never changed. The only difference was that growing up I came more
and more under her spell and was more and more deeply attached and
devoted to her. I was then 17 years old and very much in love with
her. But she was fully grown and I was but a boy yet, so that any
hopes would seem rather futile for me. Futile because of the
difference of age and because I could hardly expect that she could be
interested in me. Also because of her great charm and personality she
always had great success with men everywhere and it was more than
possible that some fortunate man would be able to win her.
Both in Russia and in America and also while she was in Bulgaria and
in Paris she had a great number of admirers and had over thirty
proposals from men of different nationalities. She even had a
Japanese suitor. But she never was interested in any of these suitors
and once told my mother that she would never marry unless she had a
complete and all consuming feeling for the man she chose.
But for the moment the war was on and everyone had other thoughts and
jobs on hand than romance.
But I was growing up and so was my feelings for her. Every time
Nelka would come to Petersburg, I would see her off to the train,
taking her back to the front. On one such an occasion I gave her a
box of white cream caramels. It was nothing, but for some reason or
other it touched her very much and she always said that to her it was
measure of my devotion.
On these departures to the front, she was always in a hurry--having
so much to do and attend to. On these occasions the determination of
her character manifested itself at different times. Once she failed
to secure the necessary permit to board a train going to the
front--there just wasn't the time for it. At the entrance to the
platforms armed guards stood and one had to show one's pass to get
through. I warned Nelka that she probably would have trouble, but she
said there was no time for this now and that she would find a way to
get through. Of course we arrived just about the time the train was
pulling out and dashed towards the platform. A soldier stood at the
entrance with his rifle and when Nelka plunged headlong towards him,
he thrust his rifle horizontally in front of her to stop her. Without
a moments hesitation she ducked low and slipped under the extended
rifle, and was on the moving train before the sentry knew what it was
all about!
On another occasion we arrived at the station just a little too late,
even though she had her pass. When we dashed out on the platform we
just could see the two receding red lights of the departing train. To
this day I do not know what happened, but Nelka raised such fireworks
that that train backed into the station. Nelka got on and the train
pulled out again!
I have often said that it took courage to be in love with a woman of
such determination!
After her winter in Novgorod, Nelka decided to form and organize a
unit of her own to serve with the cavalry. She proceeded to raise the
necessary money and to select the personnel. As the head of the unit
she chose my uncle, my mother's brother, and as assistant a friend of
his. She also chose some of the doctors she knew in Kovno as well as
some of the sisters. The regular men orderlies and the horses were
being supplied by the Red Cross. This unit was attached to the First
Guard Cavalry Division. The doctors, the orderlies, the nurses were
all on horseback; the stretchers for the wounded likewise were on
long poles between two horses. When the whole unit was strung out
Indian file it was a very long unit.
Once attached to the Cavalry Division, the unit moved right along
with it. Often this was very rough going. Often they would be called
out at night, had to saddle and be on the move. Nelka rode a horse
named 'Vive la France.' If they were to move any distance they were
loaded into trains. She always remembered a dark autumn night
unloading the horses from the train in the dark, in the woods, and
right next to the position of artillery batteries, firing
steadily--the difficulty of controlling and trying to keep the horses
reasonably quiet. She had a great deal of trouble with her frightened
horse, trembling and scared, because of the noise and flashing guns.
The fighting was going on a short distance ahead and hardly had they
unloaded as the wounded started to be brought in. They worked on them
in muddy dugouts. Between moments of respite Nelka would run out into
the dark and try to soothe her horse which was tied in the woods. The
guns kept on firing all night.
This was the kind of life which went on. In July 1916 my uncle, the
head of the unit, was killed by shell fire, at a moment of some very
heavy fighting. The work they were carrying on was right near the
firing lines.
At one time, during 1916 Nelka came for a few days to our country
estate and one day I went with her to Petrograd. There she received a
letter from her Aunt Martha Wadsworth. I was coming back to the
country with Nelka on the train. She had the letter in her hand but
would not open it for she said she felt it was bad news and she was
afraid. She had a premonition of something wrong. We traveled all the
way in silence and I could see how very anxious and upset she was.
