Show I 1 11 RUSSIAN AR my DUTY DUN 41 the tbt varied accomplishments the soldiers must possess A practice maneuver which must ates the severe tasks they are arc sometimes sometime required to per form in the german army every soldier is taught to act intelligently on out post service and in scouting operations and this is not too much to require in a country where every sol soldier dier reads arid and writes and can readily understand der stand a map and compass in ru eus sia however where nine tenths of the people cannot read or write and have lost the faculty of thinking conseco consecutively u the a army cannot teach the soldier much more than to move as with a machine in order to have a force 0 of f good men for picket work and ad vance skirmishing writes poultney bigelow in harpers magazine they have adopted this plan each company sends four of its most int intelligent ellig ent men to a select body called the scouting corps and as th the russian regiment has four battalions battalions assian with four companies each that gives a re regimental 9 scout force of sixty four this service is is very po popular pular for fok it is full of variety and though the ha hardship is great the food is good for hunting and fishing are in the gramme pro the men are practiced in every kind of woodcraft and are expected to develop jas as much ingenuity and sell self reli ance as an indian scout in our service they must midst sail mil row climb find th their way by map and compass slip through through the lines procure every variety of information and escape capture at all hazards they are splendid fellows said in answer to a question of mine here is what they did last winter when snow was on the ground and floating ice in the streams you yon must know that we attach very great importance to creep creeping ingup up close chose to the enemy and watching his movements well for a little practice in this respect I 1 callied called my sixty four men together one morning in the bar rack yard ard and divided them into two sides each commanded by noncom non com in officers I 1 pointed out on cu the map a position which one side was to watch and indicated the direction from which an attack was to be anticipated another position I 1 selected for theother the other side neither side knew what the other side was to attempt but each h had orders to slip behind the lines of the other and steal three flags that had been een posted about a mile and a half halan M the rear of the line that was to be protected the difficult part of the problem was that neither side knew I 1 anything of the positions beyond what was shown them on the map in the barrack yard and the non commis signed officers had to transmit this knowledge knowledg ti to their men each party found the right position and after posting sentry detached a party to steal the nags of the enemy six men of the one party went off each on his own account two of them were captured one of them failed to find the flags because he could coul d not remember the topography of the map and one succeeded in finding the flags and bringing them back to the noncommissioned officer the remaining two found the spot after the flags were gone and described the spot so that there was no doubt that they had been there the six men d detailed on the other side remained together and were discovered when w hen close to the picket line the they y were fired u upon pon two were captured and the remaining four pursued to a stream forty feet wide near here in spite of the floating ice they sprang in and struggled to the other side the pursuers hesitated a moment at the sig eight of the ice blocks then they followed one was captured in the water because he was hampered by the ice the rest escaped but one of the followers managed in spite of his ice bath to sneak dway away with the flags of the e en n einy 11 |