The Campaign in Russian Poland 10

The Campaign in Russian Poland 10

CHAPTER VII STORIES FROM THE FIGHTING LINE

 

 

The Austrian Army in these Polish campaigns suffered under the serious

disadvantage that, amongst the various nationalities serving in it,

there were many men whose sympathies were with the enemy, or whose

hearts were not on the Austrian side. The Slav soldiers felt they were

fighting against their brother Slavs of Russia, and there were also

in the Austrian army in Galicia Italian regiments from the Venetian

border about Trieste and Fiume. It was a sagacious move on the part

of the Tsar’s Government to make an offer in the first stage of the

campaign to Italy “as an evidence of his friendship and sympathy,” to

liberate and send to Italy all prisoners of Italian nationality taken

in Galicia, on condition that the Italian Government would engage not

to send them back to Austria. To this the Italian Prime Minister,

Signor Salandra, formally replied that the rules of international law

prohibited his acceptance of the offer. Commenting upon this, the Rome

semi-official _Messaggero_ remarked that, “Whatever Signor Salandra’s

answer may be, the Italian people are grateful to the Tsar, whose

generous humanitarian proposal contains also the official, solemn, and

precise affirmation that Russia recognises the right of Italy to the

Italian provinces that are still under Austrian rule.”

 

General Rennenkampf took with him into East Prussia, as a kind of

mascot or symbol that should be prophetic of the signal success

ultimately destined to crown the Muscovite arms, the identical flag

carried by the celebrated Skobelev on his momentous campaign of 1877. A

small thing in itself, this was well calculated to make a direct appeal

to the impressionable Slav temperament, to the young men who had heard

from their fathers of the wonderful “White General” who in the great

days of Plevna and the Balkans was perhaps more responsible than any

other single factor for the triumph of the Cross over the Crescent.

 

It was an incident characteristic of the pervading spirit, and one

well calculated to stimulate it. But there were thousands of incidents

and scenes that have perforce to be dismissed in a line, or even

not referred to at all. Among the many gallant spirits marked out

for special distinction of the Tsar was the Captain Pleshkoff whose

superb horsemanship had been acclaimed year after year at the Olympia

Horse Show in London, where as recently as 1914 he carried off the

King Edward VII Cup. Captain Pleshkoff received a nasty wound in one

of the cavalry combats around Warsaw. He is a Cossack by descent,

a pupil of the famous General Brussiloff, and is noted among his

admiring countrymen as the “inventor” of a new system of riding. The

captain shared the fate of most reformers when he attempted to bring

his riding method to the notice of his colonel, an old-fashioned

martinet commanding the Tsar’s Life Guard Cuirassiers. In fact, it led

to Pleshkoff’s temporary severance from his beloved regiment when he

became adjutant to one of the Grand-duke’s; but on the outbreak of the

present struggle he returned to the Life Guard Cuirassiers.

 

But there are so many men of Pleshkoff’s stamp among the Tsar’s eight

millions of fighters that his Imperial master might well be tempted

to say, with a great leader of the past, “If I made all my brave

soldiers generals, there wouldn’t be any privates left.” Such a one

was the wounded warrior who averred, with crystalline sincerity and

self-confidence, that if he had not been laid aside by a bullet the

campaign for Russian Poland would have been a much more brief affair!

 

A parallel story to one coming from the western theatre of war--of the

young girl who, by assuming masculine attire, managed to be accepted

for service with the Flying Corps--is that of a young Russian lady

who managed to smuggle herself into a cavalry regiment leaving for

the front. Not only so, but this young Amazon, in addition to bearing

herself bravely in the field--she was a fine horsewoman--assisted a

trooper in rescuing a wounded comrade. The secret of her sex was only

discovered when, a few days later, she herself was wounded. Again, two

lads about fifteen years of age escaped from their parents’ home in

Moscow, and, following the fortunes of a regiment belonging to that

ancient city, were present at half a dozen battles of Rennenkampf’s

campaign in East Prussia, “crawling on their stomachs with reserves

of ammunition to the firing line.” Apparently these adventurous boys

escaped unscathed.

 

A story with a delightful flavour of the hoax running through it was

communicated during October by the Petrograd correspondent of the

_Daily Telegraph_. It betrays a sense of Slavonic humour which, it is

to be hoped, was not entirely lost upon the victims of the ruse:

 

“A Russian airman, accompanied by an observation officer, was

flying over the enemy’s territory, when he was obliged to descend,

owing to engine trouble. The pilot and the officer were wearing

leather clothes, without any distinctive mark. They were working on

the motor when suddenly seven Austrian soldiers, in charge of an

under-officer, appeared over the crest of a little hill and approached

them. Resistance was impossible, for the Russians had no weapons but

revolvers. Fortunately, the officer knew German. Calling loudly to

the Austrian officer, he ordered him, in a peremptory manner, to come

and help him mend the motor. The Austrian, believing he was in the

presence of a superior officer, hastened with his men to obey, and

soon the engine had been put right. The aeroplane started off, and

as it ascended in spirals to the clouds a paper fell at the feet of

the gaping Austrians. It contained a short message of thanks to the

officer and his men for giving such timely aid to Russian aviators.”