Feeling as I did for her, it was painful for me to see her in that
state but there was nothing I could do. She did not open the letter
until we reached home and she went alone into her room. It was what
she had expected--the news that her beloved Aunt Susie Blow had died
in New York.
Another terrible, painful shock, Nelka took it in a very hard way but
with great calm and fortitude. She felt that she had failed her aunt,
that she should have been with her, instead of at the war. She blames
herself. She felt that being at the war was a form of selfishness of
self-indulgence, when her duty should have been to remain with her
aunt.
Once again a tragic and very hard blow, a blow so hard to accept
because of her special devotion to that aunt.
But the war was on--she could not even indulge in her sorrow and she
had to return to the front. Fighting was heavy that summer and her
cavalry division was engaged and on the move. The unit was always up
front, close to the fighting lines and the work was hard.
That summer I entered Officers Training School and did not see Nelka
for a very long time.
On the first of February 1917, I received my commission as second
lieutenant in the First Infantry Guard Regiment. This was the last
promotion done by the Emperor. I was assigned to the Reserve
Battalion stationed in Petrograd.
Less than a month later the Revolution broke out and I had a week of
street fighting. Then chaos ensued.
Through most of the summer of 1917, I was at the front in Galicia.
Nelka was somewhere at the front near the Rumanian border. We did not
know where each of us was and had no communications.
Gradually the discipline in the Army, under the impact of the
Revolution, broke down and the front started to disintegrate.
While my regiment was coming apart on the Galician front, Nelka's
unit was doing the same on the Rumanian border. Some time towards the
end of the summer the remnants of her unit were in Rumania and
finally came apart. She was left with but a few sisters and her
assistant chief, a friend of hers, a Finnish gentleman, Baron Wrede.
At a certain moment she sent him with some of the personnel and
equipment from Rumania over the border back into Russia. However, she
herself remained behind to take care of the local priest who was
desperately ill. A few days later, the priest died and she was ready
to follow the unit back over the border. Just before leaving she
found and picked up a poor, small abandoned kitten. Tying the kitten
up in her shawl and hanging it from her neck, she rode away from
Rumania back to Russia. One soldier was riding back with her. At
night time they arrived at a small village and for some reason or
other, the soldier disappeared. After waiting for a while, there was
nothing to do but to continue. And so in the night, Nelka rode alone
through the woods and over the mountains over the border from Rumania
into Russia. A woman, riding alone, in the night in the midst of the
Revolution! She rode all night, the kitten dangling in front of her.
By morning she reached a Russian village and soon located the unit.
She said she would never forget that ride in the night. The next day
the lost soldier turned up very much upset at having lost her on the
way.
The revolution was taking its toll and everything was rapidly coming
apart, disintegrating and in a state of anarchy. There was no choice
but to drop everything and try to get back to Petrograd if possible.
But this was not easy to do. Everything was in complete turmoil, no
regular train service and the revolutionary soldiers in complete
control of everything. The greatest danger was for the Finnish Baron
who as an officer was in danger from the soldiers. So a stratagem had
to be invented. Nelka went and declared that the Baron was
desperately ill and had to be sent to Petrograd without delay, and
that for that she needed a special permit. This she managed to secure
and was assigned a compartment in the overfilled train. The perfectly
healthy Baron was brought in and arranged lying down all the trip of
several days, while Nelka had to take care of him, bring him food and
look after the 'invalide.' He said afterwards that he had a 'very
pleasant trip.' While lying in his berth he kept with him the kitten.
Finally they arrived in Petrograd. The Baron then returned to Finland
taking with him the kitten where it lived on their estate to a ripe
old age.
Nelka, upon her arrival, stopped as usual at my mother's. Soon after
that I returned from the front. Now we were all together once more
and all together tried to survive in the Revolution, which was not an
easy matter. I then joined the British Military Mission with the
offices at the British Embassy.
