The Germans had fortified Suwalki, employing forced labor. They had connected up the trench system with telephone installation and appointed a Military Governor and other functionaries. Many German officers were joined there by their wives and families, who when they retired took with them souvenirs consisting of nearly every portable object of value in the town, besides much furniture and clothing.
The Russian trenches are scarcely more than shallow grooves in the ground with earth thrown up in front of them, making barely sufficient cover for prone riflemen.
At once the German outer positions were carried by storm with ghastly carnage.
"We didn't dig much," said a Russian officer to me. "We knew we shouldn't stay there. We should either go forward or back, and we were sure to go forward."
The cloud of patrols, mostly Cossacks, which flits unceasingly along the German front is the subject of innumerable stories.
When the news was issued that the Kaiser had come east to take command of his army on this front a Cossack came in, driving before him a plump, distressed Prussian Captain whom he had gleaned during the day's work.
"I've brought him," he announced. "I knew him by his mustache," and he produced an old picture postcard from his breast showing the Kaiser with his characteristic mustache.
Near Augustowo the roads are literally blocked in many places with abandoned German transports which became trapped in the terribly muddy country. Dead horses in hundreds lie everywhere and the Russian Sanitary Corps is busy burying them. Yet the Russians who are still moving about this country retain not only their usual average health, but do not even complain.
Between Augustowo and Raigrod a small stream is actually blocked with German stores, including much gun ammunition. The German advance which ended in this debacle has been the costliest defeat in point of materials which they have yet suffered.