Nicholas Svindine. The treasure of the white army
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Translated from the French by Leonard Mayhew
Hart-Davis, MacGibbon London
Copiright 1973 by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A.
OCR:Scout
To the memory of my brother, Ivan, who was killed at eighteen years of
age in Russia during the Civil War while serving in the ranks of General
Wrangel's army.
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Publisher's Note
This unusual story of high adventure was discovered by Robert Laffont,
the well-known French publisher, who responded to a mysterious note which
read as follows: "I have an extraordinary tale to tell. But I cannot reveal
my identity unless you are interested in its publication. I am, in effect,
the keeper of a number of secrets. Place an ad in France-Soir. Indicate the
hour when I can telephone you and meet you personally. The ad should read as
follows: Robert Laffont asks Nicholas to telephone him on ------- day,
------ hour." The result is Nicholas Svidine's dramatic account of the
legendary White Army treasure, which has been acclaimed by the French press.
Preface
The story of my odyssey with the "treasure of the White Army" will
bring down criticism on me from every side. My Russian fellow exiles will be
incredulous. Many others will say that I had no right to keep the existence
of this fortune a secret. They will tell me that others had a right to know
about it. But the truth is that I didn't know whom to tell. And I sincerely
believed that no one had a better right to the "treasure" than I.
Actually, however, in the end the "treasure" and my many attempts to
recover it ruined my life and brought me nothing but terrible moral and
physical anguish. I risked my life for it. Others died for it. If it had not
been for the treasure I could have led a normal life -- done normal work and
earned normal satisfactions.
It's too late for regrets, but enough is enough, and I am forgetting
about the treasure. It will never be found, because I could never possibly
describe where it is and how to find it. After so many years even the
landscape must have changed considerably. No, I am the only one who might be
able to identify the place, but I shall never go back to Bulgaria to try.
I will be condemned as well for having sold secret information to
several governments. But the fact is that these countries struck good
bargains -- whatever they may say now. And it kept them on their toes. Even
the Soviets have no complaint; most of my "information" came from their
weekly, the New Times, which at that time had a small foreign circulation. I
shall explain why and how I became an "informer" for the United States and
for Nationalist China.
I know only too well the risks involved in publishing this story,
because I have already suffered the most cruel punishment -- exile.
I. Officer of the Czar
1. Siberian Spring
NOVEMBER 1920. The steamship Vladimir was docked at Theodosia, on the
Black Sea, the decks, cabins and hold all filled with Cossack soldiers.
There was no room to budge. From the city came the constant sound of gunfire
and bombs. To prevent the Reds from getting our stores we had set fire to
warehouses that were filled with all the things we had lacked so sorely at
the front: uniforms sent by the English, canned food, everything we had
needed. Thousands of riderless horses galloped in confusion all over the
beach while their Cossack masters wept at having to abandon these comrades
who had saved their lives so often. Those of us on board were anguished at
the sight of the English cannons that had arrived just too late to help us.
The soldier-workers and the Greens -- Bolshevik partisans who operated in the
forests and mountains -- wanted to block our escape but were afraid to
advance on us even now. Defeated by superior numbers, ironically, our
departure was a kind of victory: our enemy's bitterest defeat was its
powerlessness to keep us from getting away. The last Cossacks mounted the
gangplank, their rough faces twisted with confusion and despair. None of us
had ever been outside Russia. Now we were leaving forever.
Eventually, I found a warm place to sit, propped myself up against the
smokestack, and looked back over my short life. I was twenty-two. I had
grown up on a small estate in the Cossack territory of Kuban. My family had
lived for generations in the Caucasus, a land with rich resources, pleasant
climate and natural beauty. But when Russia conquered the Caucasus my
grandfather had decided to settle on the Kuban.
All the men in my family had been soldiers. No other way of life had
ever occurred to them. My great-grandfather had fought the fierce Cherkess,
a people of ancient Islamic culture who were unbelievably fanatical and
fiercely courageous -- and armed by the Turks. And the men in my family were
giants -- my relatives considered it tragic that I had stopped growing at six
feet. Only half jokingly, my father and grandfather had dubbed me a freak.
My father was a strict but scrupulously fair man whose rewards and
punishments were always deserved. He was six feet six inches tall. My mother
adored me but she interfered between us only when she thought my father had
gone too far in finding fault with me. Since family custom dictated that I
be "toughened up," I was sent at eight years of age to a boarding school a
hundred and twenty miles away. I hated it at first, and would cry myself to
sleep each night. But I got used to being away from home except for
vacations.
When world war broke out in 1914, I was a teenager, the kind of student
who did just enough to get by. My father had died two years before from
wounds he had received in the Russo-Japanese War. When war came, my whole
upbringing had led me quite naturally to dream of gallant exploits. I was
disgusted with myself that I was too young to join, but the war ground on
and by the end of 1915 I was seventeen, old enough to volunteer. I had set
my heart on becoming an officer.
The army had lost so many that an accelerated officer training course
had been established -- four months instead of the usual two or three years;
you could complete your course work after the war if you lived that long. I
was still technically a year too young to be eligible for the military
academy, but it was now possible, because of the circumstances, to take the
examination whenever one felt ready. I didn't tell my mother, but I began to
try to cram a year's work into the shortest possible time, and I often
studied until the early hours of the morning. After three months, I notified
the director of the school that I was prepared to take the entrance
examination for the military academy. Because of my mediocre school record,
he thought I was just mouthing off. But I persisted, and he finally gave in,
warning me that no special allowances would be made and that he was all but
certain I would fail. But I passed the difficult examination with flying
colors, much to his surprise.
"All those years you've been pulling the wool over our eyes," he said,
"pretending to be a second-rate student."
"1 want to go to war so much, it has worked a miracle," I told him.
I had not given my mother even a hint of what I was up to because I
knew she would object. And of course when I showed her my report card and
told her I wanted to enter the military academy, she was vehemently opposed
and refused her consent. Since I was a minor, I could not join without it.
But a month of arguments, pleading and tears finally won her permission, and
on a day that was glorious for me and sad for her, I donned my uniform and
set off for the reserve battalion stationed at Ekaterinodar, the capital of
the Cossack Kuban territory. I had requested assignment and been given to a
military academy that had just been established at Tashkent in central Asia,
a region I had read much about in school, so, carrying my free railway
ticket and all my documents, I said good-bye to my mother and family and set
out on the long trip.
Anyone who has not experienced the immensity of Russia firsthand cannot
grasp what a voyage lay ahead. It was freezing cold and the train was so
packed that I counted myself lucky to find a tiny space in the baggage
compartment. Even the corridors were crowded with soldiers on their way to
and from the front. Near Tzarizin (later Stalingrad) a snowstorm nearly
buried the train, and it took two days of going hungry and nearly freezing
to dig ourselves out. The returning soldiers were frantic at the thought of
losing precious time from their short leaves. All the way to Samara
(Kubichev) on the Volga the train inched slowly forward between mountains of
snow.
On the other side of the frozen Volga, I changed trains for Tashkent.
Now, even the third-class cabins were almost empty. The countryside was a
constant surprise to me. The Russian forests had given way to desert plains
where only small bushes, called saksaule, could grow. Whenever the train
stopped, the nomadic Kirghiz rode up on their ponies to stare at the demon
locomotive; the railroad was new in central Asia, and the people of the
steppes would ride hundreds of miles to see it.
At last we reached Tashkent. We discovered we were only part of a
steady stream of Cossacks arriving from the Don, Kuban and Terek
territories. The director of the military academy was overwhelmed by us all,
and put us on a railroad car and off we went to Irkutsk in central Siberia.
I found Siberia even more dramatic than central Asia. Even though it is
intensely cold in western and central Siberia, there are seldom any strong
winds, and so it is not unpleasant. The air was so still that the smoke from
the engine rose straight up into the air; there was not the slightest
breeze. The most extraordinary thing, though, was the overwhelming, absolute
silence that fell whenever the train stopped. It was haunting. Occasionally
the quiet was broken by a piercing sound like the crack of a gunshot, as a
tree would explode in the thirty-below-zero cold.
The military school at Irkutsk consisted of a long, one-story building
with a huge courtyard in front and riding grounds behind. It had been
established in 1872 to train officers for the crack Siberian divisions. We
were welcomed by the director, who declared us officially student-officers,
junkers.
We had four months to be transformed into officers. Into those four
months, we had to cram what would take two years in peacetime -- classes,
drills, riding. We were up at 6 A.M. and retired at 10 P.M., with only two
hours in between to ourselves. Each night I threw myself exhausted onto my
bed, wondering whether I could stand the intellectual and physical
punishment. But in a month's time my young body had become so hardened that
I no longer felt the least fatigue.
Spring in Siberia is the most beautiful I have seen anywhere. It
happens suddenly as the bright sun melts the last traces of snow. We used to
take map training on the other side of the majestic Angera River, and from
there we could see a breathtaking woods, all white birch surrounded by the
freshest, greenest grass in the world. Once I gave in to the temptation to
stretch out on the grass -- but I leaped to my feet the second I touched
ground: underneath the green grass, the earth is eternally frozen. On a day
in May, a few days before the end of our course, we took a train to Lake
Baikal, about thirty-eight miles from Irkutsk. It is the deepest lake in the
world; the water is like crystal and the banks are a scene out of a fairy
tale. It was warm so I put on my bathing suit and dived in. To my shock, the
water was so cold I felt as if I were being boiled.
And then we were commissioned as sublieutenants. Foreigners could not
possibly understand what that meant to us. In czarist Russia an officer was
received everywhere, and admired and respected by everyone. He had to wear
his uniform at all times in public, and no one, especially women, could
resist him. And there were many courtesies. For instance, at the theater,
officers never remained in their seats during intermission. Even the Czar
observed the formality.
