At a small village locally known as Napoleon's Island we found the railway station demolished and the line of trucks the French had used as a barricade. These trucks had been almost shot to pieces, and many were stained with blood. Outside the station the small restaurant roof had been shot away; the windows were smashed, and much furniture had been destroyed. Nevertheless the proprietor had rearranged his damaged premises as well as possible and was serving customers as if nothing had happened.
Just outside this village there are large common graves in which French and German soldiers lie buried together in their uniforms. Large mounds mark these sites. Here again the villagers have placed roughly hewn crosses.
Not far from Huningen we met an intelligent Alsatian peasant who remembered the war of 1870 and had witnessed some engagements in the last few days. Here is his account of what he saw:
"The bravery on both sides was amazing. The effects of artillery fire are terrific. The shells burst, and where you formerly saw a body of soldiers you see a heap of corpses or a number of figures writhing on the ground, torn and mutilated by the fragments of the shell. Those who are unhurt scatter for the moment, but quickly regain their composure and take up their positions in the fighting line as if nothing had happened. The effects of other weapons are as bad. It seems remarkable that soldiers can see the destruction worked all around them, yet can control their nerves sufficiently to continue fighting.
"I remember the battles of 1870, in five or six of which I fought myself, but they bear no comparison with the battles of 1914. War forty-four years ago was child's play compared with war at the present time."
In several villages the schools and churches and many cottages are filled with wounded Frenchmen and Germans, and everything is being done to relieve their sufferings. In the stress of fighting many wounded soldiers were left from three to ten or twelve hours lying in the fields or on the roads. The ambulance equipment of modern armies appears utterly inadequate, and most of the wounded were picked up by villagers.
A French aeroplane from Belfort reconnoitred the German positions behind Mulhausen. As it passed over the German works at the Isteiner Klotz there ensued a continuous firing of machine guns and rifles. The aeroplane, which had swerved downward to give its two occupants a closer and clearer view of the German position, immediately rose to a much greater altitude and escaped injury. It cruised over the German position for more than an hour, now rising, now falling, always pursued by the bullets of the enemy.
This aerial reconnoissance [Transcriber: original 'reconnoisance'], part of which was carried out at an altitude as low as 1,000 feet, was undertaken at terrible risk, but in this case the aeroplane escaped all injury and returned in the direction of Belfort, doubtless with all the information it had set out to collect.
[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]
BERNE, Aug. 22, (Dispatch to The London Morning Post.)--Gebweiler, in Alsace, twelve miles to the northwest of Mulhausen, was taken by the French at the point of the bayonet on Aug. 20. My correspondent, who has just arrived at Basle from the field of battle, says that eight battalions of the German One Hundred and Fourteenth Regiment, numbering about 10,000 men, engaged the French Army. The French artillery was deadly and caused great ravages among the Germans, few officers escaping.
During the whole night the wounded were being transported to villages in the neighborhood, beyond the reach of artillery. All the buildings of Sierenz were filled with wounded.
Hundreds of horses were stretched on the field of battle. Those of the German artillery were killed, and in consequence the German forces left their artillery, of which about twenty guns are now in the hands of the French.
The object of the German troops was to cut off the retreat of the French and force them toward the Swiss frontier--an object which they failed to achieve.
The wounded received here say that they passed a terrible night in the open, without water or other succor, with the pitiful neighing of wounded horses ringing in their ears.
*Rennenkampf on the Prussian Border*
[By a Correspondent of The London Daily Chronicle.]
GRADNO, (via Petrograd,) Oct. 21.--I have returned here after a journey along the East Prussian frontier, as close to the scenes of daily fighting as I could obtain permission to go. The route was from the north of Suwalki southward to Graevo, a stretch of country recently in German occupation, but where now remains not a single German outpost.
It is stimulating to see the Russian soldier in his habits as he lives and fights. I have seen many thousands of them camped in the rain, swamped in bogs, or marching indefatigably over the roads which are long quagmires of mud, always with an air of stolid contentment and the look of being bent on business. They include Baltic Province men speaking German. Jews from Riga and Libau are brigaded with huge Siberians, whose marching must constitute a world record. The Cossacks are past counting, and with them are long-coated, tight-belted Circassians and Kalmucks, all representing a mixture of races and languages like that of the British Empire itself.
Actually the whole line is a battle front from north of Wirballen to well into Poland, and no day passes without contact with the Germans.
This is an army in which every man has fought. Most of them have been in hand-to-hand conflict with the Germans. They have approached the front through a country which the enemy has devastated. There is no village which does not bear the mark of wanton destruction. I have seen these things for myself. Houses have been burned, others pillaged and the contents dragged into the streets and there smashed. Churches have been invariably gutted and defiled.
It is impossible not to admire these endless battalions of Siberians.
