Chapter Six
One of Sergeant Kaledin’s “Patients”
Camp Budapest, Bulgaria
They had Russian machine guns, rifles and uniforms, Amerikanski pistols and light machine guns, and French light cannon.
It wasn’t even twenty-one hundred hours and already the waxing crescent of the setting moon hung low in the west. There were no electric lights, and it was far too dark to risk the small parts of the various special weapons by detailed familiarization of the troops with them at night. There was a surplus of talent as far as the heavy machine guns went. The same could not be said for either the Lewis guns or the 37mm infantry cannon. Still time was short and what there was of it had to be used,
The only man in the battalion who knew anything about the Lewis guns was Sergeant Major Nenonen, and nobody knew anything about the 37mm jobs.
Fortunately, Corporal Panfil could read French, while the Germans had thoughtfully provided a French manual with the guns. Right now, Panfil, with a gun next to his pallet, the wheels and caisson having been left outside, pored over that manual by the light of a flickering candle, his officer, Lieutenant Federov looking from over his shoulder and trying to puzzle through the instructions, too, while Feldfebel Yahonov and Sergeant Oblonsky manipulated the gun by the instructions given.
“So what happens if you miss?” Yahonov asked.
“It gives . . . mmm . . . two methods. The simpler one says . . .”—Panfil scanned over the text of the pertinent section, then translated the gist of it—“to keep your hands away from the traversing and elevating mechanisms—in other words, leave the gun alone—and then move the deflection and elevation knobs to put the telescopic sight on the explosion,” Panfil patiently explained. “Then, without touching the sight’s controls, to use the elevation and traversing wheels to get your sight picture back on the target.”
“Deflection?”
“Right and left, but reversed.”
“Let me think about that for a bit,” Yahonov said, working out the process in his mind. “Ooooh, I see; what’s happening there is that it turns into an instant bore sighting or zero, while adjusting for atmosphere, wind, and weather, yes?”
“Must be,” Panfil agreed.
Daniil had just finished explaining what he suspected would be needed for a landing area. Lieutenant Turgenev, a former Guards Cavalry officer, detailed to intelligence, and currently leading a small detachment of mixed cavalry and Cossacks, furiously copied down nearly every word.
“All that comes,” Kostyshakov said, “from a couple of articles I read while at Fort IX. After I meet with the captain of the airship I might have better guidance. Also, it ought to be within one to two days’ march from wherever you find the Romanovs. Now come back tomorrow, noontime, with a tentative plan,” Daniil added.
“You’re too generous with time, sir,” the lieutenant said sardonically.
Daniil made a dismissive get-thee-forth gesture with his hand and fingers. “There isn’t a lot of time, Turgenev, and less for you than for us. So quit wasting what we have and get to work.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
The young horse soldier turned intelligence officer let himself out of the crude wooden shack.
As with Panfil’s tent, a candle, too, burned in Kostyshakov’s lone hut. Like Panfil’s, lacking fat, the candle’s light was poor. The war’s made everything decrepit and decayed, he thought. I think, unless we’re both very lucky and fight very hard, that someday people will look at this war the way we see the war between the Spartans and the Athenians; the great calamity that ruined our civilization beyond redemption.
Still, so far, so good, Daniil also thought. We’ve got arms and equipment, ammunition, men, food . . . even horses and mules are supposedly coming in the morning. We’ve got an organization—that went better than expected, probably in good part because of Sergeant Major Blagov—and a plan of sorts for changing it to what we really need, when we really need it.
But I wish I had some better idea of how to train for this, some better idea of who to select for the Grenadier Company than, “He who does good.” We’ve got almost no facilities. The men are in rotten shape but they’re still going to have to build what we need.
Which is what, exactly? Well . . . we need a range for the machine guns and cannon. The same range will also do for the snipers, once we select them. Doesn’t need to be much, about a tenth of a verst by a verst and a half will do. Hmmm . . . maybe we can dig positions and run wire out for field telephones, then put men in strong trench positions to raise and lower targets, as we tell them to via the field phones. I wonder if Romeyko has phones and wire stashed away with his horde. If not, I wonder if he can get some.