By custom, the entire school was turned over to the new graduates on
the eve of graduation. The officers all stayed away and the school orchestra
played only for us. Legend has it that the famous poet Lermontov, who had
been a junker, had designed the ceremony we observed. We danced and sang the
whole night long and in the morning we took our time getting dressed since
there were no officers to make us hurry. We put on our new officers'
uniforms, still with our cadet insignia on the epaulets. By 9 A.M., we were
assembled in the courtyard. The authorities arrived with the
governor-general of eastern Siberia at their head. For the last time we
listened to the command "Come to attention!" as the director read the
telegram from St. Petersburg that said that we were commissioned. Then we
broke ranks and dashed to the dormitories to take off our cadet insignia.
Back in the ranks, we were greeted as "my fellow officers," and then we all
filed past the officers, who shook our hands and congratulated us. We
thought it unbearably moving that the customs were observed even though we
were "twelve-day wonders."
After the ceremony, we were each issued twenty-five rubles. Many of my
older comrades went to one of the numerous geisha houses, but I had decided
to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I had a date with a pretty young
Siberian girl I had met on leave. Then I took her to a concert by the famous
singer Plevitskaya, who had sung before the Czar. Two days later, our
arrangements were made, and we started on the long trip back. I was sad to
leave my girl, and the marvels of Siberia, but I had a month's furlough and
I longed to see my family and home.
2. First Feat of Arms
i WAS APPOINTED to the renowned 22nd Plastonais battalion -- of the
Cossack infantry. We were deep in the mountains on the Caucasus front, and
life was very hard. There were almost no paved roads, which was particularly
hard on the injured who had to be moved to hospitals, since everything had
to be moved by mule. We were always short of provisions, and when food did
arrive, it stank so much we had to force ourselves to eat it. There was no
firewood in those cold, barren hills. And at night, hungry jackals prowled
close to our tents. War wasn't the game I had dreamed about as a boy;
suffering attacked before the enemy.
When our battalion moved to the front lines I heard for the first time
the sounds of bullets whistling by me. Like us, the Turkish artillery had
only small mountain cannons but the cannonballs made a terrible noise as
they echoed over the cliffs and through the gorges. I soon learned, however,
that there was more danger from rifle bullets, either hitting directly or
ricocheting off the rocks. The first day on the front lines three of our men
were killed and several wounded.
Our commanding officers planned a major offensive. Because one of our
lieutenants had been seriously wounded, I was assigned to direct the
reconnaissance operation. October 4, 1916 -- I remember the day clearly. I
set out at nightfall with twenty Cossacks. My orders were to push forward
about two miles to a demolished Turkish village. The night was very dark and
windy. I divided the men in two, one group under my command and the other
led by a sergeant who was infinitely more experienced than I.
If the first detachment were ambushed, the other was to counterattack
from the rear. We wrapped our boots in cloth to dull the noise of our heels
on the roads. As we got near the village, we came upon a man sitting on the
ground. One of our soldiers jumped him and pinned him to the ground, holding
his Cossack dagger to his throat. I heard him say the word kardash
("friend"); he was unarmed. One of the soldiers who spoke Turkish soon found
out that he was an Armenian, and that his family had been killed by Turkish
soldiers. Only he had escaped. He had been hiding in a cave for several
days, was without food, and was now trying to find the Russian troops. He
told us there were more than fifty soldiers and two officers in the village
and that they had at least two machine guns. I decided to dare it. I
signaled the other group that they were to attack from the left as we came
in from the right. The Turkish position was directly in front of us.
Our battalion was called the plastounis (from plast, theword for bed)
because they were famous for surprising their foes at night by crawling up
on them on their bellies. This is the way we moved now. It took us an hour
to advance another half mile, but we surprised the Turks and took them in
twenty minutes. We captured one officer and nineteen troops, and lost four
killed and seven wounded. From a distance of two and a half miles the main
Turkish force opened an artillery barrage, but the Russian artillery
returned their fire to protect our retreat and we got safely back with the
Armenian, our prisoners, the two machine guns, and documents that would
prove useful. For my first feat of arms I was promoted to lieutenant and
received the order of St. Anne, which is worn on the saber and bears the
inscription "for courage."
That Christmas on the front was the saddest of our lives. Cold and
hungry, all we could think about was the gaiety and beauty of the
traditional Russian Christmas celebration. (We had no way of knowing that
this would be the last Christmas of the Russian Empire.) During January and
February the cold was so intense we could not undertake any serious action.
But we knew that spring would bring a major campaign designed to knock
Turkey out of the war.
News from Russia arrived a week late, and we were stupefied when we
learned that a revolution had broken out in St. Petersburg, and that the
Czar had abdicated in March 1917. I had been raised with a deep devotion for
the monarchy, and these events seemed to me unbelievable, even
.catastrophic. The ordinary Cossacks were as broken up as we officers. None
of us could imagine living without the Czar. The Cossacks had always been
the main protectors of the throne, and they wondered what then-fate would be
in a republic and feared that the revolutionaries would never forgive their
support of the Czar.
The Russian infantrymen on our right had received the news with
boisterous joy; we could hear them cheering in their camp. Ten days later
they sent a delegation to find out how the Cossacks, whom they disliked
anyhow, would react to revolution. They were astonished and angered to
discover that strict discipline still prevailed among our troops -- none of
us would wear the red ribbons that decorated their coats. We begged them to
go away and leave us alone, but that infuriated them further and led to
threats against us. After that our general ordered the Cossacks on a double
alert -- against the Turks and against our fellow troops.
A few days later, the famous order N1 of the new government arrived,
abolishing all discipline in the army. All military formations, large or
small, were to be governed by committees elected by the soldiers. The
committees were to be in charge of everything, even military operations. The
rejoicing of the ordinary soldiers can be easily imagined; they hated their
officers. Many of the officers of the regular army were severely harassed,
and some were even arrested for their harsh treatment of the men. The
Russian soldiers were furious when they found that the Cossack committees
were ninety percent officers (as opposed to only three percent -- mostly
young revolutionary officers -- among the regulars).
When the soldiers learned that the new government was promising to give
them confiscated land, they had only one idea -- to get home before the
distribution was completed. They deserted the front en masse. The Cossack
formations, however, maintained discipline, closing their ears to
propaganda. But by November 1917 our presence on the front was no longer of
any use. The Cossacks started to return to their stanitzas (villages, or
administrative districts).
At every railroad station along the route, soldiers ordered the
Cossacks to turn over their officers, and the Cossacks, with machine guns
mounted on the trains, would reply, "Come and get them." Thousands of
officers were assassinated during these days, but not a single Cossack
officer was touched.
During a stopover at Prochladnaya, I put over my uniform an overcoat
that had been lent me by a friend who was the battalion physician. I didn't
think my officer's gold braid could be seen, or that the tiny gold crown on
my fur hat would betray me.
"Look, comrades," a soldier called out, "There's an officer disguised
as a soldier."
A crowd gathered around me and I was forced to remove my coat. On my
uniform were my lieutenant's epaulets. The soldiers seized me and began to
carry me to their camp behind the station. I was sure I was going to be torn
to bits.
Two Cossacks who did not even belong to my battalion saw what was
happening to me and dashed to their trains yelling, "Quick! The soldiers are
going to kill a Cossack officer."
About a hundred Cossacks grabbed their rifles and chased away the
soldiers, who were beating me as they dragged me along. The Cossacks charged
after them with bayonets. My would-be executioners left behind one dead man
and ten seriously wounded. Some from my battalion carried me to the
officers' car, where my doctor friend gave me a big glass of vodka. "Those
bastards did a job on you but there is nothing serious." I was covered with
bruises and both my eyes were so blackened I could barely see.
Our train started up again. A division famous for its revolutionary
ardor was waiting at the Goulkevitchi station. Whenever a train arrived they
would ask if there were any officers aboard. They would drag their
unfortunate victims out of the cars and murder them with unbelievable
cruelty. As we pulled in, we saw some soldiers but they simply stared at us
with hatred. The station-master told us that they had got wind of the
incident at Prochladnaya and had decided to let us be.
Our regiment arrived finally at Tichoretzkaya, a maJoir railroad
junction where everybody was given leave buit me. Our commander, Lieutenant
Colonel Postovsky (who was to play an important role in my life), did not
want my mother to see me in the condition I was in. It was hard to be so
close to home and not to be able to see my family after such a long absence.
Even more, the thought of being seen in such a state by one very special
person with blond curls and wonderful blue eyes was worse.
Ten days later my face was almost back to normal, and the cuts and
bruises could be passed off as signs of valiant deeds. But as I was packing
my few belongings to go home, the colonel summoned me.
"You cannot go on leave. The commander-in-chief of the Cossack
divisions has ordered me to send an officer to Baku on the Caspian with a
confidential dispatch. You are the only officer I have that I trust. I'm
sending you."
"But Colonel, I shall never return. You saw what the soldiers did to
me."
"I know it's dangerous, but it would be for any officer. I have had
word that most of the soldiers have left the railroad stations. It's less
risky now. You will take the Rostov-Baku express, which has an armed guard
under an officer."
I was given no choice. I was handed a large sum of money and documents
asking the authorities (but what authorities?) to assure my safe passage. I
went to Tichoretzkaya, where I caught the train for Baku. It took two days.
In Baku I bought my mother and brother Christmas presents -- a case of the
local mandarin oranges. I also came down with a fierce sore throat and a
fever.
Just before I was to leave for home, our train was overrun by soldiers
who were fleeing the front. Compartments that were intended for four people
had to accommodate eight, and even the corridors were packed. I wore an
enlisted man's coat over my officer's uniform. I was prostrate on an upper
berth and obviously sick as a dog. Thinking I was one of them, the soldiers
kept asking me what was the matter. I pointed to my throat and whispered a
few words in an indistinct, hoarse voice, conscious that my accent might
give me away.
My fever rose and, off and on, I lost consciousness and sank into
delirium. I was blinded by my own sweat, and from the overheated, crowded
compartment.
One of the soldiers said to me, "Comrade, you should take off your
overcoat. It's hot in here and you are burning up. We will just lay it over
you." Some of the others rose to help him. I was too sick to care. When they
took my coat off and saw my insignia, there was a disquieting silence. Then
someone said, "There must be a medic on the train. Someone should ask in the
other cars." A very young soldier replied, "You're right, comrade. I'll
try."
