CHAPTER XX
LIBERATED
A prolonged spell of steady westerly winds delayed the British air squadron's return to the Western Front. A week or more had passed since the arrival of Blake and his companions on Russian soil, and although the hospitality of their hosts exceeded all expectations, the airmen eagerly looked for a favourable breeze to aid them on their lengthy flight.
Especially was there anxiety when they learnt the news—a widespread secret—that the great Anglo-French offensive was shortly to take place. On the Eastern Front, especially in Bukovina, the Muscovite troops were displaying great activity. Already the Austrians were being pushed back in headlong rout towards the Carpathians. In Italy, too, their frenzied offensive, which in the first instance had pushed Cadorna's troops from the Trentino Mountains, had been checked and hurled backwards by the magnificent valour of the Italian armies.
On the Western Front Verdun was still proving the grave of thousands of the Kaiser's troops, who, in hopes of being able to announce a splendid though costly victory, had been ineffectually hurled day after day upon the grim, determined lines of Frenchmen backed by their tremendously effective "Seventy-fives."
Meanwhile in the neighbourhood of Riga Hindenburg had to be watched. More, his projected offensive had to be met and broken. Here, too, there was a good prospect of success for the Allied arms, for not only had the Russians vast reserves of men and munitions, but since the bad smashing of the German Fleet off the Jutland shore, the danger of a naval attack upon Riga was at an end. And not only that; the almost intact Russian Baltic Fleet, aided by a number of British submarines, could co-operate with the land forces and seriously menace the left flank of the German armies in Courland.
Private Thomas Smith, who was now putting on weight rapidly and was fast recovering his normal health and spirits, had been made a supplementary member of the battleplane's crew. On learning the names of his new officers he made the announcement that for three months during his incarceration at Meseritz he had been acting as servant to Athol's father.
There were, he reported, four British officers at the prison camp, on whom the task of maintaining discipline devolved; for, owing to the horrible sanitary conditions and totally inadequate food, typhus had broken out in the camp. It was Wittenburg all over again. The Prussian guards, terrorised by the thought that they were exposed to the dread disease, had kept well aloof from their prisoners, supplying them food by means of iron trucks that were hauled in and out of the camp by endless ropes. To make matters worse the trucks were liberally sprinkled with chloride of lime, which had the effect of making the already unwholesome food absolutely unpalatable.
"Not a single man of us left the camp alive during those days," continued Smith. "Afterwards it got a lot better, so they hired us out like a lot of cattle. As things went it turned out all right for me. No, sir, I haven't seen anything of Colonel Hawke for nearly six months. He was all right then—as well as could be expected in that horrible den."
At daybreak on the following morning the rumble of guns, that for the past week had been intermittent, increased into a continuous and terrific roar. All along the Courland Front dense clouds of smoke drifted slowly across the Russian lines. The ground, twenty miles from the actual scene of the furious cannonade, trembled under the pulsations of the concentrated artillery.
"Would you like to have a nearer view of the action?" enquired the courteous Russian colonel who acted as the British officers' principal host. "To-day we hope to achieve something."
"Our battleplane is at your service, sir," replied Blake.
"No, no," protested the Russian. "That is not what I meant. Your work is best performed on your own front when the climatic conditions permit of your return. Here, while you are on Russian soil, it is our duty to take good care of you. Nevertheless, should you wish to see how your Russian brothers-in-arms can fight the Huns——?"
"Assuredly," replied Blake.
Within five minutes a swift motor-car was in readiness. Accompanied by two Russian officers, Blake, Athol and Dick were soon speeding over an excellent road that had only recently been completed—one of the vast network of communications made by the Russians during the winter of 1915-16, and which enabled them to move their troops with the same facilities as did their highly-organised foes.
"This is as far as I dare take you, gentlemen," announced one of the Russian officers, as the car came to a standstill in the rear of a slightly-rising ridge. "His Excellency Colonel Dvouski has impressed upon me the necessity of caution. It will be fairly safe to walk to the summit of this hill. From it we can see much of the operations."
The party alighted and accompanied their guide. The view at first sight was distinctly monotonous. Both the Russian and the German triple lines of trenches were completely invisible, the zigzag lines of clay being garbed in a verdant cloak of wavy grass interspersed with gay-coloured flowers. But, although the trenches were concealed from direct view the Russian gunners had the range of the hostile guns to a nicety, thanks to the efficient aid given by their observing aeroplanes.
As far as the eye could reach the German lines were being subjected to a terrific bombardment. Clouds of dust and smoke, mingled with flying timbers, sandbags, human bodies and limbs testified to the stupendous power of the high-explosive shells which Russia's erstwhile foe was now lavishly pouring into her new ally's magazines.
Two miles beyond the German third line trenches another deluge of shells was falling, forming a "barrage" or impassable zone of fire in order to prevent the enemy's reserves from being rushed up to assist the already demoralised front line defenders.
The Russian officer consulted his watch.
"In seven and a half minutes from now," he announced laconically and as calmly as if he were stating the time of departure of a train.
Breathlessly Athol and Dick watched the bursting shells, mentally comparing the hail of friendly projectiles with the state of affairs when they were "foot-slogging" in the Flanders trenches. Then they were in the unenviable position of being subjected to a heavy "strafing" with the disconcerting knowledge that the Huns were sending three shells to the British one. Now, thanks to energetic measures to provide munitions, it was the other way about. The sight that the lads witnessed near Riga was but a part of a similar and concerted plan of action stretching between the Baltic and the Carpathians on the Eastern Front; from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier on the Western, and in no less a degree against the Austrians on the Italian border.
