X OVER THE AMUR RIVER ON HORSEBACK

When I left Bira for Khabarovsk, I was without an interpreter, for my soldier had gone on to Khabarovsk from Popperoffka, ill. The train was so crowded that there was no room for me in any of the cars, and all I could do was load my heavy bedding-roll and grip on between the cars, and then stand outside with it.

The trip took all day, and till two the next morning. The weather was too cold for comfort, despite my heavy sheepskin coat. But a provodnik insisted that I share his compartment.

Except for a little Russian, our conversation was limited, but all through the day and night we entertained each other, exchanging English and Russian lessons. He claimed to be a Pole from Warsaw, spoke German, Polish and Russian, and his eagerness to learn English was pathetic. He asserted that his one ambition was to get to America, and said he had almost enough rubles to pay his passage, although it developed that he did not know the price of a ticket from Vladivostok to Japan, and thence to San Francisco. He probably had more than enough money to pay his passage, for the lowly provodnik absorbs much money and smuggles many commodities, from sugar to opium. And many provodniks are German or Bolshevist agents—they make an admirable system for “underground” lines of communication.

The fact that I had to watch my baggage kept me from getting meals from the stations along the line. But the provodnik filled his tea-kettle with hot water, we brewed tea, and he came in with a monstrous loaf of bread and big consignment of reddish salmon-roe. I never intended to eat the latter stuff, for I had no gas-mask, but when my hospitable provodnik plastered an inch of the stuff on a slice of bread and handed it to me, I ate the eekrah to get the bread. I enjoyed it quite as much as the baked sheep’s eyes once served me by an Arab in the desert.

We reached Khabarovsk at two in the morning, our passenger train coming into the yards in such fashion that some six freight trains were between us and the station, which is generally the case. As the freights were being shifted about continuously, it was impossible to attempt to go under them with my baggage, and when, after an hour’s wait, I got a porter, it appeared that we would spend the remainder of the night running round the tracks of the yard. For having gone a quarter of a mile to get round a line of freight cars on one track, another train on the next track would come rolling down between us and the station. It was nearly daylight when we got out of that moving labyrinth.

And the single drosky-driver at the station, knowing that he had a monopoly on my business, for all the others had departed with incoming passengers, demanded sixty rubles to take me to the American post.

Without argument, I piled my baggage in, clambered aboard, and then paid him his proper twenty rubles at the end of the journey. He did not demur—such methods proved to him that I was a personage not to be trifled with. Had I given him thirty, he would have chased me all night to get the other thirty, for to display weakness by over-payment puts one down as a person who can be brow-beaten and robbed. Generosity in Siberia stamps the stranger as a fool. And as a matter of fact, I paid him double rate, for the Imperial rubles I gave him were worth about twice the local paper money.

There was still a detachment beyond the Amur River, about twenty versts away, which I had not visited. Colonel Styer gladly provided me with a horse, and a mounted orderly to ride to this station, saving me the two days necessary to make the trip by trains. And the Chaplain of the Twenty-seventh, a hard-riding and hard-praying Southerner representative of our best type of army chaplains, said that he would go with me.

The trip was arranged while I was dining as the guest of Colonel Styer and Chaplain W——.

Once more I was in quarters with Lieutenant-Colonel Morrow, the regimental captain-adjutant, S——, and a second lieutenant, W——, who had been commissioned from the ranks after several years in the regular army. The building was large and roomy, having formerly been the residence of a Russian officer and his family while a regiment of Siberian Rifles had been stationed in Khabarovsk in the old days. We used their silver and furniture, their rich table covers, candelabra and samovars.

The walls of the house are four feet thick, with hollow spaces between connected with the flues of the many great stoves, in such way that the smoke and heat from the fires circulate between the walls before escaping from the chimneys. Fifty and sixty degrees below zero are said to be usual winter temperature there.

A stove in Siberia is not a stove at all, to use a Hibernism, but a sort of tile temple built into the wall, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The front of this structure merges with the surface of the wall, and the tiles being of various colors and designs, they add to the interior decorations. And it is startling to come in of a cool evening and touch a wall hot enough to suggest frying eggs upon it. My memories of that house are permeated by a kindly old Russian moujik, with long reddish beard, long hair, wrinkled and blinking eyes. Whenever one had occasion to pass him, he abased himself—he was a most pathetic demonstration of the Russian style of turning service into servitude. He seemed to spend all the day and night stuffing wood into the fireboxes.

An old soldier who had been with Colonel Morrow had charge of the servants; a soldier cook prepared the meals, and the house work was done by the blond moujik, a Russian woman and her daughter. It was a happy place—what the veteran regular calls “old army stuff,” meaning that everybody begins by assuming that the other fellow is a gentleman, knows his business, and attends to it without attempting to look, talk or stand in imitation of von Hindenburg. These latter traits afflict some persons new to the uniform of an officer, because many young men gained commissioned ranks without going through the “shavetail” period of their training. This term comes from the old style of shaving the tail of a mule new to the army, which serves as sort of a warning signal to such as may have dealings with him, that the mule has not acquired proper discipline and a regard for the feelings of others.

And no matter how high a cadet may stand in his class at West Point, when he comes to the army, he is a “shavetail officer,” for about a year, and admits that he has a lot to learn about army ways. This is one of the reasons why the old regular officers, and the officer fresh from civil life, have not always gotten on well together in the new army.