They are common objects of this countryside. I came past Suwalki as they were moving up, column after column, in gray overcoats aswing in the rhythm of their stride, like the kilts of Highlanders. It was they who bore the brunt of the fighting, unsupported by artillery, in forests of Augustowo, and, with the Baltic regiments, pushed on and took Lyck.
These are the men who marched forty miles, starting at midnight, then went into action between Gor and Raigrod and delivered a bayonet charge which their officers still boast about today.
I may not indicate the geography of the front on which the Russians and Germans are now facing each other, but the German general plan is to protect the railway and all approaches to a vital junction such as Goldapp and Insterburg. Between them and the frontier lies a country of singular difficulty for the troops. It is easy of defense, with small broken hills, innumerable lakes and roads winding in watered valleys among woods. The Germans have gone to earth in their usual lavish fashion, digging themselves in with a thoroughness worthy of permanent fortifications. Their trenches are five feet deep, with earthworks in front zig-zagging as a precaution against enfilading. Some of them are very cleverly hidden with growing bushes. All peasants remaining at the country-side in Prussia are compelled to work digging trenches. The emplacements [Transcriber: original 'implacements'] for guns of large calibre have concrete foundations.
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.
*The First Fight at Lodz*
*By Percival Gibbon of The London Daily Chronicle.*
WARSAW, Dec. 5, (by Courier to Petrograd.)--I have wired you previously of the German force which advanced around Lodz and was cut off south and east of the town. This consisted of two army corps--the Twenty-fifth Corps and the Third Guard Corps. The isolated force turned north and endeavored to cut its way out through the small town of Breziziny. It was at Breziziny that final disaster overtook them.
The town and road lie in a hollow in the midst of wooded country, where the Germans were squeezed from the Vistula and pressed to the rear. They had fought a battle during the slow retirement of five days and were showing signs of being short of ammunition. On the fifth day they made their final attempt to pass through Breziziny. That was where that fine strategist and fighting man who held Ivangorod on the Vistula brought off the great dramatic coup for which he had been manoeuvring.
The Germans were holding the town and pouring through when he began his general attack. Breziziny underwent nine hours of furious shelling and only half the town is now remaining. The Russian infantry again proved its sterling quality, and, supported by the tremendous fire of its own guns, drove home charge after charge, smashing the German resistance completely. By nightfall out of two army corps, numbering 80,000 men, there remained only a remnant.
The number of prisoners reaches the total of about 20,000, and of the remainder fully 80 per cent, were killed or wounded. This is the estimate supplied to me. Owing to the small area on which the fighting was concentrated, the dead are lying in great mounds and walls at points where the charges were pushed home. For miles the countryside is dotted with dead.
In the sparser grounds an unknown number of fugitives, most of whom are wounded, are lurking in the woods. From Rawa, south of Skierniwice, midway between Lodz and Warsaw, to Lodz on the line of the former German retreat and present advance, not a single village remains. All the burned-out district is utterly desolate.
On Dec. 1, 2, and 3 the force conducting the defense of the town of Lodz was all but surrounded. The German positions were at Royicie on the southern road, within four miles of the long, straggling street which comprises most of the town of Lodz, while at Zgierz, seven miles to the north, they had a battery of heavy guns with which they shelled the town itself, killing several hundred civilians. The fire was chiefly directed on the railway and station and the Russian guns were unable for some time to locate the battery. It was discovered and reconnoitred at last by an aeroplane.
[Illustration: The War in the East (with Net Change of Battle Line Up to Jan, 1, 1915) from Eastern Prussia to Galicia.]
Then followed an act of heroism and harebrained enterprise which is now the talk of the whole army. On Thursday night last the Colonel of Artillery made his way out and with a little group of assistants contrived to drag a field telephone wire within half a mile of the German battery. While a searchlight was swinging over the face of the country, he lay on the ground, and from there directed the Russian guns, which with his help actually succeeded in silencing the battery. The Russian guns were at this time placed in the streets of Lodz.
On Thursday night, when the attack culminated, there were 700 guns in action at one time on both sides, and throughout the night all was alight with flashes from the guns and bursting shells, and the thunder of the guns was faintly audible on the outskirts of Warsaw, sixty miles away.
Then there followed a general assault of the Germans, a charge of huge masses of men, who followed up into the glare of the searchlights under an inferno of gunfire. Here again the Siberians demonstrated the qualities which have made them famous throughout the war. They met the Germans with a rifle fire from the trenches which not only stopped them but shattered them. They again played the old trick of allowing the enemy to approach within fifty feet, meanwhile holding their fire, and then blowing them off their feet with rifle fire and their use of the mitrailleuse.
The attack failed utterly, and from the very manner of it the Russian losses could not be otherwise than light, while the German losses in the whole of the operations against Lodz and the neighboring positions exceed a hundred thousand killed. No guess at the number of their wounded can be attempted, but we know that score upon score of trains filled with them have gone west along the Kalisz line, and still continue to go.