Dated:
Somewhere in Poland,
June 2, 1915.

Provided with carriages we left our hospitable Colonel for the front trenches 4 versts further on. As we were near the Front when we were at regimental head-quarters it was not deemed safe to take the motor-cars any further, on account of the clouds of dust which they leave in their wake.

The country here is spread out in great rolling valleys with very little timber and only occasional crests or ridges separating one beautiful verdant stretch of landscape from another. It struck one as quite obvious in riding over this country that the men who planned these roads had not taken war into consideration. Had they done so they certainly would not have placed them so generally along ridges, where one’s progress can be seen from about 10 versts in every direction. As I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, this particular army had not fallen back on its fortified and prepared line, but was camping out about 25 to 30 versts in front of it in positions which were somewhat informal. In riding through this country one has the unpleasant sensation that every time one shows up on a ridge, an enemy of an observing and enterprising disposition might be tempted to take a shot at one just for practice. My friend the banker soldier explained, however, that we should be difficult to hit, and anyway he rather enjoyed shell fire. “It is a sort of nice game,” he told me with a charming smile, “one finds it very entertaining and not altogether dangerous.”

However his insouciance did not prevent him taking the precaution of forbidding the use of motor-cars with their clouds of dust, and he was quite content that we should take the carriages, which made less of a target on the dry roads.

From regimental head-quarters we went up into a little gulch where we again found that we were expected, and a genial Colonel of a howitzer battery was waiting to entertain us. Five of our guns were sitting along the road with their muzzled noses up in the air at an angle of about 35 degrees waiting, waiting for some one to give them word to shoot at something or other.

Batteries are always peculiarly fascinating to me; they always appear so perfect in their efficiency, and capable of getting work done when required. These five were of the 4-inch variety, with an elevation of forty-five degrees obtainable.

At a word from the Colonel they were cleared for action and their sighting apparatus inspected and explained. As usual they were equipped with panorama sights, with the aiming point a group of trees to the right and rear of the position, and with their observation point 3 miles away in a trench near the infantry line. The sixth gun was doing lonely duty a mile away in a little trench all by itself. This position the Colonel informed us was shelled yesterday by the enemy, who fired thirty-five 12-centimetre shells at them without scoring a single hit. After looking at the guns we spent an hour at tea, and then in our carts pushed on up the valley, where we found a regiment of Cossack cavalry in reserve. The hundreds of horses were all saddled and wandering about, each meandering where its fancy led. Everywhere on the grass and under the few clumps of brush were sitting or sleeping the men, few of whom had any shelter or tents of any kind, and the whole encampment was about as informal as the encampment of a herd of cattle. In fact the Cossacks impress one as a kind of game who have no more need of shelter or comforts than the deer of the forest. When they settle down for the night they turn their horses loose, eat a bit of ration and then sit under a tree and go to sleep. It is all very charming and simple. Our guide informed us that when they wanted their horses they simply went out and whistled for them as a mother sheep bleats for its young, and that in a surprisingly short time every soldier found his mount. The soldiers are devoted to their horses, and in a dozen different places one could see them rubbing down their mounts or rubbing their noses and petting them.

From this encampment the road went up to its usual place on the crest of the hill. The soldier driver of our carriage did not seem to feel the same amount of enthusiasm about the “nice game” of being shelled, and protested as much as he dared about taking the horses further; but being quietly sat upon, he subsided with a deep sigh and started up over the ridge in the direction of a clump of houses beyond another rise of ground at an astonishingly rapid speed. From the crest along which we travelled we had a beautiful view of a gently undulating valley lying peaceful and serene under the warm afternoon sun. A few insects buzzing about in the soft air near the carriage were the only signs of life about us. We drove up at a good round pace to the little clump of trees which sheltered a group of farm buildings. As we were getting out of our carriage there was a sharp report to the road on our right, and looking back I saw the fleecy white puff of a shrapnel shell breaking just over the road to the north of us. Like the bloom of cotton the smoke hung for an instant in the air and then slowly expanding drifted off. A moment later, almost in the same place, another beautiful white puff, with its heart of copper-red, appeared over the road, and again the sharp sound of its burst drifted across the valley. The Austrian shrapnel has a bit of reddish-brown smoke which must be, I think, from the bursting charge in the shell.

Our guide was quite delighted and smiled and clicked his heels cheerfully as he ushered us into the little room of the officer commanding the regiment in the trenches just ahead of us. Even as he greeted us, the telephone rang in the little low-ceilinged room of the cottage, and he excused himself as he went to reply to it. In a few minutes he came back with an annoyed expression on his face. “These unpleasant Austrians,” he said in disgust. “They are always up to their silly tricks. They have been shelling some Red Cross carts on the road. I have just ordered the howitzer battery in our rear to come into action and we shall see if we cannot give them a lesson in manners.”

