"The Russians tried to hold a position here," remarks Tzschirner.
We turn the corner of the church and see the Russian trenches dug between the graves. We see the great windowed walls shattered with shrapnel and shell. We gaze down into an awful hole where a grenat has plunged into a grave. The fragments of the casket are blown into the black mud, and there are other fragments too, fragments a chalky white, for the grave is old; and fragments of brown Russian coats. Nearby stands a white marble cross. "Ruhig sanft," it says, "Rest in Peace." The plains of the Memel, as we leave the churchyard, brooding in the white peace of the snow and under the Engelsberg lies Tilsit, vaguely as in a mirage, its slender steepled churches, the spires of a dream.
1:08 P. M. We are climbing a long brown slope of road that has been dug from out of the drifting snow. A kilometer from Piculponen we turn out to pass a clanking column of gray transports, plodding on toward the front. Noticing a wagon loaded with barbed wire, I said to Tzschirner: "What will you do, make this position at Tauroggen permanent? The entanglements are going up."
"Ah, yes, for a time. It is best always to be prepared," and he smiles.
In this clear, cold air our exhaust is barking in loud exaggeration, but as we crest the hill near the huddled houses of Kamstpauriken, we hear a foreign sound. Somewhere across the snows rifles are firing.
"The Russian patrols are very active this morning," Tzschirner is saying.
"How far off is that shooting?" I ask.
"About a mile. On a road which is parallel to this."
"How many in a patrol?" I was thinking that we were five—Gelbricke, who must drive the car; Seyring, the red-haired mechanician, who could use a carbine; Tzschirner, with his Browning automatic; Corey, with a fountain pen, and I with a camera.