by Alma Boykin
The fighting raged all night, back and forth—the Imperial line moved forward, pushing the Russians away from Lemberg, then sagged back west as endless waves of infantry poured down on them. Ammunition runners kept coming, trying to supply the men, but even so they ran dangerously low. Rumor flashed of a group fighting the Russians off with bayonets and sabers. Chaos swallowed the night, artillery flashes and the quick, small flame of shots fired from rifles and pistols. The Imperial artillery answered, as best they could, and three hours after midnight word came that a group of reservists had captured some of the Russian guns and had spiked them, making them useless, at least for the moment.
István paced back and forth, leading his men, then pushing them, then leading again, encouraging and threatening as needed. “No, that’s not a Russian, that’s our courier,” he told one nervous corporal.
“Forward,” the messenger gasped. “Drive them into the marshes, get Kulikov back. General’s orders.”
“Recapture Kulikov, understood.” István tried to remember where they were exactly. The war had erased landmarks, such as they were in this backwater. Northeast of them. No, northwest, that was right, on the other side of the stream, east of the road from Zólkiew. Just past the supposed range of the guns of Lemberg, if anyone had actually put the guns in that should have been there. Across another batch of streams and more marsh, István knew. His boots were starting to rot from all the mire he had slogged through.
And so they pivoted, or tried to, turning north by compass. Lemberg sat to the west, a haven and a trap at the same time. István could barely remember shopping for gifts for Barbara there a year and a century ago. “Sir, what’s that?”
István crouched, trying to fix his glasses on the bobbing thing. A flash of shell farther north gave him a glimpse of Russian uniforms. “Russians. Fire at will,” he said.
Fire spat into the darkness, men screamed, and István closed his ears. A horse screamed as well, and something to the northeast flamed high. Someone’s ammunition cart I think. A building to his left caught fire and provided a red light for the men as they advanced, stumbling over bodies and bits of things.
“This horse is sound,” a corporal said.
The closest sergeant said, “Cut it from the harness and take it to the rear. We’ll need it.” István didn’t think much of Russian horseflesh, but war ate horses even faster than it devoured men.
No sooner had the man left than a hail of gunfire smashed into the men around István. He dropped and prayed, trying to look for the gun without drawing fire. The machinegun never stopped, and István began to wonder when the barrel would catch fire or melt. After two nights, or so it felt, he heard a grenade—and no more machine gun. “Hazáért! Hazáért!” a Hungarian called in the darkness.
“Hazáért!” István called back. “For the fatherland!” The advance began again, then stopped, then crawled north.
Come sunrise, new orders flowed down the Imperial line. “Fall back to that raised road. There’s another Russian army on the way.”
“Another army?”
“Yes, headquarters thinks it’s the Fifth, to support the Seventh. We’re to hold here for now.”
They held the line for three days, before the Russian numbers proved too much. Archduke Leopold would have fired Conrad again, if he hadn’t been sacked already. István heartily concurred with that rumor, and agreed with His Grace the archduke’s low opinion of the general who had failed to even consider the need to defend the area’s largest city, rail and road junction, and supply point. István and his men mounted and rode west. There was a bitter taste in István’s mouth. Fear fluttered at the edge of his awareness, where he’d shoved it. Without Lemberg, the rails and passes lay open for the Russians to sweep south through the Carpathians toward Hungary and Kassa—and Barbara. He hadn’t heard anything now for a month at least, and prayed to St. Ann every night for her safety.
At last, as the snow started, the fortress city of Przemysl appeared, blocking the road. The men rode into the protecting cover of the great guns and outlying strong points, safe for the moment. Unless the cold killed them. They found shelter and took care of their exhausted, half-lame horses.
That night István looked east, imagining the Russians destroying like locusts. What now, Lord? What now?
