760 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



turned to an aiming point in rear or 

 flank with point of observation miles 

 away, with telephone connections to 

 check the effect of fire. It is possible 

 that much of the forest may have been 

 felled for works but I have personally 

 seen no evidence of it. 



"The most intense forest fighting has 

 probably been in the vicinity of Suwalki 

 on the East Prussian front where the 

 tide of war has carried both armies 

 back and forth for many months. I 

 have not been on that front and so can 

 express no opinion of the fighting there. 



The Russians followed them in at the 

 point of the bayonet and for nine days 

 the battle raged in this belt. I think 

 there is nothing since our battle of the 

 Wilderness to compare to it." 



Mr. Washburn's description of this 

 battle, which also appears in his book, 

 ' ' Field Notes From the Russian Front ' ' 

 is thrilling in the extreme and graph- 

 ically tells of the kind of fighting which 

 occurs in heavily wooded country. He 

 says: 



"The Russian soldier is to me the 

 most philosophical individual in the 



1 1 ,:' 



Photo by International News Service 



Germans Getting Timber For Trfnches 

 in poland the germans freely utilized the timber from the heavy forests to build and protect their 

 trenches and thousands of trees were used for this purpose 



The worst place where I have seen the 

 evidence of forest fighting was in the 

 patch of woods lying between Kon- 

 stienze, near the Vistula, and Radom. 

 All of this is blocked under the head of 

 the Battle Around Ivangrod. This 

 was the Austro-German advance on 

 Warsaw and Ivangrod. The enemy 

 never got beyond the Vistula. One of 

 our Caucasian Corps crossed the river, 

 took the Austrians in the flank and 

 drove the whole enemy forces back into 

 this patch of wood which is perhaps 

 10 kilometers wide and 30 kilometers 

 long and composed of really dense 

 timber, fir and spruce, I should say. 



world. I have seen him in the hospitals 

 with arms and legs gone, head smashed 

 in, ghastly wounds of all sorts, and if 

 he has the strength to speak at all, he 

 whispers 'Nichivo,' the equivalent of 

 which in English is 'What difference 

 does it make, anyway?' After a 

 glimpse of the men and the munitions 

 that permeate the life behind the army, 

 one is not surprised at the feats that 

 these same men, backed by their 

 organization and transport, are per- 

 forming every day on the actual field of 

 battle. While it is true that many of 

 the recent actions have been rearguard 

 affairs, where it has been perfectly 



