In a crowded station in the Russian
disorder, I suddenly found myself looking into the eyes of a spirited,
smiling young officer, who had evidently learned that I was an American
journalist and who was explaining to me in three languages that there
was no way out of my riding to Vladivostok with his military train. He
wore a red and white ribbon. His alert bearing and enthusiasm marked him
in the numbers of nondescript soldiers who were still traveling in the
Russian chaos of last spring. I was about to protest mildly in French
when three of his fellow soldiers of fortune seized my baggage, carried
it around a countless number of trains and stowed it away in a
compartment from which another officer, warned of our arrival just in
time, was removing his personal effects. He may have stood up all night.
Anyway, I was a quite willing captive on one of the forty odd trains of
the Czecho-Slovaks which had started to cross Russia and Siberia to
fight for their liberty in France.
My friend was of medium height, well knit, deep chested, smart in
bearing. The red and white ribbon on his cap was the badge of the
Czechs. Before I had left them at Vladivostok five weeks later I could
have picked a Czech out from any crowd by his air of determination
backed by an enthusiastic good cheer which everywhere won its way from
Austrian prisoner to warmhearted Russian peasant woman. All that night I
heard them singing in that splendid, low, group chorus of theirs along
the entire line of the train.
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