the highest point of its tower, the Germans have their observation station from which are noted the effect of the German fire and directions telephoned accordingly to the various batteries. You are informed also that despite this placid rear, where only the big guns are at work, and an occasional Russian shell tears up the ground, the German and Russian infantry face each other from opposing trenches beyond the tower. Only the overpowering and dominating thunder of the great guns prevents your hearing the crackle of the thousands of rifles. Russian trenches are about to be taken-news has come that the Germans already have captured one. From this church steeple alone can this fighting be seen. To the church, then, you make your way, and after a space permission comes to go to the top. You mount by a winding stair of brick through the pitch black shaft of the tower to a large space with three big arched openings, two of them boarded up. Through the unobstructed one, a section of the field of action is before you. For a while you examine it by the aid of strong field glasses, until told to mount the ladder leading to the final loft, just beneath the sharply sloping roof of the belfry. Here you find the very heart of activity, the busiest single spot you have discovered in all Germany. A general of artillery sits in the semi-darkness on a little stool, his eye fixed on the mirror of a curious observation telescope, bent at the top like an ear trumpet, its flange looking through a small opening made in the belfry roof. He notes the effect of every German shell on either Russian trench or battery, and with quick, accurate decisiveness gives brief orders to officers seated at telephones, who in turn bark them out in sharp detail over the wires to the proper gun squads in the field. And now you recall that in the church entrances were clusters of wires, in the loft wires-everywhere wires. You tarry but a minute or two, scanning the field through this distance-grasping instrument, and then climb down to the loft below; for these men are absorbed in deadly, imminent and incessant duty, and you would not trespass upon their courtesy. By aid of that observation telescope, supplemented by long and steady gaze at the opening of the loft below, you make out something of what is going on in the field before you. A long line of men, each a short space from the other, is moving forward. They do not appear to rush. They look as if they were clad in black, so sharp is their outline upon the dead white of the snow. One lies down; another sinks to a sitting posture. Midway of the field back of this line, two men are walking. They do not seem to hurry. At another point a man half-reclines in the snow, leaning on his elbow. Along a cross-road, several wagons crawl. In the distance are a cloud of figures-the Russians you are told. But why are they not in their trenches? It is very confusing for all its apparent simplicity-and deadly in spite of its seeming mildness. "Here come some Russian prisoners," a voice at your side quietly remarks. You look, and on the road leading from the field toward the town marches a column of disarmed men in charge of two or three Uhlans. You hasten down to get a closer view of these captured soldiers; but you miss them for the moment, though you are to see them, and many more, later in the day. But now the wounded who are still able to walk come straggling directly by you, for the temporary hospital is in a broad, one-story, brick building in the same street, only a few hundred feet away. Most of them have been hit in the head, face, hand or arm, the familiar wounds of the trenches. Each is bandaged, having received first aid in the field hospital near the firing-line. The blood is soaking through these bandages. Only one man passes who has been shot through the foot; he limps along on the arm of a comrade, carrying his perforated boot. After bandaging, a thick woolen sock has been pulled over his wounded foot. He is quite willing to tell about it, and laughs as he poses for a kodak snapshot. You have seen wounded men before, hundreds and hundreds of them; but these had been in hospital trains, field hospitals, or permanent hospitals. For a long time you have been anxious to see how men looked and acted when newly hurt on the battlefield itself. And here they are before you. The injured ones appear to accept their plight with nonchalant indifference. Are they and you and all male creatures callous, you wonder; for a few weeks before you had read a woman's description of wounded men which was so ghastly and sickening that you felt quite undone. Yet now with the reality before your Shot three times, but head up and still game. "What spirit! You feel like shouting, hurrah!" The white on the coat is snow sticking to and covering the dripping blood. Wounded German soldiers coming in from the firing line just beyond the town. Battle of Bolimoff, (near Warsaw) Russian Poland, January 31st, 1915. The fortitude and staying power of the German soldier is astonishing. |