A soldier on the march is enclosed, boxed in and carried along by his regiment as tightly as any sailor in a ship. However far he goes, however alien, mysterious and perilous the latitudes into which he advances, he always has around him, like the sailor with his deck, masts and rigging, the same comrades, the same marching ranks, the same sergeant Ivan Mitrich, the same regimental dog Zhuchka, the same officers. A soldier rarely wants to know what latitude his ship has ended up in, but come the day of battle – God knows how or where it comes from – the moral consciouness of warriors one and all rings with a new harsh note announcing the approach of something solemn and serious, and raising them to unknown heights of curiosity. Come the days of battle, soldiers strive to look beyond the interests of their regiment; they are all eyes and ears, anxious to know what is going on around them.
The fog had come down so thickly that although it was getting light they couldn’t see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like huge trees, flat stretches looked like soaring cliffs and slopes. At any point and from any direction they might come across an invisible enemy ten paces away. But the columns marched doggedly on through the fog, up hill and down dale, past gardens and fences, over countryside new and unknown, with no sign of the enemy. Quite the reverse, there was a growing consciousness of our own Russian columns up ahead, to the rear and on every side, all of them moving in the same direction. Every last soldier felt buoyed up by knowing that wherever he was going – not that anyone knew where that was – so were all the other Russians in their vast numbers.
‘Hey, the Kurskies have gone on,’ went the word in the ranks.
‘Damn good force we’ve got together! Did you see them fires burning last night? Went on for ever. Like looking at Moscow!’
Although the column commanders were not riding over to the ranks or talking to the soldiers (the commanding officers, as we saw at the council of war, were not in the mood because they didn’t like what they were having to do, so they carried out their orders without any effort to inspire the men), the soldiers still marched on in high spirits, as they always do when they are going into action, especially attacking.
But after marching for an hour or so through the thick fog, most of the troops were brought to a halt, and a nasty sense of confusion and mismanagement spread through the ranks. It is very difficult to tell how this kind of awareness spreads. But spread it does, with amazing accuracy and speed, slowly but surely, like water flooding a valley. Had the Russian army been acting alone, with no allies, it might have taken a lot longer for this awareness of mismanagement to become common knowledge. As things stood, there was much pleasure to be had, naturally enough, from attributing this shambles to the senseless Germans, and soon everybody believed they were in a dangerous mess because of the bungling sausage-makers.
‘Why have we stopped? Road blocked ahead? Or have we got to the French?’
‘No, can’t hear anything. They’d have been firing. Told us to get going quick, and we did, and now look at us, stuck in the middle of a field, God knows why . . . Blasted krauts, mucking things up! Damned idiots!’
‘I’d have sent them out first. No fear, crowds of ’em at the back . . . Got to stand here now with nothing to eat.’
‘Get a move on!’
‘I’ve heard that the cavalry’s blocking the road,’ said an officer.
‘Damned Germans, don’t even know their own country,’ said another.
‘Which division are you?’ shouted an adjutant, riding up.
‘Eighteenth.’
‘What are you doing here? You should have been up at the front ages ago. You won’t get there now until tonight.’
‘It’s all stupid. They’ve no idea what they’re doing,’ said the officer, and he galloped away. Then a general came trotting up and yelled at them furiously in a foreign language.
‘Oo, oo, parlyvoo, it’s all double Dutch to me,’ said a soldier, mimicking the retreating general. ‘Shoot the lot of ’em, lousy scum!’
‘Supposed to get there by nine, and we’re not half-way there yet. Wonderful management!’ was repeated on all sides, and the feeling of energy that the troops had started out with began to turn to resentment and anger against the ridiculous arrangements and the Germans.
The muddle stemmed from a redirection of the Austrian cavalry; when they were well under way moving towards the left flank, the top brass had come to the conclusion that our centre was too far away from the right flank, so all the cavalry were ordered to cross over to the right. Thousands of mounted troops had to cross in front of the infantry, and the infantry had to wait for them to pass.
