The Great White Army

by Max Pemberton

It was the second day after our leaving Kovno.

We had slept in a stable in that unhappy town and there had fallen in with Sergeant Bardot and his plunder.

I remember that it was a dreadful night, the roar of the wind almost drowning the sound of the distant artillery, which we believed to be fired at our rearguard by the Russians. It has been said since that day that Marshal Ney himself fired the guns to drive the stragglers into the town. I cannot tell you how it was, but I know that we all suffered very much, especially the child Joan, who mourned ceaselessly for her father and her brother.

Next morning we set out for the bridge across the Niemen. It was almost as great a press as that at the Bérézina. Happily, the Cossacks had not yet come up, and we got across at length to find an open country where there were few signs of an army marching.

Very shortly afterwards we lost all track of the vanguard, and were mere stragglers with a few others upon a great white plain which the wind swept pitilessly. That night we bivouacked in the barn of an ancient farmhouse which marauders had burned. It was there that we determined to go our own way henceforth and not to rejoin the regiment until we came to Elbing.

"Why should we?" old Bardot asked in his matter-of-fact way. "There will be no fighting, my friends; and if there be, the marshal will take care of those fellows. No one expects the Cossacks to cross the Niemen, and if they are wise they will now go back to their own country. We have food enough for some days and our horses are good. Let us make a caravan as the Easterns do, and leave the rest to Providence."

This was very sensible advice, and it fell upon willing ears. We were a genial company, and if my nephew spent most of his hours in close converse with Valerie St. Antoine, at least I had the benefit of the sergeant's company. As for little Joan, she rarely spoke to anyone; or, if she did, it was to raise again that fatal question of her father's whereabouts. For all these reasons I deemed it wise to do as Bardot directed, and to seek a route of our own. We should find the remnant of the army at Elbing; it would be time enough to think of re-formation when we arrived there.

So behold us crossing those fearsome steppes, Valerie and Léon for our van, the sergeant and myself, with the child between us, talking of a thousand things which were to be done if ever we saw the city of Paris again. We had come by this time to believe that we should do so, and despite the sufferings which we endured our courage remained unshaken. Alas! that it was so soon to be put to the proof. We were hopelessly lost upon the evening of the third day, and knew no more than the dead whether we were marching to Elbing or to the sea.

Remember that the heaven above us had been perpetually obscured by cloud and that the night showed us no stars. The plain in itself was a vast sea of snow, broken rarely by clumps or pines and hardly showing us a house which had not been burned by the army on its outward march. From time to time, it is true, we espied little companies of stragglers in the far distance, or groups of horsemen poised upon a knoll; but of the high road we saw nothing, and gradually it began to dawn upon us that even Bardot's store was not inexhaustible, and that we must surely perish in this wild place unless we recovered the high road speedily.

We slept that night in a dismal wood, listening to the howling of the wolves and but ill-protected by the snow-pit we had digged. The others were merry enough save little Joan, whose strength could not support these hardships and for whose safety we were all tenderly solicitous. Fortunately, we had more than one great-coat of fur with us, and we made the child a bed in the snow as well as we could, and then fell to talking of our position.