It was a variation of a story we all knew. The prison camps were filled with men who could tell of similar experiences. The location and the details might differ, but the horror and the leaden misery were common ingredients and stemmed from the same authorship.
After the First World War Kristina Polanska’s father had been rewarded for his war services by a grant of land in the Ukraine under the reorganization of Central European territory. He had fought against the Bolsheviks, and General Pilsudski was thus able to give a practical expression of Polish gratitude. The girl was an only child. They were a hardworking couple, these parents, and they intended that Kristina should have every advantage their industry could provide. In 1939 she was attending high school in Luck and the Polanskas were well pleased with the progress she was making.
Came September 1939. The Russians started moving in. Ahead of the Red Army ‘Liberators’ the news of their coming reached the Ukrainian farm workers. The well-organized Communist underground was ready. It needed only a few inflammatory speeches on the theme of the overthrow of foreign landowners and restoration of the land to the workers, and the Ukrainian peasants were transformed into killer mobs. The Polanskas knew their position was desperate. They knew the mob would come for them. They hid Kristina in a loft and waited. ‘Whatever happens, stay there until we come back for you,’ said her mother.
She heard the arrival of the mob, the shouts of men, the sounds of destruction as hammers and axes were swung in a wrecking orgy among the equipment in the surrounding farm buildings. She thought she recognized the voices of men from the nearest village. Outside in the yard Polanska called by name to some of the men he knew. The appeal came through clearly to the terrified child in the loft. ‘Take away what you want, but don’t destroy our home and land.’ Silence for a minute or two after this. A growling murmur followed, increasing as the men bunched together and advanced towards the house and Polanska. Kristina heard nothing from her mother, but she was sure she was there beside her father. Someone began to harangue the men. The phrases were violent and venomous. She heard her father’s voice once more, but it was drowned in a sudden uproar. Her mother screamed once and then Kristina pressed her hands over her ears and shivered and moaned to herself.
Kristina stayed in the loft for what seemed like hours but she thought perhaps it was not really very long. The men had gone. The house was very still. All the personal servants had fled the day before. Her mother and father never came for her. She thought the villagers might have taken them away. Kristina crept down through the silent house and into the yard. Polanska and his wife lay dead in the yard, close against the side of the house. She crept to them and looked upon them for the last time. They had been beaten and then strangled with barbed wire.
I watched her white face closely as she told of the horror of that bright September morning. She spoke flatly, with little change of expression, as a person does who is still under the influence of profound shock.
‘I went back into the house then,’ she said, ‘and I picked up some food and wrapped it in a cloth. I ran very hard for a long time.’
She did not remember the next few days in detail. Some compassionate people in villages she passed through gave her a night’s shelter and some food. She was obsessed with the idea of having to keep ahead of the Russians and out of their hands. Ironically they caught her in the act of crossing the border when she did not even know she was near it. The Red Army handed her over to a civilian court which swiftly sentenced her to be deported to Russia as a kolhoz worker in the Yenisei River area of Western Siberia.
More vividly she described her life on the Soviet farm. This was a sharper and more recent experience. Most of the workers were strapping, big-bosomed, tough Russian women, and Kristina was the only Pole among them. On the second day after her arrival she was set to threshing and moving huge sacks of corn. The other women taunted her for her refinement and her weakness. They laughed at her failure to do the heavy work they managed themselves with ease. Aching from head to foot, she would cry herself to sleep at night. Food was poor and the main item was one kilo of bread a day – for her as for the other workers.
But it was not the women who eventually caused Kristina to run. The farm was controlled by a foreman, whose attentions the other women were always inviting. Kristina was frightened of him and tried always to keep out of his way. He was a big fellow, she said, tall, swarthy and powerful. He would occasionally seek out the girl and try out some heavy pleasantries, tell her how different she was from the Russian women and that she needed someone to look after her. And after he had spoken to her the Russian women would joke coarsely, remark on the skinniness of her body, warn her she had better look out for herself.
