David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

Gossip also gleefully reported the 25th had now acquired a new sobriquet, the ‘Hernia Battalion’ and that in keeping with their lack of fitness they also lacked tents and mosquito nets. To be fair, they had been issued with fur coats and hats for winter fighting, although these had turned out to be black. Considerate of the quartermaster, some said, as it made them better targets in snow for those Red Army recruits Trotsky hadn’t yet found time to teach how to shoot straight.

The band — and a hundred other men — had been detailed to accompany their colonel, John Ward, from Vladivostok for the ceremony. A tall man in his early fifties, rather tubby with a short bristling moustache, Ward had been a regular for some years before the war and was currently a Labour member of parliament. Not that Paul had learned any of this from Ward himself — the colonel’s adjutant had filled in the details after Paul had presented himself upon arrival in Ekaterinburg. Though why Ward was back in uniform at his age, or was part of an intervention force in Siberia, for that matter, hadn’t been disclosed.

Paul’s puzzlement had rather mirrored Ward’s own when Paul presented his compliments to the colonel and asked — in a roundabout way — whether it might not be possible for him to serve with the 25th Middlesex under some sort of attachment. Paul had rather been hoping that being fit, unlike the rest of Ward’s men, the colonel might possibly be glad to have him.

‘Ross?’ Ward barked back somewhat querulously, standing erect in dress uniform and towering over most of the other men around him. ‘East Surreys? Where are they then?’

‘France, sir,’

‘France? What are you doing here then?’

‘On attachment. To Commander— To Foreign Service,’ he amended.

‘Who?’

‘The War Office, sir. Intelligence Corps. Here to liaise with Admiral Kolchak and the Czech Legion.’

‘What do you want to join the Middlesex for, then?’

‘I thought I might be of more use in my regular capacity, sir. As an infantry officer.’

Ward looked in askance. ‘Not with us, lad. Hadn’t you better do what you were sent here to do? Can’t change horses midstream on a whim. Besides, there’s not a lot of call for intelligence with the Middlesex.’

Paul supposed it was meant to be a joke but Ward’s expression remained deadpan.

‘I had been hoping to talk with General Knox,’ he said.

‘Gone back to Vladivostok. Left Omsk two or three days since.’

‘So I gather, sir. That’s why I’ve come to you.’

‘Can’t help you,’ Ward said adamantly. ‘War Office wouldn’t be best pleased to hear you’d be reassigned on the say-so of a mere colonel. Best follow orders. If you were sent here to liaise, my boy, I’d stick to the letter.’

‘I tried that, sir,’ Paul explained. ‘Sent my compliments to the admiral by way of his staff but I don’t know that they reached him.’

Ward pursed his lips and glanced towards the dais where the admiral and his entourage had gathered for the ceremony. ‘The Admiral’s a fine man,’ he said, his emphasis perhaps suggesting a view that the admiral’s staff were not. ‘General Knox is of the opinion he’s what Siberia needs. Just the man to sort these Bolshies out.’

It occurred to Paul to ask why a labour politician and trade unionist such as Ward was so keen to have the Bolsheviks sorted out. It occurred to him to ask, but he didn’t. If there was one thing he had learned since he had returned to Russia, it was that other people’s politics were a minefield into which it was best not to stray.

‘Right, sir,’ was all he said.

Ward nodded enthusiastically towards the units marching past the dais. ‘I hear the Czechs have already given them a bloody nose.’

Having just arrived, Paul wondered if perhaps Ward hadn’t heard the ‘Bolshies’ had started hitting back. He was about to mention the fact when Ward said:

‘Best be getting over there myself. Why don’t you come to my train once this is all over? I’ll see that you meet the admiral.’ And he touched his stick to his cap and turned away, striding towards the dais with his staff in his wake.

Paul cast around for Voitzekhovsky but the Russian colonel wasn’t to be seen. Edging closer to the dais, he tried to get a better look at Kolchak. He had attempted it earlier but hadn’t got to see much of him, the admiral’s staff — the usual mixture of gleaming buttons, boot polish and arrogance — not letting Paul get anywhere near their superior. Now, with everyone wrapped up in greatcoats and furs against the wind, it wasn’t easy to see much of anyone, only pale and pinched faces beneath a variety of caps and Astrakhan hats. The admiral was dressed in a British greatcoat, his admiral’s epaulettes attached, and from as much as Paul was able to see looked a somewhat austere individual. For some reason Paul couldn’t fathom, Kolchak recalled the mental picture Paul had formed of Count Dracula while reading Bram Stoker’s popular novel. He could only suppose it was the pallidity of Kolchak’s flesh in contrast to the black intensity of his eyes. Had the admiral had the occasion to smile, Paul wouldn’t have been surprised to find he displayed an unnatural elongation of the canine teeth.

He watched the ceremony until the end when, to the bemusement of the Czechs and Slovaks, the battalion band offered a selection from Gilbert and Sullivan. It brought to mind his earlier hope of seeing Major-General Knox, probably the only man sufficiently senior — or perhaps merely sufficiently egotistic — to countermand Paul’s London orders. As Knox had been appointed head of the British Military Mission, Paul assumed the general could do as he pleased with British military personnel in Siberia. The fact that he’d returned to Vladivostok to confer with Janin, had come as something of a blow although, having learned something of General Knox from Ward’s adjutant, Paul had not been over-optimistic of success anyway. Knox had apparently been chosen to accompany Kolchak because the major-general knew Russia well and spoke the language. He had been military attaché in Petersburg in 1910 and had returned again in 1914, having been an admirer of the regime and having had close contacts with the former Russian army’s General Staff. Knox had been, the adjutant assured him, a supporter of Intervention from the beginning.

All in all not the sort of man, Paul had decided, likely to give him any more of a sympathetic hearing than had Ward.

Kolchak and his staff had already departed the dais. The square, crowded minutes before with troops and civilian onlookers, was fast emptying. The band of the Middlesex Regiment had packed up their instruments and the few spectators who remained, having till now braved the November wind to watch the ceremony to its conclusion, had begun to wander off. Paul cast around, wondering what to do. There was a banquet to be given in Kolchak’s honour, with speeches and the like as there had been in Omsk upon the admiral’s arrival, but Paul hadn’t been offered an invitation. No doubt all the Russian officers from the old regime who had washed up in Ekaterinburg would be there, along with the local politicians and whatever few senior Czechs had been asked to attend. The rank and file, of course, would have to make do with whatever the kitchens on their trains could provide and that, he couldn’t help thinking, would still be far better than anything the poor conscripts at the front could expect. As it was, he had quite lost his own appetite. The admiral had his carriage attached to Ward’s train but it would be hours before either of them would return to the station. Paul had time to kill.

Across the windswept square, at one end of Voznesénski Prospékt, a bell began to toll in the tower of the Church of the Ascension. At the other end, at a junction some yards further to the west, a street ran down the hill from the corner towards the Isét river. From where he stood, Paul could see that the water hadn’t frozen yet although ice flows were already drifting down river on the sluggish current.