THE GUARDIAN OF THE LINE—HERO TALE OF LITHUANIA
Told by Frederic Lees
One of the most remarkable facts connected with the war on the Russian front is the large number of women who have distinguished themselves by conspicuous bravery, sometimes in the actual fighting-line, but more often in a civilian capacity. This story deals with the ordeal undergone by a humble railway-crossing keeper's wife in Lithuania, as told in the Wide World Magazine.
I—"THE LONELIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD"
One morning in April, 1915, Stephania Ychas, the wife of the keeper of a railway-crossing to the north of the Lithuanian town of Shavli, felt the saddest and loneliest woman in the world. Do what she could, she found it impossible to rid herself of the feeling that a catastrophe was imminent—that the terrible war into which her country had been plunged meant the end of all things. Poor Lithuania! Once so fair a place, now so desolate a wilderness!
Stephania's duties, in these troubled times, kept her continually on the qui vive. At all hours of the day—and latterly during many of the night—she had to be in and out of her little house, in order to see that the rails were clear, or to note the numbers of the troop trains as they swept past towards the north. Backwards and forwards, from her door to the telephone, fixed against the wall on the right-hand side of a little window through which she could overlook a big sweep of the line in the direction of Shavli, she went, welcoming the never-ending succession of trainloads of soldiers, wounded, or mere war material passing on to the new line of defence, and reporting their progress to the railway and military authorities.
Day after day, night after night, the great retreat of the Russian forces continued, until, single-handed as she was, Stephania Ychas was almost dropping with fatigue. A hundred times she told herself that human flesh and blood could never stand such a strain. It was not the fatigue alone which was crushing her. Added to her physical tortures were mental ones, the feeling of being alone, so horribly alone, and the knowledge that the enemy, as announced by the retreat and the nerve-racking booming of the guns, was rapidly advancing on Shavli, and that until Russia had had time to recover, the hated Teutons would inevitably overrun Lithuania as far as Vilna. At night her brain was filled with pictures of burning farms, ravaged orchards, and indescribable scenes of brutality such as she knew the German soldiers had been guilty of in Belgium and Poland.
A dozen times a day, dizzy and sick at heart, she had been on the point of staggering to the telephone to inform the commander of a neighbouring station that she could continue no longer. But a sense of duty had held her back. When it came to a point of renunciation, her stout Lithuanian heart said "Nay," and she recalled the parting from her husband and his final adjurations.
Buried in thought, while waiting for a train which has just been signalled from Shavli, she recalled the morning when Michael Ychas, suddenly called to the Colours, had left her. It seemed like an eternity since those days of the mobilization.
II—"GOOD-BYE, STEPHANIA—GUARD THE LINE WELL!"
"Good-bye, Stephania," he had said. "Be of good cheer whilst I am away, and guard the line well. It is sad to leave you here all alone. Sad to be obliged to leave one's native country and abandon it to unknown dangers. How much better I should have liked to have defended Lithuania, I, a Lithuanian bred and born, than to have been drafted into a regiment bound for the Caucasus. As if the Government could not trust us in our own country! However, Stephania, you are left, and you are doing a man's duty. It makes me happy, in the midst of my misery, to think that you are there to look after the home and the crossing and the rails. Guard them well, Stephania, and rest assured that, in my absence, I shall constantly pray to the Virgin to watch over you."
Her reflections were interrupted by a shriek from the locomotive of the expected train, which was made up partly of compartments packed with soldiers, partly of wagons filled with the most heterogeneous collection of things she had ever seen in her life—pieces of machinery piled one on the top of the other, heaps of metal articles of every imaginable description, and every scrap of copper or lead, apparently, which Shavli contained. A waving of hands from the soldiers, a friendly yell from a hundred throats, and the train had sped on its way.
Stephania Ychas had no time now to waste over daydreaming. Hurrying into her cottage, she went straight to the telephone and rang up the commander of the station farther up the line. After ringing in vain for fully a minute, she got the connection and made her report.
"Train number three hundred and forty-six passed North Shavli crossing a minute ago," she said. "A mixed train, men and materials. Any news?"
"Shavli reports that things are getting warm," replied a voice. "I should not be surprised to hear that we have to leave before the day's out. You'd better 'phone to headquarters."
She lost not a moment in carrying out the suggestion.
"Halloa, halloa! Is that Shavli?"
"Yes," came a quick answer. "You're the North Shavli crossing-keeper, aren't you? Good! Well, we were just about to call you up. Matters are coming to a climax here. There are only two more trains to go through now. One with men will be with you in a couple of minutes at the latest; the other, with goods, should follow ten minutes afterwards. We are telling the driver to pick you up."
At this point the speaker was called away from the telephone, and an indistinct buzz as of a whole office in conversation, mingled with the trampling of feet and the slamming of doors followed. But finally the speaker returned.
"Halloa, halloa! Are you still there, North Shavli? Telephone forward all I have said, and prepare them for the worst."
Stephania Ychas, now tingling with excitement, did as she was bid. Once more she stood on duty to see the reported train pass, and again she went to the telephone to send her report forward. Having finished, she was about to hang up the receiver when, on looking through the window on her left, her eyes caught sight of something unusual far down the line, almost at the point where the metals curved out of view. To run and fetch a pair of glasses which, ever since the beginning of the war, she had kept hanging in their leather case by the side of the fireplace, to bring them to bear on the point in question, and at the same time to ring up Shavli, was the work of a minute. What she saw, though her calm voice in no way revealed her inner emotion, made the blood run cold through her veins.
"Halloa, halloa! Are you there, Shavli?"
A reply came in the affirmative.
