There was the firing of machine-guns and artillery. It might be salvation. The starving wounded stirred amongst the corpses. I still had my pistols, but no powder. We heard artillery limbers go through the town. Horses. We heard shouts. The church began to shake. I heard the blessed noise of engines. An argument outside the door. A shot. I cried for joy as a White officer stood in the doorway. He held a smoking revolver at his side. He pressed a handkerchief to his face. He wore the pale grey infantry jerkin, with red and gold epaulettes. He wore a cap with the old Tsarist badge. He wore blue breeches tucked into black boots. There were medal ribbons on his jacket. There was a sword at his side. He had a well-trimmed beard and though his face was filthy and his uniform patched with powder-smoke he represented something I had never expected to see again. He called out to the soldiers in their helmets and khaki. They ran into the church with their rifles. They began to cough. Some of the wounded had been dead for several days. I crawled forward and raised myself to my feet. I was smiling. But I had been deceived once more.
The White officer said: ‘Get those who can walk out. Shoot the rest where they are. It will be a mercy.’ An NCO ordered the men to advance. I was pushed into the sunshine. It was a small unit of infantry. There were some horsemen with the long whips and wide red stripes of regular Don Cossack cavalry. Both riders and horses looked weary. There were two khaki tanks: massive things, with gun-turrets and side-firing Lewises. There were three good-sized artillery-pieces and about ten machine-guns. There was a large, open car. I tried to speak to the officer, but he was striding over to the tanks which were opening their hatches. Behind the tanks, as if worshipping new gods, peasants were on their knees in a line, holding their caps before them. I was pushed. I protested. ‘I am a loyal subject of the Tsar.’
‘Tell him yourself,’ said one of the soldiers, shoving his helmet onto the back of his head. ‘You’re going where he went.’
I was too weak. I waved again at the officer. They were going to rob me. It was of great urgency to me that they did not take my remaining property. My life seemed unimportant. ‘Captain! Captain!’
Four of the wounded men were thrown against the wall and began to slide down it even before the bullets drew their blood. It was a waste of everything. The men would have died in a few hours.
A tall, slender officer, wearing khaki shirt and shorts, with a large nose and long jaw, his cap reversed, goggles on his forehead, moved rapidly in our direction. He was shouting in English. The soldiers were taking me to the wall with three more partisans. ‘Stop! You bloody-handed bastards. Can’t you see he’s a gentleman!’ They hesitated, looking towards the White captain, who had turned. The sun was making me squint. The captain shrugged and said in Russian, ‘We’ll find out who he is.’ He spoke French to a short, broad-faced lieutenant who translated this into bad English. ‘They say to question.’
The tank-commander was Australian, as were both his crews. He wore an expression of permanent disgust on his long face. He complained he wanted to get back to Odessa and from there take a ship straight to Melbourne. He rubbed at his nose all the time, as if it itched. I spoke to him in English as he leaned, sighing, against his tank. ‘I am most grateful to you, sir.’
I was startled by his reaction. I did not know him. He grinned at his men. They had clambered out of their machines and were lounging on the warm metal, drinking from their canteens.
‘Someone who speaks real bloody English.’
The shots continued from inside the church and from the corner of the street where the walking wounded were being executed. ‘Jesus!’ said the tank-commander. ‘What else can you say?’
‘I am familiar with your language,’ I told him. ‘Blimey O’Reilly, not half!’ This to show I could speak the common dialect, as well as what Mrs Cornelius insisted on calling book-talk. ‘I learned in Kiev. I am a Doctor of Science from the University there and a qualified engineer. I have the rank of major.’
‘In whose army?’
‘Loyalist, I assure you.’ I began to explain, but then I had fainted. I awakened in twilight. An Australian soldier was waving a mug of sweet soup under my nose. I was not interested in food. It made me feel strange.
‘You got to eat, mate.’ He was like a Russian babushka. For him, I sipped the soup. Some of it remained in my stomach. ‘They’re bastards, these peasants,’ he said. He was about the same age as me. ‘I hate them worse than the Reds, don’t you?’
‘They have suffered,’ I said.
‘They certainly have.’ He shook his head. ‘Our Russkies are doing horrible things to them now. They’re all bloody savages. It don’t matter what bloody uniform they’re wearin’.’ He sighed. He did not understand. He did not want to be on Russian soil. Like his commander, he longed for the bush of his native outback. ‘We’re going to give you a lift. We need an interpreter and we could do with an engineer. We’ve lost two of our chaps from typhus already. Know anything about tanks?’
‘A little.’
‘Carbs?’
‘I should think so.’
‘Spiffing. Now, then, you have some shut-eye. Some brekker in the morning and you’ll be fit enough to look at Bessie.’ Almost all tanks, I was to learn, were called Bessie by Australians. I have asked more than once why this should be. Nobody knows. He spoke with kind assurance, as one chanting a spell whose efficacy has been thoroughly proven.
I slept in a sack beside a tank. The Russians were piling what little booty they had been able to find on the ground, under the eye of the captain, Kulomsin. He was thought lenient by his men. They called themselves, of course, Volunteers. Few of them were actually that. The Australians were contemptuous of them; ashamed of their association. The French-speaking liaison officer was a Serb. I guessed he was some sort of failed adventurer who had taken up with the Whites in order to save his skin. I breakfasted on bread and more soup, which they thinned with water. They kept their own stores and refused to share them with the Volunteers. They gave me a cigarette. It was milder than I had been used to. It was real Virginia tobacco. I cleaned their carburetor for them and reconnected it. They tested the engine. It ran well enough, but it had been badly overtaxed; driven too hard and too soon. I would have no more trouble servicing it, however, than if it had been a tractor. We were leaving the village. The Whites burned it. For harbouring Reds, they said. I did not see it. I was excited by my first experience of the choking interior of a tank. Those machines were even more cramped than the modern kind, which are Rolls Royce limousines in comparison. We moved slowly ahead. The Australians hardly spoke at all amongst themselves. I asked where we were going. They were joining up with other units, they said, for ‘some real fighting’. By this, I gathered, they meant an attack on a city.
The tank was hot and stuffy. I did not care. In it I felt secure for the first time in over two years. Every so often we stopped. Maps were inspected. I translated between Captain Wallace, the Australian commander, in his tank, and the Russian officer, who had a staff-car. My heart was singing. We were on our way to Odessa! The Serb glowered at me. His function had gone. When I last saw him, through one of the observation slits at the side of the tank, he wore an expression of morbid despair. I was called upon to tune the other machine’s engine as best I could. I was worth, said the Australians, my weight in gold.