Grey Tide In The East

by Andrew J. Heller

  As they had repeatedly done since the war in the North had turned against them, the Russians tried to make a stand, anchoring their right wing on the Gulf of Finland on one side and the northern end of Lake Peipus on the other. The southern part of the line was centred on the city of Pskov, with the defensive line running south from that key road junction. The centre of the whole position was shielded by the 100-kilometre length of Lake Peipus itself.

  This line lasted no longer than the earlier ones had. In the north, two divisions of Kluck’s First Army, escorted by a powerful squadron of warships including the dreadnought battleships Helgoland and Oldenburg, battle cruiser Goeben, along with five pre-dreadnought battleships and a screen of cruisers and destroyers, made a daring surprise landing near Narva on the Gulf of Finland, well behind the Russian lines. The 17th Century fortification guarding the harbour was demolished by high calibre rounds from the big ships, and the city’s small garrison fled without firing a shot. The Narva force attacked the Russian line from the rear in coordination with a frontal assault by the rest of the First Army. The result was the collapse of the newly formed Russian Twelfth Army.

  In the south, Swing witnessed a massive artillery bombardment on the Russian positions covering the approaches to Pskov. It was delivered by more than 900 guns large and small, including a dozen 420 mm Big Berthas, twenty 30.5 cm, Austrian mortars, and 156 of the new minenwerfer. The shelling, as heavy as any Swing had seen so far in the war, went on for a full day and night. It proved to be almost too effective, as it cratered the land so heavily that the ground was nearly impassable in some places. Swing inspected the Russian positions after Hausen’s men had gone through. He saw huge craters alternating with piles of dirt, bits of broken machinery, dead horses and men, wagons, trees and rocks all mixed together in an indescribable jumble. The smell of death was overpoweringly present in the air.

  When the Grand Duke had chosen Lake Peipus to shield his centre, he had either overlooked the fact that the lake narrowed to a width of less than two kilometres near Pnevo in the centre, or had not thought the Germans capable of launching a major assault there. This proved to be a serious miscalculation. Using thousands of boats secretly gathered near the crossing point, and preceded by a powerful barrage, elements of both the First and Second Armies, operating under Bulow, poured across the narrow neck in the middle and rapidly secured a foothold on the far side.

  The Russian line was thus quickly pierced in three places almost simultaneously. To escape total disaster, Grand Duke Nicholas had been forced to order his armies to retreat precipitously once again. According to German communiqués, he was not precipitous enough; Kluck claimed to have taken more than 150,000 prisoners from the Russian Twelfth Army in the north as a result of landing at Narva and the subsequent encirclement of the unfortunate Russians trapped by the manoeuvre.

  The Russian Army was still suffering from the after effects of the catastrophic opening campaign in East Prussia, where the greater part of two field armies of trained veterans were swallowed by the Germans. The Grand Duke had been able to call up enough reserves to form new armies and make good the losses in a purely numerical sense, but the fighting spirit of these replacements, many only half-trained and without weapons, was far lower than that of the veterans who been lost back in August. Swing had learned about the deterioration of the combat effectiveness from the Germans interrogation of prisoners and from talking to some of the captured Russians. He had also seen with his own eyes that the Tsar’s soldiers no longer fought with the same stubborn courage he had seen earlier in the war.

  “You were there,” Emma said. “You saw the German attack at Pskov, and a lot of other battles too, I guess. What’s it like? Were you afraid?”

  Swing shook his head. “I suppose a few shells landed nearby, but I never really felt myself in danger. The Russians have been taking it on the chin since the war started, and they haven’t managed to do much damage to the Germans.” He took another swallow of beer and grimaced. “But I can’t imagine what it must have been like in the Russian trenches during the bombardment. After the attack went through, I looked around at the Russian front line positions. It was like some kind of nightmare butcher’s shop, with bodies and pieces of bodies, arms and legs, scattered all over the place…” He stopped. “I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

  Emma shivered. “Of course not, Ray. I understand. I’m sorry I brought it up.” She patted his hand comfortingly.

  Another experience he had no intention of sharing with Emma was his first look at one of the new German weapons. It was during the fighting outside Pskov that Swing finally saw in action the flamethrower about which he had heard so many rumours.

  The advance of a regiment of Bavarian Grenadiers was being held up by a stubbornly defended concrete pillbox. The defenders had already driven back two attempts to close with them and take the strongpoint with grenades, the attackers leaving little piles of bodies behind after each try. The regimental C.O., a colonel, came up in person to see what was holding up the advance, and then sent a messenger back to his headquarters.

  Soon, a soldier carrying a strange device strapped on his back trotted up. It consisted of a large metal cylinder three feet long and a foot in diameter, from the bottom of which ran a hose connecting to a long, slender tube. There was a tiny flame flickering on the end of the tube. The soldier wearing the cylinder held the tube in his hand. The colonel personally spoke to the new man, although Swing was not close enough to hear what was said. The colonel repeatedly pointed at the pillbox, and the soldier nodded several times.

