Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/31

 Captain “N.“, whom we left at Kieff, proceeded:

Our first humiliation was when, at Kieff, we were marched through the town as prisoners of war with German officers! No difference was made between us and them. We were getting away from the kind, inteligent officers at the front, and were in the hands of bureaucratic officials at the rear. These Russians at home could not understand us. To them, very often, a Czech was merely an Austrian. We protested, and we did it so energeticaly that they promised to separate us. On arriving at the prisoners’ camp at Kieff a sort of separation was established. We, of our own accord, grouped by ourselves and had no communication with the Germans and Magyars. We were put in a train the same day and told our destination was Moscow. We travelled with Poles and Bosnian Serbs, and had a very commodious second-class carriage reserved for officers. The Austrians and Magyars were kept separate.

Our next shock, which brought us down somewhat from our admiration for Russia, was the pilfering of our allowance by Russian officers and officials. We were supposed to get one and a half rouble per day. We had received only half that amount during the two days we journeyed to Kieff. We thought it an oversight. But the practice continued. Our soldiers complained that most of the time they got nothing. We made mild protests at various times, and were always informed that we had received the full amount. It was paid to the officers in charge of our train, and they were presumed to have paid it over to us. The fact is a few officers were honest and gave us the full amount, but most of them did not. It was an inconvenience to us, but it was worse for soldiers. These hardly got anything, the Russian officers taking it for granted that they had the right to pocket anything coming to our men.

Apart from this annoyance, we rather enjoyed the ride to Moscow. It was very cold outside, but our carriage was heated. We could go to the buffets at each station and buy warm food or drinks. There was plenty of sleeping room in our carriages. When we got to Moscow we learned that we were to go to Siberia. This was another shock. We had read so much of the horrors of Siberia that we imagined it a land of doom. We were wrong, as we afterwards discovered for Siberia can be a very pleasant country to live in; and I even long to return thither, but at the time it seemed like aggravating our misfortunes. I remember the desolate look of all of us when we got to the news.

We spent a whole week in the station at Moscow, eating and sleeping in our carriages. We were not, of course, allowed to go into