Day by Day with the Russian Army, 1914-15

by Bernard Pares

A large, low, white building with a grassy court and outhouses; four large tents stand in the court; on the centre of the main building a white canvas band that bears in rough black letters the inscription: First Etape Lazaret of the Imperial Duma.

After a wonderful star-lit journey in a formanka or double-horsed cart with a courteous and humble old grey-haired peasant, I come on this building about half-past two in the morning. The last part of the journey was adventurous; the driver at one point wished to strike work, which resulted in a wait of nearly an hour; the way had to be asked of a group of soldiers with blackened faces seated round a camp fire, and of three sentries of the étape marching through the night with fixed bayonets, who challenged, "Who goes there?" and received with some hesitation the answer, "Our side" (svoi). One of them lowered his bayonet to be ready for any further emergencies. In the end I was guided to the lazaret, where I had a cordial welcome from the two sanitars on duty and was accommodated with a bed in one of the large tents, which was empty and ready for moving.

The Duma Lazaret was equipped chiefly by the energy and liberality of Prince Volkonsky, Vice-President of the Duma and one of its most respected and popular members. All parties are associated in the work; and Prince Volkonsky, who is a Conservative, has had the valuable help of the eminent Radical, Dr. Shingarev, who earlier earned a wide reputation as the organiser of the sanitary system in the province of Voronezh. Meetings of a committee are held in the Duma, and lately two other lazarets have been equipped and dispatched, one to the Prussian front and one to the Caucasian.

The first Duma lazaret was one of the earliest to arrive behind the front during the tremendous fighting in southern Poland and in Galicia. At Brody on the road to Lvov it gave preliminary treatment to thousands of wounded in the course of a few days. Later it was moved to Lvov, Sokal and Belzec, where I now found it. It had picked up on its road stray dogs which it had named after their places of adoption—Brodka, Rava, and Belzec.

The lazaret was equipped for two hundred patients, but at the time of my visit had only forty, as it was about to be moved further to the front. Operations were performed daily, to be ready for the move. I saw one poor fellow, very frail and no longer young, just after his leg was amputated; he was calling in a piteous way to his mother. In one ward the patients were in a late stage of convalescence from typhus, and in another lay one of the sanitars of the lazaret. In a far corner lay a poor fellow with a wound in the head; his case was hopeless, and he was communicated by the priest in an interval of consciousness.

The central wards were full of strong, lusty men, most of them young, some with bad wounds but nearly all getting the better of them. They were in many ways like dormitories of big schoolboys, all of them good comrades—during my stay of some days I only heard one altercation and that was mild and very short. They lived a chance corporate life of their own; and when I went round with cigarettes, there was always some one to see that tired or sleeping comrades got their share. There was very little groaning and no complaint; the men felt their wounds in the long night time, and sometimes one would mention that his wound was smarting. One Armenian, a weak-looking lad of the gentlest disposition, lay striving to bear his pain. "Oh!" he said as he fought it; and then, with closed teeth, "No matter; it doesn't matter; our Emperor ought to be rich; it had to be done—to beat the Germans; it doesn't matter."

Usually, however, the wound would only be mentioned in a side sentence in a narrative—"and then I got this," or it would be the occasion for a story of strong life and effort and the triumph of "ours." There was a peculiar delicate courtesy about the halest and strongest, who would shift their wounded limbs with an inviting gesture of the hand, making room for me to sit on their beds; and then there would rise a general stream of narrative where all joined in without ever seeming to interrupt each other, each telling of some daring feat of a comrade against all odds. One will not forget the figures leaning up in bed and the young, radiant faces; many of these men were cripples who will never fight again, but everything about them was full of health and fresh air and victory.

A young trooper told me of the actions of his regiment against the Hungarians. They have, it appears, a particularly mobile horse artillery, served with great accuracy by horsemen who fire with the left hand. They enticed the regiment up with displays of white flags and suddenly rent them with a murderous fire. For all that, as in practically all these narratives, in the end the Russians triumphed.

Others described the long defensive work on the San, with its narrow stream and muddy banks, and the final irresistible advance. There were two young men, one from Chernigov and one from Tauris, who beckoned to me each day, and with whom I spent several happy hours. When I asked for their addresses they wrote them down in form, beginning in the one case with "Wounded in arm" and in the other with "Wounded in leg." "Wounded in leg" was a sunny youth who, when we were photographed together, made quite a careful toilette. He was the boy who called out "What a splendid day! It's fine to-day in the trenches!" These two discussed with me all sorts of subjects, including the English sailors and the Grimsby fishermen, who appealed to them as "going for boldness." Another more elderly pair, one like a jolly farmer and the other like a brown-bearded stationmaster, worked out with me on the map the progress of the Russian army. Simplicity was the note of all, and it would have been hard to convince them that it was they more than any others who were now under the eyes of Europe.

There was another still more elderly couple that had an out-of-the-way interest. They were two old men, one of sixty-six and one of seventy-two, who had been shot by the Hungarians for sheltering Russian soldiers. One of them, a picturesque-looking person with round head and furry grey hair, told me of how he was locked up in his attic and then called down to be shot, while his womanfolk were reviled and struck. His leg was broken, but was mending. Both these poor old men were full of plaints and, after the Galician manner, insisted on kissing one's hand each time that one talked with them.