  The Germans organised another attack, this time moving forward in alternation, approaching the pillbox from an angle to the right and keeping up a steady fire as they advanced. Even as cautiously as they advanced, several of the attackers were still hit by the Russian Maxim in the pillbox. The colonel chose what he thought was the right moment, and then signalled to the soldier wearing the cylinder. The man ran forward heavily, angling to the left of the Russian position.

  Evidently, the attack from the right side had been sufficient to draw the Russians’ attention away from the left, allowing the soldier get to within 15 yards of the pillbox without being fired upon. He reached over his shoulder and pulled a lever on the top of the cylinder, then aimed the end of the tube at the slit in the pillbox. A long sheet of liquid flame shot out of the nozzle accompanied by a thick cloud of greasy, black smoke. The smoke had a very unpleasant smell, a mixture of burning rubber combined with something like kerosene.

  A moment after the flames entered the slit in the front of the pillbox, Swing heard the screams of agony from within. They were the most horrifying sounds he had ever heard. To Swing, it seemed that the screams went on forever as the soldier operating the device continued to play the flames over the opening.

  Then he heard a faint clang, and the cylinder on the flamethrower operator’s back suddenly exploded, coating the man in an orange blanket of fire. A Russian bullet had found the fuel tank of the device. The soldier, burning like a torch, screamed in unbearable anguish and spun to the ground. There was a new smell now, that of badly scorched meat. Swing dropped to the ground on his hands and knees and vomited. He was not alone. The smell of burning flesh added to the hideous death of the flamethrower man was enough to make several of the German soldiers, veterans all, bring up the contents of their stomachs.

  Swing pushed away the memory, returning to the infinitely more pleasant company of Emma Olsen.

  “I’m so glad our country has kept out of this idiotic war,” she said.

  Swing nodded his agreement. “I don’t have a lot of use for Wilson; I went for Debs last time. But I will give him credit for having enough sense to stay out of this bloody mess over here.” He took another long swallow from his mug.

  “Anyway,” he said, replacing the beer mug on the table, “probably the worst consequence of the Battle of Lake Peipus for the Russians wasn’t the loss of territory, equipment, or even men,
” Swing said. “It was the announcement by the Tsar a week after the battle that he was relieving Grand Duke Nicholas as Commander of the Russian armies and personally taking command.”

  “Why was that so bad?” Emma asked. “I didn’t hear anybody touting Grand Duke Nicholas as the second coming of Robert E Lee. The Russians have been getting their heads beaten in since the war started. How much worse could the Tsar be?”

  “I haven’t spoken to a single military man or reporter whose opinion I trust who thinks that the Tsar’s decision wasn’t a colossal blunder,” Swing answered. He took another long gulp of his beer, and explained.

  “Whatever you might think about the military abilities of the Grand Duke (and I don’t have a very high opinion of them), he is at least a soldier, trained in handling large numbers of soldiers and planning battles for big, modern armies. Tsar Nicholas the Second, on the other hand, has absolutely no practical military experience or training, unless you want to count sitting on a horse reviewing parades, and on top of that is reputed to have a generally mediocre intelligence at best. Even if it turned out that the Tsar was natural military genius on the order of a Lee or Napoleon, it would still take time for him to master the complexities of managing an army of millions of men on a front stretching thousands of miles. Russia doesn’t have time for the Supreme Commander of its armed forces to learn on the job.”

  “Well then, I suppose that he would just let the best general he had left tell him what to do, at least until he figured out which end of the stick to grab, and pretend to give the orders himself,” she said.

  Swing shook his head. “That would normally be the right thing to do, but there really isn’t anybody on the Russian General Staff that he can count on,” he replied. He signalled the bartender for another round. “You want one?” he asked. She nodded.

  “Where was I?” he asked.

  “The Tsar can’t count on his General Staff…” she prompted.

  “Oh yeah… thanks,” he said to the bartender who had returned with two foaming mugs. He took a long pull at his beer. “Say, you should forget about that L. Knoop and Company. What your father should import is this Saku Beer. It’s better than anything we have back Chicago.”

  “It is good,” she agreed. “So, what is the problem with the Russian General Staff?”

  Swing set the mug down on the table. “The highest levels of the Russian military establishment are notable for their incompetence and corruption. Rank is mostly based on nobility of birth, political connections and talent for intrigue. Officers of real ability are not permitted to rise in the Tsarist system, because they might endanger the positions of the entrenched incompetents…”

  “Which goes a long way toward explaining the course of the war here in the East,” she finished for him. Swing nodded, impressed again by her quick understanding. “The Tsar doesn’t have any half-way competent general to lean on while he tries to learn how to be Commander-in-Chief. There aren’t any."

  “None that he can trust, anyway. The Tsar has to rely on the very small circle of people he can trust, which basically limits him to relatives,” Swing said. “The Grand Duke might not be the most brilliant general in the world, but…”

  “He is the Tsar’s brother, so at least his loyalty isn’t an issue,” Emma finished.