"For Heaven's sake remain at the 'phone. There's foul work going on near the great curve. You must give orders at once to keep back the train."
"One moment, and I will return," replied the railway official.
III—A WOMAN'S MESSAGE: "THEY ARE DYNAMITING THE RAILROAD!"
A pause, which seemed to the woman with the glasses fixed to her eyes an eternity, followed.
"You were just in time," continued the voice to her infinite relief. "Courage! Fear not. Orders have been given to pick you up, with the others along the line, when we evacuate the town by car. But tell us what is happening."
"I can see a number of men tampering with the metals," telephoned Stephania Ychas. "They have dismounted from their horses. One of them, an officer, is giving orders. Yes, I can see now. They are Uhlans, and are going to dynamite the line. There are at least twenty of them, evidently a portion of an advance guard that has made a turning movement round Shavli by way of the woods. Halloa, halloa! In the name of Our Lady of Vilna, do not leave the instrument. It is a blessing they did not begin by cutting the wire. Now they are scattering to await the explosion. There!"—as the speaker beheld the explosion, followed by a cloud of smoke and dust, which rose high in the air—"it is done. Holy Virgin! They are making off now. No, the officer is pointing here. They are coming towards me. Telephone to the nearest military station to send me help immediately. And for the love of the saints, come back to the instrument!"
Stephania Ychas left the receiver dangling by its cords, and made her little home ready to withstand a siege. She locked and doubly bolted the door, and with the object of giving the Uhlans the idea that the place was uninhabited prepared to block up the windows with the boards which, as in most Lithuanian country cottages, served as shutters, fastened from the inside.
"Perhaps," she thought, "if they see the house shuttered, they will conclude it is uninhabited and will ride away."
Unfortunately, the Uhlans rode quickly, and Stephania had more than she could do with just one shutter, that which protected the little window on the left of the telephone, and which, when up, plunged the room into semi-darkness. Whilst she was fixing this barrier, the Uhlans surrounded the house and the officer momentarily caught sight of her. Simultaneously there came a violent knocking at the door with the butt-end of a rifle, a command to open, and the sharp crack of a revolver. A bullet crashed through one of the panes, traversed the centre of the shutter-board, and buried itself in the opposite wall.
The brave woman was now back at the telephone, but not before she had managed to make the entrance to her home doubly sure by dragging a heavy dresser against it.
"Halloa, Shavli! You have sent for help? Thank you. They have surrounded the house, and are trying to force an entrance. They have discovered that I am here. But they will have a difficulty in forcing open the door, unless——"
She paused and listened. There was a long and ominous silence, which made her think at first that the enemy must have decided it was not worth while to waste further time over a woman. But the hope was short-lived. She heard a sharp command in German, the sound of muffled voices, a burst of laughter, and the clatter of horses' hoofs around the house. What was happening? Were they really riding off?
Again her hopes were shattered. The scampering backwards and forwards continued, one of the horses neighed, and she imagined she could almost hear the Uhlans' heavy breathing, sounds which brought back to her the danger which she had hesitated to frame in words. Very soon her fears were confirmed. A vision flashed to her brain and made her sick with fear. A faint cracking sound broke upon her ears from several points simultaneously, spreading until it seemed to envelope her on all sides, and especially over her head. By slow degrees the crackling grew to a roar, and then she fully realized what the barbarians had done.
IV—"HELP! HELP!"—A VOICE FROM THE BURNING THATCH
"Help, help!" called Stephania into the telephone. "They have fired the thatch. For Heaven's sake, send me help. But a few minutes and the rafters, I fear, will catch fire. Are you still there, Shavli? Oh, speak—speak!"
An exclamation, mingled sorrow and anger, came from the telephonist at Shavli.
"Oh, the ruffians, the abominable assassins!" he cried. "I beseech you to have courage. Help is surely on the way."
"I will try to be brave and do my duty to the end, as Michael told me," replied Stephania, as though to herself. "But unless they come soon, it will be too late. The thatch has burnt like tinder. I can hear the flames roaring like a furnace underneath the rafters. There! One of them has given way and fallen on to the joists of my room. Already the heat is suffocating, the smoke almost unbearable. Holy Virgin! What a death."
"Alas, what more can we do than beg you to bear up?" returned the voice at Shavli, in an agonized tone. "We have just been informed that a party of Cossacks left twenty minutes ago to rescue you. Once more, courage! And may Our Lady of Vilna indeed protect you."
When Stephania Ychas next spoke through the telephone the roof fell in with a crash and pierced a hole, through which the burning embers fell, in the ceiling of her room. At the same time communication with Shavli was suddenly interrupted, either through the Uhlans having discovered and cut the wire, or, as is more probable, owing to the fire having fused the terminals. She could not, however, have sustained her appeals for help much longer. Indeed, it was not many minutes afterwards that, stupefied and blinded by the smoke, as she groped her way to the door in an instinctive movement towards the open air, she sank to the floor unconscious.
It is a characteristic of the Cossacks, many times admitted even by German military critics, and those who have been describing the operations in Lithuania for the enemy Press, that they rarely if ever waste a shot. Unlike the French cavalry, they do not fire from a distance, but fearlessly swoop down upon their adversaries and seek to bring them down, one by one, at a range of but a few yards. And that was the fate of the Uhlans, who, hungering to feast their eyes and ears on the suffering of a defenceless woman, lingered a little too long around the burning cottage of Stephania Ychas. Not one escaped.
Stephania Ychas did not lose her life after all. The brave Cossacks broke in the already half-consumed window and dragged her forth. She was badly burnt, but lived to tell this tale to a nurse in a Russian hospital, whither the railway officials of Shavli transported her, almost immediately after her rescue, in one of their motor-cars.