They were to cross one of its bridges, as the main army was now doing. The last of the regiments at Grovno would see that the bridges were destroyed before the German soldiers could come up to them.
CHAPTER XI
A Russian Retreat
FOR many hours the ambulance wagon in which Nona and Barbara were riding jogged on, forming one of a procession of similar wagons.
The girls grew cold and cramped. Now and then they tried to move in order to make their patients more comfortable or at least to give water to the wounded men. But the wagons were so crowded that the slightest stirring was well nigh impossible.
Nevertheless, as Barbara Meade had predicted, the long night was one neither she nor Nona would ever be willing to forget.
At first they rode along, passing the wooden huts of the peasants that once had lined both sides of the main road leading to the middle bridge across the river Styr. But many of these shacks had suffered from the stray shells of the Germans, which, having passed beyond the fortress, had brought desolation to the country side. These little wooden houses in many places were mere heaps of burnt-out ashes. Others were half burned, or else collapsed, as if they had been houses built by children, who had afterwards kicked them down.
Everywhere, from the little homes that were unhurt, as well as from the ruined ones, the peasants were fleeing. With the passing of the first Russian regiment away from Grovno they had guessed what must inevitably follow.