Soon he was back with a medic, who swabbed my throat with some
awful-tasting medicine. It worked like a miracle and, by morning, I was a
lot better. He came back later and gave me some more medicine, and by
evening I was almost myself again.
I was astounded and very moved by the way these soldiers treated me.
They were always solicitous, asking me how I was, and whether I needed
anything. At each stop they would fetch boiling water to make tea. All
during the three-day trip these companions looked after me, and when I
arrived at Tichoretzkaya the whole car came out to shake my hand and wish me
a safe trip home. A little while before soldiers had tried to kill me. Now
other soldiers were doing all they could for me, with great kindness.
When I reached the stanitza, I delivered my report to the colonel as
well as the receipt for the package. He complimented me for a job well done,
had the treasurer advance me three months' pay and gave me a paper for an
unlimited leave. I would never return to my battalion. It no longer existed.
Leave papers in hand, I set out for home and my mother, who was
overjoyed to see me all in one piece. It was two days before Christmas 1917.
I forgot about the dire political situation, the Bolsheviks, the threat of
civil war, and the soldiers on the trains looking for officers to kill and I
thought only about my joy in being home at last.
The next day my mother told me that my close friend, Lieutenant Joukov,
had been killed just a few days before. He had survived the war, his own men
worshiped him, and he had been assassinated by soldiers from his own
country. I was beside myself. I dreamed of rallying the Cossacks of my
stanitza to revenge the Cossacks.
In fact, the czarist government had always had an incredibly foolish
relationship with the Cossacks. They were the protectors of the throne, the
bodyguards of the Czar and his family, and yet they had always been looked
on with distrust. It was a policy that was based on the memory of the
revolts of the Zaporov Cossacks-now only about half of those who lived in
Kuban -- under Stenka Rajin and Emilian Pougatchev, both Don Cossacks.
Pougatchev had threatened the reign of Catherine II. The government had then
adopted the policy of colonizing the Kuban Cossack territory with Russian
peasants, who were encouraged to buy land on low-interest loans from a
specially constituted bank.
The intricate social organization of the Kuban Cossacks endured in
spite of all this. To rid herself of the trouble some Zaporov Cossacks, who
lived in the southern Ukraine, Catherine II had moved them to the rich lands
of Kuban, which had been conquered from the Turks, along the banks of the
Kuban River, one of the swiftest and most dangerous in the world. With this
act, the government both neutralized the Cossacks militarily and
consolidated its new frontiers.
When a Cossack reached sixteen, he received from the government a piece
of land called a nadel. The parcel varied in size depending on how much
reserve the stanitza held, but it was generally thirty or forty acres. Every
four years the land was redistributed, a system that impoverished the famous
black soil. As the Cossack population increased, the nadels became smaller
and smaller and the Cossacks, especially those who lived along the Caucasus
frontier, grew steadily poorer. They, the masters, became poorer than the
Russian peasants who had been thrust into their midst.
The government was not really giving the Cossacks much of a gift when
it ceded land to them. As soon as he receive his nadel, at sixteen, the
Cossack began his military service, though he remained in his stanitza until
he was twenty-one, and only then left to join his regiment. A special
instructor oversaw his military education. By nineteen, he had to have all
his own equipment -- uniform, boots, linens, saber and dagger, and a horse if
he served in the cavalry. Each year his equipment was inspected. The
government supplied only a carbine to the cavalrymen and a rifle to the
infantrymen. Equipment was an enormous outlay for these men, who had then to
serve actively for five years, and then remain at the disposition of the
State as reservists.
While he remained in the stanitza, the young Cossack did not merely
undergo intense military training; he also continued his regular schooling
with a tutor. By the time he joined his regiment, he was a first-class
soldier. Since the officers were usually Cossacks, the discipline in the
regiments was a family affair. Courts-martial were very rare, and only
convoked for the most serious offenses.
Life in the stanitza was based on a strict code of honor. In my own I
never heard of a divorce, a theft or of any dishonesty. Money was loaned and
borrowed on a man's word.
The Cossacks very rarely intermarried with the Russians in their midst.
They were very pious, and their own marriage ceremony was extraordinary. The
Orthodox rite is very solemn and beautiful, but among the Cossacks it
achieved a singular romanticism. The groom, in his full dress chercheska,
would gallop through the village with his closest friends, all firing their
pistols into the air, to I meet his bride. She came out to meet him with her
attendants and was escorted to the church by the groom and his companions.
After the religious ceremony the feast i would begin at the bridegroom's
house. The dowry -- I furniture, linens, maybe even oxen harnessed to a wagon
'! -- was exhibited for all to see. Late in the evening the newlyweds were
led to their room by the svacha, the matchmaker. The next morning she
triumphantly exhibited the sheets as proof that the bride had been a virgin.
The feasting lasted three days. The czarist government did not trust the
Cossacks. The ataman, their administrative chief, was always a Russian, just
as the Czar's bodyguard was always commanded by Russians or German-Russians.
The Civil War proved how fatal this policy had been for the Czar, and
how unfounded the mistrust had been. When the Bolsheviks took power, the
transplanted Russians joined them and fought the Cossacks who joined the
White Army. (Later Stalin declared the Russian peasants kulaks and they lost
everything.)
3. First Reverses
MY MOTHER WAS VERY WORRIED about me, and urged me to go for a while to
Ekaterinodar, where she thought I would be safer from the Russians. She was
not afraid for herself or my younger brother, because she was on good terms
with the Russian peasants. To please her, I went, but I found the city in
turmoil. The garrisons of Ekaterinodar were filled with soldiers who had,
for a number of reasons, stayed behind instead of returning home. It was
almost as if they had received some mysterious order to await events. The
famous General Kornilov had arrived in the Don Cossack territory and was
fighting the Bolsheviks. He was a remarkable man. During the war he had
commanded the famous Iron Division. Wounded and captured by the Austrians in
the Carpathians, he had escaped, crossed Austria, and reached Russia. He was
commanding a corps on the front when the Revolution broke out. At first, he
was on good terms with Kerensky, who named him commander-in-chief, but
relations between them quickly cooled. Kornilov schemed to be rid of
Kerensky, and thereby had him arrested and imprisoned in the small city of
Bichorv. With the help of his personal guard he escaped and reached the Don.
On my arrival in Ekaterinodar I saw a notice in the regional newspaper
from a Colonel Galaev inviting officers to Join a detachment he had formed
to keep order in the city. His small troop was temporarily lodged in the
empty junior seminary near the railroad station. I presented myself to the
colonel, who made a strong impression on me. He received me graciously and
informed me that I would serve as a simple soldier like all the others in
the detachment. I would have to remove my officer's epaulets but he made me
head of the machine gun section, which was my specialty. I had two heavy
Maxim machine guns and two light Colts. Besides sidearms we also received
regulation Russian army rifles. The date of mv enlistment, January 9, 1918,
was the day that determined the rest of my life.
Another detachment similar to our own was under the command of Captain
Pokrovsky, who held the Cross of St. George, awarded only for the highest
acts of heroism. Pokrovsky impressed me even more than Galaev. He was a
medium-sized man with an unforgettable face. His hawklike eyes both
attracted and disturbed me. They were cold and ice-gray, and seemed to reach
into one's soul. His movements were violent and brusque; his voice imperious
even with his superiors. An unusual man, he had so impressed the ataman of
the Kuban Cossacks that he had made him commander-in-chief of the troops in
Ekaterinodar, and then colonel and general in quick succession, though he
was not a Cossack.
Our two detachments were to disarm the soldiers who spent their time at
Bolshevik propaganda meetings. We put their arms, including their cannons,
into trains. As a reinforcement for my section, I received two young female
first lieutenants. They had been students at the time of the Revolution and
had taken advantage of the rights granted women by the provisional
government to take accelerated officer training in Moscow. They were named
Barkache and Zubakina, both very pretty girls. They demanded that they be
treated as any other officers, and once we had all got used to this, we got
on very well. And they were very brave, as I was to learn a few days later.
Toward the end of January, my section was ordered to accompany some
officers from another section to Ekaterinodar to inspect trainloads of
merchandise. We had received a report that the Bolsheviks at Novorossisk,
the great Black Sea port that they held, had sent arms and ammunition to
fight against General Kornilov at Rostov-on-the-Don.
I left the women officers in the barracks and ordered them to clean and
grease the machine guns. At the station we searched the trains and found
nothing. As we waited on the platform for the rest of the detachment, which
was working on the other side of the tracks, a very long train, loaded with
merchandise from Novorossisk, pulled in. It was crowded with soldiers
returning from the Turkish front. They recognized us as officers.
"Look, comrades! They are not satisfied with having drunk our blood for
centuries. Now they aim their guns at us and our brothers."
The heckling led to more serious insults and threats. The situation was
becoming dangerous. We couldn't abandon the comrades we were waiting for.
The senior lieutenant, Roschin, ordered me to go for the machine guns, and
the others to take cover in a small brick building at the end of the
platform.
I ran out of the station and jumped into a carriage. I had to pull my
gun to persuade the driver but a few minutes later I was at the seminary.
Barkache and Zubakina helped me load the two heavy machine guns onto
the wagon. As we approached the station I heard bullets whistling. The
soldiers were firing on the small brick building. Russian stations do not
have gates, so we would have to try to drive the wagon right up to the
platforms where the long train was stopped. I ordered Zubakina to shoot at
the cars. With the other machine gun I opened fire on the soldiers who were
shooting at our comrades from the platforms. The soldiers began to jump onto
the train, or tried to take cover under the cars. The engineer, a Red, saw
that things were going badly and pulled the train out.
Another five minutes and we would have been lost. They would have torn
us apart. There were many wounded and dead on the tracks, and we telephoned
the hospitals to send people to care for them. The episode had serious
consequences; it unleashed civil war along the Kuban. As it turned out, the
Reds had been getting ready to attack; we found an attack plan on the body
of a Red officer.
