Part 6
He assured me dismally that there was a Japanese officer, and several Japanese soldiers, already living in the station, and that there was not room left for so much as a flea’s brother-in-law. I told him that my orders were to live in that section, and I intended to do so if I had to sleep on the counter where the samovar stood in the daytime.
Now orders to a Japanese soldier, are not merely orders as we understand them--they are sacred revelations emanating from the most holy place in Japan and the heavens above. He understood that I was going to live in that station, even if I had to pitch out a whole Japanese division. He almost wept over the prospect, but borrowing one of my cigarettes, which I had most carelessly exposed, he got off his heels, and departed sadly to that part of the station where the Japanese officer in charge cooked his rice.
Presently the “barber” was back, now with a Japanese captain, who approached me as if I were a divinity. I let him approach close before I “saw” him, and then leaped to my feet and came to a most dramatic salute. He beamed upon me, and after we had got done bowing and scraping, the barber announced proudly that the Japanese officer had come to pay his respect to the American officer. I acknowledged his kindness with a bow that near broke my car-stiffened back.
The barber, who refrained now from sitting on his heels, and betrayed a most suspicious desire to look military, said that he would be glad to interpret for us, and said that the Japanese captain was most sad over my fate--I must have the steel of Samurai in my backbone to face so calmly an existence which would undoubtedly wreck my constitution, if it did not result in my death. I replied that I was a soldier, and was tempted to say that so far as I could observe, the Japanese captain was bearing up most wonderfully under a similar mode of life. But one must be extremely careful in joking with Japanese.
But I knew that in order to save my face when I took the first train bound south, I had better not carry my simulation of a desire for permanent residence, too far. So I became disconsolate, as they went on to tell of the discomforts awaiting me.
The Japanese captain took me to the little shed adjoining the station, where he lived. He had improvised a shelf a few inches from the dirt floor, and with a fire in a bucket, called it home. He gave me saki, in a thimble-like glass, and some raw fish. And he smiled and smiled as I said I could never endure such quarters. No doubt he has made a report, in which he cites the fact that American officers will not willingly endure privations on campaign. Thus do the nations get false ideas about one another.
I expressed a desire to get out of Ushumun as quickly as possible. The Japanese captain beamed. He informed me that a Japanese troop-train was coming down the line, and would pass through there in a couple of hours. If I desired to travel away on it, he could probably arrange with the train commander for transportation. Which he did.
So when a train with a Japanese battery of artillery arrived, I saw my friend in serious consultation with the train commander, and I was invited to the fourth-class coach on the rear, filled with officers and soldiers, and given a section, the soldiers being put out in box-cars with the horses and other men.
I do not care to analyze the motives which led the Japanese captain to hurry me out of Ushumun. It was obvious that he desired me far away. And my expressed intention of staying there, only increased his worry. If I had told him I intended leaving by the next train, no doubt I would have spent that day and the next night in discomfort in Ushumun station. But it is not in me to look a gift-horse in the mouth.
The section in the car assigned to me and my soldier-interpreter provided wooden shelves for six persons, the upper ones so arranged that they could be folded up out of the way. I begged the train commander to put four of the six non-commissioned officers who had been ousted for my benefit, back in their quarters, but he replied through his interpreter, and with profound bows, that the entire section was mine. And the hospitality accorded me in that car will never be forgotten. On that trip I came nearer to being royal than I ever expect to be again.
Knowing something of the administration of a battery of light artillery, I was most interested in seeing how horses and men were cared for by the Japanese. They attended to their duties as if work were sacred rites. They messed their men, fed and watered their horses, not merely well, but as if the fate of the Japanese Empire depended upon the utmost efficiency of every cog in that particular machine.
The simplicity of their messing arrangements for the men, in comparison with our own army in trains, is remarkable. We have to provide kitchen-cars, fitted up with field ranges, meat, bread, potatoes, canned tomatoes, coffee, and provide buckets of hot water for washing mess-kits. It is like a primitive travelling hotel, and our men go to the car to have their meals dealt out by the cooks. And on the trans-Siberian line, the road-bed was so rough, and the cars so light and the wheels so flattened by bad usage, it was frequently impossible to boil water over our stoves while under way. This necessitated stops en route to prepare meals and serve them, and once a train has lost its right of way by stopping in a siding, it may mean hours before the line ahead is clear of regular traffic, so that the troop-train may go on.
The mess-kit of the Japanese soldier is a metal container, about the size and shape of a case for large field-glasses. The top clamps on so that it is water-tight. A handful of dry rice, a little water, a fire by the track, and the mess-kits are thrown into the blaze.
