Count Tolstoy has been serving with the Red Cross branch of the Russian Army. During these tragic experiences, he kept a war diary on the battlefields. This is the first English translation of excerpts from this diary, translated from the Russian by Miss I. Rojansky for Current History—Copyright 1916 by Otis F. Wood.
I—"I CAN SEE THE SCENE UNFOLDING BEFORE MY EYES"
The war relics of devastated structures leave a sad and painful impression. Of the many deserted battlefields which I have seen during the two years past, the nameless little graves faintly marked with little wooden crosses, of the deserted trenches, nothing gave me so much food for deep and sad reflection as the bare and lonely chimneys projecting from amid piles of rubbish, melancholy blackened pots, the scattered remnants of domesticity; a smashed pail, a broken wheel, a binding of a torn book, the splinters of what was once a crib.
To think that hereabout dwelt a family; that they were contented and possibly happy! Those walls, stripped and crumbled, what have they not seen!
It always seems to me that an event having occurred at a given place, the memory of the occurrence attaches permanently to it. Whenever I happened to find myself in a locality in which some memorable events had taken place I could not think of those events without at the same time visualizing the surroundings amid which they occurred; and the more recent the occurrence, the more vividly I can see the scene unfolding itself before my eyes.
The vast number of such impressions which the present war has produced make a film, vivid and endless.
II—"I REMEMBER ... A HORRIBLE TALE"
I remember one such pile of ruins, which I saw not far from the road leading to Jaroslav. This ruin remained permanently fixed in my memory by reason of a horrible tale connected with it.
Some time ago there lived on a farm a well-to-do Galician gardener. When the war broke out he was drafted into the army. He went forth, leaving behind him a wife and three small children. Shortly following his departure, troops commenced appearing in the immediate neighborhood. At first came small detachments, but these were quickly followed by more formidable bodies. In a short time lines of trenches were dug on both sides of the farm and real warfare began.
The firing was continuous. The family sought safety in the corners of their hut. They hid in the cellar under the heaps of beets and potatoes, but the children soon became accustomed to the hissing of bullets and lost all fear of them.