There came the day when she was told she would not accompany the other workers in the horse-drawn farm cart but would report to the foreman’s house ‘for interrogation’. His intentions were obvious from the start. He promised there would be no more heavy work for her if she were kind to him, Kristina panicked, appealed to him to let her go after the others and join them. What followed was a plain attempt at rape. She screamed, clawed at his face and frenziedly kicked out with her heavy boots. Surprised at the fury of her resistance, he relaxed his hold just long enough for her to break away and bolt blindly out and back to the women’s quarters. He called vile names after her and threatened that he had means to make her change her mind.
She waited until the light began to fade in the afternoon, expecting all the time that he would come for her, but he did not show up. When she felt that the return of the other women must be imminent, she slipped out, keeping the kolhoz buildings between her and the foreman’s house, and ran. She slept that night in reeds by a river, and after following the river along for many miles the next day, finally reached a road, and was given the first of two long lifts eastwards by drivers of big farm lorries.
‘All Russians are not bad,’ said Kristina. ‘These two were sorry for me and gave me some of their bread to eat. The second one told me to try to get to Irkutsk, but he could not take me any further.’
She looked round at us all and her eyes finally rested on Mister Smith. ‘So that is how I came to be here,’ she added.
The American dug his hands into his fufaika pockets. He spoke levelly. ‘We are not going anywhere near Irkutsk; we are heading south around the other side of the lake. What are you going to do now?’
Kristina looked surprised and taken aback. She turned an appealing gaze on the other six of us. We said nothing. We knew what we wanted but were content to let Mister Smith handle this his own way. Her lips trembled slightly. Then she jutted out her little chin. ‘I am coming with you. You can’t leave me on my own.’
The American looked over her head for some moments at the river beyond. ‘Can you swim?’
‘I swim very well,’ she said, and there was no mistaking the note of pride. ‘In school I was a very good swimmer.’
Through Mister Smith’s grey-streaked beard came the flash of a smile. We relaxed as we heard him tell her, ‘Forgive me, child, if my questions have seemed to be abrupt. We just thought you might have plans of your own. All we can offer you is a lot of hardship. Our food has run very low and we have a great distance to travel. You must consider, too, that if you are caught with us you will not get off so lightly as you would if you remained on your own. If you want to join us, however, we accept you completely.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Kristina simply. ‘The only thing I wanted was to be with you.’
The girl went away from us then into a screen of bushes and in her absence I called for a check on food. All seven sacks were opened up, the rolled-up skins set on one side and the food brought out. We were, as we feared, badly off. There remained perhaps a couple of pounds between the lot of us of barley, a little flour, some salt and a few pounds of almost black deer meat. We decided on strict rationing to one small meal a day until we could replenish our stocks. The only stores item still in plentiful supply was the gubka moss
for fire-lighting. At least, we had the means of warmth.
Probably each one of us had, in addition to the communal food openly displayed, at least one piece of hard, dried bread, stuffed deep down in his long jacket pocket. I know I had one, and there was evidence later that the others also had this tiny personal cache. There was nothing dishonest or anti-social about it. To hide away bread was a prisoner reflex, a symptom of captivity. A prisoner holding one crust of bread felt that he still had a hold on life, as a man in civilized surroundings will carry round with him a lucky coin to insure that he will never be penniless. It was a measure of the great affection we developed for this waif Polish girl that later on one and another of us would dig out this last piece of bread to allay her hunger.
We ate hurriedly there that morning and decided to make an immediate river crossing. This first hour of daylight gave promise of a fine spring day and we had a common desire to make distance fast and to return as soon as possible to a straight course to the south.
