“For the first time the advancing line hesitated, apparently bewildered.  Mounted officers dashed along the line, urging the men forward.  Horses fell with the men.  I saw a dozen riderless horses dashing madly through the lines, adding a new terror.  Another horse was obviously running away with his officer rider.  The crucial period for the section of the charge on which I had riveted my attention probably lasted less than a minute.  To my throbbing brain it seemed an hour.  Then, with the withering fire raking them even as they faltered, the lines broke.  Panic ensued.  It was every man for himself.  The entire Russian charge turned and went tearing back to cover and the shelter of the Russian trenches.

“I swept the entire line of the Russian advance with my glasses—­as far as it was visible from our position.  The whole advance of the enemy was in retreat, making for its intrenched position.

DEAD MEN COVER ACRES

“After the assault had failed and the battle had resumed its normal trend I swept the field with my glasses.  The dead were everywhere.  They were not piled up, but were strewn over acres.  More horrible than the sight of the dead, though, were the other pictures brought up by the glasses.  Squirming, tossing, writhing figures everywhere!  The wounded!  All who could stumble or crawl were working their way back toward their own lines or back to the friendly cover of hills or wooded spots.

“After the charge we moved along back of the German lines at a safe distance and found the hospital corps bringing back the German wounded.

“The artillerymen had resumed their duel and as we came up in the lee of the outbuildings of a deserted farmhouse a shell struck and fired the farmhouse immediately in front of us.  As we paused to see if the shot was a chance one, or if the Russian gunners had actually gotten the range, a regiment of fresh reserves, young men who had just come up from the west, passed us on their way to get their baptism of fire.

“Their demeanor was more suggestive of a group of college students going to a football game than the serious business on which they were bent.  They were singing and laughing, and as they went by a noncommissioned officer inquired rather ruefully whether there were any Russians left for them.

“Throughout the day we watched the fight waged from the opposing trenches and by the artillery.

“Suddenly at sundown the fighting ceased as if by mutual agreement.  As I write this I can see occasional flashes of light like the flare of giant fireflies out over the scene of the Russian charge—­the flashes of small electrical lamps in the hands of the Russian hospital corps.

“I’m glad I don’t have to look at what the flashes reveal out there in the night.”

CHAPTER XIII

THE AUSTRO-SERVIAN CAMPAIGN