Within a few hours our intelligence informed us that the Novorossisk
Bolsheviks were organizing a punitive expedition. Trains loaded with armed
soldiers were on their way to Ekaterinodar and would arrive at night. We
were in great danger, since we were at most two thousand fighting men, all
officers. Ataman Filimonov held a council of war. Colonel Galaev was to
defend the city along the railroad track. Pokrovsky was to set out under
cover of dark and attack the Reds from the rear. I would put my machine guns
near the railroad bridge and defend the track and the paved road, the only
access to the city, which was surrounded on all other sides by an impassable
river marsh.
I placed a heavy machine gun on each side of the bridge. The women
sublieutenants, protected by steel shields mounted on their guns, fired in
bursts as the Reds opened fire on our position, which was only about fifteen
yards wide. I fired from the bridge with the light Colt, also protected by a
shield.
I had never heard so many bullets whistling around my head. Thousands
of soldiers were aiming their fire at our small position. The women showed
extraordinary courage and coolness. I was afraid they were taking too many
risks by standing up over their shields and I yelled to Barkache to get
down. But she stood up for a fraction of a second to turn the gun around and
add water to cool it, and in that instant was shot in the heart. A short
time later Colonel Galaev was killed in the same way.
Finally, when Pokrovsky arrived and attacked from the rear, the Reds
fled with heavy losses, abandoning their weapons and the trains. But our
victory was saddened by the death of Barkache and our commander. In the
evening we brought their bodies to the seminary to prepare them for burial.
As the funeral procession passed through the city on the way to the
cemetery, the whole population lined the route.
Captain Pokrovsky was made colonel and commander-in-chief of the entire
garrison. The fighting continued to rage. The Reds were furious at their
rout and were determined to take revenge. Replacements joined them from
every direction and we were sorely pressed, particularly since eighty
percent of the population were partisans of the Reds.
Civil war is the ultimate horror. I was in a battalion that was
directed against my own stanitza. When I heard the cannons, I knew they
might be killing my loved ones or destroying my home. And there was terrible
savagery and ferocity on both sides. When at last I saw my family again,
they told me that the grocer's two sons, with whom I had played as a child,
had enlisted in the Red Army and had sworn to cut me to ribbons if I fell
into their hands.
That war was full of ironies. There was a rich mujik, a man who owned a
hundred and twenty-five acres, had more than twenty horses, and thirty
cattle and much other livestock, in our town. Yet his three sons immediately
joined the Reds. One of his neighbors, also a mujik, who lived by making
Russian ovens, had a wife and seven children, and was as poor as Job. Yet he
joined our detachment and fought the entire war in the famous Kornilov
regiment.
Several times during this period my life was spared against all odds. I
left my machine gunner's section to join the cavalry. My grandfather had
served Czars Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II and had retired in
1907 as a general. After his retirement, he had raised horses and had taught
me from the age of two all the skills of a horseman. So, when it was decided
to create a sotnia (mounted section), I was named first officer. I bought a
horse from a former Cossack commander, a beautiful animal but with two
faults: he was unwilling to follow other I horses, being used to the lead
position, and he was shot from under me.
After the capture of my stanitza, my commander told me to go back to
Ekaterinodar for a few days and not to stay where everyone knew me. "If the
Reds retake the stanitza," he said, "your relatives may pay dearly for you."
With my orderly, I started back to Ekaterinodar, about fifty miles
away. That evening I arrived at a convent of nuns located halfway between
the stations of Platnirov-skaya and PIatunovskaya. I knew the place very
well. The mother superior, a venerable old lady, had been a great friend of
my grandfather. She told me that the Reds were burning down all the
convents. There was a small Cossack detachment there, about forty men, on
their way to Ekaterinodar to join the fight, commanded by the sublieutenant
Kedrovsky, whom I knew so well.
Like many Russian convents, this one was by a high wall and resembled a
fortress. My horse had lost a shoe and I sent my orderly to take him to the
stanitza about three miles away to be reshod. When he left, the massive
single gate to the convent was barred and sentinels were placed at the gate
and in the bell tower. The front lines were shifting constantly, so that one
could expect a Red band at any time. After dinner, the mother superior
escorted me to the guest room, while the sublieutenant and his men remained
below.
I was sound asleep when firing broke out. A nun woke me at i A.M. The
Reds had surrounded the convent and Kedrovsky was seriously wounded.
The Cossacks were firing back from the bell towers but we were short of
ammunition. Kedrovsky had been carried into the chapel and I could see that
he did not have much time left.
"We are done for," he whispered. "There are too many of them. They have
two cannons and we only have twenty-five cartridges apiece. Hide. The
Cossack troops may be able to save themselves somehow, but for you and me it
is certain death. You know how these pigs torture officers. Don't fall into
their hands alive."
A Cossack dagger and the nine-millimeter Colt I had received in
military school were the only weapons I had. The Red cannons were bombarding
the convent and shrapnel was falling everywhere. I left Kedrovsky and went
back to the courtyard.
"We can't hold out much longer," a noncommissioned officer told me. "I
am going to talk to them. They have promised not to kill us if we open the
gate. They don't know you're here. Hide somewhere and no Cossack will betray
you."
But where? Surely the Reds would ransack the convent from top to bottom
and I would be discovered. I was nineteen, not ready to die. To be killed in
battle was one thing, but to kill myself or die under torture was
unthinkable.
I shook hands with the sergeant. Kedrovsky had died. The terrified nuns
were hiding in the cellars. "I have a place that nobody knows about," the
mother superior told me. "My poor daughters are so frightened they might
betray you out of fear. You will be safe if the Reds don't stay too long."
She took me to a dark corner of the main church, where there were a
number of icons. One icon was very large and so old that nobody knew what
saint it represented. The mother superior pressed something at its base, and
then drew the icon aside. There was a small cubbyhole
J
where I could just squeeze in. "They won't find you here," she said.
"I'll come back when the danger is over. Don't move, and don't smoke."
She moved the icon back in place and I was left in the darkness with
only the air that filtered through a small crack in the wall. For a while I
listened to the artillery and rifles. It was silent for a brief moment.
Then, shots and wild screaming. Afterward, I learned that the Reds had
massacred all the Cossacks. Only one, a fellow my own age, had been rescued
by the sister-cook, who had hidden him in a dish closet.
The Reds were searching for convent treasure. I heard them approach
with the mother superior. They were warning her that thev would kill her if
she didn't tell them where it was. They were so close that I could hear
their swearwords and their heavy, drunken breathing. They looted the church
for about a half hour. In spite of the cold and my cramped quarters, I fell
asleep.
I was wakened by someone shaking me and I thought the end had come.
When I opened my eyes, I saw some officers and Cossacks, with the mother
superior. "Come out of your hole, friend," said a captain I did not know.
"And thank the mother superior for saving your life. Everybody else was
slaughtered."
I was so stiff I could hardly walk. By the time they got me to the
courtyard I saw one of the Cossack detachments from Ekaterinodar. About two
hundred Red soldiers had captured the convent as they had been returning
from a village where they had looted a State vodka factory. Dead drunk, they
had been on their way to the railroad station, where another Red detachment
was quartered, when they had come upon the convent and heard that there were
Cossacks inside.
While I had slept, the situation had reversed. Exhausted from the
fighting and drunk on the mass wine they had looted at the convent, the
soldiers, even the sentinels, had fallen asleep. The Cossacks in a nearby
stanitza had managed to alert a detachment on its way to the front. The
battle was short and the Reds were wiped out. Only twenty were left alive to
bury the dead, and then they were shot. That was what the Civil War was
like.
My orderly returned with my horse, and I set out again for
Ekaterinodar.
Despite some victories, our resistance was doomed. There were just a
few of us, and masses of Reds were arriving from all sides. We had no
reserve ammunition, while the Reds had the leftover reserves of the Russian
army at the front.
The noose was tightening around Ekaterinodar. Our superiors -- Ataman
Filimonov, Colonel Pokrovsky and some generals from the front -- decided the
only way to escape being annihilated was to retreat to the mountains to the
south on the Black Sea. I don't think they had anv idea of how we would
survive in the mountains or where we would find food for thousands of men.
How would we defend ourselves? It was a desperate decision but it was our
only choice. The situation became more critical as hordes of civilians and
retired officers who were afraid of falling into the hands of the Reds
followed us.
In February 1918 we left our beloved city only to run immediately into
a line of Bolshevik troops. After a few days of fighting, we were sure the
end had come for us. Everyone was put into the front lines, even the
civilians and the old men. But toward the evening of the third day somehow
we broke through. My mounted detachment had the responsibility of protecting
headquarters from a surprise attack.
A horseman galloped out of the woods, leaped from his horse before
Ataman Filimonov, and threw his arms around him shouting, "Kornil, Kornil."
He was one of our Cherkess allies and had brought us unexpected good news.
General Kornilov and his tiny army were just eighteen miles away. We had
thought he was still in Rostov-on-the-Don, but he too had evacuated under
pressure. He had hoped to join us and wait for better times -- for the moment
when the Cossacks, who were observing strict neutrality (ninety percent of
our men were ex-officers), would understand what real threat the Bolsheviks
were to their whole way of life.
Pokrovsky was scheduled to meet Kornilov the next day but Pokrovsky
himself had only been named major-general the evening before by Filimonov.
This was bound to offend Kornilov and the other generals. Filimonov did not,
in their view, have the right to make appointments. Now he had acted as the
head of an independent state, and this could only add to the tension between
the Cossacks and the Russians. Pokrovsky, because he was not a Cossack, was
denied a role in the joined armies.
The meeting of our two small troops under Kornilov's command was to
take place in the stanitza of Novy-Dmitrievskaya. We hoped to persuade the
Cossacks to rise, so we thought it essential to retake their capital,
Ekaterinodar. So, at the beginning of March, our army was once again before
the city. Ekaterinodar was defended by ten times our strength, and fortified
by heavy artillery against our measly ten cannons and two thousand shells.
