In the war; memoirs of V. Veresáev

Contents

CHAFFEB PAGB

FOREWORD ' Vii

I AT HOME 1

Foreword

Byelinski recognized in Gogol the founder of the Natural School, which dethroned the romantic hero with his extravagant and exceptional achievements, and enlisted the reader's sympathy for the struggles, sufferings and defeats of plain, every-day characters. Military exploits immediately lost their favor as subjects of novels, and in the portrayal of war scenes the Russian authors sought out the humble soldiers with their passive resignation to fate, where formerly they had revelled in the glorification of generals and kings. Tolstoy began his career as a romanticist, and, besides his autobiographical sketches, wrote his Incursion, a story of camp life in the Caucasus. This was but a flash in the pan. In 1855 the Crimean War broke out, and Tolstoy, in his Sevastopol sketches, described the terror and uselessness of battles, in which the only heroes were the patient soldiers who unflinchingly performed their duties, while the officers vied with each other in bravado, debauch, and cowardice. He returned to the recital of battle scenes in War and Peace, only to deny the existence of all military science, to belittle the genius of Napoleon, and to extol the Christian meekness of a peasant, Platon Karataev.

The Turco-Russian War did not produce any marked literary denunciation of war, except in Garshin's Four Days, in which the terrible suffering of a wounded soldier was painfully recited. But Tolstoy's example was this time followed by the great painter Vereshchagin, who devoted all his energy to the reproduction of battle

vii viii FOREWORD

scenes in sucli a realistic manner that they could only fill the spectator with abhorrence and hatred of war. The Russian Government found it necessary to prohibit exhibitions of his pictures as destructive of patriotism, that is, as creating a spirit imfavorable to the maintenance of military enthusiasm.

During the Russo-Japanese War, Vereshchagin once more set out to study battle scenes on the spot, but lost his life on one of the cruisers which was sunk by the Japanese. This time, however, it fell to the lot of a physician, Veresaev, to sketch the whole campaign in such a way as to deprive war of the last vestige of respect, and to bear out the novelist and the painter in every detail of their terrible denunciations. The abyss has been reached. The ignorance, incompetence, negligence and brutality of the superior officers are described in painful detail, and now even the soldiers have lost the aureole with which Tolstoy surrounded them. As a human document Veresaev's In the War is of prime importance. It is the most complete analysis of the ingloriousness of war yet obtained. The present European War will hardly produce anything more incisive than the works of the Russian novelist, painter and physician.

The Teanslator,

Chapter I

Japan broke off her diplomatic relations with Russia. In the roadstead of Port Arthur the explosions of Japanese mines resounded one dark night amidst the peacefully-sleeping war-ships. In distant Chemulpo the lonely Varydg and K or Sets perished after a titanic struggle with a whole squadron. The war began.

What was this war about ? Nobody knew. For half a year conversations, unintelligible to all, had been going on in regard to the evacuation of Manchuria by the Russians. The clouds had been gathering heavier and heavier, and a storm was in the air. Our statesmen had been balancing the scales of war and peace with provoking hesitation. Now Japan definitely cast her lot on the scale of war.

The Russian patriotic newspapers began to seethe with military fervor. They shouted about the hellish treachery and Asiatic cunning of the Japanese, who had attacked us without a declaration of war. Manifestations were taking place in all the large cities. Crowds of people walked the streets with the Tsar's portraits in their hands, shouting "Hurrah !" and singing "God save the Tsar !" According to the newspapers, the audiences in the theatre persistently and unanimously demanded the singing of the national hymn. The armies that went eastward struck the newspaper reporters by their fine appearance, and were anxious to begin battle. It looked as though Russia, from the top to the bottom, were seized by one mighty impulse of enthusiasm and indignation.