Yes, if he can, that should be good for the Maxims, the Lewis guns, and the snipers. I think maybe we just put out a bunch of targets for the 37mm cannon, and have no men down range when we use those. So . . . okay, different days for automatic and cannon fire . . . different days for the snipers, too, I suppose.
Then we need a range for the grenades. We have enough to expend two or even three for every rifleman, convert a couple of hundred to flash powder, and still have enough explosive ones for the mission. Hmmm . . . maybe have each man throw one a few dozen times before they pull the ignition cord. Will they stand up to that much abuse? Better ask the Germans how they do it. Wooden mockups, maybe? Hmmm . . . wooden mockups with a lead core?
We’re going to need a good rifle range, call it six tenths of a verst by . . . oh . . . a tenth or a twentieth, maybe. But how do we set up targets and give feedback?
Daniil spared a glance at the rough lumber of his shack and thought, No way we’ll get enough finely cut lumber for the usual frames. Maybe we can use smaller targets, and have men hold them up on rough poles, bringing the poles down to mark the targets. T-poles, I think.
“Targets? Targets?” he wondered, aloud. “Can we get targets from the Germans?”
We’ll have to dig in the men down range a good eight or ten feet. Those wretched little shovels won’t do. Ask the Germans—I am growing so tired of that phrase—for real picks and shovels, a hundred or so, each.
Ah, but then finally, we’re going to need a place to train for and rehearse the actual mission which is a rescue. And that . . . I am not sure. Maybe the sergeant major will have some idea.
Camp Budapest
“Maybe we could dig a house—a complex building, or the spacing of one—down into the ground,” said Blagov, scratching at his half right ear, to Kostyshakov. “You know, open top so we can see and evaluate the men going through the drill. We could even close it off, sometimes, for them to practice it in the dark with just those cylindric li— Dear God! What are those?”
Blagov pointed at his first glimpse of the miserable collection of mule- and horseflesh shambling though the gate of the camp.
“Damn . . . just damn,” Daniil shook his head in despair.
There were only eight horses and two dozen mules, which was substantially less than Kostyshakov had asked for. Far worse than the numbers, though, was that these animals looked more than half-starved, with ribs showing more or less plainly, backbone sticking up like an irregular rail, hips outlined, and the withers very sloped.
“I think they call them ‘horses’ and ‘mules,’ Sergeant Major,” Daniil said. “Though I am not sure why.”
“How important are they to the mission?”
Kostyshakov thought for a bit. “Well, a half dozen or so of the horses are very important, and become so soon. There’s some time for the rest to heal up . . . if they can heal.”
“Kaledin,” was Blagov’s instant judgment. “He’s another Cossack, probably could ride before he could walk. I doubt we have a better candidate for getting them back in some kind of shape. If they can be brought back to some kind of shape.”
“Okay, so assign him to the quartermaster and—”
“He’s already assigned,” Blagov interrupted, “to the reconnaissance team heading into the interior to pin down and report on the royal family. And those have to leave within, as you said, sir, about a week.”
“Well, I’m supposed to meet with Turgenev at noon, Sergeant Major. Could you send someone to advise him to bring the entire detachment? Thank you.”
“Effective immediately, Lieutenant, Sergeant Kaledin is detailed to the quartermaster to try to get those horses and mules into shape.”
“Bu’ . . . bu’ . . . bu’?”
“No arguments. Kaledin, go now. Some of those animals look to be about to keel over. The sooner you start getting them in shape the more likely some of them will survive.”
“Are they that bad, sir?” Kaledin asked, dark eyes going sad.
“Words fail,” Kostyshakov said.
“I see, sir. Yes, sir, I’m on my way.”
After the sergeant had departed, Kostyshakov demanded, “What’s your plan, Turgenev?”
