Every nation, I suppose, has its peculiarities. I do not depreciate the Germans. They can fight, and fight bravely—but not with the generous bravery that most soldiers exercise one to another. They are cruel in their desperation, vicious in the moment of victory; and they yell for mercy in the hour of their defeat; the only soldiers I have known to exercise this form of—I will not call it cowardice—Hudibrastic caution.
In this battle the wonderful iron shields reappeared; and about 700 of them were taken by the Russians, and used to form a breastwork; which the next day was knocked to pieces by the German artillery.
The enemy was followed half-way to their own lines, and many of them killed as they ran. Unfortunately no Cossacks were at hand, as there was here a fine opening for their peculiar form of ability, which I have no doubt they would have exerted to the utmost.
The number of killed in proportion to wounded was very great: I should think quite one in every three, which is more than double the normal number, even when many casualties are caused by artillery fire; but bayonet work is the most deadly form of military execution.
The prisoners taken are not worth mentioning: the total of German casualties was about 8,000 on a front that did not exceed two versts (2,333 yards English measurement). They lay thickest in and about the trenches. In the bottom of the advanced trenches there was a foot depth of blood which had drained from the corpses. The holes dug at measured intervals for the convenience of the troops (latrines) were full of it; and the men occupying the position were compelled to stand in it half-leg deep for several days until an opportunity came to clean the trenches, when the congealed horror was removed in the camp tumbrels, and buried by the ton in holes dug for the purpose. In one part of the trench I helped to remove a heap of sixty-nine corpses, lying eleven deep in the middle. No one of them had a breath of life left, though some were not mortally wounded. They had been smothered under the weight of their dead comrades, or trampled to death. Outside the trenches there lay heaps of dead bodies, six or seven deep, and innumerable scattered dead and wounded.
All the fighting that day was over before 2 p.m., and our Red Cross men, and hundreds of volunteers, went out to succour the wounded. They were immediately fired on by the German artillery and about twenty of them killed or injured. A flag of truce was then sent out to inform the enemy our sole object was to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded; and that the German injured were receiving the same attention as our own men. The flag was received at a farm used as an outpost by the Germans; and the commander, a big, swarthy-faced man, declared he did not care a curse what our intentions were, he would fire on anybody he saw walking about the field of battle. I inquired the name of this officer and was told it, and that he was a chief Staff Officer to Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, who, it was declared, had personally directed the day's fighting.
I believe a protest was lodged with this military churl, but, of course, nothing could be done under his threat. After nightfall volunteers again went out, and nearly a thousand wounded were brought in to the surgeons, quite two-thirds of them being Germans. The total Russian losses were, I should think, about 6,000 men.
While accompanying the flag of truce I used my eyes. About thirty officers were receiving first-aid, or undergoing what seemed to be preliminary operations, in the farm-house and yard; and I heard very pitiful groans in some barns and outhouses, while down the road a string of twenty Red Cross waggons was coming up. I concluded therefore that the enemy had carried back a number of his wounded when he retreated. There were pools of blood everywhere on the road: for the snow had been trampled down so hard that it could not soak away; and it speedily coagulated into great clots. Many horrible mementoes of the fight lay about. Seeing what I thought was a good sound boot lying on the road, I picked it up. There was a foot in it. I could fill pages with such little stories. There were some collections lying about suggestive of the Germans turning out their dead comrades' pockets. Several letters, the photograph of a woman nursing a baby, and an elder child leaning against her knee; a lock of fair hair—a little girl's, I thought—and less pathetic objects: a pack of cards, a broken pipe, a bent spoon, and some disgusting pictures, suggested many men of many minds—some of them none too clean.
The night of the 4th February was very quiet until about four o'clock a.m., when the steady rush of thousands of feet alarmed all who were awake. The Germans were attempting a surprise. A few straggling shots from the sentries along our front, accompanied by shouts of warning; a blaze of rifle fire; the heavy booming of artillery, and, in one minute from the alarm being given, the hell of battle was again in full fury. Our engineers threw search-lights over the trenches and in front of them, so that we could see what we were doing. The effect was very weird, and heightened the horror of the scene; but it helped the enemy as much as it did us.
The Germans used hand-grenades, or trench bombs, as I understand they call them on the Eastern front of the war, but we were not provided with these troublesome and destructive little weapons. However, there was again much bayonet fighting, a species of combat which the Germans did not relish, and in which they always got the worst of it. The Russians had the advantage in the length of their bayonets—a trifle, but trifles are not trifles in close fighting. Moreover, our men have a genius for bayonet-fighting, and keep these weapons always ready for use: that is, they are never unfixed, as I have previously explained, except to be cleaned, and not always for that purpose. The Russian soldier shoots with his bayonet fixed, which is not conducive to first-class marksmanship; but then the German also is not a good rifle-shot. Still, I wish I could induce the Russians to adopt the practice of unfixing bayonets when shooting at long ranges.