Of course, the war had not been provoked by Japan, and was incomprehensible on account of its uselessness ; but what of that? If each small cell of the living body has its small, individual consciousness, it will not ask the question why the body has suddenly leaped up, why it makes an effort, why it struggles. The blood corpuscles will flow through the arteries, the muscular tissues will contract, each little cell will do its predetermined duty. But it is the business of the supreme brain to say what the struggle is for and where the blows are to fall. It is precisely this impression that Russia was making: she did not need the war, she did not understand it; but all her enormous organism was atremble with the mighty elation which had taken possession of her.

So it seemed from a (distance, but it looked quite differently near by. The intellectuals were not at all hostilely provoked against the Japanese. They were not agitated by the question of the result of the war; there was not a trace of ill-feeling against the Japanese; our failures did not oppress them. On the contrary, side by side with the pain for the reckless and useless sacrifices, there went a feeling almost of malice. Many people went so far as to proclaim that Russia would be best served by a defeat. To the occasional observer, to whom the whole matter was incomprehensible, it looked as though something incredible was taking place. He saw the country at war, and yet at home the flower of its intelligence was following the struggle with hostile impatience. Foreigners were baffled and the "Patriots" were immeasurably provoked by "the rotten, aimless, cosmopolitan Russian intelligentsiya." But with the majority it was not at all a

AT HOME S

real, broad cosmopolitanism which could say to its country, "You are wrong, your enemy is right" ; nor was it an innate contempt for the bloody, sanguinary method of solving international quarrels. What really was striking in this matter, what now glaringly met the eye, was the immeasurably deep, universal hostility towards the rulers of the country that had begun the war. They, who had been leading up towards a struggle with the enemy, were themselves the most hated enemies and most foreign to the masses.

Again, the nation was experiencing something quite different from what the patriotic newspapers had been expecting. In the beginning there had, indeed, been some enthusiasm, the unconscious enthusiasm of the unthinking cell, that was carried away by the fervor of the organism aflame for the struggle. But the enthusiasm was only superficial and weak, and from the persistently shouting figures on the stage heavy threads were running behind the curtains, and the directing hands were visible.

I was at that time living in Moscow. During the Butter Week I happened to be in the Great Theatre, to see "Rigoletto." Before the overture, several voices in the pit and in the galleries demanded the national hymn. The curtain rose, the chorus on the stage sang the hymn, and an encore was demanded ; and they sang a second and a third time. Then they passed over to the opera. Before the last act, when all were already in their places, single voices suddenly began to shout from various parts of the house, "The Hymn, the Hymn!" The curtain shot up at once. The chorus stood on the stage in a semicircle, dressed in their opera costumes, and they once more gave the three conventional repetitions of the hymn. But here was a strange matter. As is well known, the chorus has no part in the last act of "Rigoletto." Why, then, had they not changed their clothes and gone home.^^ How could they have had a presentiment of the growth of the patriotic enthusiasm of the public, and why had they arranged themselves in time on the stage, where they had no business to be? The next day the newspapers wrote: "In society may be observed an ever-growing elan of patriotic sentiments. Last night the audiences in all the theatres persistently demanded the singing of the national hymn, not only before the performance, but even before the last act."

The same suspicious element might have been observed in the street manifestations. The crowds were small and consisted to a great extent of street urchins. In the leaders of the manifestations people recognized policemen in civilian clothes. The attitude of the crowd was aggressive and insulting. They demanded of passers-by that they should take off their hats. Those who did not do so were beaten. When the crowd increased, there arose unforeseen complications. They almost demolished the "Hermitage" restaurant, and on Strastnaya Square mounted policemen drove off with knouts the overfervent demonstrators of patriotic enthusiasm.

The Governor General issued an order. He thanked the citizens for the sentiments expressed by them, and proposed that they should stop their manifestations and return to their peaceful occupations. Similar calls were at the same time issued by the high officials of other cities, and suddenly all the manifestations ceased. It was touching to notice the exemplary obedience with which the citizens proportioned the height of their spiritual ardor with the insinuations of the warmlybeloved authorities. Soon, very soon, the streets of the Russian cities were. to be filled with other crowds that were welded by a real, common enthusiasm, and against this enthusiasm not only the paternal insinuations of the authorities, but even knouts, sabres, and bullets, remained impotent.