About that time the Kerensky Government was overthrown by the
Bolsheviks and a lot of fighting took place in the city. Nelka used
to say how pretty the city looked with the streets completely empty,
when she would be returning home, sometimes skirting the walls of the
buildings when some shooting would start along the street. We all
soon got used to that kind of existence, which became a normal way of
life.
But the Revolution was going on and things were getting worse from
day to day. The Bolsheviks were killing right and left and the Red
terror was in full swing. My work with the British Mission was at
that time of some protection for the Bolsheviks were not yet sure of
themselves to the extent of daring to molest the foreign missions. My
work with the Mission took me away on various trips accompanying
British officers.
In the spring of 1918, one of these trips took me to Mourmansk on the
Arctic Ocean and where fighting was in progress between White
Russians and other foreign units and the Bolsheviks.
All that area was not exactly a very healthy place to be in and after
quite a few adventures I managed to return to Petrograd. I brought
back with me 75 cases of what the British call 'Iron Rations,' a
mixture of all kinds of food to be used in emergencies.
Food was more than scarce by that time and I was given a couple of
cases. It was a God send for all of us. We all subsisted on it.
But the Bolsheviks were getting bolder by the day and were raiding
houses, arresting former officers and executing them every night.
One evening about ten, a knock came on the door. I opened. Three men
with rifles came in with a commissar. They asked for me by name and
said they had an order to search the place. They asked if I had any
arms and I said I had a service revolver, which had been given to me
by the British. I also had another revolver of mine which lay on the
mantelpiece. Nelka, who was there in the room, did at that moment a
most risky thing. Unobtrusively she slipped my revolver into the
pocket of her dress. I noticed this, but the men did not. I produced
the other gun which they dutifully registered and took. They then
proceeded to search the place and after examining my papers,
announced that I would not be arrested in view of my service with the
British. Upon that they left. Nelka had done a most risky thing, for
had the pistol been discovered in her pocket, it probably would have
been the end of all of us.
However, things were getting very acute and very dangerous. It was
obvious that a similar raid might happen again any day and might not
finish as well. Should I be arrested and taken away the chances would
be of my being shot. So far my service with the British had served as
a protection, but with the relations with the foreigners fast getting
worse, this could mean just the opposite for me and the connection
would be detrimental instead of helpful. So it soon proved to be.
We all had a general consultation and decided to try and get out of
the country if only possible. My father went to Moscow where he knew
a prominent Jew who was procuring exit permits, for a price, and was
helping that way people to get abroad. Then we all began to move
about trying to stay in different places, different nights.
In the midst of all this, I declared my love to Nelka and asked her
to marry me. She refused because she said she did not think it was
fair to me on account of our age difference. I was then twenty-one
and she was forty. I kept insisting. She admitted that she loved me
and would not hesitate had it not been because of the age difference.
On a certain Friday morning something kept me from going as usual to
the British Embassy where our offices were located. This proved to be
my salvation for that same morning the Embassy was raided by the
Bolsheviks. They invaded the Embassy, arrested all the British
officers and killed Commander Crombie right on the entrance steps
when he tried to stop them from entering. They hung his body head
down out of one of the windows.
All the Russian officers who worked with the Mission were also
arrested and promptly shot. Of 16 such officers, only three including
myself ultimately got away. Thirteen were shot.
After the Embassy raid my position became extremely precarious, for I
was now on the black list and being searched for. While previously my
connection with the Mission had been a protection, now it was just
the opposite. I could not very well remain in our apartment and we
all scattered, except my mother who remained. My father was still in
Moscow. Nelka went to some friends. I spent some time in the country
where I hid for some time in our empty house.
It is to be noted that food was practically unavailable and that
there was no money to buy it with if there was any. So we all had a
pretty desperate time, but so did everyone else.