“Step one, sir,” the lieutenant said, “is that someone is going to have to give me a great deal of money, and probably a mix of it. If we each had a string of the best horses in the world, the distance is on the order of four thousand versts. That’s four months of travel . . .”
“You don’t have four months.”
“Yes, sir, I know. So we’re going to have to rely mainly on less secure, certainly less secret, but faster means. That means we walk to Kermen with everything we can carry and maybe grub a lift for the rest of the baggage from Taenzler. From there we take a train to as near to Burgos, that Black Sea port, as we can get. Now Burgos, what with the war, isn’t too bloody likely to have continuing ferry service to, say, Rostov-on-Don. There will probably be smugglers galore, though, who would risk it.”
Kostyshakov nodded, “They’re likely as not to be pirates, too. That means you go armed, but also with arms that can be hidden, knives and pistols, both. And that means practice.” He turned his attention to the five men remaining after Kaledin’s departure. “Any of you familiar with pistols?”
“Familiar, sir, but that’s all, all for any of us except the lieutenant,” answered the next senior man, Mokrenko.
“The men know their way around a lance or a carbine a lot better than they do a pistol,” added Turgenev.
“Right . . . add to your plan one day of pistol familiarization. Maybe two.”
“Yes, sir,” said Turgenev, continuing then with, “From Rostov-on-Don we try to take a riverboat if we can, or charter one, if we can’t, or buy decent horses if we can’t do either. The rail may be running, too, though I have my doubts. If none of those are possible, then there’s no way to complete our mission in time.”
Wordlessly, Daniil just nodded his understanding. One of those, he silently agreed, ought be available.
“I think we’ll be able to go mostly by river, though, and am planning on it. We follow the Don as far as possible to get as near as we can to Tsaritsyn. At that point, we likely must buy horses to get to the Volga. That’s the area where the Reds’ control is limited, which must mean intermittent rail connections, at best.
“That means, once again, we’ll need money, though we’ll probably have to sell the horses for anything we can get at Tsaritsyn.
“We can follow the Volga to Samara, and then take a train to Yekaterinburg and then onward to Tyumen. From there, once again, we must buy horses to get to Tobolsk. Yes, we could try to catch the river boat to Tobolsk, but it would be better to arrive as unseen as possible. For that matter,” the lieutenant paused to scratch his head, “even if we could go by river, we can’t count on that river not being totally frozen . . . so . . . horses.”
“The Germans tell me,” Daniil said, “that they believe the family is in Tobolsk. But I figure we can only be sure that the royal family will be in one of those two places, Yekaterinburg or Tobolsk. Timeline? And add a couple of days at Yekaterinburg to see if they’re there or coming there.”
Turgenev consulted his notebook, making a couple of quick corrections. “Here to Kermen, about one day. Kermen to Burgos, maybe two. Burgos to Rostov-on-Don . . . I’m a cynic and a skeptic; five, minimum. If we can get a steamboat up the Don, three days, plus three to buy new horses and ride to Tsaritsyn. If not, probably nineteen. Then five days by boat to Samara. Rail to Yekaterinburg, logic says one but cynicism tells me two. Then three days in Yekaterinburg. Then to Tyumen, call it one day. Buy horses and race to Tobolsk, maybe six.
“That’s thirty-one days to Tobolsk, if we’re lucky. Fifty, if we are not.
“As to how we’re to tell you where they are, I have no clue. I asked around to see if anyone knew anything about carrier pigeons. Turns out Lieutenant Antopov, in Second Company, used to race them. He says they’re good, the best of them, for maybe two thousand versts. This is twice that. We need something else. I asked the signal officer, Lieutenant Dragonov. No, sir, radio won’t work. Oh, we could, maybe, if we used a rail line to act as an antenna, send a message out. Maybe even receive one. But, in the first place, they’re too big to carry while, in the second place, if the Reds or the anarchists see us with a radio they’ll just stand us against a wall and shoot us.”