In the show-cases of the stores were displayed cheap chromos of an amazingly stupid character. On one of them a gigantic Cossack, with a ferocious grin on his face, was mercilessly beating with his knout a tiny, frightened, howling Japanese. In another picture, which portrayed "How a Russian tar did a Jap's face mar," the blood streamed down the face of the Japanese, and his teeth poured down in a heavy rain into the blue waves. Small "monkeys" were squirming under the enormous boots of a shaggy creature with a bloodthirsty physiognomy, which personified Russia. It was as though the artist could get no other inspiration than from a drunken bout in a low saloon, where jaws cracked and teeth flew all about. Meanwhile patriotic newspapers and periodicals wrote of the deeply national and deeply Christian character of the war, of the mighty incipient struggle of George the Victor with the Dragon.

And Japanese victories followed upon victories. One after another our ironclads were smashed, and the Japanese proceeded farther and farther into Korea. Makarov and Kuropatkin, taking with them mountains of consecrated icons, had left for the Far East. Kuropatkin pronounced his famous "Patience, patience, and patience." At the end of March the blindlybrave Makarov, deftly baited by Admiral Togo, went down with the "Petropavlovsk." The Japanese crossed the river Yalu. The news of their landing at Bitszyvo flashed across the country like a streak of lightning. Port Arthur was cut off.

It appeared that we were attacked not by fimny crowds of contemptible '^monkeys," but by well-organized armies of stern warriors who were insensately brave and who were seized by a great spiritual ardor. Their firmness of character and power of organization inspired admiration. In interims between the arrival of news of great Japanese victories, the despatches announced some spirited scouting expeditions of Captain K. or Lieutenant U., who had bravely cut down a Japanese guard of a dozen men or so. But this did not help to balance the bad impression. Confidence was falling more and more.

A newspaper boy walked down the street, and some artisans were sitting in front of the gate.

"The latest despatches from the theatre of war! We have beaten the Japs !"

"All right. Get a move on you ! I guess they have found a drunken Jap somewhere in the gutter and have licked him. We're on to it!"

The battles were becoming more frequent and more bloody. A sanguinary mist was covering distant Manchuria. Explosions, rains of fire from the cannon, covered pits, and barbed-wire entanglements — corpses, corpses, corpses — from a thousand miles away there seemed to pass through the pages of the newspapers the odor of lacerated and singed human flesh, the phantom of some gigantic, unheard-of slaughter.

In April I left Moscow for the city of N. and departed thence into the country. Everywhere they eagerly read the newspapers and asked for the latest news. The peasants said in sadness: "Now they are going to ask for bigger taxes !"

At the end of April our Government announced a mobilization. There had been dim references to it before, and it had been expected for three weeks ; but everything was kept a great secret. Suddenly the Government was struck as if by a hurricane. They drafted the men in the villages right from the fields and from the ploughs. In the towns the pohce rang the bell in private apartments in the dead of night, handed summonses to the recruits, and ordered them to make their appearance in the wards without delay. At the house of a friend of mine, an engineer, they drafted all the servants, the lackey, the coachman, and the cook. He himself happened to be away on leave of absence. The police broke open his desk, got from it the passports of the recruits, and carried them all oif.

There was something unfeelingly ferocious in this incomprehensible haste. They tore men away from the midst of their business, without giving them a chance to settle or liquidate their affairs. Men were carried off, and all that there was left after them were senselessly-destroyed households and ruined welfare.

The next morning I happened to be in the office of the Military Council. I had to report my country address in case of being called with the reserve. In the large yard of the office, along the fences, stood carts with horses, and in the carts and on the ground sat women, children, and old men. A large crowd of peasants was standing around the porch of the office. A soldier at the door kept driving the peasants away. He shouted angrily:

"Didn't I tell you to come Monday? Get away! Move along!"

