swamps, wherever need be, and with nothing but my cape to cover me.  Nothing disturbs one.  One night, while sleeping, we were drenched to the skin by torrential rains.  We never stirred, but waited for the sun to dry us out again.  Many things considered necessities of civilization simply drop out of existence.  A toothbrush was not imaginable.  We ate instinctively, when we had food, with our hands.  If we had stopped to think of it at all, we should have thought it ludicrous to use knife and fork.

We were all looking like shaggy, lean wolves, from the necessity of subsisting on next to nothing.  I remember having gone for more than three days at a time without any food whatsoever, and many a time we had to lick the dew from the grass for want of water.  A certain fierceness arises in you, an absolute indifference to anything the world holds except your duty of fighting.  You are eating a crust of bread, and a man is shot dead in the trench next to you.  You look calmly at him for a moment, and then go on eating your bread.  Why not?  There is nothing to be done.  In the end you talk of your own death with as little excitement as you would of a luncheon engagement.  There is nothing left in your mind but the fact that hordes of men to whom you belong are fighting against other hordes, and your side must win.

My memory of these days is very much blurred, every day being pretty nearly the same as the preceding one,—­fatiguing marches, little rest and comparatively little fighting.

It is quite possible that our commander tried to divide the work of the troops in a just manner, and that in consequence of my regiment having borne the brunt of two terrible attacks, and having suffered considerable loss, we were now temporarily withdrawn from the fighting line, and not once during these days were assigned to the duty of a rear guard.  Consequently we had only few and unimportant skirmishes in these days, twice while guarding the flank through having to repulse attacks of Cossacks, and once being harassed by an armored automobile.  But the movements of an automobile being confined to the road, we had no difficulty in avoiding its fire, and as for the Cossacks with their eternal feigned attacks, we had reached the point where we almost ignored them.

We were in the first days of September, and upon reaching the swamps near Grodeck, south of Lemberg, a determined stand was decided upon by our commanding general.  It seemed the most propitious place for a formidable defense, there being only few roads through otherwise impassable swamps.  On September sixth my battalion was ordered to take up a position commanding a defile which formed one of the possible approaches for the enemy.  Here we awaited the Russians, and they were not long in coming.  First they violently shelled our position and silenced one of our batteries.  Finding their artillery fire did not draw any answer from our side, they attempted to storm our position