“I agree,” Daniil said. “What’s your monetary breakdown?”
“Six men for two months, at twenty rubles a day, seven thousand three hundred, call it. That’s not generous, by the way; we’ll not be staying in fine hotels nor eating in expensive restaurants.
“Train and boat passage . . . I think we’d be making no mistake if we budgeted two thousand per man. Horses? Two horses per man, plus saddlery, if we can get a boat to Komovka on the Don, but four per man if we cannot. Four per man from Tyumen to Tobolsk, plus saddlery. I confess, I have no idea whatsoever what a horse may cost back home now, in paper rubles, let alone forty-eight of them, plus the saddlery. I think we’ll be in the one thousand to fifteen hundred range if we can get gold rubles. That would be fifty to seventy-five thousand rubles, most of it in gold. But then there’ll be the tips and bribes. Some we’ll get back when we sell them and some of them, at least, should still be alive at the end of the mission for sale . . . unless the Bolsheviks notice them and confiscate them.”
“We’ll not count on the Bolsheviks’ appreciation for the sanctity of private property,” Daniil said. “I’ll ask the Germans for a round hundred thousand rubles. They’ll probably want receipts when this is all over, as well as receipts for what you got when you sold them. Thorough people, the Germans.”
“Yes . . . well, sir, I’ll try. But any receipts that tend to show how far we’ve travelled are also a death sentence if the Bolsheviks catch us, or even notice us enough for a search.”
“No receipts,” Kostyshakov said, instantly.
“But we’re still stuck with how to even let you know once we’ve found the tsar and his family.”
“Let’s go find Major Brinkmann.”
Brinkmann tapped his cane as if impatient. After several taps, he reluctantly said, “There . . . is a . . . way, but . . . come with me.”
A bare ten minutes later in his own quarters, he explained. “We maintain a small office in neutral Sweden, in Stockholm. It’s in the guise of a trading firm. Send them a telegram; they’ll forward it to us. Well . . . they will after they’re told that certain telegrams from Russia are to come to our office. But you’re going to need a code book, a set of prearranged terms, that are neither obvious nor suspicious. Best, I think, if it’s simple enough to be memorized, though that’s asking for a lot. And your signal to the Stockholm office . . . maybe a particular trading firm, yourselves. Furs?”
“Furs make sense,” Kostyshakov agreed. “So the Pan-Siberian Import-Export Company?”
“Works for me,” said Lieutenant Turgenev.
Horse Paddock, Camp Budapest
Never going to work, thought Kaledin, gazing upon the sorry spectacle of equines listlessly munching on thin, frozen grass. Some lacked even the energy for that, but just stood there, blankly.
The Cossack sergeant wasn’t alone; one of the cooks, Private Meisner, not needed by the German mess section, accompanied him. This was a private who was, at least, used to horses since mess trailers—Gulaschkanonen, in German—all used horses to get around.
These poor beasties, about half of them, already have two hooves in the grave . . . or the sausage factory, as the case may be. Triage? Look for the ones who have a chance and slaughter the rest to feed the troops? I don’t see a better way but . . . I love horses and have a soft spot for mules. I don’t have it in my heart to kill them until there’s no choice left.
I’ll do my best and let God decide for me.
Now, for step one, let’s look them over closely. I count . . . one, two, five, eleven, twenty . . . .thirty-one? There were supposed to be thirty-two, eight horses and twenty-four mules . . . I count . . . seven horses only.
Kaledin walked to his right, around the clump of equines and forest of legs. He was less than a quarter of the way around it when he spotted the bay, lying on one side. He didn’t want to spook the animals by running, but picked up his pace until he was close enough to see that the supine horse wasn’t even breathing.
The sergeant stopped and crossed himself, orthodox fashion, up, down, then right to left. Then he walked over to the horse and took one knee, reaching out to stroke its now cold forehead.
“Poor thing,” he muttered, “poor abused thing.” Kaledin felt a tear forming and dashed it away. In truth, he liked horses a lot better than he liked most people.