"What do you mean by Monday? You took us, you drove us, you told us to get here at once."

"All right. So come on Monday!"

"On Monday!" The peasants walked off, swinging their arms. "They raised us in the night, they took us without saying a word, they didn't give us a chance to straighten out matters, they drove us here for a distance of thirty versts, and now they teU us 'Come Monday !' And it is only Saturday to-day !"

"Of course, it would have been more convenient for us to come on Monday. But where are we to stay now until Monday?"

Weeping and lamentation filled the whole city. Here and there brief dramas were enacted. One recruit from a factory had a sickly wife and five children. When the call to the army came, the excitement and sorrow caused his wife paralysis of the heart, and she died at once. Her husband took a glance at the dead body and at his children, and went into the barn and hanged himself.

Another recruit, a widower with three children, wept and cried in the Council room:

"What shall I do with my children? Instruct me what to do ! They will all die from starvation without me!"

He acted like a madman, shouted, and shook his fists in the air. Then he suddenly grew silent, went home, killed his children with an axe, and came back.

"Now take me. I've attended to my business."

He was arrested.

The despatches from the theatre of the war again and again brought the news of great Japanese victories, and of clever scouting exploits of Ensign Ivanov, or Cornet Petrov. The newspapers said that the Japanese victories on the sea were not at all remarkable, because the Japanese were born sailors, but that now, since the war was transferred to the land, things would go quite differently. We were informed that the Japanese were out of money and men, and that sixteenyear old boys and old men were being called to the colors. Kuropatkin calmly and austerely announced that peace would be made only at Tokio.

In May, before the army corps was sent to the Far East, the reservists received a week's leave of absence. I was just driving from the railway station to the village as they were returning to the city. It was a grey, misty, rainless evening. Soldiers w'ere walking and driving along the road to the station. It was unusual to see these grown-up, bearded peasants in military cloaks. Some were drunk and shouted songs ; others were sober, and trudged along gloomily and sadly. The women howled. A stocky soldier with a shaggy beard and firmly-set lips looked at me. He said :

"Give me your blessing for the Far East!"

I had a strange sensation, as though it were the voice of one who was on his way to his execution.

Aleksyey Sofronychev, a plasterer from our village, drove by in a cart. His cloak hung like a bag on his narrow, stooping shoulders, and his eyes looked immovably at one point. His silent wife, with tearful eyes, held the reins.

It was getting dark. The sky was overcast, the fields looked gloomy. And in the twilight the sad figures of the fated ones moved on like grey phantoms.

In the beginning of June I received in the country a despatch demanding my immediate appearance at military headquarters.

There I was told that I was called for active service and must report in the city of S. at the Staff Office of the Division of Infantry. According to law, I was given two days to arrange my domestic affairs and three days to get my uniform. Everything was being done in haste, the uniform was being made, and all kinds of things were being bought. Nobody knew how the uniform was to be made, what was to be bought, or how many things one could take along. It was a difficult matter to get one's complete equipment in five days. It was necessary to hurry the tailors and to pay them three-fold for day and night work. In spite of it all, the uniform was a day late, and I hurried on the first train to S.

I arrived at night. All the hotels were full of newly-drafted officers and surgeons, and I drove about town for a long while before I found an expensive and dirty room in an ill-furnished lodging-house in the outskirts of the town.

In the morning I went to the Staff of the Division. I felt awkward in the military uniform, and I felt awkward, too, because the soldiers and policemen whom I passed saluted me. My legs got constantly entangled with the sabre which dangled at my side.

The long, low-studded rooms of the Staff were filled with tables, at which officers, surgeons, and soldierclerks sat and wrote. I was directed to the Assistant Division Surgeon.

"What is your name.?"

I gave it to him.

"You are not mentioned here in the mobilization plan," he repKed in surprise.

"I know nothing about it. I was summoned here to S. with the order to appear at the office of the Infantry Division. Here is the paper."