 

At the time of General Rennenkampf’s severe reverse near Soldau after

his first brilliant incursion into East Prussia, it had been generally

inferred that the brave General Samsonoff and other leading officers

had been killed in the practical surrounding of a large Russian force

of two army corps. A gleam came out of the fog of war when it was

semi-officially announced that this was not the case. It was the deadly

explosion of a chance shell that killed General Samsonoff, General

Martos, and other officers of the Staff. The former was particularly

beloved by his men, but he had a fatal facility for exposing his life

unduly and recklessly. In reply to all remonstrances he would simply

say, “My place is where my soldiers are”--and to this trait, not less

than to his care for the comfort of his men, was due the remarkable

popularity that he enjoyed among the rank and file. No officer was more

universally regretted on the Russian side.

 

The Tsar took the unusual but intensely popular course of conferring

all four Classes of the Order of St. George, the Russian Victoria

Cross, upon a humble trooper of Hussars. This man--a type of the many

who honestly cannot see that they have done anything out of the common

in performing a deed of the purest and most unselfish heroism--was

orderly to an officer. The latter fell dangerously wounded, when

this brave fellow rescued him from a storm of shot and carried him a

distance of _four miles_. During that long and wearisome tramp with his

helpless burden the soldier had to dodge the enemy’s patrols a number

of times. Not only so, but in their path lay several canals, all of

which he swam, supporting his officer in the water as best he could.

 

Another soldier, brought into the field-hospital at Druskeniki, had

received _twenty-four bullets_ in his legs. He was not aware that many

of them had even struck him--an intensely interesting point this, and

not wholly unreminiscent of Mr. Winston Churchill’s testimony of his

and others’ experience in the great Dervish rush at Omdurman, when they

were scarcely conscious of wounds or of tumult. Well, when this Russian

soldier recovered consciousness after having one of his feet torn off,

he found himself lying in a depression of the ground, with shrapnel and

rifle-bullets whistling over him. The undulating ground unquestionably

saved him from death, as six bullets passed through his pail and

four through his water-bottle! He lay thus for some twenty-four hours

before being discovered and carried into safety, having spent this

agonising period in praying for a passing projectile to put an end to

his sufferings.

 

A visitor to the scene of the desperately sustained struggle for the

line of the river San points to the melancholy fact that at one point

alone where 200,000 men were locked in a death-grapple for upwards

of a week (numbers larger than those engaged either at Gettysburg or

Waterloo), the name of the wretched little village would not be known

to one in a thousand who looked at the map. Yet the reaper Death

found fearful employment during those seven or eight days of pitiless

slaughter. “At the summit of and just beyond the crest of the hill

is the line where stood the Austrian artillery in their efforts to

encounter the hell of heavier fire let loose on them by the Russians.

The heaps of brass cartridge-cases show how stubbornly the Austrians

contested this ridge. Here and there one sees where a big shell landed

true. Splinters and bits of wheels scattered in every direction spell

the end of this particular gun-crew. Behind this the Austrians seem to

have had a cavalry support of some kind, for in a little hollow just

over the ridge we come upon a mass of cavalry accoutrements. The large

metal helmets of the Austrian dragoons are scattered everywhere, some

of them twisted by bits of shell, others punctured with the single

bullet-hole which, coupled with the deep brown stain on the inside,

tells what happened to the unfortunate who owned it. We find one on

which the name and regiment of the wearer is written, a name no doubt

that when published as among the dead will bring misery and suffering

to some home in the beautiful valley of the Danube, where even now

perhaps the wife or mother anxiously awaits news of this very one who

sleeps now in a great trench with hundreds of his fellows.”

 

It is a relief to turn momentarily from such scenes of horror and

bloodshed to the humorous aspect--grimly so, perhaps, but none the less

humorous--of war. Thus, for example, there is something of a Gilbertian

touch about the “interchange” of the Kaiser’s hunting-box and the

Tsar’s hunting-box (the latter’s at Spala, near Tomascheff) in the

two Polands. The Russians appear to have seized upon the one and the

Germans upon the other, and to have thoroughly despoiled them. Still

on the grimly humorous side (“the hostilities in Poland are taking on

a very embittered and cruel form,” he says), the _Daily Telegraph’s_

Petrograd correspondent tells of the form of receipt(!) that the German

troops would leave with the ignorant peasantry after commandeering all

sorts of supplies. Two such written acknowledgments which were shown

to the correspondent ran: “I am much obliged to you for your beautiful

horse,” and “Whoever presents this at the end of the war will be

hanged.”

 

This same _Telegraph_ correspondent states in definite terms of the

Russians that “looting and licence are unknown, and everything taken is

paid for in hard cash. They are welcomed as deliverers by the Polish

peasantry, who bring them refreshments and cigarettes, for which

payment is refused.”