Two days later a letter arrived. Dated two weeks before, it assured him that Barbara was fine, if tired, and that she looked forward to him coming home at St. Martin’s feast, or for Christmas barring that. “And I’m more certain than ever that I’m carrying a boy,” she wrote. “Your parents send their love and will write as they have time. And Aunt Claudia has stopped scenting her letters, as part of her contribution to the war efforts. Praise be to Our Lady.”
István laughed. He couldn’t stop, howling with black mirth until his sides ached, tears blurred his vision, and Felix started backing away, as if fleeing a madman. “Family joke,” István gasped. “You have to know Aunt Claudia to understand.”
November 11, the feast of St. Martin, came and went, and the lines only moved a whisker’s width. István, temporarily assigned to Col. Marbach’s staff, looked at the map and wondered which would come first, the Austrian breaking point or spring. Oh, not the Empire’s breaking point—that he knew could last. It had outworn the Turks and would outwear the Russians and the Germans, too, for that matter. No, as the lamps shone gold in the dark office, he wondered about the men with him.
No one had gotten leave for a month and more, and the soldiers wanted to go home, to get warm, to see their families. And probably, in the case of the reservists, never to come back, which was exactly what the Galician forces could not afford. Successes in the south could not balance the misery of the wet lines in the north. Especially at the end of a very long supply line. And letters from home about hunger and dearth did not raise the men’s morale, which led to the military war council taking up the unhappy job of censoring the mails. István wondered which poor souls had drawn the short straw for that thankless task. Well, at least his soldiers could rotate in and out of the houses and barracks within the citadel of the fortress, which helped. And the stalemate farther east helped their spirits—the Russians suffered as much as the Imperials did, possibly more, if the old tales about their rations and supply systems held true.
Through some miracle of truly divine proportion, General Brudermann had stopped the Russians, and even pushed them to just north and east of the oilfields, though at a terrible cost in men, horses, and supplies. His troops had drawn the Russians south, stopping their advance along a Lemberg-Stryi line, then pushing them back north to Lemberg proper. They’d lost the eastern rail line, but only that one. More soldiers—Hungarians for the most part—stopped the pass at Lavoönec, keeping that rail line open north and south, so the Imperial navy and transport corps could keep getting oil. Rumania supplied a little fuel, but not enough, and that by wagon, not rail. And so the eastern edge of the empire sat quiet, snow-dusted, and grey, for the moment.
“So, István,” Lt. Col Scheele said. “Where will the bear’s paw next appear?” István turned and straightened up, but did not salute. After all, he outranked Scheele, military titles notwithstanding. Scheele brandished a cigar almost as plump as he was, although István knew that the chief-of-staff’s round shape consisted of muscle, not fat. Scheele came from farm stock, turned merchants, with light brown hair, light green eyes, and a square face and head that was out of keeping with the rest of him. He’d been in transport before the war began.
István kept his answer within the bounds of military politeness. “The south, sir, and Königsmitte, if rumor holds true.” Not that the Russians would ever make it that far west, to the border where Silesia, Galicia, and Moravia kissed. István did not think the Russians would try and take Przemysl, not this late in the season, either. They’d do better consolidating what they had and using Lemberg as a base for harassing attacks.
“The Germans swear they will come at them through the Masurian Lakes once
more, to avenge Tannenberg.” Scheele inhaled and the tip of the cigar glowed deep red for an instant. He exhaled a thick stream of white smoke, filling the room like an over-swung censer.
“The Germans, with all due respect to our noble allies, or their emperor, sir?”
Scheele’s smile revealed two missing front teeth, but he kept his silence.
István turned back to the map. “They will push more into Lemberg, and try to come up the Dniester, here, sir, parallel to the mountains.” Or from the north, but if the German reports held truth, the Russians were too busy abusing the Poles to move very far.
“No attack on Przemysl?”
“No, sir, that is, we’ve hurt them badly enough that they need something to show for their efforts. Especially if the rumors are true about the troubles inside the Russian Army.”
