Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/79

 likewise made a successful attack, and had we been allowed to complete our operations we would hawe taken possesion of Irkutsk at once and avoided much future trouble. We had captured a large quantity of arms, stores, and ammunition, and were in a position to deliver the town.

But the French and American consuls at Irkutsk, deceived probably by the Bolsheviks, who concealed from them the treacherous orders of Trotsky, of which our commanders themselves had not yet been informed, intervened. They proceeded to Vojensky in two motor-cars, one with the French and the other with the American flag, and a white flag, and asked to arrange the matter with a desire to spare Irkutsk. Our officers, after long discussion, reluctantly yielded to their representations, and consented to a truce on condition that the Bolsheviks agreed, and we even restored some of the arms and material we had taken.

The result was that we had to recapture Irkutsk a second time a month later with many difficulties and hardships. The Bolsheviks with their usual treachery disappeared from Irkutsk and proceded to the Baikal, arming the prisoners there and in the region of Eastern Siberia, and the more effectively to hinder our progress they mined the thirty-nine tunnels of the railway in the Baikal mountains. Had they been able to blow them up they would have destroyed milliards worth of property and made the railway unserviceable for a year or two.

Our echelons meanwhile received instructions and knew better what to do. Our National Assembly informed them that war was declared between us and the Bolsheviks, and we were to act accordingly. We had taken the precaution of keeping well informed of the Bolshevik movementst east of Irkutsk, and, learning that they had laid mines in all the thirty-nine tunnels, ready to blow them up when our transports passed, or to destroy the tunnels in any case if they were defeated, our echelons, on reaching a point about 100 kilometres away, were detrained and strong columns were sent on a march of 200 kilometres through the mountains to Lake Baikal. They reached the railway there at a point where the Bolsheviks were concentrating, and taking them by surprise defeated them, and thus got into possession of the important part of the railway comprising the tunnels. The Bolsheviks were able to damage slightly only the last tunnel, where they exploded a mine. But even that took us three weeks to repair. Several exciting actions took part on Lake Baikal. One of our batteries opened fire on a big boat full of Bolshevik troops and sank it after the third shot.