I’ll have someone come for you in a bit, old friend. I am sorry, but I cannot guarantee you will not end up in a pot or as sausage. Yes, as a matter fact we are that hard up at the moment. Yes, I know it is also somewhat risky.
“Meisner?”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Go to the mess, ask what they want to do with the dead horse. If nothing, notify the quartermaster to send someone to take it away and bury it.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Kaledin then stood, pulled a small notebook and pencil from a pocket, and went to the first horse to be examined. Chestnut gelding, he wrote, about sixteen hands high. Shod. Poorly. Probably Oldenburger. Neck, discernible. Withers, faintly discernible. Spine, can’t see individual vertebrae. Tailhead, prominent, hip rounded, discernible. Ribs, prominent. Shoulder, discernible. Prognosis, fairly poor but possible.
From that one he studied another horse, also a likely Oldenberger, and then three mules in succession. Doing the entire herd took almost until sundown. Before that, Meisner had returned, as well as a group from one of the rifle companies to drag the dead horse away.
“They need food,” Kaledin told the boy. “They need it desperately, but they’re too far gone down the road to starvation to eat much at any one time. Overfeeding will kill them as surely as no food would.” He pointed, “You see that chestnut one? We’ll start with him. Get him a mix of lucerne and hay, then add to it about a little bit of oats, just a few ounces, a handful or so. Put it in a feed bag and hang it for the poor thing . . .”
“How much, Sergeant?”
“About two funt, no more, in total. We’ll refill when they’ve had a chance to digest fully. It’s going to be nearly an all day, all night job for us, boy, for at least the next two weeks. For the mules make it about a fifth less. And when we’re finished, we go collect blankets from the quartermaster.”
The men digging the horse’s grave weren’t the only ones digging. The entire Second Company, for now armed with nothing but their miserable little entrenching tools, worried at the ground at one end of a hollow field. About six hundred meters distant, the bulk of Third Company pounded in numbered stakes with rocks, dug individual pits, and filled some sandbags, three or four for each pit.
Sergeant Major Blagov and two of the company first sergeants paced the line, encouraging the men and occasionally enlightening them with a firm boot. From a deep and long draw, a few hundred meters to the east, came the sound of steady firing as a team of long service noncoms confirmed or fixed the zeroes of all the rifles; that, or rejected them as unserviceable.
It was slow work, digging, what with the ground being so frozen. At least, though, it was warm work, the frozen-breath pine trees sprouting from each man’s face every few seconds told of a bitter temperature, indeed.
Meanwhile, in a small copse of woods to the north, everyone from First Company, not otherwise engaged, chopped at trees to bring down some lumber. There were no decent saws, yet, so, again, the entrenching tools had to do. There were also no horses available, as all but three of the ones who had pulled the wagons from the train station had been returned, the three being two for Romeyko’s operations and one horse and one wagon, assigned to the mess. When they did manage to fell a tree, the heavy machine gun section became the beasts of burden and hauled the trunk to the wood-splitting area near the target line where the light cannon section split them into useful poles.
“They’re coming; they’re coming!” Romeyko had promised.
Going to take days, thought Sergeant Major Blagov. Fucking days. And we would be done by noon tomorrow if we had the proper tools!
Brest-Litovsk
Hoffmann looked over the telegram sent to him by Brinkmann.
One hundred thousand rubles in gold, they want? Ten thousand ten ruble coins? Almost ninety kilograms of gold? I don’t think so. I could give them twice as much, three times as much, in captured Russian Imperial currency. We’ve captured pay chests enough to cover that much. But the coins, the actual article? In that quantity? Not a chance.
For one thing, that much in coinage would raise suspicions and attract attentions I do not want or need. I am still on Ludendorff’s and Hindenburg’s persona non grata list. They’d object to anything I do now, out of sheer spite. Thank God the kaiser hasn’t told them anything about our little project.
