I reflected that it was very easy to understand why the generals had not told this poor fellow and his men that they were to be the scapegoats of the army. When travellers attacked by wolves in Siberia sacrifice a horse in order to gain time, they do not tell the animal why it is sacrificed. I took a liking to this young fellow, and decided I would stick to him as long as I could, so that I tried my best to interest him in myself. To convince him that I was above all suspicion, I began, first of all, to reel off the names of all the Russian officers belonging to his regiment that I knew; but I am afraid that 1 only made him sad, for after every single name I mentioned, including that of the colonel, he repeated the one dreadful dissyllable " umer " (dead). If was like the " Kyrie Eleison, Christi Eleison" in a Litany for the Dead.
As we went along, our party gradually grew larger, being joined by soldiers driving empty ammunition carts, by dismounted Cossacks, by slightly wounded men, by drunkards, by unarmed soldiers who seemed to be insane, and, generally speaking, by the flotsam and jetsam of war. We kept close to the railway on the eastern side, and, when we had reached a point a little north of the Imperial Mausolea at Pehling, we came suddenly on the traces of a big disaster. About a square mile of ground seemed to have been strewn thick with old mess-tins, over-turned carts, canteens, topboots, socks, pelisses, dead horses, bags of flour, rifles, bayonets, cartridge-clips and cartridges. The bayonets and rifles seemed a new-cut crop of some kind. Alas! they were the only crop Manchuria yielded that year.
With large eyes, we stood contemplating this wreck, as one would contemplate a corpse, when suddenly our reverie was broken by a sudden shower of rifle bullets. Ping! ping! ping! ping! they savagely buried themselves in the railway embankment alongside us, raising little puffs of dust. Now, this embankment was ten feet above the level of the plain, but, about twenty yards ahead, a road crossed it, and for that road we all made an instant and simultaneous rush. I have a dim recollection of our party making immediate and generous contribution to the collection of curios that already strewed the ground, of frenzied soldiers flogging on cart-horses, of horsemen taking that tenfoot embankment at one bound, of infantry men running like hares, their accoutrements banging around them as if they were being whirled along by a typhoon.
The young Siberian officer with whom I had been riding pulled in his restive horse with a tug that threw it back upon its haunches and, without taking his cigarette from between his lips, cursed steadily. That was the last I ever saw of him.
When I got to the other side of the embankment (I was one of the first across) I found about five thousand soldiers there. Some of them were marching northwards. A long line of them were lying on the top of the embankment, firing as hard as they could on the Japanese, who were quite invisible. A good many were standing motionless. I went close to the base of the embankment so as to get the best shelter possible, but was horrified to find there the body of a soldier who had evidently been hit while he stood on that spot.
Let military men explain the phenomenon as they may, that embankment was no protection. Further on I found another dead man. Then I stopped. There was no safety anywhere.
Men now came rushing in out of the dust-storm to the north. They were in a hurry, as if pursued by cannibals. Among them was a young regimental surgeon, stylishly dressed, whom I ventured to question. For some time he could not speak, and his face worked as if he had taken poison. At last he waved his arms wildly and that seemed to relieve him, for he proceeded to tell a terrible tale. I expressed poignant sympathy, although I could only catch the words: " We were surrounded — shrapnelled — whole regiment wiped out." After a while, however, he was able to explain that the regiment with which he had been retreating had opened fire on some Buriat Cossacks whom they had mistaken for Japanese, and that, when the survivors were explaining matters to one another, the Japanese came upon the scene and were mistaken for Buriats until they had got very close. " Its the beginning of the tragedy," said I to myself, horrorstricken. " Like a wounded, blind, infuriated monster, the doomed army is beginning to devour its own children. God alone knows what's in store for us this coming night! "
On learning that I was a correspondent, the doctor implored me to go back to Mukden with him. I refused, whereupon he became hysterical and lost all self-respect. An officer who had seen us from a distance elbowed his way through the crowd, and asked what it was all about, whereupon the doctor told him that we were both going back to Mukden, to surrender.