On the March.
By J. Okunev.
The following sketch is another extract from Mr. Okunev's Russian book of impressions of the War. The first extract was published in the April issue of "The Russian Review."—Ed.
We have now become accustomed to everything, we have passed through everything, and it is impossible to frighten or to surprise us with any unexpected circumstance. Attacks, forced marches, flank movements, rapid changes of front, tramping through impassable roads and often simply through fields and woods—all this we have already tried, and it seems that the rest of the campaign cannot have any further tests for our strength, endurance, and patience. After Rawa, Seniava, Jaroslaw, after marching through hundreds of versts of swamps, marshes, and woods, after crossing rivers through the water or over pontoons, under a terrific fire of the enemy, despite all this —despite the fact that we were covered with dirt, that our boots were worn down and torn, our garments reduced to rags—those of us who remained unharmed received, with remarkable indifference, the news that on the following day we were to start on a new, long, and difficult march towards the heights of Beskid, where every step would have to be made fighting, where every inch of ground would have to be taken by force.
We are "fighting units." Now the volunteer Somov, who is a graduate of two universities, is not distinguishable from the Olonetz peasant Kistiakov, who can scarcely count as far as one hundred. And what differentiation can there be when all our movements are co-ordinated and brought under one control, not so much by discipline, which may be considered consciously and complied with without the loss of one's individuaity, but as if by a mighty instinct, which destroys all mental superiority, all differences of intellectual capabilities, points of view, strivings, and aspirations. There are perhaps fifteen of us, educated men, amidst four thousand peasants, coming from Riasan, and Poltava, and Kostroma, and Tula. And having marched with them from Sandomir to Stry and to the forests of Unterwalden, we have become like them, have acquired their ways, their habits, their motions, because these ways "seem "handier," because it is more convenient to do exactly as those peasants dressed in military uniforms.
"Why do we walk around and around, instead of fighting?" asks Kistiakov.
