Rakowski, 17, was sent to the front line after completing three months of recruit training at the Bohemia boot camp in Wells.

Rilakowski in Weirs training camp experienced the most difficult physical training in his life. The officers had almost harsh requirements for the recruits. Every day after training, Weirskoka would be exhausted and immediately slept like a dead dog after falling on the bed.

Rakovsky was not disgusted with such days, but instead felt a sense of joy. Like an ordinary boy, he had the excitement of making achievements on the battlefield. He was just a child from an ordinary Polish family, and his father was a miner. In November 1914, an expanded conscription order was issued. For the sake of family life, Rakovsky, who was under 18, replaced his father in the recruit camp.

A regiment of recruits left the recruit training camp, walked five kilometers, and arrived at the railway station in Mlada. The station was full of military trains, and one of them was filled with canvas covered with canvas, with hundreds of them. Rakowski was curious about what these new heavy artillery looked like. In the training camp in Wells, they had only seen some light infantry artillery and mortars, as well as some old, eliminated old artillery.

The officers leading the troops blew whistles in their mouths, and the recruits boarded a train heading towards Northeast Galicia.

The train took more than 2,000 recruits among the mountains of the Carpathian Mountains.

Bang, bang...

Amid the boring sound of collision between wheels and rails, the train drove through the Carpathian Mountains for more than a day, and finally arrived at Tenopol, located on the northeastern side of Transnistria. It has crossed the original border between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Russia.

"Look at us now that we are at the Russian territory!" Lizakov shouted excitedly by the car window. Rakovsky looked through the window along the place where he pointed. Outside was a large wide and desolate valley, covered with snow. The river water had just melted, and large pieces of floating ice were churning in the river. On both sides of the banks were sparse woods, and these woods were shaking with bare branches in the wilderness, which looked particularly desolate.

The recruits got off here and walked 15 kilometers to reach Littic.

The recruit company where Rakowski is located was added to the 3rd Regiment of the 3rd Galician Lancer Division stationed here.

The air in the outer Carpathian Podor Heights in early spring was filled with chills, and the valley was surrounded by steep mountains, full of jungles of huge fir and birch. They walked along a muddy forest road and passed through these woods, and finally saw a large open area of ​​river beaches.

There, a village like a fairy tale is located in front of you.

In the open space in front of a small wooden church, the recruits lined up in an orderly manner, and a dozen officers wearing erectile squadrons came out of the church. The leader of the sergeant issued a loud order. The recruits stood at attention again, erecting their chests, and the sound of the heels of the leather boots on the feet of more than 150 people was quite neat.

After a brief welcome ceremony, an officer started to call out with a piece of paper. The recruits were assigned to various companies according to their class and were taken away by some officers one after another. The squads where Rakovsky and Lizakov were assigned to the 7th Company. They followed a non-commissioned officer who might be thirty years old and left the Kutakaniya town where the regiment headquarters was located, and came to the company station about three kilometers east.

A broken Ukrainian village.

There were only some old people left in the village, most of whom ran away after the war broke out. In the propaganda of the Austrians, the Russians were described as demons who killed people without blinking, so a large group of Ukrainian refugees fled to Hungary like flocks last summer.

All that is left is the elderly and children who cannot run.

Rakowski and his men put their luggage on the wooden bed inside a house. There were many empty houses in the village, enough to accommodate a camp.

After a while, the whistle rang, and the new squad leader Valuzi shouted, "It's time to start dinner!" Rakowski found that he was hungry. After walking for most of the day, they didn't eat anything, except for a few biscuits halfway through. The recruits lined up behind the veterans with steel military lunch boxes and received food from the cooks: a piece of cheese, a piece of salted fish, a spoonful of beet soup and a large piece of black bread.

The soldier who had finished the meal squatted under the wall and started eating. Rakovsky soaked the cheese in the beet soup, but Bruno, who was beside him, cut the hard cheese into small pieces with a knife, then put it in his mouth and chewed it, making a creaking sound. Lizakov also finished picking up the food and walked while gnawing on the black bread.

"Where is our horse?" Lizakov said as he walked.

"No horse, our legs are horses." Veteran Hillenwitz said loudly from the side.

"Aren't we cavalry?" said Lizakov.

"Now our mounts have been requisitioned to pull the carts, and the poor horses have been put on the shafts," shouted Shirenwitz, with a mocking tone. "Our official name is now the Royal Bohemia Lancer Shooters, which has long been changed to infantry, new recruits."

Then a large group of veterans laughed, as if mocking the ignorance of the recruits, and whimsically thought that the Lancer regiment was the cavalry. After dinner, the soldiers were called to a spacious room, and the sergeant chief gave everyone a speech on why the Austro-Hungarian Empire held this war.

There is no feeling, it is understandable to drive away the brutal Russian bandits, but most of the people living here are Ukrainians, and it is hard to understand the Ukrainian people who live in dire straits. How did the Ukrainians live tragically under the Russians' exploitation? What does it have to do with the Poles?

"It doesn't matter, but if you don't kill those Russians on the battlefield, you will have to be killed by them!" The sergeant chief said viciously in response to the question. This is the truth.

In the next few days, there were no orders, and there were very few trainings. I only hit the target once. Except for the necessary gatherings and morning exercises every morning, I was doing nothing for the rest of the time. The veterans were bored complaining that there were no girls in the village, not even old women, and then they began to tell all kinds of dirty jokes and stories.

The Russians were still far away, about seventy kilometers away from the front line, but occasionally a few cannons could be heard, coming from afar, reminding the soldiers that they were still fighting.

The remaining snow continued to melt, the water level of the Transnistria River was rising day by day, and the weather became warmer.

The days ahead were not so easy, and the division commanded the construction of fortifications along the Transnistria River. Last year, the veterans had dug many trenches, and now they need to deepen and strengthen.
Chapter completed!