Chapter 231
ZYRARDOW, Poland, Jan. 3, via London, Jan. 8, (Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)--The lines of trenches, the position of which I am able to observe from here, are those extending south from Sochaczew, and to the west of Msczonow. The chief German efforts are being directed against the centre of this line.
They have made a concentration of their best troops opposite our positions west of the village of Guzow, against the trenches of the second army at a point where an army corps of veterans have turned their position into an earthen fortress. Here within the last few days the Germans have brought up guns of all but the largest calibre and generally displayed considerable increases in their artillery. Here also their infantry attacks, those tragic and wasteful a.s.saults in force which send so many thousand German corpses down the streams of the Rawka and Bzura to the Vistula, and so home, are most intense.
During the last few days a certain lull in the frequency of these attacks has been observable and has been construed by the Russians as prefatory to renewed endeavors to force the line and advance a short stage on the dangerous road to Warsaw. This premonition was justified on New Year's Day when the enemy's attacks were renewed east of Guzow. The armies are facing each other across their breastworks at a distance varying from 200 to 300 yards. The dawn of 1915, the Germans roused themselves again to the dreary energy of the hopeless battle. I watched the sh.e.l.ling from the headquarters of a regiment which is occupying a trench in the centre of the front line.
It was impossible to approach the trench more nearly during daylight, as the gra.s.sless brown flats were noisy with bullets from the German lines.
They shoot with wasteful prodigality shrapnel and even heavier sh.e.l.ls on any single figure that is discernible; but when early dark came down the attempt was made successfully and the first line held by the Bielojevsky Regiment was reached. I had the advantage of the company up to the zone of fire of Prince Peter Volkonsky, who is leader of a Red Cross motor column. Throughout our journey the Germans were firing rockets. A slow, green ball of fire ascends as gradually into the air as a loaded balloon, seems to poise aloft for a moment, then sinks slowly to earth, lighting the country for a long way around with a ghastly green illumination. Each rocket is followed by a prompt fire from the field batteries and a short spurt of rifle fire.
The trench to which I finally came at midnight was that in almost the mathematical centre of the Guzow positions. Here behind an eight-foot-high breastwork the famous regiment, which invariably has been in the front line during the five months of the war, has made itself efficiently at home. Since the war began the regiment, whose normal strength is 4,000 men, has lost 5,500, making good its losses out of the reserves, so that now again it is at its full strength.
The Germans have made a routine of their attacks, always making them at night and always ineffectually. They advance as far as the barbed wire, 30 yards in front of the trench. There they encounter the full force of the Russian rifle fire and fall back again. The Germans sh.e.l.l without ceasing. All the Russians speak of their profuse expenditure of ammunition. The commander of the trench told me that at the lowest they fired over 3,000 sh.e.l.ls on a single day.
Although intermittent firing continued through the night, no attack was made. With the morning the German guns resumed their exhaustive questing along the rear of the trenches, and a big factory to the southward once more became their target. Its great chimney began to acquire a kind of sporting significance, it was so obviously the object of fire in that direction; and bets were going in the trench backing the chimney against the German gunners.
I counted in an hour thirty-six sh.e.l.ls directed at the factory, but the chimney, like the steeple of a persecuted but triumphant religion, was c.o.c.king its unbowed head to the skies.
Now began the sh.e.l.ling of the trench, while the German rifle bullets searched along the front. This, however, is a game at which the Russian riflemen are specially proficient. They can in a few moments organize a combined murderous fire which forces every German who is not weary of life to keep his head down. After a few minutes the German rifle fire goes wild, their bullets no longer striking about our loopholes.
Toward late afternoon their fire increased, and the Russian long-range battery came into position behind us. The gun out of sight astern of us roared grandly. A sh.e.l.l traveled over us, whistling in its
Sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l under our eyes, timed to a fraction, raked the trench; then came the reply to it. A German heavy battery out of sight in a dip toward the river came into action. From horizon to horizon the world was noisy with the stupendous drum of artillery, while at each brief interval the rending reverberation of rifle fire from trench to trench tore at one's ears.
The dreary, icy night darkened over the desolate fields which in this war have seen their crops trampled and have been sown with dead men. The darkness was lit by gun flashes and brief moons of shrapnel winking aloft, while from the opposite trench issued a ghostly, flickering blaze of rifles at their work.
The attack developed after all to the left of the trench in which we were. It was part of a great attack along a line which extended from near Gradow southward to Rawa, and was unsuccessful everywhere.
When dark came I made my way out of the trench in the same way I had previously entered it--under fire; but this time the moon was showing frostily clear over the horrible levels, so that as we went we were silhouetted against her vacant face. We obviously were plainly visible to the Germans, for besides bullets, which were beginning to become commonplace and unremarkable, a shrapnel sh.e.l.l came screaming up and burst on the ground about twenty feet away.
We gained the road to Chervonaneva. The road was white and straight, bare as one's empty hand. Here I endured the most curious experience of my life. Myself and companion, John Ba.s.s, correspondent of The Chicago Daily News, were walking in our heavy furs between the glaring moon and the German gunners, who will fire extravagantly at anything. Their guns got to work along the road and a sh.e.l.l came screaming up and burst perhaps twenty feet away, followed by three or four others.