He summoned an aide. “Telegram Major Brinkmann, at Camp Budapest, ‘Ober Ost will provide six thousand rubles in coin. The rest must be paper currency. I can increase the currency, even substantially, if needed and wanted.’ ”
Camp Budapest
Five Russians showed up at Feldwebel Taenzler’s kitchen. None of them was a Pole. Taenzler knew, distantly, that a lot of Russian ranks had been taken from German practice. Job one, find out who’s senior.
“Feldwebel?” Taenzler asked, looking from Russian to Russian. “Feldwebel?” The Russian pronunciation was close enough. “Wachtmeister?” This also produced no response.
“Unteroffizier?”
One Russian raised his hand, answering, “Ilyin, Mladshy Unter-ofitzer.”
“Close enough,” said Taenzler. “Ilyin Mladshy,” the German said, gently, thinking the latter was the surname, “let me show you our kitchen . . .”
The sergeant major still had all three existing companies out digging, less three men armed with bayoneted rifles who wandered the camp as guards, and the two would-be deserters from a couple of days prior who were living in an open pit they’d had to dig themselves, said pit covered with a lattice of tied logs.
The guards were only there to prevent pilfering. The exterior of the camp was guarded by Germans manning machine guns in towers, while the labor parties and the range area had a double ring of armed Germans and, outside of that, armed Bulgarians to keep the prying eyes of the local populace away.
Those two detainees were also on bread and water. A couple of the worst blankets had been tossed to them, as daily were tossed their pound and a half of bread, no Schmaltz, and a canteen of water.
The three companies were out, but the sergeant major remained behind for the nonce. Right now he stood over the two in the hole and asked, genially, with a brilliant smile, “How’s the food down there, boys?”
“Oh, it’s a feast, Sergeant Major, a veritable feast.”
The voice had an accent, enough so that Blagov asked for names.
“Kowalski, Sergeant Major,” answered one.
“Chmura,” said the other.
“Poles, then?”
“Yes, we’re Polish,” said Chmura.
“Not especially common in a Guards regiment,” Blagov observed, fingering his half missing ear. “What twists of fate brought you to the Guards, and what depths of idiocy caused to you try to desert? You’re lucky we didn’t just shoot you, you know.”
“We weren’t trying to desert, Sergeant Major,” answered Kowalski. “We thought we were escaping.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Sorry to disagree, Sergeant Major, but, yes, it does. When we ducked under the train we’d just come out of rail accommodations for prisoners. The only armed men we saw were Germans. As far as we knew we were still prisoners and had a duty to try to escape.”
“Didn’t your officers and noncoms tell you not to?”
“The world is full of collaborators, Sergeant Major,” said Chmura, “and has no dearth of traitors.”
Well, that much is true, thought Blagov, thinking back to Dragomirov and any number of other rejects. And, then, too, we hadn’t given anyone but the officers and senior noncoms, and not all of those, any idea of what was going on. Maybe that was a mistake.
“I don’t trust you two; let’s be clear on that,” said Blagov. “Even so, I’m going to give you a chance to prove me and the commander wrong.”
A single sharp whistle from the sergeant major brought the three camp guards at a run. “Lift the cage off them,” Blagov said.
“You’re not making a mistake, Sergeant Major,” said Kowalski.
Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t do to leave two people living under a cloud, but sharing a common language and culture, together.
“Either of you speak any German?” asked Blagov.
Only Chmura raised a hand. “Mine’s fair, Sergeant Major. Never as good as my Russian, though.”
Why didn’t I already know this? Blagov asked himself. If the commander needs to know something about the men of the battalion it is my duty to have the answer right there.
That was a case of the sergeant major being too hard on himself; this unit had just come into being, so of course he didn’t know every man.
“Go report to the mess. Look for Junior Sergeant Ilyin. You, Kowalski, come with me.”
Without another word, Blagov set off briskly for the front gate, on his way to the range area. He suddenly stopped. Shit, neither of them have drawn any uniforms or equipment.