“From your mouth to God’s recording angel,” Scheele said. “Even if the Germans are still squalling about the need for us to do more so they can transfer more troops west.”
“Which is less likely than my horse growing wings,” Col. Marbach informed his staff officers. “At ease.” He limped into the room, waving away the smoke. “Put that thing out, Scheele.” Once the men took their places, Marbach went on. “I have good and bad news. The bad is that only a quarter of the Christmas leave requests have been granted, although the general staff informs me that more will be allowed out after New Years.”
At least they are granting leaves, that’s a good sign. István made a note to himself to pass the word to Felix, Bathory, and the others.
“The good news is that the Serbs are starting to severely regret supporting the crown prince’s assassins.” Marbach smiled, a very broad smile indeed. “Despite Potiorek’s attempts to squander the southern army by attacking through the hornet’s nest of the mountains, Belgrade is close to falling and the river has been secured. Without the Russians and Rumanians helping, the Serb government seems to lack arms. They still have men, and it is not—what do the English call it?—‘a walk through a park.’ But they regret some of their foolishness.”
And the Italians have not moved, threats to the contrary notwithstanding. István had been disappointed, but not surprised, when Rome declared war on the Empire, arguing that since the Austrians had attacked the Serbs, their mutual defense treaty no longer held any weight. Not that anything was going to move through the Alps, nor would anyone attack the four-corner fortress protecting Trient and Bozen. István suspected that winter’s cold held more sway over the Italian army than did French and English blandishments. Of course, they could try to attack Triest or push northeast toward Villach and Klagenfurt, but still. The Southern Italians might be foaming at the mouth with nationalism, but the northerners held the purse strings.
“So, gentlemen,” Scheele began, drawing István back from woolgathering. “The last reports had the Russians well to the east of their former Polish holdings in the north, and reducing their strength around Lemberg to a single army. Their most recent attempt to bring fortress guns into Lemberg may have been their last, because the scouts report that they accidentally destroyed the railway when they attempted to change the gage.” A chorus of snorts and eye rolls came from the gathered staff officers. No one seemed surprised—the unexpected part had been the Russians’ unwillingness to simply use the rolling stock they’d captured at Lemberg and Tarnopel.
“The High Command has decided that the time has come to drive them out of Lemberg.”
Now surprise flashed around the room. Major Eggenberg raised a hand. “Sirs, how can we do that if the men are on leave?”
“Because we are not attacking for two weeks at least. General Brudermann needs to resupply, we need more supplies, and the High Command wants the situation around Lemberg clarified. So we will shift our location from here to Jaworów.” Scheele pointed to the town on the map, northeast of Przemysl and northwest of Lemberg. “Ideally we would go on to either Jandów or Kulikov, but there are limits to how close Archduke Leopold believes we can get without alerting the Russians. The High Command wants information more than fighting, at this moment.”
“And a Russian attack from the north or southeast could change all our plans,” Col. Marbach said. “Thus far they seem content to stay in Lemberg or within the sight of it, but they could be planning a punch to restart the offensive. And our cold weather field equipment has arrived.” He forbore saying, “at last.”
That night István warmed his hands over the little stove that never seemed to generate enough heat, wondering what the Russians intended. Probably to try and break through at Lemberg, given the stories coming from the Western Front about the punishment the French and English were suffering. They’d be crying for help as much as the Germans had, István guessed. Dear Lord, but I want to see Barbara and to be warm again. I never thought I’d miss being warm. Some of the troopers had begun joking that they liked Fr. Tomachek’s sermons the best, because he preached in such warm detail about the fires of Hell. István pulled his scarf tighter around his throat and tried to ignore his cold feet.