For the girl this first river was a new ordeal. We persuaded her to take off her warm jacket, trousers and boots. I had a moment of great pity for her as she stood with us in the shelter of the trees in her faded purple dress. I went carefully out to the edge of the ice with the line paying out behind me, the axe stuck firmly in the back waistband of my trousers, and I made it fairly quickly across the open channel to the other side. Kolemenos crossed, holding her rolled-up clothes with some difficulty above water. Paluchowicz and Makowski came over together, the girl behind them with the bight of a length of spare line about her, the ends held by the two Poles. The other three followed, one of them bringing the girl’s boots. We ran for cover, winding in the line as we went.
Kristina was blue with cold and she could not stop her teeth chattering. Kolemenos handed her her clothes. ‘Don’t stand still, child,’ the American told her. ‘Run off from us now and take that dress off. Wring it out quickly, wipe off the water as much as you can and jump into your dry trousers and fufaika.’ She nodded and ran. We stripped off, danced around, wringing out our garments as we did so. The operation did not take long and in our wet rags we waited a few minutes for the girl to rejoin us. She came running, with her dress and underwear under her arm in a soggy bundle.
‘Did you see? I can swim, can’t I?’
Mister Smith grinned. ‘Yes. I saw.’ And, aside to me, ‘The little lady is not going to be much trouble, after all.’
We walked hard all through that day, halting for only the briefest rests, and Kristina kept up with us uncomplainingly. The midday May sun was pleasantly warm, helping, with the heat of our exertions, to dry out our clothes. We must have covered thirty miles north-east away from Lake Baikal by nightfall and we slept easier for being back among tall timber.
On the third day after leaving the lakeside, I judged we were in a position for turning south on a route which would take us down to the border, with Baikal lying some fifty miles to our right. It was guesswork, but I don’t think the estimate was far out, although it would have been impossible to maintain a truly parallel course. The country was hilly and well wooded and our progress was a series of stiffish climbs, with scrambles down into steep-sided valleys carrying small rivers and streams down to the lake. The valleys ran almost uniformly south-west. Many of the streams were fordable, although the current, swollen by the break-up of the ice, was strong. Kolemenos led the way across these, prodding ahead of him with a long sounding pole.
I marvelled at the way the girl stood it all. I fear we all still had misgivings about her frailty and I am sure she was aware of them. In these early days she never once held us up. She was even gay and happy when we were soured and foot-weary after a particularly trying march. She treated us like a crowd of big brothers – all except Mister Smith. Between those two there grew almost a father-and-daughter relationship. Often in the night shelter she would get him to tell her about America and on more than one occasion I heard him tell her that when this was all over she should come to the States with him. He would gently tease her about her big Russian boots and then say, ‘Never mind, Kristina, in America I will buy you some beautiful dresses and elegant high-heeled shoes.’ And Kristina would laugh with the wonder and promise of it.
She grew on us until there was not one of the bunch who would not cheerfully have died to protect her. She would wake in the morning, look at the unhandsome collection around her and say ‘It is wonderful to see you all. You make me feel so safe.’ On the march she loved to get Zaro up to his funny business. Even Zaro sometimes was glum, but Kristina never failed to chaff him back to his normal sparkling humour. Zaro, spurred on by her interest, would effervesce with fun. Sometimes as I watched them together, I found it hard to realize we were on a desperate mission, half-starved and with the worst of the journey yet to come. Most reserved of the party was the Lithuanian, Marchinkovas. He talked little and generally only gave his advice when he was asked for it. Kristina would walk alongside him for miles, talking softly and seriously, and then there would be the phenomenon of Marchinkovas smiling, even laughing out loud.
Now, too, the party had a nurse. Kolemenos began limping with sore toes. Kristina bathed his feet for him, tore strips off her petticoat and bound up the raw places between his toes. When my leg wound opened up, she dressed that. A cut or an abrasion was her immediate concern. When the bandages were finished with she washed them through in stream water, dried them and put them away for further use.
