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Updated: June 11, 2025
I have mentioned in these pages that I had already spent three months with our Otriad at the Front. I cannot now define exactly what it was that made this drive on this first evening something utterly distinct and apart from all that I had experienced during that earlier period.
There would be the doctors, generally two at a time Semyonov, unmoved, rough apparently in his handling of the men but always accomplishing his work with marvellous efficiency, abusing the nurses and sanitars without hesitation if they did not do as he wished, but never raising his soft ironic voice, his square body of a solidity and composure that nothing could ruffle, his fair beard, his blue eyes, his spotless linen all sharing in his self-assured superiority to us all; one of the Division doctors, Alexei Ivanovitch, a man from Little Russia, beloved of us all, whether in the Otriad or the army, a character possessing it seemed none of the Russian moods and sensibilities, of the kindest heart but no sentimentality, utterly free from self-praise, self-interest, self-assertion, humorous, loving passionately his country and, with all his Russian romance and even mysticism, packed with practical common sense; another Division doctor, a young man, carving for himself a practice out of Moscow merchants, crammed with all the latest inventions and discoveries, caring for nothing save his own career and frankly saying so, but a lively optimist whose belief in his own powers was quite refreshing in its sincerity.
It was on July 23 that I first entered the Forest of S . I did not, I remember, pay the event any especial attention. I went with Anna Petrovna to the cholera village that is on the outskirts of the forest, and I recollect that we hastened back because that evening we were to celebrate the conclusion of the first six months' work of our Otriad.
Not only our own Sixty-Fifth Division, but the whole of the Ninth Army was retreating "within half an hour." Moreover the Austrians were advancing "a verst a minute." By four o'clock the whole of our Otriad had disappeared, leaving only this soldier to inform us that we must move on at once to T or S , twenty or thirty versts distant. "Retreating!" cried Trenchard. "But we were winning!
Meanwhile the sanitars had discovered one of our own soldiers: this man, who had been sitting under a hedge and listening to the Austrian cannon with very uncomfortable feelings, told them of the affair. At three o'clock that afternoon our Otriad had been informed that it must retreat "within half an hour."
He had a genius for compelling other men to obey him, he was never perturbed by unexpected mischance, he paid no attention at all to what other people thought of him, and he seemed incapable of fatigue. I often wondered what he was doing here, why he had chosen so small an Otriad as ours in which to work, why he stayed with us when he, so openly, despised us all.
A wounded man cried suddenly: "Oh, Oh, Oh," an ugly mongrel terrier who had attached himself to our Otriad tried to leap up at him, barking, in the air. There was a scent of hay and dust and flowers, and, very faintly, behind it all, came the soft gentle rumble of the Austrian cannon. Nikitin, splendid on his horse, shouted to Semyonov: "What of Mr.? Hadn't some one better go to meet him?"
What had occurred since that night in the train, when I had felt, during the greater part of the time, nothing but irritation? Frankly, I do not know. It may be, partly, that he was given to me by the rest of the Otriad. He was spoken of now as "my" Englishman. And then, poor Trenchard!... How, during this fortnight, he was unhappy! It had begun with him as I had foreseen.
Semyonov and Marie Ivanovna did not offer us a picture of idealised love they did not offer us a picture of anything, and although they were, both of them, most certainly changed, they could not be said in any way to do what the Otriad expected of them. The Otriad quite frankly expected them to be ashamed of themselves.
This, too, when only a few hours ago there had been that battle of S won by them after a struggle of many days; that position, soaked with Russian blood, to be surrendered now as a leaf blows in the wind. When they arrived at T and found our Otriad he was, I believe, so deeply exhausted that he was not conscious of his actions. His account to me of what then occurred is fantastic and confused.
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