“Halt!” Blagov barked. “Instead, come with me. We’ll set you up with the quartermasters before you go to work. And get those blankets you’ve been using.”
“Hoffmann says paper, with a little gold, not all gold,” Brinkmann informed Kostyshakov and Turgenev, north of the camp, not far from where the battalion dug and cut, making their known distance range. “Six thousand rubles in gold coin. I complained but, from the wording, I think he’s going to be inflexible on this, and probably doesn’t really have any choice.”
“How much paper, Major?” Turgenev asked.
“Now that’s interesting; he’s willing to go much higher on the paper to make up for the loss of gold. We might be able to double the request, or even more.”
“If serious inflation kicks off, where horses are concerned, we might not be able to carry enough paper. If it doesn’t, we might have too much.”
“Where did it come from?” Kostyshakov asked of Brinkmann.
“Probably captured pay chests. It’ll be good, honest paper, at least, not counterfeit.”
“Double it?” Kostyshakov asked Turgenev. “A mix of high, medium, and low value notes?”
“Do we have any choice?”
“No,” said both Kostyshakov and Brinkmann, simultaneously.
“Then I guess it will have to be.” The junior officer grew contemplative for a moment, then observed, “Maybe we’d be well advised to rob a bank.”
“Better to rob a Bulgarian bank,” said the German, “before you leave Burgos. You would not, after all, want the Russian police and the Reds to take special notice of your presence in Russia.”
“Maybe,” agreed Turgenev. “But make our getaway on what, those old nags your army sent us?”
Another horse had died in the night, quite despite the careful feeding and quite despite the blankets Kaledin and Meisner draped over them.
On the plus side, the food had given each of the equines something to crap out, which also gave Kaledin the chance to inspect the droppings for worms.
Nothing, which is good, but in a week or ten days, if we can put a little meat on their bones, I think a modest solution of turpentine in their water would be to the good, in case they’ve got a residual infection of the evil little bastards.
“Hey, Meisner?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Trot over to the quartermaster’s office and ask for some turpentine, a vedro of it. Tell them it isn’t immediate, but in a week would be good.”
Quartermaster’s Office, Camp Budapest
Frustrating, thought Captain Romeyko, purely frustrating. Hmmm . . . well maybe not all that pure, since there’s an element of humiliation to the matter, as well.
A whitewashed board was affixed to one wall on Romeyko’s small office. The board was divided into three sections with two hand-drawn charcoal lines. The left side was labeled, “ROUTINE,” and the other, “SPECIAL.” In between was lettered, “TRANSPORTATION.”
Under ROUTINE were such matters as “Daily ration draw,” and “Ammunition type and issue.” On the right, under SPECIAL, were written, “Machine Pistols,” “Pioneer tools,” “Horse blankets,” “Blacksmith,” “Money,” “Field telephones,” “wire,” and about two dozen other items that had, so far, proven beyond Romeyko’s ability to fix or acquire. A couple of items were crossed out, including “Saddlery,” “Radio,” and “Carrier Pigeon.” One big glaring need was, “Map of Rodina.” As it turned out, Brinkmann had to send to the General Staff office, in Berlin, to get a usable scale map of western Russia, up to and including Tobolsk. Even Ober Ost’s only went as far as the general line of the Volga.
Very few of the items on this list had an expected arrival date.
Somewhere, mused Romeyko, somewhere, possibly in Warsaw, there is a repository of captured maps where, if they looked, the Huns would find maps of Russia going all the way to Vladivostok. No doubt it is all well filed and documented, but we—in our miserable state—just don’t know who to ask.
In the middle column, conversely, there was almost nothing written, just the daily, “Wagons to draw rations for seven hundred”—okay, OKAY; so Taenzler is drawing some extra and I’m helping? So sue us!—“from the railhead.”
Even as he thought it, from outside came the creak of wagon wheels, leaving the camp on their way to the railhead.