Approaching what was probably the Bargusin River, about halfway down the lake, Kristina was herself a casualty. She began to drop behind and I saw she was hobbling. I stopped the others and went back to her. ‘My boots are hurting me a little,’ she said. I took them off. The soles and backs of the heels were raw where blisters had formed and burst. She must have had hours of agony. The boots had been too heavy and big for her. All seven men fussed about her while she insisted that she was quite well enough to continue. I bandaged her feet with some of her own linen and then persuaded her to let us cut off the long felt tops of the boots to see if she could get on more easily with the reduced weight. Off came the felt and was stowed away to be used later inside moccasins. But an hour later she was hobbling as badly as ever and we decided to throw the boots away and make her some moccasins.
So I made Kristina a pair of moccasins. I lavished on them all the care and artistry of which I was capable with the materials at hand. The others sat round and watched every cut of the knife and every stitch of the leather thonging. I doubled the soles so that they would be stiff and long-wearing and I lined them with sable. Everybody congratulated me on my handiwork and Kristina planted an impulsive kiss right in the centre of my forehead.
We began to feel the girl was good luck to us. We suffered no real slow-down until we reached, at night, only five days after turning south at the lake tip, the Bargusin River. The trouble with all the bigger waterways was that we had to spend extra time reconnoitring for the best position to attempt a crossing. We discovered the next day there were three fair-sized rivers in our path. Having crossed the first we encountered the second after only an hour’s march. The third, and biggest, held us up three hours later and we wasted hours surveying it and eventually negotiating it. We guessed that all three rivers must join to the westward to enter the Baikal Lake as the main Bargusin River. We climbed a hill on the far bank of the third river and lit a fire to dry ourselves out. We were all dog tired and very hungry.
About this hunger business, I found that the real pangs did not hit me for about eight days. All the others would in the meantime have been suffering badly. But when I was attacked by the pains of starvation I was worse affected than any. We made a little kasha with the barley that night, but the quantity was so small that it was almost worse than nothing at all. We could think of little else but food. There were suggestions that we should creep up on a farm or smallholding and steal something, but even in our extremity we had the great fear of jeopardizing the whole escape by bringing ourselves to th
e notice of the people who lived in the country. If we were determinedly hunted some of us at least must be recaptured.
Kristina was fast asleep even while we were talking.
The Sergeant looked down on her. ‘Let us sleep. I think she will bring us luck tomorrow.’
‘Let us hope so,’ said his friend Makowski.
13
Across the Trans-Siberian Railway
THE BARGUSIN crossing took place at the end of May and was the last of the major water hazards. On the south bank the Siberian summer seemed to be waiting for us. From the northern tip of Baikal we had been favoured by exceptionally mild spring weather, dry and quite rainless. Now the sun beat down on us, all was green, there were flowers and the birds were back from their distant migrations. In six weeks we had walked out of the bitter tail-end of Central Siberian winter into the warm embrace of the Southern summer, where village orchards in the distance were gay and beautiful with blossoming cherry and apricot trees. Sleeping out became less of an ordeal even when it was considered prudent not to risk lighting a fire. During the day we were forced to discard our fur waistcoats but we put them on again after sunset to protect us against the night’s chill.
For a full two days after the Bargusin we ate nothing and the thought of food obsessed all minds. Then it was that we saw the horse through the trees betraying its presence with restless movement in the shafts of a crude sledge. It had scented our approach and obviously did not like what it smelt. Zaro and I went forward for a close look. The horse turned the whites of its eyes over its shoulder towards us. It had every reason to suspect our intentions. We were quite ready to eat horsemeat.
Zaro and I saw it at the same time – an old single-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun, stock and barrel held together by windings of copper wire. It lay across the sledge alongside a little leather pouch which we guessed to be for the ammunition. The thought struck me hard. We must get that gun before the owner can reach it. I ran forward with Zaro and whipped it quickly under my arm, barrel pointing down. I waved the others forward. Kristina, with Mister Smith’s arm protectively about her shoulder, stood well back as the rest of the party came up to Zaro and I. Kolemenos went towards the horse to talk to it and to try to quieten its restiveness, but the animal shied from him.