I do not always side with the regular. The regular army had a splendid opportunity to send back to civil life several thousands of temporary officers with friendly feelings for the regulars, and an appreciation of the professional training of the regular. Instead, in too many cases, the regular officers went out of their ways to point the fact that the new officer was only an amateur at the game of soldiering. The new officers, with a few exceptions, never pretended to be anything else. They wanted to learn, but they resented being humiliated while learning.

As it happened, the regular army of England was forced to enjoy a monopoly of the fighting in the early days of the war, with the result that the regular officers were almost entirely wiped out.

But one foolish amateur in an American expedition generally resulted in all his fellows being judged by his inefficiency and his foolishness. The regular army would not wish to be judged by its worst types. And I refer to these things here to point the fact that if our regular officers had shown the same spirit toward the strangers that Colonel Styer and the officers of the Twenty-seventh United States Infantry showed to the temporary officers of the Siberian Expedition, the regular army would hold the respectful deference of those men who have quit the officer’s uniform for civilian garb.

Before we could cross the Amur to visit the detachment near Khabarovsk, it was necessary for me to have a pass for the big railroad bridge over the river, issued by the headquarters of General Oi. S——, the adjutant, arranged it for me through the Japanese liaison officer.

We rode down through Khabarovsk, and out on a road which would take us to the bridge. A guide at headquarters said there was a passage over the bridge for horses and foot-passengers, but he did not go with us.

When we came to the bridge, we found that the “passage for horses” consisted of nothing more than loose planks laid lengthwise between the rails. And outside the rails, between the steel girders, were great openings big enough to let a horse go through, in case he shied from between the rails. And if we met a train, we would have to turn our horses and come back.

This bridge over the Amur is nearly a mile long, and consists of twenty-two spans supported by great stone piers built up from the river bed. It may be less than half a mile from the surface of the river, but it appeared to be that far above the water as I looked it over in contemplation of riding a horse across it. I had crossed it twice by train, but late at night, when I had not appreciated its grandeur, so to speak.

There is a story that the Bolshevists planned to blow it out, but that one Bolshevist leader had objected, and threatened to shoot his comrade with the explosives, if the bridge were destroyed, saying it belonged to Russia, and so much wealth could not be destroyed with his assent. That Bolshevist must have been something of a patriot, for he saved the bridge.

The Japanese guards examined my pass. I consulted with W——. The horses seemed steady enough, and I decided to attempt the crossing. So starting off at a slow trot, I led the way. My horse shuddered and snorted at first, but I did not allow him to stop and think it over.

By the time we had crossed the first span, the others were trailing behind. And everything went well, till I came to planks which were underlaid with sheets of corrugated iron. These made a tremendous racket under the impact of the blows of the horse’s feet on the loose planks, and he began to prance and refused to go on. I dismounted, and without looking back at him, led him across the bad stretch. He followed meekly, and once we were clear of the sheets, I mounted again, and went on at the slow trot. So we went over and back again without mishap, and found it not to be so foolhardy a crossing as it had appeared to be at first glance.

My orderly was now out of hospital, and I arranged to leave for Vladivostok. The train would leave at one o’clock in the afternoon. At ten, I sent the orderly-interpreter to the station, to get two tickets and book accommodations for us. At eleven we were at the station, in order to assure ourselves of a seat, for the train came in a couple of hours before it departed, and seats belong to those who get them, regardless of seat-tickets or anything else, under that system of “equality” which the Siberian has acquired.

All my effects were dumped from an army wagon, in a blinding snow storm. The Cossack commandant assured us that our seats would be preserved for us. The train came in, and unloaded its passengers, and immediately there was a wild scramble on the part of peasants and Chinese, fighting their way into the cars. The commandant was with my interpreter, finding our places, so I waited an hour, having an abiding faith at that time in the polite assurances of Cossack officers.

The interpreter came back looking disconsolate. He said the Cossack had given up in disgust—there was no room in the train for us. And the engine tooting for an early start, with my baggage rapidly becoming a snow drift!

I went to the station and found the Cossack officer. I displayed my tickets, and cited the fact that I had taken every precaution for transportation, and had taken him at his word that he would be glad to reserve seats for us. I demanded that he make good his promises.

He displayed a most laudable energy, and going aboard a car, opened the door of a compartment despite the protests of four Russian men inside. He waxed eloquent over the fact that an American officer and soldier must travel on that train. They displayed pistols, but finally gave way, and the six of us sat down in the compartment. My baggage was checked, and away we rolled.

It developed later that the reluctance of the four men inside to admit anybody was due to the fact that they were carrying large sums of railroad money to Vladivostok. And they explained to the interpreter that they had showed the pistols for the benefit of the crowds in the passageway of the car, and were willing enough that we should share the compartment with them, for if we had not, they might have had trouble with the exasperated travelers outside, who were compelled to stand up all that day and most of the night, to get to Vladivostok. As it turned out, we lived in that compartment as if in a besieged fortress. At every station, new passengers demanded admittance, and fought for some time to be admitted, claiming that there was room to sit on the two upper berths.

But the Russians drove them away with pistols, and by asserting that the compartment belonged to “the Americanskys.” And Russian women with children, scowled at me through the narrow aperture of the chained door which ventilated the compartment, losing no opportunity by looks or remarks, to express their opinions of people who came to Siberia and prevented honest people from riding in comfort in their own trains.

We got into Vladivostok about four o’clock the next morning, and hiring three Chinese carriers, I got my baggage to headquarters, and set up my cot in the Intelligence Office.

During my absence, there had been a merry rumpus.