Many stories were brought to us of what had taken place in other districts. All agreed that the Germans had not succeeded in entering Warsaw; but it was reported that a fleet of aeroplanes had sailed over the city and dropped bombs. Only private houses had been wrecked; not much damage done, and the "hostile aircraft" had soon been driven away. As nothing was said about the bringing down of any of these aeroplanes, I felt pretty sure that they had all escaped the Russian fire. The Germans had not left much for them to destroy in their retreat; and I never learned from whence they had come, or whither they went when they had completed their fell work. We saw nothing of them in our district.
On the 23rd we still continued to follow the enemy, keeping in touch with them, and exchanging shots. About the middle of the day we were joined by a large force of artillery and cavalry. Where these troops came from I cannot tell. They were a welcome reinforcement; but as we were moving through a wooded country they could not make much impression on the enemy, except when the latter attempted to make a stand. The trees were mostly pines, and the ground beneath them free of undergrowth; and the destruction of them, after a few hours' cannonade, was enormous. Whole forests looked as if they had been blighted, or blasted by lightning.
The German jagers often took post in the trees, as affording a favourable place for marksmanship; but when our gunners discovered them we had an extraordinary sight as a small crowd of arms and legs came tumbling through the air in every imaginable position. Those of the men who were not killed by the shrapnel usually lost their lives by the shock of the fall. Sometimes big trees were snapped clean in two when the shell had made a direct hit before bursting. More generally the branches were ripped to shreds by the flying shower of bullets. I saw the dead body of one rifleman lodged amongst the boughs of a large pine. He must have been killed instantly, for he was still clasping his rifle in his hands.
There were some painful scenes. We came across a fine, handsome young fellow raving over the body of another boy. It was ascertained that they were brothers, and, "What will mother do? This will kill her," was all he could say. I never saw a man more grief-stricken. A few hours afterwards we found a man shot through the body. Blood was bubbling from his mouth and nose, and he was dying fast; but he had struggled to his knees, and leaning against a tree-trunk was praying—not for himself, but for his wife and four little children. By chance I discovered that this man could speak English. He had been a clerk in Liverpool. He was distressingly anxious about his family, and begged we would not destroy a letter addressed to his wife which he had in his pocket. "For," he said, "I knew I should not come through this"—the war, I suppose, he meant.
I assured him that nothing found upon him should be disturbed, and that the letter should be sent to the German commander on the first opportunity. We did what we could to relieve his suffering, and sent a man back for the Red Cross men who were following behind; but the poor fellow died before they arrived. War is a curse.
The rain ceased only for a few hours at a time. It generally commenced to fall as evening came on, and continued to pour down steadily the greater part of the night. Sometimes it rained night and day without cessation, and the thickest overcoats became saturated with wet. I made a kind of cloak from the remains of a rick-cloth which I found in the outhouse of a burnt farm; and this was a great protection.
The country we were passing through was deserted. The Polish peasantry are very poor, and what would become of the miserable people, who, like the Irish of a former day, depended on their pigs, fowls and potato-crops, it was painful to think. We supposed they had fled to the towns; but every now and then we came across the bodies of some of them, and it is certain that hundreds had been wantonly destroyed by their cruel enemies.
For many miles we marched through a flooded country, and passed the Pilica River by means of a bridge which was partly under water, the reason, perhaps, that the Prussians missed it. We were guided to it by an old peasant who had been in hiding; but the banks of the river were quite hidden under water, and on this account many of our men, as well as Germans, floundered into it and were drowned. Horses and waggons were swept away, and some guns captured. Our own guns were forced to go higher up the stream and were, I believe, passed over a pontoon bridge. Hundreds of Cossacks swam their horses across, and gathered up some prisoners. They sent a far greater number to their long account, and seized an immense booty in food, stores, etc. For the Germans always stripped the country they passed through of everything that was worth carrying away. That which was too cumbersome to be moved they destroyed.
I never actually heard who commanded the Germans, or our own force. At one time rumour asserted that the Kaiser himself was chief of our enemies, and was personally directing their movements. When this surmise exploded, we were repeatedly told that the Crown Prince was the Commander-in-Chief. All that was known with certainty was that we were immediately opposed, for a week at least, by a divisional commander named Swartzenberg. On our own side Major Beke was the battalion commander under whom I served. He was killed soon after we crossed the Vistula, and was succeeded by an officer who was wounded and sent to the rear on the same day he was appointed. His successor only held the command two days when he was blinded by a piece of wood driven into his face by the explosion of a shell. Krischelcamsk then became our leader. Colonel Tunreshka was the regimental commandant. He disappeared the night after we crossed the Pilica. The general opinion was that he was drowned in the river; but he may have been taken prisoner.
One reason of the unusually rapid retreat of the Germans on this occasion was that they had expended nearly all their ammunition, and were unable to bring up more on account of the dreadful state of the country—knee-deep in mud, and covered with water. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; and the rain, which hampered the Russian on one hand, helped to save Warsaw on the other.