Even so, we might have taken it if General Kornilov had not been hit by a
shell. His death was a terrible blow. It overturned all our plans. He was a
Cossack general and immensely popular. If we had taken Ekaterinodar, he
could have rallied all the Cossacks of Kuban, the Don and Terek. His
successor, General Denikine, did not have the same relationship with the
men. In any case, he decided to raise the siege and to move us to the
territory of the Don Cossacks where, it was rumored, the Cossack contingents
had begun to converge.
We went through a village called, in Russian, "The Colonies." It was
where the Germans who had been transplanted to Russia under Catherine II
lived. With elaborate security, we buried Kornilov. (The next day the Reds
discovered his grave and dragged his body through the streets of
Ekaterinodar.) had hoped to join us and wait for better times -- for the
moment when the Cossacks, who were observing strict neutrality (ninety
percent of our men were ex-officers), would understand what real threat the
Bolsheviks were to their whole way of life.
Pokrovsky was scheduled to meet Kornilov the next day but Pokrovsky
himself had only been named major-general the evening before by Filimonov.
This was bound to offend Kornilov and the other generals. Filimonov did not,
in their view, have the right to make appointments. Now he had acted as the
head of an independent state, and this could only add to the tension between
the Cossacks and the Russians. Pokrovsky, because he was not a Cossack, was
denied a role in the joined armies.
The meeting of our two small troops under Kornilov's command was to
take place in the stanitza of Novy-Dmitrievskaya. We hoped to persuade the
Cossacks to rise, so we thought it essential to retake their capital,
Ekaterinodar. So, at the beginning of March, our army was once again before
the city. Ekaterinodar was defended by ten times our strength, and fortified
by heavy artillery against our measly ten cannons and two thousand shells.
Even so, we might have taken it if General Kornilov had not been hit by a
shell. His death was a terrible blow. It overturned all our plans. He was a
Cossack general and immensely popular. If we had taken Ekaterinodar, he
could have rallied all the Cossacks of Kuban, the Don and Terek. His
successor, General Denikine, did not have the same relationship with the
men. In any case, he decided to raise the siege and to move us to the
territory of the Don Cossacks where, it was rumored, the Cossack contingents
had begun to converge.
We went through a village called, in Russian, "The Colonies." It was
where the Germans who had been transplanted to Russia under Catherine II
lived. With elaborate security, we buried Kornilov. (The next day the Reds
discovered his grave and dragged his body through the streets of
Ekaterinodar.)
4. Discovery of Fear
BY NIGHT, across the violent winds of the steppes of the northern
Caucasus, we marched toward the Don. Each evening as we would start out only
the general staff knew what our route was to be. Nevertheless, the Reds
succeeded regularly in discovering the stanitzas where we halted, and
bombarded us with artillery fire. We were so short of guns and shells that
we could not fire back except in grave emergency. Our supply corps was the
closest Red detachment; when our shells or cartridges ran dangerously low,
we raided them.
I took part in these expeditions often. On the steppes of Kuban, one
night, we were only a few miles from my village, where my mother and younger
brother still lived. I hadn't seen them for months, and was frantic to know
if they were all right, but I could not leave the column. I had been
assigned to be General Markov's liaison with General Denikine for that
night.
It was pitch dark, the clouds blotted out any trace of moonlight, and a
cutting wind blew in our faces. We were wearing Cossack burkas, long, black
felt water- and wind-proof capes which served at night as sleeping bags. We
marched eight miles north, then turned south to throw the Bolsheviks off our
trail. We had to cross the railroad tracks, a movement which took several
hours and was very dangerous since the Reds might easily telephone our
position to the armored trains, who could bombard us. To keep the trains
from getting too close to the column as it crossed the tracks, teams of
sappers would blow up the tracks a few miles away on both sides of our
lines.
That night I was following General Denikine's personal bodyguards.
Wrapped in my burka, I had laid the bridle on the horse's neck and begun to
doze off. I was roused when my horse stopped. The column, two or three miles
long, had halted and everybody had dismounted. We stretched our stiffened
limbs and lay down, covering our heads with our burkas. Next to me was a
kurgan, one of the mounds on which the Cossacks a century before had lit
their signal fires to warn of Cherkess attacks. I climbed one side of the
kurmn to get out of the wind, attached the bridle to my leg to keep my horse
from wandering, and fell asleep. After a while, the cold woke me. When I
opened my eyes, I leaped up. The column had disappeared. My horse, grazing
on the fresh grass, had dragged me gradually down the kurgan.
The wind had died and the sky was cloudless. Overhead the moon shone
brilliantly; it was absolutely silent. I put my ear to the ground to see if
I could pick up any sound of the column and wagons. I could hear nothing. I
was quite alone in this vast, dangerous steppe.
I was frozen with such intense fear that I was physically ill. I gave
my horse his head in the hopes he would find his own way to our column. I
knew the Red cavalry would be close behind. He didn't run, he flew. The
noise of his hooves resounded like thunder on the dry ground.
After about an hour, I saw a dark line against the gray horizon. To
make less noise, I rode along the side of the road, where the earth was
softer. After a while, I realized that the dark line was a row of trees
planted along the railway tracks to protect them from snowdrifts. I knew the
road would lead to a crossing, but I didn't know what might await me there,
so I turned to the right.
When I was five hundred yards from the crossing, I thanked God that I
had made a detour. Through the unbearable silence I heard the sound of a
train slowly approaching. The armored train, I thought. I dismounted and led
my horse into the shadows of the trees. Apparently the Reds had repaired the
section of track we had blown up and were searching for the place where we
had crossed.
The train had stopped at the crossing house, and I heard what I assumed
was the Reds interrogating the railroad guard. I could not distinguish the
words. The talking stopped but still the train did not move.
It might stay there until dawn. It was already 3 A.M., so I didn't have
much time and the only safety lay on the other side of the tracks. But to
cross I would have to go through woods, down along a road that sank three
yards below the surrounding ground. The other side was easier. It was only
about a yard high, no trouble for my horse. But I would have to do all of
this without the men on the train hearing me, and there was no wind to drown
out the noise.
I pulled off farther to the right, leading the horse by the bridle. He
was used to the front, so we accomplished this easily. Then he saw the
tracks glinting in the pale moonlight. I pulled at him with all my strength
to get him to cross them. He was afraid of the slippery rails and would not
budge. All this effort made a considerable amount of noise.
I could hear my heart beating, and despite the cold I was bathed in
sweat. The only solution was to mount the horse, which might lessen his fear
and encourage his instinct to obey his rider. I made the sign of the cross
and leaped into the saddle and, for the first time ever, struck him with my
crop. Surprised and offended, he made such a leap that he almost fell
between the tracks, and I had difficulty keeping my mount. Everything
happened quickly. I found myself half stunned, lying against a tree. The
horse was standing next to me trembling. I could hear the drops of sweat
falling from his body onto the ground. My face and hands were scratched from
the branches and I had an enormous bump on my head. My whole body hurt but I
didn't have time to think. The Reds must certainly have heard. I forced
myself to my feet and led the horse through the woods.
A few minutes later, I was on the steppe once again and relieved. I was
on the right side. I heard voices from the crossing and then the train began
to move. They were searching for the source of the noise. I whipped the
horse with my crop and he leaped forward. Immediately, I heard the sound of
machine gun fire aimed in the wrong direction. But now the Reds heard the
hoof beats on the dry ground. They couldn't get me with a machine gun so
they fired a dozen cannon shells. All fell short, except one that landed
about two yards to my left.
I galloped God knows where for about twenty minutes. But the horse was
about to fall from exhaustion and so I stopped for twenty minutes. I was
certain now that the Reds were not going to get me that night. The moon had
disappeared behind clouds and a morning fog indicated that I was near a
river. My body was aching and the bump on my head was swelling. I stretched
out on the ground and heard ahead of me the sound of wagon wheels. "Come on,
old friend," I said to my horse, "one more effort and we are home free." The
horse, Kochevoi, sensed our friends were near. He let out a whinny that
could be heard for miles. A half hour later, I was with my column. By
morning we had reached the stanitza of IIinskaya, our next stop on the Don
road. I was worried, as I presented myself to the headquarters staff, that I
might have been needed during the night to transmit an order to General
Markov. There had been nothing. I had not been missed.
Our march was difficult, slowed down by the necessity of pulling the
supply wagons, by the civilians who accompanied us, and by the wounded.
Since we were always on the move, the wounded could not be properly cared
for, and even slight wounds, easily cured in normal circumstances, could be
fatal.
In view of the desperate situation, our command decided to leave the
wounded behind in Diadkovskaya. At the same time they freed a communist,
Polouian, with great ceremony and asked him to watch out for them. I said
farewell to the wounded sorrowfully.
Finally, we reached the large stanitza of Ourpenskaya, which was near
the government seat of Stavropol. This was not a Cossack city and many of
its men had joined the Red Army. General Denikine received the news that
many Cossacks had risen against the Reds and were ready to join us. Two
regiments of Kuban Cossacks arrived. Our situation now seemed a bit hopeful.
Denikine decided to march to the Don and soon our army was settled in the
two Don Cossack stanitzas, Olguiskaya and Metchetins-kaya.
The Cossacks of these towns had fought hard against the Reds. They had
removed all the tracks that connected the Rostov-on-the-Don to the
Ekaterinodar-Tzarizino line. We arrived on the eve of Easter and for the
first time in a very long while we had time to celebrate in style.
During the next month we received reinforcements. The situation was
looking more favorable. All over the immense empire, groups like ours were
forming. Denikine decided to leave the Don and set out on the conquest of
the Kuban. It was May, a beautiful month in southern Russia. Our army of ten
thousand fighting men started out on the return trip to Kuban. We were glad
to get away from the Bolsheviks, at least those in the northern Caucasus.
