We lie at the head of a little valley, some few miles from the Divisional Staff. As the troops move forward new questions are constantly arising; and our transport sanitar, Nikolay Nikolayevich, discusses the possibilities of getting better access for the wounded to the hospitals. We are pressing back the enemy into the Carpathians, and there are halts in front of difficult hill positions. The advance through swamps of mud makes tremendous demands on the men, who have to lie for days in rifle pits full of water; at times a well-chosen and well-entrenched position holds the Russians at bay at a distance of a few hundred yards or less, in one case fifty, and yet they will not go back. "Und auf den Carpathen sind die wege beschneit," often recur to me, these lines of one of the laziest of German student songs, which is a kind of renunciation of all effort. Nikolay Nikolayevich and I rode over through the snow to the Staff of the Division. He is a charming and simple man, very like one of our own best-known Generals both in face and manner. He lives in a small hut, which is kept very clean. We lunch and discuss transport, and I am asked to carry certain suggestions to the town. On our way back, accompanied by two Cossacks, we pass through Tuchow, a little township half in ruins, and I notice that, as on our way out, some one is still strumming on a piano in a house of which only the walls are standing. The cannon has carried away a large tree and left deep pits near the road. Driving in the evening to the town, I find groups of wounded, for whom there is no place on the carts, wandering forward in the darkness. The men choose among themselves which I shall take with me: "Let him with the nose go," for one of them has had his face smashed up; the rest move on contentedly, and my passengers give me a word of thanks, which would make any one feel ashamed of himself. This is their Christmas Eve.