The colours of the Siberians.
Officers in the head-quarters of regiment and divisions tell of the operators at the telephones clinging to their instruments until only the sounds of their choking efforts to speak came over the wire, and then silence. Some were found dead with the receivers in their hands, while others were discovered clutching muskets fallen from the hands of the infantry that had succumbed. In this trying ordeal not a man, soldier or officer budged from his position. To a man they remained firm, some overcome, some dying, and others already dead. So faithful were they to their duty, that before the reserves reached them the Germans were already extricating themselves from their own dead and wounded, and hurriedly beating a retreat toward their own lines. From the rear trenches now came, leaping with hoarse shouts of fury, the columns of the Siberian reserves. Through the poisoned mist that curled and circled at their feet, they ran, many stumbling and falling from the effect of the noxious vapours. When they reached the first line trench, the enemy was already straggling back in retreat, a retreat that probably cost them more dearly than their attack; for the reserves, maddened with fury poured over their own trenches, pursued the Germans, and with clubbed rifle and bayonet took heavy vengeance for comrades poisoned and dying in the first line trench. So furiously did the Siberians fall upon the Germans that several positions in the German line were occupied, numbers of the enemy who chose to remain dying under the bayonet or else falling on their knees with prayers for mercy. Somewhat to the south of the main gas attack there came a change in the wind, and the poisoned fumes blew back into the trenches of the Germans, trenches in which it is believed the occupants were not equipped with respirators. The Russians in opposite lines say that the cries of the Germans attacked by their own fumes were something horrible to listen to, and their shrieks could have been heard half a mile away.
Thus ended the first German effort to turn the Russians out of their positions by the use of a method which their rulers had pledged themselves in treaty never to adopt. The net results were an absolute defeat of the Germans, with the loss of several of their own positions, and a loss in dead and wounded probably three times greater than was suffered by the Russians. Even although it was unexpected and unprepared for, this first attempt was an absolute failure; the only result being an increase of fury on the part of the Russian soldiers that makes it difficult to keep them in their trenches, so eager are they to go over and bayonet their enemies.
SOME DETAILS REGARDING THE GAS HORROR
CHAPTER XII
SOME DETAILS REGARDING THE GAS HORROR
Warsaw,
June 8.
Ever since my return from the southern armies last week I have spent practically my entire time in the study and investigation of the newest phase of frightfulness as practised by the German authorities. Ten months of war and an earlier experience in Manchuria of what misery it represents even when conducted in the most humane way have not tended to make me over-sensitive to the sights and sufferings which are the inevitable accompaniment of the conflict between modern armies; but what I have seen in the last week has impressed me more deeply than the sum total of all the other horrors which I have seen in this and other campaigns combined. The effects of the new war methods involve hideous suffering and are of no military value whatsoever (if results on this front are typical); while they reduce war to a barbarity and cruelty which could not be justified from any point of view, even were the results obtained for the cause of the user a thousandfold greater than they have proved to be.
I found on my return from the south the whole of Warsaw in a fever of riotous indignation against the Germans and the German people as the result of the arrival of the first block of gas victims brought in from the Bzura front. I have already described the attack made on the Russian position, its absolute failure, and the result it had of increasing the morale of the Russian troops. I must now try to convey to the reader an idea of the effects which I have personally witnessed and ascertained by first hand investigation of the whole subject. The investigation has taken me from the Warsaw hospitals, down through the various army, corps, division and regimental head-quarters, to the advance trenches on which the attack was actually made. I have talked with every one possible, from generals to privates, and from surgeons to the nurses, and to the victims themselves, and feel, therefore, that I can write with a fair degree of authority.
The gas itself, I was told at the front, was almost pure chloral fumes; but in the hospitals here they informed me that there were indications of the presence of a small trace of bromine, though it has proved somewhat difficult to make an exact analysis. The effect of the gas when inhaled is to cause an immediate and extremely painful irritation of the lungs and the bronchial tubes, which causes instantly acute suffering. The gas, on reaching the lungs, and coming in contact with the blood, at once causes congestion, and clots begin to form not only in the lungs themselves but in the blood-vessels and larger arteries, while the blood itself becomes so thick that it is with great difficulty that the heart is able to force it through the veins. The first effects, then, are those of strangulation, pains throughout the body where clots are forming, and the additional misery of the irritation which the acid gases cause to all the mucous membranes to which it is exposed. Some of the fatal cases were examined by the surgeons on the post-mortem table, and it was found that the lungs were so choked with coagulated blood that, as one doctor at the front told me, they resembled huge slabs of raw liver rather than lungs at all. The heart was badly strained from the endeavour to exert its functions against such obstacles, and death had resulted from strangulation.