  The month of May in Poland, if this season is typical of the climate here, is a period to dream about. When we turned out of our camp beds early this morning, the sun was streaming into our little whitewashed room, while the fragrance of lilacs blooming in a near-by garden drifted in at the open window. In the little garden behind our house are a dozen colonies of bees, and already they are up and about their daily tasks. The sky is without a cloud and the warmth and life of the early spring morning makes one forget the terrible business that we are engaged in. The little street of the town is lined with great horse-chestnut trees now in full bloom with every branch laden deep with the great white pendent blossoms. For a What has broken the peaceful tremor of our thoughts is the sight of some soldiers pulling into the town a half-wrecked aeroplane brought down by artillery fire the day before near our lines. Its wings are shattered and its propellers twisted into kindling, while its slight body (if one can use that expression) is torn and punctured by a score or more of shrapnel holes, with several gashes where bits of the shell case had penetrated the thin metal frame. Here at least is one example of artillery practice which has been able to cripple the bird of ill omen on the wing. After a generous breakfast, provided by our kind host the General, we are in our motor-cars again and in a few minutes are speeding down one of the roads westward to the head-quarters of a certain artillery brigade who over the telephone have consented to show us particular Every village that we pass through is full of soldiers bestirring for the day, while already the main arteries of travel to the trenches are filling up with the activities of the morning. It is a perfectly still day, and with each advancing hour it is growing hotter. There has been no rain for a week or two, the dust is deep upon the roads, and as our cars hum along the highways we leave volumes of the thin cloud in our wake. Now and again we pass small columns of infantry marching cheerfully along in the sunshine, each man in a cloud of dust. Yet every face is cheerful, and almost without exception the men are singing their marching songs as they swing along the highways. In the villages and on the road everything suggests war, but now with quite a different atmosphere from that of last autumn. Then it was war also, but of war the novelty, the new and the untried. Then all faces were anxious, some apprehensive, some depressed. They were going into a new experience. Now, however, it is war as a tried and experienced profession that is about us. The conduct of the campaign has become as much of a business to the soldiers and to the officers as the operating of a railroad to men At brigade head-quarters we halt a few minutes and are directed to proceed slowly along a certain road, and advised to stop in a cut just before passing over a certain crest. When we learn that the enemy’s guns command the road over the crest we inquire with the keenest interest the exact location of the ridge mentioned, for something suggests to us that this is a bit of interesting information that the artillery officer is handing out to us so very casually. They are all casual by the way; probably they have all got so used to sudden death and destruction that they feel as nonchalant about their own fate as they do about others. Half an hour’s run over very heavy and sandy road, brought us on to a great white ribbon of a highway that ran due west and dipped over the ridge. This was our place, and stopping the cars we climbed out to meet a few officers sauntering down the road. They seemed to be coming from nowhere in particular, but as I learned later, they lived in a kind of cave dug out of the side of the road, and had been advised by telephone that we were coming and so were on the lookout for us. The ranking officer was a colonel of artillery—one of the kind that you would turn about in the street to look at and to say to yourself, “Every inch a soldier.” A serious, kindly-faced man in a dirty uniform with shoulder straps so faded and frayed that a second look was necessary to get his rank at all. For six months he had been living in just such quarters as the cave in the side of the road where we found him. He was glad to show us his observation. One could see at a glance that his whole heart and soul were wrapped up in his three batteries, and he spoke of all his positions and his observation points with as much pride as a mother speaking about her children. The country here is a great sweeping expanse, with just a few ridges here and there like the one that we have come up behind. The country reminds one of the valley of the Danube or perhaps the Red River Valley in North Dakota, except that the latter has less timber in it. I thanked him politely and also commended the sun for shining in the enemy’s eyes instead of over their shoulders as happened last night when the observer in the German battery spotted us at 6,000 yards and sent five shells to tell us that we were receiving his highest consideration. On the top of a near-by hill was a small building which had formerly been the Russian observation point, but the Germans suspecting this had quickly reduced it to a pile of ruins. Near by we entered a trench cut in from the back of the hill, and worked our way A first-line trench in Poland. It was now getting on toward noon and intensely hot. The view from this position as one could sweep it with the hyperscope was perfectly beautiful. Off to the west twinkled the silver ribbon of the Rawka, while the whole plain was dotted with fields of wheat and rye that stretched below us like a chess board. Here and there where had been houses were now but piles of ruins. The lines here were quite far apart—perhaps half a mile, and in between them were acres of land under cultivation. I think that the most remarkable thing that I have seen in this war was the sight of peasants working between the lines as calmly as though no such thing as war existed. Through the glasses I could distinctly see one old white beard with a horse ploughing up a field, and even as I was looking at him I saw a shell burst not half a mile beyond him near one of the German positions. I mentioned it to one of the officers. “Oh yes,” he said, “neither we nor the Germans fire on the peasants nowadays. They must do their work and they harm neither of us.” On this part of the line the war seems to have become rather a listless affair and perfunctory to say the least. I suppose both Germans A bit to the south-west of us lay a town which a few days ago was shelled by the Germans. This town lies in a salient of our line, and since Russian General inspecting his gunners. As we sped down this three miles one felt a certain satisfaction that one had a 95 horsepower Napier capable of doing 80 miles an hour. A third of the town itself was destroyed by the German shell fire. The rest was like a city of the dead. Not a human being of the population was to be seen in the streets, which but a week ago were swarming with people. Here and there a soldier from the near-by positions lounged on an abandoned doorstep, or napped peacefully under one of the trees in the square. The sun of noon looked down upon a deserted village, if one does not count an occasional dog prowling about, or one white kitty sitting calmly on a window ledge in the sunshine casually washing her face. As ruins have long ceased to attract us, we did not loiter long here, but turned eastward along the great white road that led back in the direction of Warsaw. There is one strip of this road which I suppose is not more than 4,500 yards from the German gun positions. Personally I am always interested in these matters, and being of an inquiring turn of mind I asked my friend the Ten miles up the road we came on a bit of forest where the unfortunate villagers who had been driven out by shell fire were camping. Here they were in the wood living in rude lean-to’s, surrounded by all their worldly possessions that they had the means of getting away. Cows, ducks, pigs, and chicken roamed about the forests, while dozens of children played about in the dust. One picture I shall not forget. Before a hut made of straw and branches of trees a mother had constructed a rude oven in the earth by setting on some stones the steel top of the kitchen stove that she had brought with her. Kneeling over the fire she was preparing the primitive noonday meal. Just behind was a cradle in Telephoning to the battery from the observation position. A hundred yards away a gang of labourers was digging in the forest. It is no wonder that the mother looks nervously from her fire at their work. Perhaps she wonders what they are about. We know. It is another line of trenches. From what we have seen of the front line we believe they will not be needed, but it is not strange that these poor fugitives look on with anxious eyes with the question written large on every face. Probably to them the war seems something from which they cannot escape. They came to this wood for safety and now again they see more digging of trenches going on. Another hour on the road brings us back to the head-quarters of the army and our day in May is over. THE CHANGE OF FRONT IN POLAND AND THE BATTLE OF OPATOV |
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