  Swing nodded. “The Tsar is probably going to have to rely on advice from his wife and whatever religious charlatan is currently in favour at the Court,” he said. “I’m pretty sure they aren’t going to be able to give him the kind of help he will need.”

  In his article on the sacking of the Grand Duke, Swing had written that the Tsar’s move was equivalent to another major defeat for Russia equal to the one suffered in August in East Prussia. The German First Army was now at Narva, a little more than 100 miles from St. Petersburg, gathering supplies and preparing for the final spring to the Russian capital. Time was definitely running out for the Tsar and his empire.

  “To make matters worse,” Swing continued, “the Ministry of War is said to be corrupt from top to bottom, with the possible exception of the Minister himself, Sukhomlinov. So the Russian Army’s not even getting a lot of the supplies that are available, things like ammunition and food, because it’s being stolen by Ministry bureaucrats. I don’t think that if God himself took command He would be able to save the Tsar.”

  After a pause, Emma asked, “Do you have any news about what’s going on with the rest of the war? I can’t find an English or American paper that’s less than a week old around here.”

  “There’s a little news stand on the other side of the Square where you can get the Daily Mail, two days old. Got one right here,” Swing said, bringing it up from the seat next to him and shaking it open. Emma leaned in, pressing close to Swing in an attempt to read the paper over his shoulder by the inadequate light of an overhead wagon-wheel candelabra.

  “Looks like more bad news for France and Russia,” Swing said, squinting at the newsprint and trying not to let Emma’s near presence distract him. “Down in the Black Sea, those two new dreadnoughts that the Brits built for Turkey have been cruising around sinking every Russian ship they find, and blowing up the port facilities and oil processing plants at Sevastopol. The Russian Baltic Fleet has nothing to match those monsters.” He turned a page.

  “Here’s something,” he said. “It’s a report on the Turkish invasion of the Caucasus over the winter. They finally have a reliable account of what happened. It was a disaster for the Turks. The weather did most of the fighting for the Russians. The article estimates that blizzards froze a hundred thousand Turkish soldiers to death.”

  Balanced against this success was a calamity for the Entente’s sole ally in the Balkans, Serbia. The Germans had brought Rumania and Bulgaria into the Triple Alliance with offers of land from Serbia once the conquest of the little nation was accomplished. Their armies had joined the Austrian Third Army and the German Eleventh to overrun Russia’s ally in a three-week campaign, crushing the Serbian Army and forcing the Serbs to surrender on April 18.

  Serbia had been accused by the Austro-Hungarian Empire of involvement in the conspiracy that assassinated the heir to the Hapsburg throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand. This incident had started the war when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia in July 1914, and her ally Russia supported her by a declaration of war against the Dual Monarchy. Serbia was out of the war and, most likely, soon to be erased from the map.

  “What about the Western Front?” Emma asked. “The last I read, the French had launched their big spring offensive and were predicting that they would be in Berlin by Bastille Day.”

  “They’ve been hammering away at the Germans in the Vosges Mountains for three weeks now,” Swing replied. He scanned the front page article in the Daily Mail about the French offensive. “The French are saying that everything is proceeding on right on schedule and exactly as planned. They also claim to have inflicted enormous casualties on the Germans in the fighting in Alsace-Lorraine. The war correspondent for the Daily Mail, Basil Clarke, says that he has been unable to confirm any of these claims.”

  “They’re allowing foreign reporters at the front now?” Emma asked, surprised.

  Swing grinned cynically. “The credibility of the official communiqués sank so low that the French had to allow a few foreign reporters up to the front. It got so bad that if the French government communiqué had announced that the sun was going to rise in the East, everybody would have started looking for it come up in the West.” He looked at the paper again. “Even the official dispatches out of Paris admit that the front has advanced no deeper than ten kilometres into the German lines anywhere. They’re not claiming any significant territorial gains.”

  Swing had travelled in Alsace and Lorraine before the war. The land was rugged, the woods were thick and the roads were few and narrow. It was a defender’s dream. He had no doubt that the Germans had spent the winter stringing up barbed wire and building strong points, machine gun nests, pillboxes, and artil
lery positions in preparation for the French spring offensive. Rapid offensive movement in Alsace was practically impossible, and any ground gained there could come only at heavy cost to the attackers.

  “I’ve seen that country where the French are trying to break through,” Swing said. “If you want my opinion, this whole spring offensive is going to be a repeat of the Battle of the Frontiers of last summer, when the French Army lost a quarter-million men trying to butt head-first through a stone wall.

  “Hold on. There is a small ray of sunshine for the French,” Swing said, turning a page. “They managed to throw back an Italian invasion in the mountains north of Nice.”

  “Was that a surprise, that the French beat the Italians, I mean?” Emma asked.

  “Not really,” Swing answered, “for two reasons. First, the terrain there is even more difficult for armies than Alsace-Lorraine is. The Alps in that region are practically impassable if they are defended at all. Second, the Italian Army is probably the least efficient one in Western Europe, and might even rate lower than Turkish levies in actual combat.”