The Assistant Division Surgeon looked through the paper and shrugged his shoulders. He went away, had a talk with another surgeon, and both rummaged through a lot of documents.

"There is positively no reference to you in our documents," he announced to me.

"So I may return home?" I asked smihngly.

"Just wait a little. I'll take another look."

I waited. There were some other surgeons who had been called from the reserve, some in civilian clothes, others, like me, in brand new uniforms with shining shoulder-straps. We made each other's acquaintance. They told me of the incredible confusion which reigned in the office. Nobody knew what he was about, and nobody could find anything out from his neighbor.

"Arise !" A sonorous voice commandingly passed through the room.

Everybody arose, hurriedly arranging his clothes. An old, spectacled general sauntered into the room, exclaiming jestingly:

"I wish you good health!"

A friendly din met his salutation. The general passed into the next room.

The assistant approached me.

"Well, at last we have found it. In the ambulance corps of the field hospital there is a vacancy caused by a junior surgeon whom the MiHtary Council has declared to be unfit for service. You are to take his place. By the way, here is your chief surgeon. Introduce yourself to him."

A small, spare old man hurriedly entered the room. His uniform was shabby, and his shoulder-straps, indicating his rank of Collegiate Councillor, were tarnished. I walked up to him and introduced myself. I asked him where I was to go, and what I was to do.

"What are you to do? Why, nothing. Just leave your address in the Office, that's all."

I left the Staff with a strange feeling. The stern •and categorical rules of the summons demanded that I should leave for the appointed place within five days ; I left my personal affairs in an unfinished condition; I flew thither as to a conflagration — and here I saw that nobody needed me, that there was no sense in being in a hurry. I might have arrived a week or two later, and no one would even have noticed it.

Day after day passed without work. Our Corps did not leave for the Far East until two months later. We, the surgeons, improved our knowledge of surgery by visiting the local hospital, being present at operations, and working over dead bodies.

Among my companions who had been called from the reserve, there were specialists in all imaginable departments. There were among them alienists, hygienists, children's physicians, accoucheurs. We were scattered over hospitals, over ambulances, over armies, on the basis of the mobilization records, and not at all on the basis of our specialties. There were some physicians who had long ago given up practice. One of them had entered the service of the Excise Office eight years before, immediately after graduating from the university, and had never in all his life written a single prescription.

There was another physician, a grey-haired man, rather bald, who was nearly sixty years old. How could such an old man have been summoned to the army? This is the way it happened. After graduating as a physician, a man who is subject to military duty is counted in the reserve for the next eighteen years, independently of his wish, of course, whether he likes it or not. It would seem that after eighteen years the physician would be free. Not at all. He must then make known his desire to leave the reserve, otherwise he is not stricken from the records, and continues to be counted in the voluntary reserves. Our old physician had accomphshed the term of the reserve some twelve years ago, but like a typical Russian he forgot to give notice of the end of his service, and so he quite unexpectedly appeared in the "voluntary reserves." Now, since the war had been declared, matters were settled, and he could not leave the reserve. So the old man was called, and he had to go to the war.

I was appointed to the field hospital. In war time every division has two such hospitals. In the hospital there is one chief surgeon, one senior assistant surgeon, and three junior assistants. The lower positions were taken by physicians who had been called from the reserve, the higher by military surgeons,

I seldom saw our chief surgeon. Dr. Davydov. He was busy organizing the movable hospital; besides, he had an extensive practice in the city, and was constantly rushing somewhere. At the Staff I made the acquaintance of the chief surgeon of the second hospital of our division. Dr. Mutin. Previous to the mobilization he had been the junior surgeon of the local regiment. He was still living with his wife in the regimental camp. I passed an evening with him, and met there the junior surgeons of his hospital. They

AT HOME IS

had all made each other's acquaintance, and a relationship of comradery had established itself between them and Miitin. They were a jolly, happy lot. I was sorry for not having been appointed to their hospital, and I envied them.

