The Austrian Army in these Polish campaigns suffered under the serious disadvantage that, amongst the various nationalities serving in it, there were many men whose sympathies were with the enemy, or whose hearts were not on the Austrian side. The Slav soldiers felt they were fighting against their brother Slavs of Russia, and there were also in the Austrian army in Galicia Italian regiments from the Venetian border about Trieste and Fiume. It was a sagacious move on the part of the Tsar’s Government to make an offer in the first stage of the campaign to Italy “as an evidence of his friendship and sympathy,” to liberate and send to Italy all prisoners of Italian nationality taken in Galicia, on condition that the Italian Government would engage not to send them back to Austria. To this the Italian Prime Minister, Signor Salandra, formally replied that the rules of international law prohibited his acceptance of the offer. Commenting upon this, the Rome semi-official Messaggero remarked that, “Whatever Signor Salandra’s answer may be, the Italian people are grateful to the Tsar, whose generous humanitarian proposal contains also the official, solemn, and precise affirmation that Russia recognises the right of Italy to the Italian provinces that are still under Austrian rule.”
General Rennenkampf took with him into East Prussia, as a kind of mascot or symbol that should be prophetic of the signal success ultimately destined to crown the Muscovite arms, the identical flag carried by the celebrated Skobelev on his momentous campaign of 1877. A small thing in itself, this was well calculated to make a direct appeal to the impressionable Slav temperament, to the young men who had heard from their fathers of the wonderful “White General” who in the great days of Plevna and the Balkans was perhaps more responsible than any other single factor for the triumph of the Cross over the Crescent.
It was an incident characteristic of the pervading spirit, and one well calculated to stimulate it. But there were thousands of incidents and scenes that have perforce to be dismissed in a line, or even not referred to at all. Among the many gallant spirits marked out for special distinction of the Tsar was the Captain Pleshkoff whose superb horsemanship had been acclaimed year after year at the Olympia Horse Show in London, where as recently as 1914 he carried off the King Edward VII Cup. Captain Pleshkoff received a nasty wound in one of the cavalry combats around Warsaw. He is a Cossack by descent, a pupil of the famous General Brussiloff, and is noted among his admiring countrymen as the “inventor” of a new system of riding. The captain shared the fate of most reformers when he attempted to bring his riding method to the notice of his colonel, an old-fashioned martinet commanding the Tsar’s Life Guard Cuirassiers. In fact, it led to Pleshkoff’s temporary severance from his beloved regiment when he became adjutant to one of the Grand-duke’s; but on the outbreak of the present struggle he returned to the Life Guard Cuirassiers.
But there are so many men of Pleshkoff’s stamp among the Tsar’s eight millions of fighters that his Imperial master might well be tempted to say, with a great leader of the past, “If I made all my brave soldiers generals, there wouldn’t be any privates left.” Such a one was the wounded warrior who averred, with crystalline sincerity and self-confidence, that if he had not been laid aside by a bullet the campaign for Russian Poland would have been a much more brief affair!
A parallel story to one coming from the western theatre of war—of the young girl who, by assuming masculine attire, managed to be accepted for service with the Flying Corps—is that of a young Russian lady who managed to smuggle herself into a cavalry regiment leaving for the front. Not only so, but this young Amazon, in addition to bearing herself bravely in the field—she was a fine horsewoman—assisted a trooper in rescuing a wounded comrade. The secret of her sex was only discovered when, a few days later, she herself was wounded. Again, two lads about fifteen years of age escaped from their parents’ home in Moscow, and, following the fortunes of a regiment belonging to that ancient city, were present at half a dozen battles of Rennenkampf’s campaign in East Prussia, “crawling on their stomachs with reserves of ammunition to the firing line.” Apparently these adventurous boys escaped unscathed.
A story with a delightful flavour of the hoax running through it was communicated during October by the Petrograd correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. It betrays a sense of Slavonic humour which, it is to be hoped, was not entirely lost upon the victims of the ruse:
“A Russian airman, accompanied by an observation officer, was flying over the enemy’s territory, when he was obliged to descend, owing to engine trouble. The pilot and the officer were wearing leather clothes, without any distinctive mark. They were working on the motor when suddenly seven Austrian soldiers, in charge of an under-officer, appeared over the crest of a little hill and approached them. Resistance was impossible, for the Russians had no weapons but revolvers. Fortunately, the officer knew German. Calling loudly to the Austrian officer, he ordered him, in a peremptory manner, to come and help him mend the motor. The Austrian, believing he was in the presence of a superior officer, hastened with his men to obey, and soon the engine had been put right. The aeroplane started off, and as it ascended in spirals to the clouds a paper fell at the feet of the gaping Austrians. It contained a short message of thanks to the officer and his men for giving such timely aid to Russian aviators.”
At the time of General Rennenkampf’s severe reverse near Soldau after his first brilliant incursion into East Prussia, it had been generally inferred that the brave General Samsonoff and other leading officers had been killed in the practical surrounding of a large Russian force of two army corps. A gleam came out of the fog of war when it was semi-officially announced that this was not the case. It was the deadly explosion of a chance shell that killed General Samsonoff, General Martos, and other officers of the Staff. The former was particularly beloved by his men, but he had a fatal facility for exposing his life unduly and recklessly. In reply to all remonstrances he would simply say, “My place is where my soldiers are”—and to this trait, not less than to his care for the comfort of his men, was due the remarkable popularity that he enjoyed among the rank and file. No officer was more universally regretted on the Russian side.
The Tsar took the unusual but intensely popular course of conferring all four Classes of the Order of St. George, the Russian Victoria Cross, upon a humble trooper of Hussars. This man—a type of the many who honestly cannot see that they have done anything out of the common in performing a deed of the purest and most unselfish heroism—was orderly to an officer. The latter fell dangerously wounded, when this brave fellow rescued him from a storm of shot and carried him a distance of four miles. During that long and wearisome tramp with his helpless burden the soldier had to dodge the enemy’s patrols a number of times. Not only so, but in their path lay several canals, all of which he swam, supporting his officer in the water as best he could.
Another soldier, brought into the field-hospital at Druskeniki, had received twenty-four bullets in his legs. He was not aware that many of them had even struck him—an intensely interesting point this, and not wholly unreminiscent of Mr. Winston Churchill’s testimony of his and others’ experience in the great Dervish rush at Omdurman, when they were scarcely conscious of wounds or of tumult. Well, when this Russian soldier recovered consciousness after having one of his feet torn off, he found himself lying in a depression of the ground, with shrapnel and rifle-bullets whistling over him. The undulating ground unquestionably saved him from death, as six bullets passed through his pail and four through his water-bottle! He lay thus for some twenty-four hours before being discovered and carried into safety, having spent this agonising period in praying for a passing projectile to put an end to his sufferings.