Soon we lost our legendary general, Sergei Leoniko-vich Markov, a tragedy to
us. It happened after we had captured the railroad station of Chablievskaya,
on the Novorossisk-Tzarizino line. The battle was virtually over when I saw
the general walking between two warehouses. He returned my salute, visibly
delighted at this first victory that cut off the Reds from the east. At that
moment, a Red shell, fired by the armored train as it retreated, exploded
over his head. He died almost immediately. The deaths first of Kornilov then
of Markov changed the course of our destiny. Even so, I think that there was
never such a small army, almost without resources, that accomplished such
exploits against an enemy infinitely superior in numbers, arms and
munitions.
A few days after the death of General Markov, I was almost killed
during the attack on the Red infantry at the railroad junction of
Tichoretskaya. But we captured Tichoretskaya and that opened up the roads to
Rostov-on-the-Don and Ekaterinodar and to the southern Caucasus. The
Bolsheviks had to abandon an enormous amount of materiel, which we
recovered: two armored trains with their battleship guns, hundreds of wagons
loaded with ammunition, and many other supplies. The victory also had
political significance. It demonstrated our strength to the population, and
encouraged those who, even though they hated the Reds, had feared to join
us. The arrival of our army in Cossack territory and our victories against
the Reds had an immediate result. Everywhere the Cossack stanitzas rose
against the Communists and our army mushroomed. Day and night, Cossack
detachments arrived to join us.
General Pokrovsky was still in disgrace for having accepted promotion
by the Ataman Filimonov. He was biding his time. As great numbers of
Cossacks began to join us, there was a need for a man like Pokrovsky to
command. When he was named commander of the Cossacks, he asked me to be his
aide-de-camp, but I chose to join a Cossack detachment serving under him
that was commanded by one of my uncles.
Pokrovsky was pitiless with both the Red soldiers and civilians. After
we captured Timochevskaya, the people as usual denounced the Bolshevik
sympathizers, who were mostly peasants from the interior. He had twenty
gallows built and placed in a circle in the main plaza. One stood apart. It
was for an officer who had been conscripted by the Reds but who had declared
his intention to rejoin our side. When the Reds retreated, he had remained
behind and hidden himself. Pokrovsky had him hanged anyhow. Practically all
captured officers were hanged. To escape, it was not enough to plead that
one had been forced into service. One had to prove that he had acted against
the Reds.
On August 2, 1918, a memorable date for me, we entered Ekaterinodar
once again after six months' absence. Most of the people gave us a wild
welcome. As we marched down the streets they shook our hands and invited the
officers to dinner. After this, I received three days' leave to go see my
family. I had had no news of them for several months, and I was apprehensive
as I approached home. I was overjoyed to find my mother and younger brother
well. They had heard from a Cossack who had seen me in Ekaterinodar that I
was safe and sound. During the three days we spent together, my mother told
me about life under the Bolsheviks. Many of our belongings and household
goods had been requisitioned. The Reds had taken all my father's small arms,
and even a pair of binoculars he had won in a pistol competition. As he took
them, the soldier told my mother that they would be useful in helping aim
the cannons against us as we attacked. The essence of civil war is irony: my
father's binoculars might have helped kill me.
My mother had not been badly harassed, though my seventeen-year-old
brother had been arrested. But he had soon been released after some peasants
my mother had once helped intervened. Leaving them was terribly painful. If
I had realized that I would end up fighting in a civil war, I would never
have Joined the army. Now it was too late. "Long farewells bring useless
tears," says the Russian proverb. I got on my horse and galloped away to
hide my tears.
My regiment was already far away and it took me three days to catch up
with it. The rout of the Reds was complete in the northern Caucasus. Cities
and stanitzas fell to us one after another. Kuban Cossacks, officers, and
even soldiers whom the Bolsheviks had not succeeded in converting, flowed
into our ranks. We were now one hundred thousand strong. Young as I was, I
knew the czarist regime was dead and that Russia needed serious reform -- but
why must neighbors kill each other, destroy their farms and livestock, and
raze their homes?
5. Farewell Mother Russia
IT is NOT MY INTENTION to record the history of the Russian Civil War;
that has already been done many times. I have recorded these reminiscences
of my youth so that my later adventures will be understandable. For two
years I fought in numerous battles, was wounded, had four horses shot from
under me, and was lucky enough to survive.
Without pretending to be a historian, I would like to suggest why the
Army of Volunteers, as we were called, fell short of total victory over the
Bolsheviks, even though our victories brought us very close to Moscow. We
were so few. We had subdued an immense territory, populated by tens of
millions, but our rear was always exposed and could furnish us with no
reserves. The orders for general mobilization were ignored. Those who were
drafted hid in the forests.
Because we had no real supply system to speak of, we had to live off
the population and we made enemies of the people everywhere. If my horse was
killed, I had to replace it by requisitioning one from someone who had until
then sympathized with us.
The situation with clothing was even worse. For two years I was issued
absolutely nothing, and to avoid being eaten alive by lice, I had to
requisition whatever I needed from the populace.
The government of the volunteer army issued its own money, called
kolokoltchiki, but it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. The
population of the conquered areas accepted it only when they had no choice.
It is clear why our presence was not always welcome, especially since our
victims were usually from among the less well off. The privileged had
connections and they could make things hard for us if we bothered them.
People who owed their lives to us would complain to the high command about
the smallest requisitions.
Lenin, among others, recognized the real reason why we and all the
White armies -- those of Kolchak, Deni-kine, loudenitch, and later Wrangel --
were defeated. So long as our armies were made up of volunteers who were
enemies of Bolshevism, everything was all right. But when we had to
conscript the peasants and our Red prisoners, our situation became
vulnerable.
After coming so close to victory, the volunteer army gave way before
the avalanche of the Red forces and their partisans behind our lines. We had
few munitions and weapons, and the Allied powers gave us practically
nothing. After the French sailors at Odessa mutinied, the Allies were only
confirmed in their desire to get out of Russia, where their soldiers might
be contaminated by the new ideology.
We could see that the end of Denikine's army was near. I wanted to say
what I thought might be a last good-bye to my mother. When I arrived home, I
was upset to learn that my brother had enlisted in the guard regiment
commanded by my uncle. I had hoped he would stay home to care for my mother.
The previous year he had enlisted in another regiment, but I had asked the
commander to send him home, since he was a minor and had enlisted without
our mother's consent. He had returned, but, as with me, his whole background
pressed him into the fight.
Our house was full of refugees, mostly Don Cossacks who had abandoned
all their possessions so as not to fall into the hands of the Reds. On my
last night home, I invited a few friends and a good accordionist and we
spent the evening dancing. About l A.M. some Cossacks from our stanitza
knocked on the door. "Lieutenant," one of them said, "the Reds are only
twelve miles away. They'll be here by morning. You must leave right away.
They'll kill you if they find you here."
One of them saddled my horse. Six cavalrymen from my regiment had come
for me. They had been with me for more than a year, since my last visit
home. As I led the horse to the courtyard gate, my mother walked with me.
She looked at me for a long time and then blessed me. I kissed her and
leaped on my horse so as not to prolong the scene, and galloped off with my
Cossacks. Nobody said a word. We had all been through the same drama.
We rode all night in the direction of Ekaterinodar. The next day, all
the roads leading to the city were clogged with refugees and soldiers. The
city was unrecognizable. It had been very clean, even pretty. Now it was
filthy, crowded with men and horses, and there were drunks everywhere. Our
soldiers had pillaged the State-owned vodka factory and everyone, it seemed,
had a bottle. I had no idea where to find our regiment, so I decided to
press on toward the Black Sea, because I knew that in case of retreat our
division would go to Touapse. I said good-bye to my friends. No one knew
what the future would be.
We practically had to fight our way across the railroad bridge, which
was the only way out of Ekaterinodar in the direction of the mountains.
Toward evening we arrived at a large tobacco plant that belonged to a Greek.
Some girls who worked in the tobacco curing houses lived in one of the
buildings. We asked if we could spend the night with them. I fell madly in
love with one of them, a marvelously beautiful young woman. Our idyll lasted
only the night and we parted the next morning with breaking hearts.
When I got to Touapse, I learned that my regiment had already passed
through, moving toward the Georgia border. Georgia had declared its
independence from Russia. I caught up with it at Adier, a tiny and charming
village beyond Sotchi.
General Rasstegaev, who commanded my regiment, told me that it was now
part of a cavalry brigade of which he was to take command. He made me his
adjutant because I was good at writing reports and orders. But the
appointment was meaningless; a few days later the brigade had ceased to
exist.
The mountain forests surrounding us were filled with Red partisans, the
"Greens," who attacked continuously, while the Qth Red Army pressed us from
the coast. Our Cossacks were increasingly demoralized.
Now, we were ordered to Georgia, where we would certainly be disarmed
and interned according to international law. The brigade was assembled and
the order given to move toward the border, a few miles away. The general
turned his head only to discover that half the brigade had not budged. He
galloped back, with me following.
"What are you doing here? Didn't you hear my orders?" he shouted at
them. The general began to curse them, castigating them for their
disobedience. It was a dangerous game to provoke three hundred Cossacks who
were afraid of nothing or nobody.
The only officer with them was a young lieutenant, a good friend of
mine. At last he came forward and saluted his commander. "General, we have
decided not to go to Georgia. We prefer to wait here and surrender to the
Red Army."
The general's face turned crimson. Without a word, he wheeled on his
horse, rode over to those who had followed him, and ordered them to return
to their lodgings. I knew that he was deeply humiliated. Not only had the
Cossacks refused to obey him, but the lieutenant and at least fifty of them
were from his own stanitza.
An hour later, a cargo ship dropped anchor a good way from shore; Adier
had no harbor. The sea was very rough, and a small boat lowered from the
ship had a terrible time getting to shore.
I went out to meet the landing party and asked what they had come for.
The ship's second officer replied that they had been sent to pick up as many
men as possible and take them to the Crimea. "But," he added, "we cannot
take any horses. We have no way of loading them, and besides, we are
anchored practically in the open sea."
The general asked his Cossacks whether they would agree to embark for
the Crimea without their horses. Their answer was immediate and unanimous;
they would rather go to Georgia. At that point, the general made a mistake
that cost him his command and his commission.
