In conversation with a number of the men who sat at table, I heard that their regiment had been in thirty-four actions since the war had started. The Colonel himself had been wounded no less than three times in the war. One Captain of the staff showed me a hat with a bullet hole in the top made in the last battle; while the Lieutenant-Colonel laughingly told me that they could not kill him at all; though he received seventeen bullets through his clothes since the war started he had never been scratched in any action in which he had been engaged. The tactical position of a Colonel in the Russian army is in the rear, I am told, but in this regiment I learned from one of the officers, the Colonel rarely was in the rear, and on more than one occasion he had led the charge at the very head of his men. AN AFTERNOON AT THE “POSITIONS” CHAPTER X AN AFTERNOON AT THE “POSITIONS” Dated: SOMEWHERE IN POLAND, _June 2, 1915_. Provided with carriages we left our hospitable Colonel for the front trenches 4 versts further on. As we were near the Front when we were at regimental head-quarters it was not deemed safe to take the motor-cars any further, on account of the clouds of dust which they leave in their wake. The country here is spread out in great rolling valleys with very little timber and only occasional crests or ridges separating one beautiful verdant stretch of landscape from another. It struck one as quite obvious in riding over this country that the men who planned these roads had not taken war into consideration. Had they done so they certainly would not have placed them so generally along ridges, where one’s progress can be seen from about 10 versts in every direction. As I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, this particular army had not fallen back on its fortified and prepared line, but was camping out about 25 to 30 versts in front of it in positions which were somewhat informal. In riding through this country one has the unpleasant sensation that every time one shows up on a ridge, an enemy of an observing and enterprising disposition might be tempted to take a shot at one just for practice. My friend the banker soldier explained, however, that we should be difficult to hit, and anyway he rather enjoyed shell fire. “It is a sort of nice game,” he told me with a charming smile, “one finds it very entertaining and not altogether dangerous.” However his insouciance did not prevent him taking the precaution of forbidding the use of motor-cars with their clouds of dust, and he was quite content that we should take the carriages, which made less of a target on the dry roads.