In a short time, the soldier’s meal is ready, and after he has eaten as much as he wants, the remainder is kept hot by closing the lid. I have seen Japanese prepare their meals during a ten-minute stop by such methods. And each soldier, on the march, can carry enough dry, light rice, to last him several days. His columns are not hampered by the slow progress of heavy ration-wagons, his food is not in danger of being cut off by enemy, his service of supply presents no problem. The swift movements of the Japanese armies during the Russo-Japanese war were due to the simplicity of their transport.
On this trip I came to a full realization of the hatred held for the Japanese by the Siberian populace. It is hatred remaining as a result of the Russo-Japanese war; it is a hatred engendered by fear of the Japanese, and their ambitions regarding the future of Siberia; it is a hatred deeply-embedded in the hearts of the Russians, and of such intensity that the two races cannot hope ever to mingle with any amity.
I found it embarrassing, too; to stop in a station, and be recognized as an “Americansky” and receive the smiles and open admiration of the people, while my hosts were covertly, and sometimes openly, sneered at, and disrespectful and insulting remarks about “monkey-faces” came out of groups of peasants, made it apparent to my hosts that I was much in favor with the people, and that the Japanese were regarded as if they were rattle-snakes. It must have hurt the sensitive pride of the Japanese, but I must give them credit for good discipline, and splendid self-control, in the face of such treatment.
Had I not been present, it is likely that the Russians would have been more cautious; as it was, my presence only subjected the Japanese to insults which they might not have had to endure in the presence of a witness. But they went on about their business, as if their superiority to the Siberians was something which was beyond question--and perhaps their attitude held something of a “biding my time,” for a suitable revenge.
Standing outside the car one afternoon, beside the Japanese troop-train commander, I saw a Japanese soldier coming toward the train with two large buckets, a Siberian peasant following him closely, and calling out in protest. The soldier, aware of the fact that he was under the eyes of his commander, made no reply, but came on. Presently, as the Siberian came close enough to recognize me as an American, he darted up behind the soldier, and pulled from one of the buckets, a head of cabbage. The train commander looked on, but made no comment, though it was obvious that the Japanese soldier was stealing the cabbage. Under similar circumstances, an American soldier would have been reprimanded on the spot.
The Siberian put the cabbage on the ground, and emboldened by the passive attitude of the Japanese, once more ran in pursuit, and extracted from the other bucket, another cabbage. Having emptied the buckets of the forager, he departed with his cabbages. I wondered if he would have been allowed to regain his property if I had not been with the Japanese.
In this connection, peasants always came to my interpreter with complaints against the Japanese. But our orders were to give no heed to such complaints--in fact, not to listen to them. There were tales of murder, robbery, outrage, of isolated districts in which Japanese soldiers drove the people from their homes, and took the dwellings as quarters, confiscating all money and property in possession of the people. I can only cite the fact that these stories were told; the truth of them is a matter I am not competent to discuss.
Early in the morning we were back in Botchkereva, and stopped there while the horses were fed and watered. I went to the station restaurant for tea. There I found a young lieutenant of the Twenty-seventh Infantry, who had left Khabarovsk two days later than I did, in an effort to find Major Miller’s force.
His name was D----, and he was shivering from the cold, for it was not time to begin the sale of tea and food, though the girls were sleepily washing the floors, and firing up the samovars. A throng of refugees were standing about, patiently waiting for the hour to arrive when they might get something hot.
My interpreter and I were thoroughly chilled, but no amount of money would induce the slatternly girls to give us even hot water from the samovars--it lacked a half an hour before they would begin to serve anything. I looked at the men, women and children huddled together in corners, some of them shivering so violently that their teeth chattered, and poor, under-nourished and illy-clad children crying from cold. Why the attendants must observe such regular hours, under such conditions, I could not understand, and never will. It may be that it was a demonstration of the “rosy conditions of Soviet Russia,” which an American referred to recently in a speech at Madison Square Garden, New York, at which the beauties of the Bolshevist régime were extolled. But I wish to call attention to the fact that those who did the extolling of the Bolshevist régime were not enjoying that régime in Russia--they were enduring the hardships of the “capitalistic United States.”
The solution of the mystery as to why shivering and hungry people in that station could not buy tea from bubbling samovars till the clock struck a certain hour, probably lies in the fact that the attendants were “free,” and members of a Soviet. When it comes to autocracy, the peasant of Russia can outdo all autocrats. And curiously enough, they are most cruel to their own kind. If a pair of Cossack officers had come into that station, and demanded tea forthwith, I believe they would have had it, regardless of the time. The fact that the samovars were steaming would have been reason enough for serving the tea.