They rode away from the comforting bulk of Przemysl on a day so cold István thought Braun’s ears would break off. The sun glared down from cold blue skies, glittering off the layer of ice that lay over everything. White ice fringed the shores of the San River—not a good sign for so early in winter. Even with ice caulks on their shoes, the horses moved with care, fearful of falling. Their riders shared the fear, although things improved as the sun burned the ice away from the top of the road. As rough as the winter’s rain had left the track, István didn’t think Braun could fall, but he rode carefully just the same. He fancied he could see the white wall of the Carpathians to the south, towering over the plains and hills and shielding Hungary from storms and Russians both. It was a fancy, he knew, but the thought cheered him. The coming of Christmas cheered him as well. His child was due, his son, and István had Col. Marbach’s promise that he could go on home leave as soon as word of the birth came.
They stopped at Krakowiec for the night. The sun had improved the roads, evaporating the ice, although it remained cold enough to freeze fire. The Szklow River had to be frozen, at least on top, István thought. They rode to a rural country palace, a long white building very much like some of the country palaces he’d visited in Moravia and Bohemia. Apparently the Russians had missed it, or had not bothered stealing more than they could carry off, because the main building remained intact and most of the furnishings seemed to be in place, albeit scattered. István wrinkled his nose at the muddy boot prints on a white and gold settee, like the one his grandmother had been so fond of. The men set about scavenging firewood and fodder, while István scouted the stables. Indeed, the palace stables too had solid walls, ceilings, and doors, and unbroken windows. Well, he suspected that would not last, but for now he wasn’t going to turn up his nose at a miracle.
As the men made camp and his new servant, Andrej, prepared his quarters in the main building, István studied the exterior of the palace. The main building extended east and west from the front entry. Three arches helped screen in the portico and interrupted the symmetric line of the façade. The building extended four windows long on either side of the entry, then stepped back to only one room deep for two more windows. The trim gave the building a bit of a classical air, as did the austere symmetry. Four dormer windows let air and light into the first floor, and he guessed there was a servant’s loft above that. Barbara would like this for summers. Maybe we could see about something similar on the edge of the House lands, once the war finishes?
The interior was not as nice, but then the Polish nobles never spent enough on interiors, or so István assumed. But the stove worked and heated the room enough that his breath stopped steaming. And Andrej announced, “My lord Major, there’s a hot spring in the cellar for bathing, if you wish to take advantage?”
István blinked and considered. “Yes, I believe I will. Show me.” He wasn’t the first or last to take advantage of the steaming hot spring. No
wonder the inside of the house felt warm despite the owners’ absence. He didn’t want to leave the water, but did, drying with record speed. His feet had finally healed from the first campaign, thanks be, and he pulled on dry socks, then jammed his feet into his boots. He’d asked his mother to find some of the felt boots from Transylvania for him for Christmas, and to send more socks.
The next day they continued on to Jaworów, still not meeting any Russians. István assumed the enemy were around, just not close enough to encounter. Yet. The city seemed half-empty, but not looted yet. Then István started looking at the houses, seeing the broken glass. The riders stopped near the city hall, where a haggard old man in a municipal uniform met them.
He spoke Polish, and Lt. Belichkov tried some Slovak in reply. It seemed to work, and the man babbled on and on, waving toward the eastern section of the city, until Belichkov gave up trying to stop him. “He says the Russians burned out the Jews and chased them away, but left the rest of the town alone after they found the distillery and brewery. The pottery is also closed, and the Russians didn’t bother it much.”
“How many died from drinking, I wonder?” Col Marbach said with a cold smile.
“Not enough,” István muttered under his breath.
Although if the Russians had found much hard liquor, the fact that the entire town hadn’t burned down counted as a miracle. The Russians were supposed to have a head for liquor, but the few István had crossed paths with seemed unimpressive. They would drink a fish dry, true, but they could not hold their drink any more than the average Hungarian peasant could.
“I do not need a history lesson, I need current information,” Col. Marbach barked, gesturing for Belichkov to shut off the municipal officer’s stream of words.
The lieutenant tried again, this time getting a shorter response. “He says the Russians left after looting the distillery, raising the Russian flag here, and looting three of the churches, one of which they burned. And attacking the ghetto.”