After a few pleasantries he asked what it was that we would most like, and I replied in my stock phrases, “Observation points and trenches, if you please.” He stood for a moment studying the tip of his dusty boot; evidently he was not very eager about the job. However, he shrugged his shoulders and went back to the telephone, and after a few minutes conversation came back and said to us: “It is a very bad time to go into our trenches, as we have no covered ways, and in the daytime one is seen, and the enemy always begin firing. It is very unsafe, but if you are very anxious I shall permit one of you to go forward, though it is not convenient. When the enemy begin to fire, our batteries reply, and firing starts in all the trenches. The soldiers like to fight, and it doesn’t take much to start them.”

Put in this way none of us felt very keen about insisting. So we all compromised by a visit to a secondary position, which we were told was not very dangerous, as the enemy could only reach it with their shell fire and “of course no one minds that,” as the officer casually put it. We all agreed that, of course, we did not mind that, and so trooped off with the Colonel to the trenches and dug-outs where the troops who were not in the firing line were in immediate reserve.

The group of dug-outs was flanked with trenches, for, as the Colonel informed us, “Who knows when this position may be attacked?” And then he added, “You see, though we are not in the direct view of the enemy here, they know our whereabouts and usually about this time of day they shell the place. They can reach it very nicely and from two different directions. Yesterday it became so hot in our house that we all spent a quiet afternoon in the dug-outs.” He paused and offered us a cigarette, and as he did so there came a deep boom from our rear and a howitzer shell wailed over our heads on its mission of protest to the Austrians about firing on Red Cross wagons. A few seconds later the muffled report of its explosion came back across the valley. A second later another and another shell went over our heads. The Colonel smiled, “You see,” he said, “my orders are being carried out. No doubt the enemy will reply soon.”

His belief was justified. A moment later that extremely distressing sound made by an approaching shell came to our ears, followed immediately by its sharp report as it burst in a field a few hundred yards away. I looked about at the soldiers and officers around me, but not one even cast a glance in the direction of the smoke drifting away over the field near by. After wandering about his position for half or three-quarters of an hour, we returned to the cottage. It consisted of but three rooms. The telephone room, a little den where the officers ate, and a large room filled with straw on which they slept at night, when sleeping was possible.

Here we met a fine grey-haired, grizzled Colonel, who, as my banker friend informed me, commanded a neighbouring regiment, the — Grenadiers. He is one of our finest officers and is in every way worthy of his regiment, the history of which stretches back over two centuries. The officer himself looked tired and shabby, and his face was deeply lined with furrows. We read about dreadful sacrifices in the Western fighting, but I think this regiment, which again I regret that I cannot name, has suffered as much in this war as any unit on any Front. In the two weeks of fighting around Cracow alone it has dwindled from 4,000 men to 800, and that fortnight represented but a small fraction of the campaigning which it has done since the war started. Again and again it has been filled to its full strength, and after every important action its ranks were depleted hideously. Now there are very few left of the original members, but as an officer proudly said, “These regiments have their traditions of which their soldiers are proud. Put a moujik in its uniform and to-morrow he is a grenadier and proud of it.”

The Colonel, who sat by the little table as we talked, did not speak English, but in response to the question of a friend who addressed him in Russian, he said with a tired little smile, “Well, yes, after ten months one is getting rather tired of the war. One hopes it will soon be over and that one may see one’s home and children once more, but one wonders if——” He paused, smiled a little, and offered us a cigarette. It is not strange that these men who live day and night so near the trenches that they are never out of sound of firing, and never sleep out of the zone of bursting shells, whose every day is associated with friends and soldiers among the fallen, wonder vaguely if they will ever get home. The trench occupied by this man’s command was so exposed that he could only reach it unobserved by crawling on his stomach over the ridge, and into the shallow ditch that served his troops for shelter.

Leaving the little farm we drove back over the road above which we had seen the bursting shells on our arrival, but our own batteries, no doubt, had diverted the enemy from practice on the road, for we made the 3 versts without a single one coming our way.

It was closing twilight when we started back for the head-quarters that we had left in the early morning. The sun had set and the peace and serenity of the evening were broken only by the distant thunder of an occasional shell bursting in the west. From the ridge over which our road ran I could distinctly see the smoke from three different burning villages fired by the German artillery. One wonders what on earth the enemy have in mind when they deliberately shell these pathetic little patches of straw-thatched peasant homes. Even in ordinary times these people seem to have a hard life in making both ends meet, but now in the war their lot is a most wretched one. Apparently hardly a day passes that some village is not burned by the long range shells of the enemy’s guns. That such action has any military benefit seems unlikely. The mind of the enemy seems bent on destruction, and everywhere their foot is placed grief follows.

The next morning for several hours I chatted with the General and his Chief of Staff, and found, as always at the Front, the greatest optimism. “Have you seen our soldiers at the Front?” is the question always asked, and when one answers in the affirmative they say, “Well, then how can you have any anxiety as to the future. These men may retire a dozen times, but demoralized or discouraged they are never. We shall win absolutely surely. Do not doubt it.”

The Polish Legion.