Day by Day with the Russian Army, 1914-15

by Bernard Pares

I ended this journey in an ambulance train standing at Mezolaborcz, which is already Hungary. The chief of the train, though I did not know him, gave me a clear night's rest, with luxuries of every kind, including English tobacco, of which he insisted on making me up a packet for my journey. But the best of the evening was, as so often, a clever and fascinating conversation on the war and the future of Russia and England. There is matter in this subject for all sorts of interesting suggestion, but one seldom meets any difference of opinion on one point, namely, that after the war the relations of the two countries will assume a far wider importance, political, economic and, above all, social, and that they will be among the chief factors that make for the peace of Europe.

April 19.

The staff of the Xth Division was housed in a white-walled cottage at the end of the little town. After the usual glasses of tea and talk of England, we set out with a small cavalcade for the front. The long street was very definitely Hungarian. It was not only the notices and the shops, with surname written first, among which I saw the historic name of Rakoczy, probably a Jew; but that the line of the houses, the river and the landscape were all new to one coming from Russia.

We rode fast along the double track of railway, and very quickly reached our first halting-place. Diverging to the high road, which was also fairly hard and dry, we soon left our horses and proceeded on foot. The road was so good and straight, the weather was so fine, and the beautiful hills so peaceful, that, though talking all the time about the war, we somehow forgot that we were in it, when suddenly, from a high hill that seemed quite close to us, there crashed a shell about thirty yards from us. The little lurid flame that preceded the explosion burned long enough to let us throw ourselves against the bank, which was bright with pretty blue flowers. We found we had exactly reached the front of our positions and made our way under shelter up a slope. The men were at work on their breastworks, which were very different from those of the Galician plain. On this higher ground, almost at any point the spade soon came on springs of water which filled the hole in a few minutes. In such places the breastworks are ordinarily what is called horizontal; they are constructed of brushwood and spruce fir, and give hardly any shelter. The earth-huts are replaced by little arbours of fir boughs, which are very much more difficult to warm, though from the captured Austrian trenches, unfortunately facing in the other direction, there have been taken quite a number of excellent little stoves. As the new Russian lines were only recently occupied, they were still in a very primitive state; in the wood that stretched in front, trees were still being cut to the stump to serve as posts for the wire-entanglements, and the lines themselves were not as yet at all continuous. Shells continued to fall at short intervals for some time, and a private, killed while at work, was brought up for burial. The colonel pointed the moral of getting the shelters finished as soon as possible.

When the firing died away, we walked along the outside of the lines; the task of sentries and scouts was a difficult one, for the trees stood close together. After a halt, I was taken further by a business-like officer with worn uniform and steely blue eyes, and, with his approval, I passed a word or two of greeting from the English army to the groups of soldiers at work. Several of the men asked me to send a like greeting back.

As we went forward, this little procedure became more detailed. The idea was taken up with enthusiasm by the commanders of companies, especially after I had been conducted, staff in hand, over a deep gully which separated us from the next regiment. Here each company was called outside its trenches and drawn up facing the enemy. I gave the salute, "Health, brothers"; and the usual answer came in a thundering peal. I told them how grateful we were for everything that they had sacrificed and everything that they had done for our common cause, and said that we wanted to be in time to do our full share on land, that our new big army was ready, and that we were going to advance as they had done. There is no difficulty in making simple things clear to Russian soldiers. They answered with their "Glad to do our best," and the "Hurrah!" which was so vigorous as to bring the Austrian machine guns into play; I am glad to say, without results. Several of the men came and talked to me in groups later; they felt the effects of their hard work and the heavy losses that go with attack, but their spirit was a conquering one, and all the more impressively so, because of the hardships in which I saw them. Later, when I saw the Commander of the Army, who had run a risk of being captured close to this very ground, he asked me to continue to give these greetings, "to hearten for the common cause," and arranged for me to get early news of any successes on the western front.

I slept with the usual brotherly group of officers in a little forester's hut, a hundred yards from the comparatively open front; on the outside of the door was chalked the word "Willkommen," which read like an amusing invitation to the enemy. We all slept on the floor, but I was accommodated with a litter, which made an excellent bed. The porch served as first-aid point, and when the firing was resumed in the morning, a wounded man was brought in here.

Before I went further, the Brigadier-General sent me by telephone a warm greeting, to be communicated to England.

April 20.

The reader will remember "The Birds," a very tight place held by the L regiment beyond a river on another front. The L's had done no end of work and had suffered heavily long before I visited them at "The Birds." There, too, they lost many men—about 1500 out of 4000—in an action which followed on their occupation of those positions and in the weeks of cannonade which they endured there.