The old horse I had obtained from a Cossack, as related on a previous page, had disappeared—boiled down to soup by the men, I imagine; in which case I had my share of him, and can bear witness to his gamy flavour. In consequence of this little accident (or incident) of war, I was again numbered amongst the footmen, and had to trudge with the others to Lovicz. I started exhausted, and arrived nearly dead. All I can remember of that dreadful march was that the road was crowded with troops of all arms, and the snow which covered it was trampled and churned into a thick sludge of a nearly black hue; marching through which was a tormenting misery.
When we arrived in the vicinity of the town we were halted near a group of barns, and told we might billet in them. I entered one with about a hundred of the men, dropped on some dirty wet straw, and fell asleep on the instant. How long I slumbered I do not clearly know. I was awakened by the rough shaking and prodding of a soldier, who had a basin of steaming hot coffee in his hand, and a great hunch of coarse bread, which he offered to me. I swallowed them quite eagerly, for I was nearly starved, and went outside, where the men were falling in.
The battalion was now so reduced that there were only about 300 men on parade. What had become of the others I do not know; but I think that a good many prisoners were taken during our retreat. There was only one officer left with whom I could communicate, Lieutenant Sawmine; and only two other subalterns that were with the battalion when I joined it. A stranger, a Major in rank, had been put in command. He had been, I believe, a Staff Officer. We were still attached to a regiment which had lost one of its battalions en masse—as prisoners I heard.
Before we marched off the companies were equalized; which brought us up to a little over 400 per battalion, or about 1,700 for the regiment, so the losses had been terrible. Then another ration of bread, and 120 cartridges, were served out to each man, and we were marched to a railway-station on the outskirts of the town and entrained. Sawmine said that nobody in the regiment had the least idea where we were going; but one of those vague notions which seem to instinctively invade the minds of soldiers led the men to believe that they were destined for some great enterprise.
A FIELD OF BAYONETS ON THE POLISH FRONTIER
I was still so tired that I was no sooner in the train than I went to sleep again, as I believe most of the men did. When I awoke the train was merely crawling along, and the sound of heavy artillery firing came in through the open windows. For we were packed in so tightly that the men were compelled to keep the windows open for air, though the wind was icy cold. Almost immediately the train began to run back; and often it went on a few versts, stopped for half an hour, and then went on again. Sawmine who sat beside me said that the train had been going thus for many hours, sometimes advancing, then halting, retiring, and so on. He had been asleep himself, and did not know how far we had come, or where we were. Looking out of the windows we could see four long trains ahead of us, and one about half a verst behind us. There were also two pilot engines on the line, one of which had a large signal flag attached to it.
The distant firing was heavy enough to shake the train; but we could see nothing of the fighting. It was drawing towards dusk on the evening of the 2nd February when we saw the men in the trains ahead of us getting out: and presently our turn came. There was more than 1,000 men in each train, the officers riding with their men. We soon discovered that we all belonged to the same division; and we were formed up in the open fields beside the line. Before this manœuvre was completed it was nearly dark; though as the moon was about the full it gave considerable light through the clouds—at least when it was quite up; and we could see dimly over the country across which we were marched.
We were kept on the march all night, with other columns ahead of us, a circumstance which led to many short halts, and a good deal of "tailing off." About four o'clock in the morning we were brought up into what seemed to be a line of battalion columns at deploying intervals. We could now see the bright red flashes of the guns; and occasionally a shell fell in front of us. An officer who was known to Sawmine passed along, and stopped to have a minute or two's chat with the Lieutenant; and thus I learned that we were near the town of Skyermevice, and on ground I knew something of. The Germans were said to be massing in vast columns; but so far the fight was confined to the artillery; and this, which we had supposed was on our front, was really on the left flank. We were ordered to lie down and wait.
About six o'clock we were again ordered to advance; and after marching six versts occupied a line of shallow trenches. These trenches had recently been held by other troops—there could be no mistaking the nature of the dull stain-patches on the snow: and though our dead and wounded had been removed, there were hundreds of the enemy's slain lying in front, as far as the eye could see them, when daylight came.