XIII
Escape
Flight from the prison of “Soviet” Russia was as difficult a matter for me as for any Russian anxious to elude pursuit and escape unobserved. Several designs failed before I met with success. According to one of these I was to be put across the Finnish frontier secretly, but officially, by the Bolshevist authorities as a foreign propagandist, for which I was fitted by my knowledge of foreign languages. I was already in possession of several bushels of literature in half-a-dozen tongues which were to be delivered at a secret address in Finland when fighting unexpectedly broke out on the Finnish frontier, the regiment through which the arrangements were being made moved, and the plan was held up indefinitely. Before it could be renewed I had left Petrograd.
Another scheme was devised by a friend of mine, occupying a prominent position at the Admiralty, at the time when the British fleet was operating in the Gulf of Finland. On a certain day a tug was to be placed at the disposal of this officer for certain work near Kronstadt. The plan he invented was to tell the captain of the tug that he had been instructed to convey to the shores of Finland a British admiral who had secretly visited Petrograd to confer with the Bolsheviks. At midnight the tug would be alongside the quay. My friend was to fit me out in sailor’s uniform and I was to pose as the disguised British admiral. Then, instead of stopping at Kronstadt, we should steam past the fort and escape, under the soviet flag and using soviet signals, to Finland. If the captain smelt a rat a revolver would doubtless quiet his olfactory nerve. But two days before the event, the famous British naval raid on Kronstadt was made and several Russian ships were sunk. My friend was ordered there at once to assist in reorganization, and I—well, I failed to become an admiral.
The most exciting of these unsuccessful efforts ended with shipwreck in a fishing boat in the gulf. At a house where I was staying there had been a search, the object of which was to discover the source of Allied intelligence, and I escaped by throwing a fit (previously rehearsed in anticipation of an emergency) which so terrified the searchers that they left me alone. But I was forced subsequently to fly out of the city and hide for some nights in a cemetery. Having got wind of my difficulties, the British Government sought to effect my rescue by sending U-boat chasers nearly up to the mouth of the Neva to fetch me away. These boats were able to run the gauntlet of the Kronstadt forts at a speed of over fifty knots. A message informed me of four nights on which a chaser would come, and I was to arrange to meet it at a certain point in the sea at a stipulated hour. The difficulties were almost insurmountable, but on the fourth night I and a Russian midshipman succeeded in procuring a fishing boat and setting out secretly from a secluded spot on the northern shore. But the weather had been bad, a squall arose, our boat was unwieldy and rode the waves badly. My companion behaved heroically and it was due to his excellent seamanship that the boat remained afloat as long as it did. It was finally completely overwhelmed, sinking beneath us, and we had to swim ashore. The rest of the night we spent in the woods, where we were fired on by a patrol but eluded their vigilance by scrambling into a scrubby bog and lying still till daylight.
Then one day my commander informed me that he had orders to move our regiment to the front. After a moment’s consideration I asked if he would be able to send some of his soldiers down in small detachments, say, of two or three, to which he replied, “Possibly.” This intelligence set me thinking very hard. In a minute I leaned over to him and in a low tone said something which set him, too, thinking very hard. A smile gradually began to flicker round his lips and he very slowly closed one eye and reopened it.
“All right,” he said, “I will see to it that you are duly ‘killed.’ ”
Thus it came to pass that on a Sunday evening two or three days before the regiment left Petrograd I set out with two companions, detailed off to join an artillery brigade at a distant point of the Latvian front near Dvinsk. The Baltic State of Latvia was still at war with Soviet Russia. My companions belonged to another regiment but were temporarily transferred. They were both fellows of sterling worth who had stood by me in many a scrape, and both wished to desert and serve the Allies, but feared they might be shot as Communists by the Whites. So I had promised to take them with me when I went. One was a giant over six feet high, a law student, prize boxer, expert marksman, a Hercules and sportsman in every sense and a picked companion on an adventure such as ours. The other was a youth, cultured, gentle, but intrepid, who luckily knew the strip of country to which we were being sent.
The first night we travelled for eleven hours in the lobby of a passenger car. The train was already packed when we got in, people were sitting on the buffers and roofs, but having some muscle between us we took the steps by storm and held on tight.
I was the fortunate one on top. The lobby might have contained four comfortably, but there were already nine people in it, all with sacks and baggage. About half an hour after the train started I succeeded in forcing the door open sufficiently to squeeze half in. My companions smashed the window and, to the horror of those within, clambered through it and wedged themselves downwards. Treating the thing, in Russian style, as a huge joke, they soon overcame the profanity of the opposition. Eventually I got the other half of myself through the door, it shut with a slam, and we breathed again.
Next day we slept out on the grass at a junction station. The second night’s journey was to take us to the destination mentioned on our order papers, and in the course of it we had a curious experience. About three in the morning we noticed that the train had been shunted on to a siding, while muffled cries in the stillness of the night showed that something unusual was happening. One of my companions, who reconnoitred, brought the most unwelcome intelligence that the train was surrounded and was going to be searched. On the previous day, while resting at the junction station, we had encountered a shady individual clearly belonging to the local Committee for Combating Desertion, who questioned us repeatedly regarding our duties and destination. The recollection of this incident gave rise in our minds to a fear that we might be the objects of the search, and this suspicion became intensified to the force of a terrible conviction with all three of us when, after a second reconnoitre, we learned that our car was the particularly suspected one. We occupied with two other men a half-compartment at the end of a long second-class coach, but conversation with our fellow-travellers failed to give us any clue as to their business. The problem which faced us was, how to dispose of three small packets we were carrying, containing maps, documents, and personal papers of my own, all of the most incriminating nature. They were concealed in a bag of salt, through the sides of which the packets slightly protruded. The bag of salt would most certainly be opened to see what was in it. Our first idea was to throw it out of the window, but this could not be done unobserved because our two unknown travelling companions occupied the seats nearest the window. So in the pitch darkness we thrust them, loose, under the seat, where they would of course be discovered but we would say desperately that they were not ours. This was just done when the door opened and a man with a candle put his head in and asked: “Where are you all going?” It turned out that we were all leaving the train at Rezhitsa. “Rezhitsa?” said the man with the candle, “Good. Then at Rezhitsa we will put prisoners in here.”