More out of curiosity than necessity, I made every plea to get tea; my train would go on shortly; I would give fifty rubles for three glasses of tea; I was ill; I must have tea then, or go without it all day. None of these arguments got the tea.
So having a supply of dry tea of my own, my interpreter took the cups from our canteens, and putting them over the little fires of the Japanese soldiers alongside the track, brewed our own warming beverage for breakfast, and invited D---- to join us.
Once he had driven the chills from his body, he told me that he had sat up in the station all night, only pretending to nap, because he had a suitcase full of rubles to pay off the men of Major Miller’s force and was afraid it might be stolen. And in order to divert suspicion from the suitcase, he had thrown it carelessly in a nearby corner, as if it did not matter what became of it, though he kept a wary eye upon it.
He said it was likely that the train to take him back to Khabarovsk might not arrive till that night. I immediately asked the commander of the train if I might take D---- with me, and he gladly assented. So when the train moved out, D---- shared a lower shelf with me.
IX
A RED SWEATER AND THE GENERAL
It happened that I wanted to get off at a little station, called Bira. And I understood that the Japanese troop-train would stop there to feed and water, making a sufficient stop for me to visit the company of American soldiers quartered in box-cars on a siding. But we whisked through Bira at an early hour, and we were well down the line toward Khabarovsk, before I learned of the change of plans of the train commander.
But I planned to leave the train the next morning, and double back, visiting our detachments on the way. Besides, I wished to locate a certain English-speaking Russian, who wore a red sweater and made it his business to work or loaf wherever we had soldiers and to mingle with them to strike up acquaintances. This man had worked several years in the United States, and he was busy at his special propaganda among our troops.
It was not so much his work and spying which I wished to investigate, but I was interested in his methods, and I wished to determine if possible who was supplying him with money and who was directing his efforts. He was not merely a man who professed a dislike for the United States, but he evidently belonged to a coterie which was well instructed as to how to build up an enmity between the Russians and the Americans.
I had talked with this man twice, or rather he had sought me out and tested my knowledge on what the United States intended to do in Russia. I had discussed matters with him as if he were what he pretended to be--an uneducated working man. As a matter of fact he had been a lawyer in Michigan, making a poor living among Russian and other immigrants, and none too ethical in his ways of making money.
Such detachment commanders as I had talked with on the way up, when asked as to suspicious characters, all declared that they had noticed no persons who appeared to be worthy of attention--and all told me of Red Sweater. The usual story about him was about this:
“There is a man in a red sweater who worked here on the track a few days, with the section hands. He talks English. He hung around our men, generally showing up at mess-time, and asking for some American food. He has ‘joshed’ the men about being in this country, but they don’t pay any attention to him. He finally went away, and we haven’t seen him for a couple of weeks. But he doesn’t amount to anything--just kind of a poor simpleton, who thinks he knows it all because he can talk a little English.”
That sounded reasonable enough the first time I heard it. The next time I heard it, I began to take notice, and a day or so later, Red Sweater attached himself to my train in the capacity of a provodnik, a man who keeps up the fires, pretends to sweep the car, and gives out the candles.
Red Sweater worked first on my interpreter, and then felt his way along with me in English. At that time, I was confident that our expedition would take such action as was necessary for the good of Russia, and in time proceed to establish a new Russian front against Germany in association with all the available forces of our Allies. Of course, this was some time before the armistice, or early in October. But I professed to be entirely out of sympathy with any American action in Russia. That attitude was far more likely to bring to my attention such Russians, or enemy agents, as secretly opposed us, than an attitude of desiring aggressive action by my country. And in their eagerness to find an American who upheld their contention, Bolshevist agents and others, walked into the little trap and revealed their lines of propaganda. It is remarkable how the person who appears to be a malcontent, attracts the professional agitators--they seem overjoyed at the prospect of making a convert, or in having their reasoning and actions justified by others not in their circle.
And Red Sweater was dangerous, not because of the falsity of the things he said, but on account of the truths he uttered, and his subtlety in perverting truth to fit his ideas and theories. It was probably such chaps, working among our troops in Archangel, which caused the reported “mutiny” in our forces there--just “kind of a poor simpleton,” saying silly things, and not worthy of attention.
Red Sweater was clever in his ways. He made no statements on his own responsibility, but always quoted the “Russian people.” As I listened to his arguments, I was led to believe that he must have held a plebecite which included every inhabitant of Siberia and European Russia, and to him alone, had been revealed the desires and intentions of two hundred million inhabitants.
“The Russian people do not trust the United States,” he said glibly, after he was assured that I was “safe.” “You are a capitalistic nation, and they know it. You say you are friends of the Russian people but the Russian people ask: ‘Why are you fighting Russian people near Archangel if you are our friends?’
