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.
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