This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIII "AMONGST THOSE KILLED...." Two summers on the Russian Front; two winters; and now the smiling-weeping days of my third spring. "Two years ago," I can say now; or else: "A year ago to-day "; and then discuss the altered battle line. April, for instance, stands for Poland--and Smorgon, east of Vilna--and where I am to-day. I read the pencilled notes of scrappy diaries and think how quickly time has flown--and yet how very far away are those two twelve-month spans. And I find days that I must mark on all my future calendars. Days of great joy that I must celebrate; days of great grief when I must turn my thoughts to absent friends; days of great danger--that I must not forget.... To-day is April 29. The Russian date is thirteen days behind, but I still count in English time. The Colonel came in for lunch. Also old "Batushka "--"Father "--the army priest, who is as much at home with us as if he'd never known the quiet monastery from which he came. Sergei Vladimirovitch, a captain of a neighbouring regiment, too; and three young officers from the Divisional Staffs. And we dined, and smoked, and talked of other years. Nicolai Mihailovitch, who smokes an English pipe though he is just as Russian as caviare, puffed hard and asked us if we thought the enemy could hold out till another spring. "If they can," said he, "heaven knows what we will do to them." And then he talked about the past two years and of the great events we prophesied when once the spring arrived. "Great Allied attack, spring, 1915," he said, flippantly. "Greater Allied attack, spring, 1916. Greatest Allied attack due any moment now. The spring," he added, "will go down to history as the time when we Allies would really begin to fight,"--and then he talked of last...