Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/22

 then it was a problem which way to go. The Landsturm captain was gone. Every man of the regiment had vanished. We trudged back aimlessly. It was a sorry retreat. I found other officers and men wandering about. Nobody could give any command. Nobody had any orders. We walked back several kilometres.

At night we got to a place called Klimentoff. It was a place of wild confusion. The sooner out of it the better! I asked other officers and other officers asked me in what direction we were to retreat. It was no longer a question of ammunition, but of food. None of us had any rations for three days. The officers who survived after that battle could be counted on one's fingers. The last captain I had seen was the Landsturm captain who had disappeared. All the rest of us were lieutenants or sub-lieutenants. We discussed the retreat. It was decided to follow the direction of the sun to the west.

It was a weary march. For three days we trudged along roads and across fields torn up by shells. We were hungry and starving. My soldiers found some turnips. They were our salvation. I never knew turnips were so delicious! We picked up stragglers from our regiment and formed a motley company. I was the only surviving officer of the whole battalion. The “battalion“ was reduced to 240 men, just the complement of a company. I remained in command till we got about thirty kilometres north-west of Cracow on the German frontier.

Here we were left almost to ourselves for sixteen days. It was perhaps the most wretched period of my “fighting“. The men got cholera and died. I reported a doctor, and we were isolated on a hill. Supplies were sent to us from a little village and handed to us across a fence. We had a few cottages on the hill where the worst cases got shelter. Eighteen of my men died of cholera. It was a wretched sight. The men when they felt they were dying crawled out, tried to sit up a few times, looked for a lump of earth or stone against which to lean, then fell over and gasped their last breath. A few days passed during which no more men died. It was decided then that the plague had left us, and we were supposed to be fit once more to go and “fight“.

On Nov. 16, in fact the order came. To the “fighting“ line once more. My “battalion“, now only 200 strong marched fifteen kilometres. Positions were assigned to it. The Russians were already near. We spent the rest of the day and the night digging trenches. We had not time to dig them deep enough. The ground was frozen. In the morning the Russians were already firing at us. We lay in our trenches, just deep enough to protect us against rifle bullets. We had orders to attack. But