Railway Travelling in Soviet Russia
I will not attempt to describe the hour of suspense that followed. Though my two friends resigned themselves calmly to what appeared to be an inevitable fate, I was quite unable to follow their example. I, personally, might not be shot—not at once at any rate—but should more likely be held as a valuable hostage, whom the Soviet Government would use to secure concessions from the British. But my two faithful companions would be shot like dogs against the first wall, and though each of us was cognizant of the risk from the outset, when the fatal moment came and I knew absolutely nothing could save them, the bitterness of the realization was past belief.
Compartment by compartment the train was searched. The subdued hubbub and commotion accompanying the turning out of passengers, the examination of their belongings, and the scrutiny of seats, racks, and cushions, gradually approached our end of the coach. From the other half of our compartment somebody was ejected and someone else put in in his stead. A light gleamed through the chink in the partition. We strained our ears to catch the snatches of conversation. Though our unknown travelling companions were invisible in the darkness, I felt that they too were listening intently. But nothing but muffled undertones came through the partition. The train moved forward, the shuffling in the corridors continuing. Then suddenly our door was rudely slid open. Our hearts stood still. We prepared to rise to receive the searchers. The same man with the candle stood in the doorway. But all he said on seeing us again was, “Ach—yes!” in a peevish voice, and pushed the door to. We waited in protracted suspense. Why did nobody come? The whole train had been searched except for our half-compartment. There was silence now in the corridor and only mutterings came through the partition. The pallid dawn began to spread. We saw each other in dim outline, five men in a row, sitting motionless in silent, racking expectation. It was light when we reached Rezhitsa. Impatiently we remained seated while our two unknown companions moved out with their things. We had to let them go first, before we could recover the three packages hidden under the seat. As in a dream, we pushed out with the last of the crowd, moved hastily along the platform, and dived into the hustling mass of soldiers and peasant men and women filling the waiting-room. Here only did we speak to each other. The same words came—mechanically and dryly, as if unreal: “They overlooked us!”
Then we laughed.
An hour later we were ensconced in a freight train which was to take us the last ten miles to the location of our artillery brigade. The train was almost empty and the three of us had a boxcar to ourselves. A couple of miles before we reached our destination we jumped off the moving train, and, dashing into the woods, ran hard till we were sure there was no pursuit. The younger of my companions knew the district and conducted us to a cottage where we gave ourselves out to be “Greens”—neither Reds nor Whites. The nickname of “green guards” was applied to widespread and irregular bands of deserters both from the Red and White armies, and the epithet arose from the fact that they bolted for the woods and hid in great numbers in the fields and forests. The first “Greens” were anti-Red, but a dose of White regime served to make them equally anti-White, so that at various times they might be found on either side or on none. It was easy for them to maintain a separate roving existence, for the peasantry, seeing in them the truest protagonists of peasant interests, fed, supported, and aided them in every way. Under leaders who maintained with them terms of camaraderie it was not difficult to make disciplined forces out of the unorganized Greens. Not far from the point where we were, a band of Greens had turned out a trainload of Reds at a wayside station and ordered “all Communists and Jews” to “own up.” They were shown up readily enough by the other Red soldiers and shot on the spot. The remainder were disarmed, taken into the station, given a good feed, and then told they might do as they liked—return to the Reds, join the Whites, or stay with the Greens—“whichever they preferred.”
Our humble host fed us and lent us a cart in which we drove toward evening to a point about two miles east of Lake Luban, which then lay in the line of the Latvian front. Here in the woods we climbed out of the cart and the peasant drove home. The ground round Lake Luban is very marshy, so there were but few outposts. On the map it is marked as impassable bog. When we got near the shore of the lake we lay low till after dark and then started to walk round it. It was a long way, for the lake is about sixteen miles long and eight or ten across. To walk in the woods was impossible, for they were full of trenches and barbed wire and it was pitch dark. So we waded through the bog, at every step sinking halfway up to the knees and sometimes nearly waist-deep. It was indeed a veritable slough of despond. After about three hours, when I could scarcely drag one leg after the other any farther through the mire, and drowning began to seem a happy issue out of present tribulation, we came upon a castaway fishing boat providentially stranded amongst the rushes. It was a rickety old thing, and it leaked dreadfully, but we found it would hold us if one man baled all the time. There were no oars, so we cut boughs to use in their stead, and, with nothing to guide us but the ever-kindly stars, pushed out over the dark and silent rush-grown waters and rowed ourselves across to Latvia.
The romantic beauty of September dawn smiled on a world made ugly only by wars and rumours of wars. When the sun rose our frail bark was far out in the middle of a fairy lake. The ripples, laughing as they lapped, whispered secrets of a universe where rancour, jealousies, and strife were never known. Only away to the north the guns began ominously booming. My companions were happy, and they laughed and sang merrily as they punted and baled. But my heart was in the land I had left, a land of sorrow, suffering, and despair; yet a land of contrasts, of hidden genius, and of untold possibilities; where barbarism and saintliness live side by side, and where the only treasured law, now trampled underfoot, is the unwritten one of human kindness. “Some day,” I meditated as I sat at the end of the boat and worked my branch, “this people will come into their own.” And I, too, laughed as I listened to the story of the rippling waters.