Overwhelmed by betrayal, he wanted only to get away as soon as
possible.
"Pity, I shall leave alone, and you will accompany me," he said to me,
"but I absolutely demand that they take our horses." He explained to the
second officer that they were thoroughbreds that could not be left to the
Bolsheviks. The officer agreed but only at our own risk. It took five hours
to get the horses on board, and they were so frightened and exhausted that
they took a week to recover.
When we arrived at Theodosia, an ancient city founded by the Greeks, we
presented ourselves to General Babiev, commander of the Cossack division.
Shortly afterward, Rasstegaev was dismissed for having abandoned his
Cossacks. (I saw him years later in Paris, singing for tips in a cabaret. I
was too embarrassed to speak to him.) I was sent to the famous Wolf
regiment, which had been established during the Civil War by General
Schkouro. I was not held in blame, since it was assumed that I had had to
follow the general's orders. A few days later, most of the Cossacks still at
Adier were evacuated to Theodosia without their horses. Those who did not
follow the general were conscripted into the Red Army.
Without their horses, the Cossacks had lost their souls. Fortunately,
new mounts were found for them two months later. General Denikine was forced
to resign his command. The head of the new "Russian Army" was General Piotr
Nikolaevitch, Baron Wrangel. A very cultivated man, he had been a mining
engineer before becoming a soldier, and had studied at the famous Nicolas
Cavalry School at St. Petersburg and later at the War College, where he had
finished first in his class. During World War I he had won the Cross of St.
George for having captured a German battery at the head of his squadron.
During the Civil War he commanded the Cossack divisions and was very
popular. He was the most liberal of all our generals and the most hated by
the Bolsheviks, who called him the "Black Baron." They judged correctly that
his very liberalism made him the most dangerous of their enemies. Alone
among the White generals, he had a program for the future of Russia, if his
troops should be victorious. He abolished reprisals against Red prisoners
and forbade requisitions from the civilian population. But he had come to
command too late, and he knew it.
Immediately after he took command, he began to work out plans to
evacuate the troops abroad in case of defeat. He made arrangements with the
French government, the only foreign power that recognized his authority.
Although he took the precaution of planning for a possible evacuation,
Wrangel was not a man to give up without a fight. His plan was to break out
of the peninsula and try to incite an insurrection while the Reds were
having trouble on the Polish front. But his calculations left out one
essential consideration: the Russian people could not forgive Wrangel for
his foreign family alliances.
During this new brief war, I had another proof of my extraordinary
luck. Early in May of 1920, a week before our army broke out of the Crimea,
I had been in the trenches with my regiment, facing the Red lines. One
morning, the commander had ordered me to take a few Cossacks that night and
try to capture prisoners.
Between our lines and the Reds there was a wide no-man's-land where
there were nightly skirmishes between reconnaisance parties. I chose a few
Cossacks whom I knew to be adept at this kind of operation and we worked out
a plan. To kill time during the afternoon, as we waited, I played a few
hands of cards and won quite a lot of money. By evening, however, I was ill
with chills and a high fever. When it was time to set out, I was running a
temperature of 104. I could not possibly go on such a mission. Another
officer went in my place. In the morning we learned that the reconnaisance
party had fallen into an ambush and no one had returned.
My illness was diagnosed as typhus. It left me completely exhausted;
nonetheless, it had saved my life. I was
sent away for a month's convalescence, and then repined my regiment.
When General Wrangel realized that his offensive against the superior
Red forces was doomed, he took a long shot. That was when he decided to
invade part of the Kuban Cossack territory, hoping to stir the population
against the Bolsheviks, of whom they had, by this time, some experience. His
hopes were illusory. This was the last offensive of the White Army -- and it
was the battle that claimed the life of my younger brother.
Only the Cossack regiments were to invade Kuban from the coast of the
Azov Sea, but our preparations were apparently known to the Reds well in
advance. The landing was to take place near the stanitza of
Primorsko-Akchtars-kaya on the eastern shore of the Azov Sea. The landing
was easy, following a short bombardment of the shore. This was the last time
I saw my brother. His regiment, formerly the personal guard of the Czar, was
the first to set out on a landing barge. My regiment was to follow close
behind. My last sight of him was as he stood in the prow of the landing
barge, smiling and waving to me.
As we should have expected, the landing was a fiasco. The Cossack
population did not budge. Those whom the Bolsheviks considered bad risks had
been removed before we landed. In any case, the Cossacks had not forgotten
their grievances against the White Army. There is a Russian proverb that
says, "Never spit in a well; you may need to drink from it someday."
For the first time, we were facing a new Red Army, better outfitted and
equipped than we were. It was clear from the start that they were
unbeatable. On the evening of August 22, the day my brother was killed, the
First Cossack division, commanded by General Babiev, arrived at the stanitza
of OIguinskaya, with a great number of Red prisoners. Almost immediately, he
had to order us out, without a chance to rest either ourselves or our
exhausted horses. He had been informed that the Red cavalry was attempting
to cut us off from our base. With us were two companies from the Konstantin
Military School of Kiev and two cannons. He left only two sections of mv
regiment, my own included, in the stanitza, along with the cadets and the
two cannons.
We were glad of a chance to catch some sleep. But we had also been left
in charge of a few hundred prisoners, and we didn't know what to do with
them. They were mostly boys of eighteen to twenty who did not understand the
war at all. We couldn't let them go nor could we kill them. Soon, our
dilemma was solved for us. A patrol, coming in from the opposite direction
General Babiev had gone in, notified us that a large force of Red cavalry
was advancing toward the stanitza. Since cavalry cannot fight in a town, the
director of the military school, the highest-, ranking officer among us,
ordered us to withdraw immediately to the north, in the direction of our
landing base. We had to abandon the prisoners.
Our cavalry detachment left the stanitza last. A little over a mile
from the village, we spotted a full Red cavalry regiment facing the village
from the east. When they saw us, they advanced in attack formation.
We were only about a hundred and fifty and would be overrun easily
without even the chance to resist with honor. All we could do was retreat,
and even then our chances of getting away were almost nil. We knew what
would happen to us: the officers would be slaughtered and the Cossacks taken
prisoner.
When the Reds were about five hundred yards from us, ;: they
broke into a full gallop. We drove our horses to the ; utmost of their
endurance but the Reds' horses were in much better condition, and they
gained on us. They were now only a hundred yards away. Behind me, I saw that
the front rider had seen my epaulets and had picked me out. His saber was
extended.
My horse was slowing down. I put my sword away and ^ took out my
pistol. I would take a few Reds, and use the last bullet on myself. My
orderly's horse fell just in front of me. There was nothing I could do for
him. The Red horseman was still behind me. Though he wore no insignia, he
was clearly the leader of the regiment. I fired twice and missed. But the
third time, I saw him fall less than fifty yards behind me.
We were all resigned to die -- and then we were miraculously rescued.
The two companies of cadets, who had been hidden by a tall growth of
sunflowers, were suddenly visible, and getting ready to fire on the Red
cavalry. One company formed the first line, kneeling on one knee, and behind
it stood the second. On their flanks were two heavy Maxim machine guns. They
waited for us to get close. As soon as we had spotted them, our two
detachments split in two, going off to the right and the left.
The Reds were practically on top of us, charging with such screams and
curses that even seasoned soldiers would have been terrified, but the
students did not move a muscle. Then came a curt order, and all hell broke
loose. The Red horsemen, cut down by the rifle and machine-gun fire, turned
back. Our two cannons had been brought up in the rear and they opened fire
on them as they fled.
The field was filled with dead and wounded men and horses. It was an
incredible experience in every way: the courage and coolness of the
students; the savagery of the Red attack, its courage and fanaticism. We
learned later that there had been three regiments against our two companies.
But such defeats were of no use now. It had been over for us ever since the
failure of our ill-advised landing.
We were ordered to the coast, where boats were waiting to take us back
to the Crimea. I asked about my brother's regiment and was told it was due
in an hour. I went under a tree to wait. The heat was unbearable. I was
terribly anxious and went out to the road to watch, hiding myself behind
shrubs. At last, in the distance was the glorious standard of His Imperial
Majesty that had been awarded to the regiment for its valor in the battle of
Leipzig in 1813. My grandfather, father, uncles, cousins, my brother and I
myself had all served under it.
The regiment had almost passed by and there was still no sign of my
brother. Then I saw Berejnoi, his friend, a boy of the same age who had
volunteered at the same time. I called to him and he came toward me. His
manner was enough to tell me what I feared to hear. "Where is Ivan?" For a
long moment he did not answer. "He was killed the day before yesterday." I
had been waiting for these words, but they struck me like a blow in the
face. Berejnoi told me how Ivan had died, and that he had been buried with
another officer and two Cossacks in the stanitza of Grivenskaya with full
military honors. Some of his belongings had been kept for me.
My brother's death affected me so that I could not bear the idea of
going back to war. When I got back to the Crimea, I told my commander that I
had to have some time off. He consented, and I returned to Theodosia with a
small detachment of veterans of the Civil War. I was then twenty-two years
old.
The news from the front was very pessimistic. Under pressure from the
Reds, the army had been forced to retreat to the Crimea, which was protected
by fortifications, some built by the Tartars and some by us. Our army
thought they had foreseen everything, but the fierce cold was a surprise --
and a costly one. The only unfortified part of the Crimea was along the
stormy Sivach Bay, which was on the army's right flank and was to have
formed an invulnerable barrier against the Reds. But the supposedly
unpassable Sivach froze overnight so thick that the Red cavalry crossed it
easily and attacked from the rear. That was the end of the White Army.
6. Into Exile
SO, NOW I WAS ON BOARD the steamboat Vladimir as it got under way to
leave Theodosia. The Black Sea is often stormy in the winter, but that
November day it was extraordinarily calm. It seemed to me that even the sea
understood the tragedy of men about to leave their homeland forever.