In the midst of all this, Nelka finally agreed to marry me. Perhaps
the Revolution, the circumstances, the constant danger which we were
all facing all of the time, helped her make her decision. But decide
she did and so one day early in September 1918 we went to Tsarskoe
Selo, an hour by train from Petrograd where an old aunt of mine
lived. We were married in a church there with just a handful of
friends in attendance. Nelka wore a white sister's uniform for her
wedding dress. My old aunt who was very fond of Nelka took off a gold
bracelet she wore and put it on Nelka's arm. Nelka never took it off
throughout her life.
Some friends of ours let us use their empty apartment for our
honeymoon. We had a 5 pound can of British bully beef and subsisted
on that until it was used up. We then returned to Petrograd and moved
into one room of a tiny flat where a Polish woman, Mrs. Kelpsh, lived
who had worked in Nelka's hospital in Kovno. This was in a back yard
of a small side street. She registered Nelka under her maiden name
and me not at all. If seen, I was just supposed to be a boy-friend
visiting.
However, things were getting more and more dangerous, and we had to
invent something if we were to save ourselves.
Earlier, before our marriage, when things were not so bad and we were
all seeking ways of getting out of Russia, I had applied for a
foreign passport to go abroad. At first some people were being let
out before the Bolsheviks clamped down on everybody.
Now, this application at the Foreign Office or Commissariat was a
dangerous identity of myself and a disclosure, especially when I was
being searched for because of my connection with the British Mission.
Nelka knew this situation and one day unknown to me she went to the
Commissariat. There she very naively inquired about the application
of Michael Moukhanoff. The girl looked up and brought out my file,
looked it over and said that no decision had been made yet. Nelka
then asked when one could hope to have an answer. The girl said she
did not know but could go and find out. If Nelka would wait she would
go and inquire. She left the room and Nelka then did a very desperate
thing. She picked up the file from the table, walked quickly out of
the room, down the corridor and then faster down the steps and into
the street where she mixed into the crowd. A dangerous thing to do,
but my file was gone, even though my position became that way only
more illegal and perhaps even more dangerous. But Nelka as usual did
the decided thing with courage and determination.
Like many others we were now trying to escape. Like always in such
cases, there are people who for a price were getting people out of
town and over the Finish border. It was very dangerous work for
them--dangerous for the people trying to leave and also expensive. We
established contact with one such person who turned out to be a very
decent fellow, and he agreed to try and get us out. He had peasants
along the border whom he knew and who were helping him. These he had
to pay and quite highly for it was all dangerous work for them also.
He warned us that he could not tell when he would be ready to move us
and that we should be ready to go on a moment's notice. Therefore, we
prepared what we thought we could take with us and waited.
In the meantime my father had succeeded to get some false papers
through his Jewish friend in Moscow and with these he and my mother
managed to get over the Finnish border into Finland by train. They
were by now in Stockholm and getting ready to sail to America.
By this time also, Nelka and I were living in another house, in a
closed apartment in a house where some very close friends of ours
lived. Nelka was registered there under a false passport in the name
of Emilia Sarapp. I was not known, unless as a boy friend.
The food situation had become absolutely desperate. There just was
none. Some mornings I would go to the outskirts of the city where
peasants would come in their sleighs selling milk. People fought to
get a quart of this watery stuff.
We also had some frozen potatoes. When frozen, potatoes are pink and
sweet and slimy. These we ate without butter or even salt which was
not available. The watery milk sometimes helped. Once in a while we
got a loaf of black bread with a mixture of straw. I saw people cut
off chunks of meat from a dead horse lying in the street and carry it
home for their dinner.
So we packed some clothes and valuables and waited. Before leaving,
we wanted once more to see my old aunt in Tsarskoe and we went there
to say goodbye. We spent the day with her and were returning to
Petrograd before dark, for a curfew was sometimes imposed and it was
not safe to be around in the dark.
As we were hurrying through the crowded station, someone slipped up
to the side of Nelka. It was our friend from the house we lived in.
