The station was very soon in order. One of the sisters went round distributing clean underwear. "Change while you can, children," she said; "we shall give you some tea and soup, and pack you into the train, and send you straight off to Russia"; and in a few hours the first train had arrived and the station was cleared for further work. In the dusk, the military ambulance men set out again to collect more of the wounded under fire.
What is happening is, shortly, this. The Russians, who had first to deal mainly with the Austrians, leaving the Germans to us, have now got within sight of the end of this part of their task. A first-class military power has been so pounded and smashed and has been repulsed in so many vigorous counterstrokes that it is coming to have only a secondary importance. Meanwhile the bulk of the Russian forces is now devoted to meeting the incessant and desperate initiative of the Germans. Russia's new defensive front on this side runs in a straight line to the point where it covers the Russian conquest in Galicia. It is now being extended further south to the natural barrier of the Carpathians. The interval made necessary by the operations in the north is not being wasted by the victorious troops in the south. When we get to the end of the Austrian efforts and have a mountain barrier to safeguard us on that side, these forces will be able to act with much more effect against the Germans. Russia, by accounting for Austria and concentrating her attack on Germany, will have done more than her full share of the work in the common cause. "Honour is not to be divided," said Ney when he stormed the heights of Elchingen; and it is in this spirit of generous rivalry that the Allies move forward.
By a little arrangement room was made in our small quarters for a New Year's feast, to which the divisional doctors were all invited. Father Tikhon had turned the local hall of the Sokols into a Russian church, and the evening service was crowded with soldiers. There was great delight in unpacking the gifts and delicacies received from Petrograd, and soon the guests began to arrive. It was all the simple talk of men accustomed to great privations: some of it turned on a comparison of unpleasant bivouacs; for instance, one told of a night spent in driving wind and rain on an open slope by the light of a burning village; he hoped the wind would blow over some of the warmth from the flames, till at last shelter and sleep were found in a ditch. Another officer was drowsing in a hovel when the door was opened, there entered a strong smell of coarse tobacco and a heavy weight fell on him; he woke in the morning to find a soldier asleep across his knees. An artillery officer, a fine-looking man, told of the tremendous work of the mobilisation and of the strain which war life puts upon the hardest nerves. Regimental doctors have, of course, had to work under fire for weeks on end. Every one discounts the heavy German mortars which in the field do very little damage in comparison with their expense. As to the Austrian bullets, one doctor says that it takes a man's weight of bullets to wound a man. When the trenches are near they come pouring in a sort of continuous rain. One man who insisted on standing up had thirty-six bullets through him directly. When the distance is a hundred to two hundred yards, especially where there is no natural cover, continuous sniping goes on. The line not being straight, but varied by all sorts of indentations, due to the lie of the ground and to the Russians' desire to get as close as possible to the enemy, the former at many points crouch in the temporary and flooded holes which they have scratched out for themselves, perhaps all the while under a cross fire. Men are killed going out with long scissors to cut the Austrian wire entanglements. Many a man has fallen in a crawling excursion to dig up a potato. The sniping becomes a kind of game, and it was described as such by two Russian soldiers, of whom one had knocked over nine Austrians and the other sixteen. The Austrians fire a lot of random shots in the night which are in most cases a sheer waste of powder; but it was hard on a man who was relieved after a week's rifle pits to be hit by a bullet in the night on his way back, as far as a mile from the front.
The last hours of the Russian Old Year I spent in a goods carriage. My companions kept reckoning whether we should reach the town by midnight. Twelve o'clock was well past when the train drew up heavily a verst from the station and we were told that it would go no further. We scrambled out into the snow, when suddenly from the lighted station there rose in full orchestra, strong and triumphant, the most beautiful and the most religious of national anthems. It was played three times, and the notes may even have been carried to the neighbouring Germans beyond the river. This was our Russian New Year: and in the station a colonel was dismissing his men with the words, "For this year I wish you health and victory."
Next day the stretch of railroad that we had traversed and the carriage in which we had supped was cannonaded by the biggest German shells. The bombardment went on all day and night, the huge "portmanteaux" making tremendous holes and falling for the most part far wide of their only mark, the railway, and carrying ruin and mutilation to many of the inhabitants, who are thus encouraged by the beaten enemy to remain Austrian subjects. There is hardly any object in this bombardment, which is put down to the Germans and has roused great indignation among the many wounded Austrian officers and men who are lying here in hospital. Not a soldier has been touched; but wounded civilians, men, women and children, have been brought in to the different hospitals.
January 16.
The bombardment, which was continued yesterday, has created a certain excitement here, but nothing approaching to panic. The big "portmanteaux" are very ugly things and make an unpleasant noise, but only two shots can be said to have produced any results worth mention. The prevailing mood is one of vigour and interest.
I have had some informing conversations with wounded officers of the enemy. They indicate a definite mental attitude very different from ours. I see no trace of religious enthusiasm and little of nationality in the wider sense. The Germans have the greatest confidence and pride in their army. They tell me that two million volunteers were inscribed at the beginning of the war—an enormous fact, if correct. The attitude of the German women is such that no man who can serve dares to remain at home. My informants fully realise that for Germany the war is a matter of life and death. They have served on the western front and described the French fortresses as extremely strong ("brillant"). The Bavarians are terrible in warfare and spread alarm among the population. The losses of the first move through Belgium were enormous. The Belgians are described as excellent soldiers, and large German losses are put down to them. In the march on Paris the reserves and the commissariat could not keep up. The retreat is accepted as an unpleasant necessity. There was a certain pedantry among my informants in insisting on the need of turning the allied right wing, whatever should happen at other points. They claimed that the Germans were now in Calais.
Large losses against the Russians were admitted, but it was claimed, without any real evidence, that the Russians had lost more. Again, there was a kind of machine-like insistence on the need of attack in columns with reserves close up—as this was "our tactics." The Germans had so far been saved by the default of any real Russian winter, which would have ruined the German transport and artillery and robbed their operations of all effect. What struck me most was the absence of any real intelligence as to the political issues in debate. My informants were, for reasons of humanity, in favour of a status quo peace.