Grekoff is a short, stout, red-faced man with Dundreary whiskers, very fond of the pleasures of the table, and formerly notorious in Mukden for hanging round the provision waggon of the Ekonomitchesky Obchestvo in the hope of buying some new delicacy for his kitchen, so that he was hardly the man to leave in command at this important point; and, as a matter of fact, some Russians attribute the loss of the battle to the inefficient way in which at the outset this cavalry leader handled his Cossacks. In the opinion of these critics — of whose qualifications to judge I must, however, say that I know nothing — Grekoff should have been able, by means of his scouts, to hear of Nogis approach; but probably the Cossacks, who were taking things easy after the withdrawal of the iron-minded Rennenkampf, whom they hated for the way in which he made them work, were somewhat to blame themselves. However that may be, Grekoff was quite surprised to learn, on February 26, just as he was sitting down to dinner, that a strong Japanese column was approaching from the north — of all places in the world! — while another was coming from the south. The Cossacks had just time to escape, and, save for their subsequent repulse of an attack on the railway north of Mukden, I did not hear of anything done by them on the right flank at this battle. After all, Charles XII. was right when he said that the Cossacks are only good for cutting up a defeated army.
I was not with the Cossacks on the occasion of this interrupted banquet, as I had left them the day before in order to return to Mukden. After passing through Sifontai, I came to the district occupied by the 1st Siberian Corps, and was astonished to find that it had been evacuated. All the villages were deserted, and sundry indications pointed to the fact that the soldiers had left only a few hours before. The names of regiments were still chalked up on the walls, but there was not a soul about, not even a solitary specimen of the aboriginal inhabitants, the Chinese. In the high wind that blew, doors swung violently on their hinges, and nobody cried to the soldiers to shut them. No smoke issued from the chimneys. There was no sign of life save a few hungry dogs. The landscape was to the last degree sad. It was noonday, and the sun was making some attempt to shine, but a graveyard by moonlight would be a cheerful spectacle in comparison with the scene which lay spread out before me on that occasion. The surface of the illimitable, bare, brown plain had thawed, apparently to the depth of a few inches, and the dust flew from it in whirling clouds and pillars. Whenever one raised a foot, a huge puff of dust rushed out tumultuously from under it, like genii out of a magic bottle which had accidentally been uncorked; and it was like being overwhelmed by an avalanche to find oneself on the windward side of a passing patrol of horsemen, or of a train of transports. There was a thick coating of dust on every face, so that the passing soldiers looked like corpses. A ghastly grey mask covered their features and their beards. The wrinkles around their mouths and eyes looked like deep scars. The eyes themselves were distant and sunken.
I overtook a company of Siberian foot soldiers trudging along the road, and learned from them that the i st Corps had been suddenly ordered to the extreme left flank. The soldiers and officers were so dead tired, so utterly done up, that they could hardly speak. They had not even enough energy left to arrest me for not having the password. They found it hard even to drag one leg after the other, and had to throw themselves flat on the ground every twenty minutes or so in order to get a short rest. A little further, however, they were able, I dare say, to take the branch railway to the main line, whence they could go by train to Fushun, but they had so far to walk after they got to Fushun that they must have had no great desire for fighting when they reached their destination. A few days after, when Kuropatkin discovered that the Port Arthur army was on his right flank, instead of on his left, he brought the 1st Siberians back again to the extreme right, and, in spite of the fatigue and demoralisation all this aimless wandering meant, they resisted Nogi's terrible onslaught with conspicuous bravery and stubbornness.