We passed
cannon, jingling southward with their caissons; trucks bound both
ways, bristling with armed men; ambulances full of wounded from the
direction of the battle, and once a peasant cart, creaking slowly
along, in which sat a white-faced boy bent over his shattered
stomach and screaming monotonously. In the fields on either side
women and old men were digging trenches and stringing barbed wire
entanglements.
Back northward the clouds rolled away dramatically, and the pale sun
came out. Across the flat, marshy plain Petrograd glittered. To the
right, white and gilded and coloured bulbs and pinnacles; to the
left, tall chimneys, some pouring out black smoke; and beyond, a
lowering sky over Finland. On each side of us were churches,
monasteries.... Occasionally a monk was visible, silently watching the
pulse of the proletarian army throbbing on the road.
At Pulkovo the road divided, and there we halted in the midst of a
great crowd, where the human streams poured from three directions,
friends meeting, excited and congratulatory, describing the battle
to one another. A row of houses facing the cross-roads was marked
with bullets, and the earth was trampled into mud half a mile
around. The fighting had been furious here.... In the near distance
riderless Cossack horses circled hungrily, for the grass of the
plain had died long ago. Right in front of us an awkward Red Guard
was trying to ride one, falling off again and again, to the
childlike delight of a thousand rough men.
Pages:
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320