In the Russian Ranks: A Soldier's Account of the Fighting in Poland

by John Morse

I expected that there would have been some fighting; but there was not. The rain was falling in a steady downpour; and we could not see the opposite bank of the river. Perhaps the wet damped the ardour of the Germans. Certainly I should think that the autumn and winter of 1914-15 was the wettest ever known. The right bank of the river was bad enough, but the left was the softest marsh we had so far experienced. No wonder the Germans could no longer make much resistance: their trenches were full of water. I slipped into one, and thought I was going to be drowned. Fortunately for me a couple of the men stopped to assist me; for there was six or seven feet of water in the wretched trench. Many of our men met with similar accidents, and I am not sure that some of them did not lose their lives. I saw the bodies of Germans floating in their ditches, but these may have been men killed previously to the flooding.

It was entirely an infantry fight. We had crossed the river on rafts towed by boats, and could bring no guns; while those of the enemy which could be moved they were anxiously striving to save, and did not stop to fire. Many of their heavy guns they destroyed to render them useless to us, but a number of machine-guns were brought into action on each side.

For many miles the left bank of the Vistula is a deep morass, with extensive woods, and a few scattered houses and hamlets. The inhabitants of these were all gone, fled or murdered; and the Germans had pierced the walls of their homes with loop-holes, and piled the furniture, carts and farm implements together to form barricades. They failed, however, to stop our advance. Position after position was carried, sometimes by a withering rifle-fire, sometimes at the point of the bayonet. Brave as he is, the German soldier is not ashamed to plead abjectly for his life when he is driven into a corner. I saw men clinging to the bayonets that were about to terminate their existences; and many actually screamed for mercy. It was not much use making such petitions; the women and old men who had been driven in, leaving a toll of murdered behind, had stories to tell which inflamed the fiercest passions of the soldiers. I contrived to save the lives of one or two of these wretched Germans; but my own safety required that I should not interfere too strenuously; and though, I hope, I should not fear to give my life in a just cause, or to save a just person, I was not prepared to throw it away on behalf of ravishers and child-stabbers.

In this fight I crossed swords with a German officer of the 2/94th regiment (probably Landwehr), a portly gentleman who thought fit to finish the encounter by an unconditional surrender. He took advantage of my remissness in watching him, and tried to escape back to his own men. Some of our fellows noticed this, and—well, he had not time to suffer much. Dishonourable acts, and breaches of word, were very common amongst the Germans; but it often got severely punished.

The enemy suffered most, I heard, at places called Sandomir and Kozyniece. The latter place is close to Ivangorod, which was, for some days, our headquarters, and the centre of our line. Further north, near Bloni, and Vishgo, and at Novogeorgevsk, they suffered more severely, and gave way sooner. By the evening of the 21st they were retiring at many places along the entire line; but at some spots they stood firm with remarkable tenacity, and suffered themselves to be almost surrounded.

We passed the night in a hamlet of a dozen houses which had been defended by a company of jagers (riflemen). Only forty-eight of them survived our attack with the bayonet; and these we captured. They slept in the same rooms with their captors, played cards with them, and sang jovial-sounding songs, apparently quite unmoved by the fact that 120 dead bodies of their comrades lay in the gardens and courtyards outside. Both the Germans and Russians are great card-players and inveterate gamblers.

In the morning, before it was daylight, we made our prisoners dig graves and bury the dead—129 of theirs, sixty-two of ours: we then sent them to the rear under an escort, while we advanced towards Chinlin, and began skirmishing with the enemy, who were only 600 or 700 yards in front of us.

Both sides took shelter behind pine-trees; and very little execution was done, though the firing went on nearly all day. At last the Germans took post in a thick wood, and it became clear they had been playing with us all these hours while their sappers placed this copse in a state of defence. The discovery was rather humiliating; but these things occur in war, and it was not the only occasion on which our cunning opponents "came the old soldier" over their denser, slow-thinking foes. But in spite of their slyness they were beaten. Some Russian battalions got behind the wood, and its defenders were compelled to run for their lives. They ran very well, but most of them were captured; and we passed the second night in the nice, nest-like little hovels they had prepared for their own accommodation.

The German dearly loves his comfort and good cheer. They never seemed to be short of food, and we took carts laden with wine that had been made in France and must have been sent hither at much trouble and expense only to find its way down Russian throats in spite of the Czar's teetotal proclamation. I think the German troops must be taught to make bivouacks and huts, they are such adepts at the work; and render their dens so comfortable by a hundred little devices that show they have previously studied the art of adapting everything to their own welfare and ease. Needless to say, the plunder of houses and cottages was utilized for furnishing these temporary abodes.

There was now no doubt that the Germans were retreating; but they were doing so in that leisurely way which indicated that their retirement was anything but a rout; and I foresaw that it would not be long before they turned again with renewed ferocity. I do not think that the troops we had been opposed to were some of the best that Germany could put in the field. In some battalions there did not appear to be a man under forty years of age: in others they were all boys: and these last named were amongst the best fighters. I passed over ground strewn with the dead of one of these battalions, and not a lad of them seemed to be much over twenty years; some were not more than sixteen or seventeen.