"It was now five o'clock in the afternoon on January 31, 1915, and the artillery fire still roared over the white plain. Here and there were a few scattered farms, deeply snowed in. In the distance stood forests, darkly silhouetted against the sky, covered with heavy, low-hanging snow clouds. In between were yawning depths, and farther up other curtains of clouds glowing in the full purple light of the setting sun. A wonderful majesty lay on the heavens at that hour. But down on the earth, across the white plain, the fighting German troops still crowded against the enemy. Again infantry fire started and became the livelier the nearer twilight approached and the deeper evening shadows prepared the coming night.
"The 1st of February, 1915, the second day of battle, broke damp and cloudy. Once more artillery fire set in. Later in the morning, just as on the first day, the infantry again attacked. While the roar of the battle went on, some of the men prepared the last resting place for their comrades who had fallen on the previous day. Silently this work was done. Here there were single graves, and then again places where larger numbers were to be put to rest together. One such grave was dug close to the wall of the cemetery and in it were bedded the dead heroes so that their closed eyes were turned westward—toward home. A chaplain found wonderful words at the open grave, blessing the rest of those who had fallen on the field of honor and speaking to their comrades of the joys of battle and of its sorrows while they said farewell to the dead with bared heads.
"The guns still roared; then they were silent and then roared on again. A remarkable tension was in the air. In a discord of feelings the day drew to its end, and after that the third day of battle, the 2d of February, dawned with renewed fighting. It was noon. We were sitting at division headquarters, lunching, when the telephone rang loudly. With a jump a staff officer was before it. 'General, the Russian lines are giving way.' Quickly the general issued his orders. Once more the fighting set in with all the available strength and vigor. The thunder of the guns was renewed, and so the third day of battle ended with the storming of the strong Russian positions in Humin and with the occupation of the entire village by the German troops."
After the storming of Humin the Germans took the heights near Borzimow, which commanded the road Bolimow-Warsaw. Here, too, the fighting was very hard. South of Humin, near Wola-Szydlowieca, the Russian lines again were broken on February 3, 1915, after a combined artillery and infantry attack, which began early on February 2, 1915, and lasted for more than twenty-four hours. The next ten days brought continuous fighting at many points, some of it almost as ferocious as that of which we have just spoken, but none of it yielding any important results to either side. With the middle of February a lull set in in this sector of the front. Of course the fighting did not stop entirely. But the Germans did not advance farther, and the Russians were unable to break their lines or to force them back anywhere to any appreciable extent.
Of course all this fighting took place near enough to Warsaw to be heard there and to fill its inhabitants with terror and fear of a possible siege or attack on the city proper. Although a great many people had fled to the interior, thousands of others had flocked to the city, especially from those outlying districts that had been overrun by the invaders. Most of these were practically destitute and without means or opportunity to earn any money. The Russian Government did its best to help them, and provided nineteen asylums and thirteen people's kitchens which, it is reported, distributed each day 40,000 portions. Wood, coal, and oil gradually became more and more scarce and advanced to very high prices, causing a great deal of suffering, especially among the poorer classes.
Again reports of various neutral war correspondents, located at that time in Warsaw, are of great interest. Says one: "The thunder of the cannons has started up once more. Only the forts of the belt line of fortresses are still silent. The railroad to Wilanow has been closed. No one is allowed to go beyond Mokotow. In front of the two railroad stations silent crowds of people are standing, their features showing their terror. They stand there like they would at a fire to which the firemen are rushing with their engines and ladders. One's feet are like lumps of ice, one's head feels foolish and empty. Doors and windows in the big new houses in Marshalkowska Street have been boarded up in expectation of the rifle fire. It reminds one of a boat when, before the breaking of the storm, hatches are closed up and sails are trimmed. Omnibuses come in loaded with wounded, likewise butcher wagons with similar loads. Many of the lighter wounded soldiers limp on foot. With nightfall the entire city falls into darkness—strange, ghostlike. People creep along the walls with bowed heads. The silence of the night only intensifies the roar of the untiring guns, and they seem then to come closer."
During all this time the German dirigibles and aeroplanes were very active, too, throwing bombs. Granville Fortescue pictures the terror spread by them most realistically. "Warsaw's inhabitants know now well the meaning of an aeroplane, and whenever they see one approach they run in wild terror into their houses and cellars. Before every open door pushing, shouting crowds mass themselves, and serious panics are caused when the sharp crack of the exploding bomb shakes and rattles all the windows. As soon as the danger is passed the curious collect, first with hesitation, then bolder and bolder, around the spot where the bomb fell and gape with terror at the powerful results produced by the explosion. Here a stretch of the railroad has been destroyed; the walls of the near-by houses are covered with innumerable holes looking like smallpox scars; others, of the splinters from the bomb, have dug themselves deep into the ground and not a single window in the vicinity is unbroken."
A winter of the most bitter misery has closed in on the unfortunate city; miserable-looking shapes by the thousands, without home or food, crowd the narrow, crooked streets. As sand flows through an hourglass, so regiment after regiment, from every part of the vast empire of the czar, streams through the streets which now are black with people. From far-distant Siberia and from the borderlands of Turkestan these gray-clad soldiers pour through Warsaw to the plains of Poland. In their dull features no trace can be discovered of what they feel or think. One can study the faces of these Tartars, Mongols, and Caucasians as much as one pleases, there remains always the same mystery. Tramp, tramp, tramp—they march from the Kalish station along the railroad until they disappear together with the horizon in a single gray mass—who knows whither, who knows whence? It is at such times that one realizes the magnitude of Russia if one considers that many of them have traveled all the way from the Ural Mountains.
Quietness and gloominess now reign in Warsaw's hospitals, in which formerly there was so much life and activity. The patients have been sent, as far as their condition permitted, into central Russia to recuperate, and at this time only slightly wounded men are brought in. This is a bad sign, for the doctors figure correctly that it indicates that those seriously wounded are left on the battle fields and perish there. The hotels, on the other hand, are full of life. There officers have settled down; every rank and every branch of the service is represented here, from the grizzly general down to the beardless lieutenant; every province of the immense empire seems to have sent a representative. You may see there the most fantastic figures: Caucasian colonels with enormous caps, huge mustaches, and black boots, figures which look still exactly like the Muscovian warriors from the days of Napoleon. It strikes one as very strange to hear so many German names borne by these Russian officers. And while the poor inhabitants of Warsaw await their fate with fear and trembling, the officers are the only ones full of joy, for war is their element and a promising opportunity for thousands of enticing possibilities which peace never brought them.
During November and December, 1914, both in north and south Poland, continuous fighting went on along the lines. In south Poland the field of action was at first north of Cracow, between the Rivers Warta and Pilitza, and later between the latter and the River Nida. But although the result of this fighting—which mainly was in favor of the German-Austrian forces—to a certain extent influenced the result in the central sector to the west of Warsaw, the details of it do not properly call for consideration at this time and place. For it was directed much more by the Austrian General Staff than by that of the German armies, the forces involved were preponderantly Austro-Hungarian, and it was more closely connected with the Russian attack on Galicia and the Carpathians than with Von Hindenburg's attack on the Russian center. It will find its proper consideration in another place in connection with the Galician campaign. Suffice it to say here that the Austro-Hungarian forces under Boehm-Ermolli, supported by the German division under General van Woyrsch, carried successfully that part of Von Hindenburg's general plan which had been assigned to it—the protection of the right wing of his central group of troops and the shielding of Cracow from a direct Russian attack.