She whispered to Nelka: "Do not return home. A raid took place and
they have an ambush waiting for you." Having said that, she slipped
away into the crowd.
Now we were in a desperate fix, and we knew it. The first thing was
to get off the streets. We quickly thought it over and then called
the apartment of some friends of mine, who we knew were not there,
but where an old governess was still remaining. We just said we would
come over. People understood and asked no questions. We went there,
explained what had happened and spent the night.
We were in a critical situation. We had no money, except a little on
hand, no belongings of any kind, except the clothes on us, and in
greater danger of getting caught. So first of all, we went to the man
who was to take us over the border and explained the situation. He
especially understood how very dangerous it was particularly for me,
with all the points which were against me. He said he had nothing
arranged for the moment, except one possibility which was not too
certain and not too safe. He had a peasant coming to see him that day
and that he could send me with him, but not both, for this was not to
sure a way. He suggested that we better accept this proposition that
I be got out of the way at once and over the border and that with the
next safer possibility he could move Nelka, I to be waiting just over
the border. Nelka explained that we had no money but that she thought
that she could get some from some one she knew. We all discussed the
situation together for a while, but saw that there was not much
choice. In the meantime, the peasant arrived and the man went to talk
to him. Finally, it was decided that Nelka remain with our friends
under the name of Emilia Sarapp and that I go with the peasant, and
wait at the border.
It was all very bad. Finally we had to say goodbye, both realizing
the danger but having little choice. It was quite a heartbreaking
separation--I leaving into the unknown with a bandit looking
individual, of whom we knew nothing, Nelka remaining in the city with
the uncertainty of finding any money.
I will not go into the details of my trip, except to say that it was
not easy nor safe, but I finally late that night reached the Finnish
border and crossing the stream separating the two countries in the
woods and deep snow, arrived at a small Finnish peasant hut.
I explained the situation to him and that I would like to stay with
him for a few days until my wife could join me. He readily agreed for
he knew and participated in this business of people escaping and was
receiving a number of them at all times. He was also engaged in
contraband dealings and a number of his agents kept coming and going
through his hut, moving goods over the border. I had just a little
money and arranged to have him keep me. I gave a note to the peasant
who brought me over and he promised to get it to Nelka when he
returned to Petrograd. Then I waited. Practically every night people
came over the border and most of them stopped at the hut. It was
quite an active spot. One or two of the parties who were all coming
through the services of the same man, brought me notes from Nelka.
Once or twice I crossed the border back into Russia and went about
five miles to the nearest village hoping that perhaps Nelka was
coming through with the next party as she wrote she hoped to. This
perhaps was dangerous and risky on my part, but nervousness just kept
me from sitting still.
Then the unforeseen happened. At that time the Finnish people were
having a revolution of their own. There were Red Finns and White
Finns fighting each other all over the country. The front was fluid
with small units moving back and forth, here and there, occupying
this or that area or this or that village. There is where misfortune
struck me. A Red Finnish patrol took possession of the area and I was
caught by the Red patrol.
This has nothing to do with this story I am now writing about Nelka,
so I will not go into this complicated and lengthy matter of how I
managed to escape from the Finnish Reds. This is a long story.
Suffice it to say, that I managed to get away.
But it was not possible any more for me to remain on Finnish ground
and I crossed in the night back into Russia. Having no money I was
obliged to walk and walked about 30 miles to Petrograd. I finally
made it, but I did not know where to look for Nelka so I went to our
man. He told me that Nelka was to come and see him that morning at
about eleven, and so I waited. Nelka arrived on time. When she saw me
she went into an absolute fury, for my having come back. I always
said that she was in such a fury with me that for about 48 hours I
never even had a chance to try to tell her why I was back.
Finally I got it over to her, and while we were happy to be together
again, our position was just as desperate, if not worse, and we were
back where we had started. We knew that we better do something fast.
However, while Nelka had managed to get some money, there was not
enough to pay the man to get us over.