The good weather lasted all the way to Constantinople, which was lucky
because many of the boats were old and all were overloaded. Even a slight
storm could have caused a catastrophe. That night there was a cold wind and
I pushed my way below deck, but the air was so stale I couldn't stand it for
more than five minutes. I found a small space on deck amid all the heads and
legs, wrapped myself in my burka, and for the first time in my life, fell
asleep outside my homeland.
In the morning the cold was intense. The waves were higher, and the
boat began to pitch. On the horizon we could see a large two-stack ship and
near it a smaller ship.
Small boats were passing between them. The smaller ship, the Caucasus,
terribly overloaded with men, was slowly sinking. Fortunately, it stayed
afloat until all on board had been evacuated.
The sun rose higher and warmed us somewhat. I was terribly hungry.
Before we had left shore I had been able to find a large can of English
corned beef, but no one had been willing to sell us any bread, since they
knew that our money would be worthless after we departed. I opened the can
with my Cossack dagger and began to eat with my fingers. When I saw the
haggard faces of the others, and how they gazed at my every mouthful, I
offered to share the meat with the men around me. One of them had a few
pieces of bread and we ate that with the canned meat. It was very spicy and
made us frightfully thirsty. One man volunteered to go for water. It took
him an hour to fight his way through the crowd and return with a bucket of
foul-smelling water that we drank with pleasure.
To pass the time, I decided to search the ship for friends. I received
nothing but hostile looks since I had to trample on people's feet in order
to move. The men were used to the worst after two years of civil war, but it
was particularly difficult for the few women on board.
At last I found some officers from my former regiment near the prow.
Because we were facing into the wind it was colder there than on the decks,
but also less crowded. We made a sort of tent around ourselves to block the
wind and stayed there together. The next day we saw some low mountains split
by a deep crevasse, the entrance to the Bosporous straits. On both sides
stood the ruins of forts that no longer threatened anybody. Turkey had lost
the war and Constantinople was occupied by French, English and Italian
troops.
In front of us and behind us, ships of our armada waited for permission
to enter the straits. Mixed in with great ships like the Don, the Rion, and
the Kherson there were smaller boats of every description, about a hundred
altogether. Anything that could float had been used in the evacuation.
As our ship entered the Bosporus, I forgot my troubles and the hunger
and cold. There was Asia on one side, and Europe on the other. At the Golden
Horn, I could scarcely contain myself. On the left was Scutari, in front of
Istanbul with its dome of Sancta Sophia and the minarets of hundreds of
mosques. Our whole armada was assembled in the strait, accompanied by
warships of the occupying powers. Not far off was the magnificent cruiser,
the General Kornilov, and the elegant yacht, the Loucoul, which carried
General Wrangel, his family and staff. The General Kornilov, pride of the
Russian navy, which had been launched in 1915, was to be taken by the French
to Bi-zerte, where it rotted away because the French refused to return it to
the Soviet Union. The Loucoul later sank in the Bosporus.
The noonday sun made us forget the freezing cold of Russia. As soon as
we cast anchor we were surrounded by small boats filled with Greek and
Turkish merchants selling all kinds of supplies. Almost nobody had any
foreign money, of course. For a loaf of bread or a kilo of figs, the vendors
would take a wedding ring. One could buy some bread and some halvah for a
pistol. The goods and payments were raised and lowered in nets over the side
of the ship. To persuade us to deal with them rather than the Turks, the
Greeks would make the sign of the cross in the Orthodox fashion. Most of us
on the boats had eaten nothing for three days and many gave away anything
they had for some bread. I had two automatic pistols, a gold watch, a gold
cigarette case, my dagger with its silver handle, and a gold cross and chain
that my mother had given me. It was all I owned in the world, and in spite
of my hunger, I could not part with my possessions.
Shortly afterward, I was glad I had made that decision. A motor launch
was headed for us loaded with bread. Because there was not enough to go
around, the crew began throwing the bread up onto the deck; but the railings
were high and a good deal fell into the water. It made me feel sick to see
this food being lost, so I gazed instead at the city's panorama. Suddenly,
out of nowhere, a magnificent loaf of bread, which must have weighed almost
a pound, landed in my arms. I finished it off in short order and began to
feel more optimistic. It is amazing what a loaf of bread can do for a hungry
man.
Alongside the small boats of the merchants, there were other small
craft pulling up. These held families of officers who had been evacuated a
month or two earlier, searching for husbands, fathers and brothers. It was
an almost impossible task, and even if they did find them, it was still
useless. We were forbidden by the Allies to disembark.
In the evening the sailors told us that our ship was lifting anchor and
that we would be put off on some Greek island. Eventually we learned that
the island was Lemnos in the Aegean Sea, populated by a few very poor
people. It did not seem a very cheerful prospect. As we got into the open
sea, the boat began to pitch wildly and many were seasick.
As we passed through the Dardanelles the next day, we saw the wreck of
the French heavy cruiser, the Bove, which had been sunk by a mine during the
world war. Toward evening we made out the outline of our "promised land," as
one compatriot called it. The land looked gray and sterile. It made me
melancholy.
They put us off in groups on a peninsula that was connected to the
island by a narrow isthmus. The peninsula had been an Allied naval base
during the world war. There was a large building that desalinated seawater,
and next to it some wooden barracks. Farther on stood an immense wooden
warehouse, its walls painted with pitch, and beyond that some houses that
must have been occupied by the headquarters staff during the war. Far off on
the right we could see the Greek city of Moudros, and on the other side of
the isthmus was the village of Portianos.
We were each given bread and a can of pate, and were issued tents large
enough to hold ten men. Soon a city of tents arose and the place looked less
forbidding. It was terribly cold and we shivered inside the tents, though
they were secure and quite waterproof.
Exhausted, we soon fell asleep, but around midnight we were awakened by
an uproar -- shouting and the sound of wood being ripped apart. The Cossacks,
frozen inside their tents, were dismantling the warehouse, the only wood on
the island. We took our share. By morning, the warehouse had disappeared. We
forgot one detail, however. The planks were coated with pitch and let off a
suffocating black smoke when burned.
As the days went by, the camp took on the appearance of a real city,
but it was only appearance. There was nothing inside -- no source of heat, no
beds or covers, no water to wash ourselves or our clothes. Crowded together,
we were soon infested by an enormous army of lice, which we could not fight
off. It was a horrible existence.
Our legal situation was also precarious. When General Wrangel realized
that his army could no longer resist the Red Army, he had appealed to
foreign governments to aid the refugees when they left the Crimea. Poland
had just concluded an agreement with the Reds, and that had freed the Red
Army to fight Wrangel. But, during a dangerous time for Poland, when
Boudienny's Red cavalry was advancing on Warsaw, Wrangel had helped the
Poles by breaking out of the Crimea and marching toward the Ukraine. To show
its gratitude on behalf of its Polish ally, the French government had given
de jure recognition to the Crimean government. Therefore, it was normal
enough for Wrangel to appeal to France to save the lives of his followers.
The French agreed to assist the refugees until they could migrate to new
homelands.
The French commissary supplied us with daily food: a loaf of bread for
every five persons (shipped all the way from Constantinople, it was almost
inedible by the time it arrived), a can of corned beef for every four
people, a spoonful of margarine each, and a little sugar and tea. We put
everything except the sugar and tea into a large pot and this "soup" was our
daily nourishment. It left us chronically hungry.
But the French did not neglect their own interests. They confiscated
all the Russian ships as well as all their supplies. This caused terrible
privation. They ordered the Cossacks shipped to Lemnos and the regular
detachments to near Gallipoli. The situation of the regulars was even worse
than ours; the land there was an absolute desert. To keep us from escaping,
the French treated us not as allies but as prisoners of war.
There were some English soldiers and one officer on Lemnos, charged
with dismantling their base, but their barracks were some distance away and
we saw little of them. Our sources told us that one could get all sorts of
supplies in the Greek village, from which we were cut off. I wracked my
brain to find a way of getting there. There came a day when I was so hungry
that I decided to give it a try, come what might. I would have to cross
through the English zone and then pass the posts of the Cherkess, who were
guarding us for the French. Since I didn't have a penny to my name, I took
along an Austrian pistol that I had captured. In Western Europe, if someone
offered a gun to a grocer, he would call the police. But, in the East, a
pistol is the easiest thing in the world to sell.
I knew that the only safe way out was right through the English
encampment and I thought if I could get through there, I wouldn't have to
worry about the Cherkess guards. I passed the barracks without seeing a
soul, and I was sure that I was safely on the open road when I heard
footsteps gaining on me. I decided to head for an outdoor privy I saw
nearby, but as soon as I was inside realized that I had made a mistake.
Through a crack in the door I could see an English officer heading straight
for the privy, and for me.
He approached and I heard him swear when he saw that it was occupied.
First come, first served, I said to myself. I waited for him to go away.
Unfortunately, that was not his attitude. He kept pounding on the door and
swearing. After a few minutes, I realized I had no choice and opened the
door. When he saw me, he got so angry I thought he was going to hit me. The
only thing I could think to do was draw my pistol and say "Russian officer."
He got the message and backed off. I also backed away until I had passed the
barracks and the way was open. Later, I learned that the privy was "for
officers only," and that, although he was the only officer in the
detachment, British military discipline allowed no exceptions.
In the village I was astonished to see the main street lined with
shops. I went into what looked like the best of the lot and was overwhelmed
by the variety of the merchandise. I wondered who in this poor village could
afford all these preserves, canned meats, honey, and chocolate. Soon I
realized that all these goods were a burden to the proprietor. Only a short
time before, there had been a sizable English garrison nearby with plenty of
money to spend. When they departed, the merchants were left high and dry.
So, my entrance was greeted with warm smiles and handshakes.
Before offering my pistol for sale, I asked the prices of some of the
goods. After I had figured out how much I wanted would cost, I decided on
three hundred drachmas for my Austrian pistol. The merchant, as I had
foreseen, was anxious to bargain and made a counteroffer of two hundred.
After some haggling, we agreed on two hundred and f