“You are not fighting the Russian people here. They ask why not? And their answer is: ‘The capitalists of the United States do not fight us here, because they wish to steal our trans-Siberian railroad.’
“The Russian people say they have freed themselves of capitalists. The United States say they are free people--but the capitalists of the United States have conscripted the ‘free’ working men of the United States, and compelled them to come here to Russia to fight the free Russian working men. That is what the Russian people say. You think you are serving your country by being here. The Russian people say you are serving your capitalists, to again enslave the Russian working men. The Russian people say they have a right to run their own country in their own way, but the capitalists of the United States send an army of conscripts over here to prevent the Russian people from keeping their freedom. If the working men of the United States were satisfied with their country, would they want a Russian army to go over there, and tell them how to run it? But the Russian people know that the people of the United States did not send this conscript army over here--the capitalists did that. And for that reason the Russian people do not want to fight you--they do not want you to fight them. Japan and England do not want a republic here--they want to put the Czar back. Both those countries have thrones, and their rulers do not want to see new republics. And the reason they want to see the Czar back here, is that they can make secret treaties with the Czar, but they could not make secret treaties if we had a government of the people. The Russian people say the American capitalists sent an army here to help Japan and England put the Czar back on his throne. If he is put back on the throne, and partly by your help, are you sure that the Czar, the Emperor of Japan, and the King of England, will not combine, and some day send their armies to force the people of the United States into having an Emperor? The Russian people say to you: ‘Comrades, we understand. You, too, must overthrow your capitalists, as we have done, and control your own country for the benefit of the working men.’ The Russian people say you are not free yet--no man is free, if he can be conscripted for the benefit of capitalists, and sent to the other side of the world to fight the working men of another country.”
And some officers thought Red Sweater did not “amount to anything.” This was because they had no way of knowing that his itinerary included every station where American troops might be found, and because he was clever enough to look like a poor tramp, and wise enough to act the fool when the occasion demanded that he conceal his purposes.
He deserted my train after he had traveled far enough to plant his insidious propaganda in my mind. The next time I saw him, he did his best to get me to ask the Japanese troop-train commander to let him ride with us. I did no such thing, whereupon he concealed himself between the cars, and I was now interested to see at what point he would leave us. This was one of the reasons I was willing enough to pass through Bira.
The night following our passage through Bira, I got to sleep about ten o’clock. At a quarter to eleven I woke with a start, for no apparent reason. D---- was sleeping soundly beside me, and my interpreter was snoring on an upper shelf. The train was toiling up hills slowly, and then dashing down the other side recklessly, or so it seemed to me. Many bridges had been blown out by the Bolshevists, and small rivers and gullies were crossed by the railroad over temporary trackage, laid on amazing grades, and poorly ballasted, for the purpose of making detours around the wrecked bridges.
I felt the train making painful progress up a slope. The engine puffed laboriously. We reached the crest of the hill, and suddenly began to go down at a rapidly increasing rate, and at the same time I missed the noise of the engine, some thirty or forty cars ahead. Our car was the last on the train.
There was a terrific crash, far ahead, and then every moveable thing on our car started for the front end. My interpreter was hurled off his shelf amid all the cooking utensils and food in the car, D---- was slammed up against the side of the section, and I skidded on my elbows out on the floor, barely avoiding taking an iron support which held the shelf above me, off with my head.
The car swung round sidewise and lurched downward, and amid the sound of rending timbers, appeared to be headed for a river below. I was sure we had gone through a blown-out bridge.
But the derailed car settled over gently on its side, and came to rest. We got out as quickly as possible, not sure that the wrecked train was safe from attack by Bolshevists. Under a cold, clear sky, we saw that the train had been shattered in the center, the wreck occurring on a sharp down grade between the banks of a cut. Several of the small and light box-cars, containing horses and Japanese soldiers, had been smashed, but the damage was not great, due to the fact that the shock had been absorbed by the cars bulging upward into an inverted V. The Japanese were busily engaged in getting out horses, and in checking up their men, to ascertain if any had been killed. There were a few minor injuries.
It was too cold to linger outside long in my pajamas, and I went back to the car, and finding our electric flashlights, sorted ourselves out and went back to sleep. In the morning we learned just what had happened.
The train had broken open in the middle at the crest of the hill. The engine, with the forward half, had run down into the valley over temporary trackage. Then the engineer discovered what had happened. The tail end of his train was just gaining headway over the crest, and coming down with increasing speed. So, in order to go back and get it, he reversed his engine and came back at top speed, meeting us in the cut when we had acquired good speed from the descending grade. It was a splendid example of how not to recapture the runaway half of a troop-train.