The holes burnt in the coats of the men were mostly small; but, where they were close together, quite destroyed the garment, appearing to have rotted the material. In my opinion the substance of this fire was some kind of melted metal, mixed with waxy matter. It was tenacious, and could not be wiped off; and left a light grey residuum on the cloth. It did not burn its way through to the flesh in those cases which I examined.
About this time I heard mentioned the poisonous gas which has since become notorious. The Germans, I believe, had not yet resorted to sending the horrid stuff in clouds against a position; but they fired shells which emitted it in considerable quantities, and caused some deaths, and many disablements, amongst the Russian troops. I saw some of the shells burst; and the gas, which gradually expanded to a small cloud with a diameter of about 30 feet, looked like a thick, dirty yellow smoke. The odour of it was horrible and peculiar and very pungent; and it seemed to be a very heavy vapour, for it never rose high above the ground—not more than 20 feet. It dispersed slowly. In my opinion the best way to avoid it would be to rush rapidly through it towards the point from which it had been discharged. Doubtless some of it lurks in the air; but not sufficient, I think, to have deleterious effects. The bulk of it rolls on in a low, dense cloud. That which was shot at us came from percussion shells, which do not explode in the air. These projectiles were usually fired at us in salvoes; so as to form a cloud of gas on the ground.
I went to see the bodies of two men who had been killed by one of these poison-shells. They looked as if they had been rolled in flour of sulphur, being completely covered, flesh and clothes, with a yellowish deposit. Some wounded men, and others who had first gone to their assistance, were similarly encrusted. Some of these were insensible; others were gasping for breath, and discharging froth from their mouths. The two men who were dead had been killed by pieces of shell and not by the gas, though this may have helped to destroy them.
On the 8th March I was watching an aeroplane when the petrol tank appeared to burst. There was a puff of smoke, and then the machine dropped like a stone. It must have fallen a mile from the spot where I was standing: but of its further fate I know nothing. It was a German aircraft, and was, I suppose, hit by a lucky Russian bullet.
It is astonishing what a riddling these aeroplanes will stand. I have seen them with from forty to sixty bullet holes in different parts of them, and yet they were not forced to come down by their injuries of this character.
Between the 8th and the 14th March I saw more aircraft of various kinds than at any other time during the period I was with the Russian Army. On the 9th six of ours hovered over the German positions for a long time, and dropped many bombs. A tremendous fire was opened upon them by the enemy, but not one of them was seriously damaged.
During the first fortnight in March we were moved very gradually towards Ostrolenka. On the 14th we were at Roshan on the Narew, which is here a small river with fords in the neighbourhood. It had been frozen over; but the troops had broken up the ice for defensive purposes, as they had on many other streams. It was also beginning to thaw.
Enormous numbers of Germans, fresh troops, were assembling in front of Ostrolenka and Lomza; and, according to reports, on a line extending 400 versts north and west of these places. It was evidently the prelude to a renewed attempt on Warsaw.
The persistence of the enemy to take the old capital of Poland is a parallel to his perseverance in the endeavour to break through to Calais in the Western area of the war. Will he do it? He has been within a very few versts of the place, and made repeated efforts to gain his object; but so far the Russians have been able to beat him back.
The capture of Warsaw by the enemy would be a great calamity to the Russians, and have an immensely depreciatory moral effect on her troops, scarcely less so than the fall of Petrograd would have. Some critics have, I fear, attempted to show that the capture of Warsaw would not be so very heavy a blow to the Russians. These persons do not know much about it, I think. Warsaw is the chief railway centre in Poland, and a place of immense commercial importance. It is really the Russian headquarters, which, if it falls into German hands, will have to be removed to Bialystok, or even Vilna, and will compel a complete change of the Russian front.