Our attempt to take to the fields, where we would not be so conspicuous, was thwarted by the Russian barbed wire and other preparations for the enemy. There was nothing for it but to continue along the naked road till we got out of range. Further on low trees began at the side of the road. We hastened toward them, hoping to make them serve as cover, but sh.e.l.l after sh.e.l.l arrived, each bursting close by. The trees were of no use.
There was not another soul upon the road for over two miles. Each time we heard a sh.e.l.l coming toward us we cowered with our arms covering neck and face. After each shot we inquired of each other if either had been hit. The shooting of the gunners with such a small and distant target appeared to me superb.
At last a sh.e.l.l exploded overhead, smas.h.i.+ng the branches and sending a load of metal flying. I felt blows of flying earth and twigs on my back.
Ba.s.s asked, "Have they got you?"
"Are you all right?" I inquired.
"Think they have got me in the face," was the reply.
I had an electric pocket lamp, with which I made an examination. He was cut across the jaw with a fragment of sh.e.l.l and bleeding freely. I bandaged him with our handkerchiefs, Ba.s.s, as always, uncomplaining and treating the wound humorously.
Several sh.e.l.ls followed, each too near for comfort, but we were now reaching the limit of the guns' range, and we came without further incident clear of their fire.
Ba.s.s's Story
[Special Dispatch to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
CHICAGO, Jan. 7.--John F. Ba.s.s, the staff correspondent of The Chicago Daily News, who with Perceval Gibbon had a remarkable escape from being blown to pieces by German sh.e.l.ls while returning from a visit to a Russian first-line trench in Poland, cables to his paper his version of their experiences, which duplicates largely that by Perceval Gibbon cabled to THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Recounting their arrival at the trench held by the Bielojevski Regiment, in the centre of the battle line, he says:
"The officers, in small underground bomb-proofs, gave us a hospitable welcome. The men had cut small recesses in the front wall of the trench, where they were comfortably housed in straw with bagging in front to keep out the cold. The trenches were in good condition and clean for war time.
"In the loopholes rifles lay ready for firing. One man in every four watched while the other three slept. As we walked through the trench we stepped over dead bodies of men who had recently fallen. Two of the regiment's battalions are commanded by Staff Capt. Podjio, one of the finest specimens of a conscientious, hard-working line officer I have met. He pa.s.sed the night traveling the trenches, keeping a vigilant watch and encouraging the men, who seemed to be in fine condition.
"It was bitterly cold, so we lay for a time on the straw of a bomb-proof, watching by candlelight a giant orderly sending and receiving messages on a buzzing telephone from different parts of the line. It is a habit of Germans to make night attacks that bring them within fifty yards of the Russian trenches before they are driven off.
"We saw indistinctly across the trenches the Russian videttes in front.
It is reported that the Germans do not take the precaution of posting a line of sentinels before their trenches. Just before morning the videttes came running to report activity in the German trenches. Quickly the sleeping soldiers were roused to man the loopholes. The machine guns cracked and the rifles rolled out volleys in the cold morning light. The Germans answered and bullets kicked the top of our trench. Some of the bullets seemed to crack on striking and it was reported to us that the Germans were using explosive missiles. Under the Russian fire the Germans failed to leave their trench.
"When the light swelled into day the German artillery began sh.e.l.ling the houses, the tall chimney, and the trenches. Black clouds of smoke rose from the spots where the sh.e.l.ls struck. On our trench they used shrapnel, which burst for the most part beyond us in white puffs. The German infantry continued a heavy fusillade, but our machine gun fire, which seemed to sweep the dust from the top of the German trench, caused their rifle fire to go high and the bullets hissed overhead.
"Two German aeroplanes swept down the line above the Russian trench, but retired when chased by a Russian biplane. In the distance a German observation balloon hung in the sky like a huge sausage."
[Ill.u.s.tration: H.S.H. PRINCE LOUIS ALEXANDER OF BATTENBERG,
Who Was Forced to Resign as First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty.
(_Photo_ _by Pach Bros., N.Y._)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIELD MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS,
From a Photograph Taken on His Eighty-second Birthday.
(_Photo by L.N.A._)]
The Waste of German Lives
By Perceval Gibbon.
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
ZYRARDOW, Poland, Jan. 5, (Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)--Once again Poland has seen a great German general attack along the whole line of the Bzura and Rawka positions from Gradow to Rawa. For thirty-six hours the battle has s.h.i.+fted like a moving flame in a long line. Now that its intensity is abated, it is clear that the German purpose has again failed of accomplishment, and at several points the Russian line has advanced.
We have no key to the German mentality which inspires these attacks so wasteful in lives of soldiers, so ineffectual in their general result.
In the records of this struggle along the courses of the two little rivers I have notes of upward of 100 attacks in considerable force, of which not a single one resulted in s.h.i.+fting the imperturbable Russian infantry from a trench, but each of which has been accompanied by ghastly loss to the Germans.