled one of the chief requirements for such headquarters: a sufficiency of many large, light rooms which permitted to combine the necessary offices with the officers' quarters under the same roof. Every high command needs a number of offices for its various branches of service, in war as well as in peace. At that, war demands a hundredfold measure of ready cooperation and punctual working together. What happens from early in the morning, far into the night and often throughout the night in these offices during the course of a lively action on the battle field is nothing more or less than administrative activity as it is known to us and practiced in peace, but of a degree of activity, responsibility, and decision, of an importance and variety as times of peace do not demand from an army officer.

"Day and night numerous telegraphs and telephones, established often by means of very skillful and exposed connections, receive reports, communications, inquiries, and requests from the front and transmit orders, instructions, decisions, and information to the front, and at the same time maintain a similar service with superior headquarters. The number of subjects which have to be watched continuously is legion: movements of their own and the enemy's forces; changes in their own and the opponent's positions; news and scouting service; losses, reserves; lodging, provisioning, arming of the troops; sanitation, prevention of epidemics, ambulances, hospitals; counting and handling of booty and prisoners; military law, religious matters, gifts; health and continuity of the supply of mounts; climate, weather, condition of the water; condition of streets, bridges, fortifications; means of intercourse and traffic of all kinds; railways, mails, wagons, motors, pack animals; aeroplanes; telegraph and wireless stations.

"And all these matters, within a certain group of the army, change hourly, perhaps, and are continuously subject to unexpected modifications; at the same time they depend in their outward relations on events that happen in other adjoining army groups, on the general military and political conditions, on the decisions and interference of general headquarters. And if the staff quarters of two or three army groups have to consult with each other about every action and re-action before they make their various moves, unceasing activity must be displayed by everyone in order to accomplish all that each day demands. This activity which at one and the same time actuates and reports, acts, observes, and accounts, requires the possession of many manly virtues: the energy of strong nerves, clearness, wisdom, knowledge, self-consciousness, and decision. Every commander shares in it. But the greatest demands are made by it on the few supreme commanders on whom depends the fate of millions.

"Thus the summer months quickly passed by. As they passed, the advance continued. In spite of this, however, the crops were brought in from the fields so recently conquered. And what was accomplished in this direction will some day form a separate chapter in the economical history of this war.

"Much of the crops, of course, had been destroyed. In many other cases all the agricultural machines and implements had been carried off or destroyed. And then there was a great lack of labor. What was there to be done? Under the leadership of officers with agricultural experience separate commissions were formed. They gathered up all the implements and machines that could be found or could be repaired again and then ordered by the hundred and thousand from the country in the rear what they still lacked and soon battalions of war prisoners were busy peacefully gathering in the wheat in the fields. Before long the harvest had been completed. Threshers and threshing machines were put to work. Wherever flour mills were in condition to allow of repairs, mechanics were set to this task. And soon a steady stream of flour poured forth that enabled the invaders to feed their armies, their prisoners, and whatever part of the civil population had returned, to a great extent from supplies raised and gathered in the occupied region itself, a remarkable success gained from a combination of German organization, Russian labor, and Polish versatility."[Back to Contents]