Suddenly the guns pounding the German first line trenches "lifted," transferring their hail of projectiles to a line well beyond. Simultaneously swarms of grey-coated Russian infantry appeared from the invisible trenches, clambered over the parapets, and surged shoulder to shoulder across the intervening "no man's land."
Numbers fell, for the Huns had contrived, even amidst the inferno of high explosive shells, to keep some of their machine-guns intact.
But the Czar's troops were not to be denied. With the sunlight glinting upon their long bayonets, and with a succession of rousing cheers they swept forward unfalteringly and irresistibly.
Penetrating the barbed wire entanglements they closed. Here and there bayonet crossed bayonet, or clubbed rifle fell upon foeman's skull, but for the most part the Huns, their spirits crushed by the nerve-racking bombardment, threw down their rifles and raised their hands above their heads in token of surrender.
Over the parados of the captured trench swept the triumphant troops, hurling hand grenades by hundreds into the second line of Hun defences. The reserve trenches shared the same fate, and in less than forty minutes the surviving Germans, unable to flee owing to the steady barrage fire, surrendered to their hitherto despised foes.
Already swarms of prisoners, closely guarded, were being marched to the rear of the Russian positions, while a long line of wounded, some supported by their comrades, others borne in stretchers, and others walking slowly and painfully, testified to the stubbornness of the conflict.
"What are those fellows doing, I wonder?" asked Dick, indicating a large body of unarmed men who were approaching with every indication of delight. They were still some distance off, but by the aid of their binoculars Blake and his party could see the men with comparative distinctness.
They were clad mostly in a motley of rags Their faces were black with dirt and almost hidden by long, straggling beards. Yet in spite of their battered and scarecrow appearances they marched with a good idea of military order.
"Poles, perhaps," suggested one of the Russian officers. "The Huns have forced a lot of them into their ranks. That is what the Germans meant by granting them self-government."
"You are wrong there, Alexis Ivanovitch," said his brother officer, speaking in French, for, out of politeness to their guests, they had refrained from talking to each other in their native tongue. "Those men are not Poles; they are English and French."
"Surely?" inquired Blake incredulously.
"I am certain of it," continued the Russian. "They are some of the prisoners whom the Huns have sent from their concentration camps to work in their trenches on this front. These Germans have a saying, 'Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar.' The whole civilised world can now very well say, 'Show me a Hun and I will show you a brute.'"
Nearer and nearer marched the ragged regiment, proceeding along a road that led about a quarter of a mile from the hillock on which Blake and his companions were standing.
"Let us go and give the poor fellows a bit of a welcome," he suggested, to which the Russian officer agreed.
Suddenly, to his comrades' surprise, Athol broke into a run and made straight for the advancing men. His sharp eyes had discovered a tall, attenuated figure at the head of the column. In spite of the grey beard, the hollow cheek, and bent shoulders the lad recognised his father. Not so Colonel Hawke; he never expected to find his son, a tall strapping youth in the uniform of an officer of the Royal Flying Corps, on this remote corner of Russian soil.
When at length the colonel grasped the situation, he could only gasp in speechless wonderment, while Athol shook his hands as if they were a couple of pump-handles.
The rest of the released prisoners, numbering half a dozen British and French officers, and about four hundred men, halted, broke ranks, and crowded round the rest of Blake's party, filled with delight at the sight of the well-known uniforms once more.
At the same time a Russian regiment on its way to the captured positions halted. The troops with characteristic kindness were soon offering their water-bottles, rations and tobacco to their starving allies.
"It has been simply hell," declared Athol's father, after he had recovered from the surprise that had all but rendered him speechless with emotion. "Those swine of Germans compelled our poor fellows to slave in their first-line trenches. Our spirit was broken by hunger and exhaustion. We would have welcomed a Russian shell, but even that was denied us. They pushed us into dug-outs and mine galleries, and kept us there for three days without food. Thank heaven, though, the boys kept their end up pretty well. At least three large mines failed to explode as the Russians stormed the first line trenches, and I think I know why. We tampered with the wires."
"We have a motor-car which is at your disposal, Colonel Hawke," said the Russian officer responsible for the safety of the British airmen. "It will indeed be an honour to offer you hospitality."
Athol's parent shook his head.
"Many thanks, sir," he replied, "but I must decline. Until I see these men safely quartered and given a good meal my place is with them. Well, good-bye, Athol, for the present. I'll try to look you up this evening. I say," he added anxiously, "what's this we've heard about a great German naval victory in the North Sea?"
"If the fact that Wilhelmshaven and Kiel are chock-a-block with crippled German warships, that a score or more are at the bottom of the North Sea, and that Jellicoe's fleet still holds undisputed mastery of the sea—if that constitutes a German victory they may repeat their success as many times as they like," observed Desmond Blake. "I suppose that in Germany the people still believe the tissue of lies issued by the German Admiralty. Already neutrals know the truth. I feel sorry for the Kaiser when his subjects learn the actual facts."
"I feel sorry for no German," declared Colonel Hawke. "I never was of a vindictive nature, but—a Somali would give a Hun points as far as 'culture' is concerned, while an Afghan or a Turk is streets above the brutal, degraded louts who sport the Kaiser's uniform. My great wish at the present moment is to get back to England as soon as possible, pick myself up—and I want a lot of feeding up, I fancy—and then have another go at the Huns."