A few days later a despatch suddenly came from Moscow to the Staff of the Division. Dr. Mutin was ordered to turn over his hospital to a Dr. Sultanov, and himself immediately to repair to Harbin, in order to organize a reserve hospital there. The appointment was unexpected and incomprehensible ; Mutin had already formed his hospital here, and had everything in running order^ — and suddenly this transfer. Of course, there was nothing to do but submit. Mutin consoled himself with the thought that now he would not have to go to the Far East with the echelon, and that, consequently, he would get travelling expenses, about a thousand rubles. But a few days later there came a new telegram. Mutin was not to go to Harbin; he was again appointed junior surgeon of his regiment, which he was to accompany to the Far East. Upon arrival at Harbin with the echelon, he was to organize a reserve hospital. Thus he lost the chance for the travelling expenses.

It was a cruel and undeserved affront. Mutin was provoked and agitated. He said that after such an insult in the service there was nothing left for him to do but to send a bullet through his brain. He took a leave of absence, and went to Moscow to get justice. He had some connections there, but he did not succeed in his quest. He was given to understand in Moscow that a mighty person had a hand in the matter and that nothing could be done against him.

Mutin returned to his shattered nest, the regimental ward, and a few days later there arrived from Moscow his successor in the hospital. Dr. Sultanov. He was a tall gentleman, in the forties, with a Van Dyke beard and greyish hair, and with a clever, smiling face. He knew how to start a conversation and to talk glibly ; he became everywhere the centre of attention, and in a nonchalant, serious voice dropped witticisms which made everybody laugh. Sultanov stayed in town a few days, and then went back to Moscow. He left all the responsibility for the further arrangement of the hos^ pital in the hands of the senior assistant.

Soon it became known that of the four Sisters of Mercy who had been invited to the hospital from the local Red Cross Society, only one was left. Dr. Sultanov announced that he would substitute the other three himself. There were rumors that Sultanov was a great friend of the commander of our corps, and that certain Moscow ladies, good friends of the commander of the corps, were going to the theatre of war, and to his hospital, in the capacity of Sisters of Mercy.

The town was full of soldiers. The red lapels of the generals, the gold and silver lace of the officers, and the yellow and cinnamon blouses of the lower ranks gleamed everywhere. The men were constantly assuming attitudes and shamming to each other. Everything looked strange and queer.

On my uniform there were silver buttons, and on my shoulders tinsel silver straps. On the basis of these, every soldier was obliged to draw himself up respectfully in front of me and to use antiquated phrases, such as "Precisely so, sir," "By no means, sir," "I will try, sir." On the same basis I was obliged to evince a deep respect for every old man if his cloak had a red hning and a red stripe ran down his trousers.

I learned that I had no right to smoke in the presence of a general, nor to sit down without his permission. I learned that any general could arbitrarily put me under arrest for a month, while my chief surgeon might lock me up for a week. And all this would happen without any right of appeal, even without any right on my part to ask for an explanation of my arrest. I myself might exercise the same power over the lower ranks under my command. A certain novel atmosphere was created, and it was perceptible that men were getting drunk from their power over other men, and that their souls were tuned anew in a manner which only provoked smiles.

This intoxicating atmosphere acted in a curious way upon the feeble head of one of the physicians who had been called from the reserve. This was Dr. Vasilev, that same senior surgeon to whom Sultanov, upon departing for Moscow, turned over the task of organizing the hospital. Psychically unbalanced, painfuUy pufFed-up by egotism, Vasilev was simply crazed by the power and respect with which he suddenly found himself surrounded.

One day he entered the office of his hospital. When the chief surgeon, who enjoyed the privileges of a district commander, entered the office, the supervising officer generally gave the command to the sitting clerks, "Arise!" When Vasilev entered, the supervisor failed to do this.

Vasilev frowned, called the supervisor to one side, and sternly asked him why he had not given the command to the clerks to arise. The supervisor shrugged his shoulders.