Siberia To-Day

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Before reaching San Francisco, Smith wired for the Intelligence Officer in San Francisco to arrange for a hotel, for taxicabs to take us to the hotel, circulated “memoranda” among us as to whether or not we were willing to pay for the taxis he had ordered, and asking us with paternal care, to signify the officers with whom we intended to share rooms. Some wag suggested discreetly that we should arrange by wire for a supply of lollypops, and that we each specify the color desired. Smith turned a baleful eye in the direction of the wag.

We found that General Graves had sailed ahead of our arrival. He evidently had not been aware of the value of Smith’s counsel. We faced a wait of three weeks for the transport. We went to our rooms in the Fairmont, and in the morning Smith marched us down to the paymaster’s and handed us out blanks and set up a table in the corridor of headquarters of the Western Division, from which he superintended the signing of our names to our vouchers. Back at the hotel again, he got the office of the depot quartermaster on the telephone, and for three weeks he worried the life out of a patient major. (This major sailed with us, but for some reason or other, was assigned to the transport Logan, while we were assigned to the Sheridan. Likewise by some peculiar whim of Fate, Major Graves also sailed in the Logan, though he confided to some of us that he was sorry not to be with us.)

Smith resumed his conferences. His field clerk would call all our rooms on the telephone and summon us to secret meetings in Smith’s room. The bellboys were much impressed by these gatherings. They knew we were Intelligence Officers, and they felt we were up to something which was dark and mysterious. If they had listened at our locked door they might have heard Smith advising us to get smoked goggles, or asking us for the sizes of our shoes, and whether we preferred our canvas Alaskan coats lined with yellow or blue felt.

In spite of the burden of these details, Smith managed to find a professor in a nearby college who had lived in Japan several years and talked Japanese fluently. Smith felt that this man would be of value to the expedition, as we were to serve with General Otani’s Japanese divisions.

But the professor had his family in Berkeley, his position in the college, and was also serving in an advisory capacity for the local Board of Trade in Japanese commercial matters. He could not afford to leave home unless assured a good salary.

Smith, we understood, had said that if the professor would go, he would be given the rank of major, and instead of being classed as an interpreter, would have the title of “advisor” or something of that sort, to the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia.

But in the short time before our departure, Smith asked Washington to authorize the engaging of the professor as a field clerk, when Smith had brought the urgency of the matter to the attention of a public-spirited citizen of San Francisco, who put to the professor’s credit in a local bank some two thousand dollars to insure him an adequate income in addition to the pay as field clerk. So the professor went with us.

As the sailing date approached, and we had finished buying clothing and equipment suitable for a polar expedition, Smith became more secretive than ever. The night of the first of September he called a last conference, in which he issued envelopes containing tags for our heavy baggage.

“Gentlemen,” he announced, looking at us over his glasses in his room, strewn with Red Cross gifts for us, “the name of our transport is the Sheridan. In these envelopes are the tags, with the name of the ship. The envelopes serve to conceal the name of the transport, and will not be removed from the tags till the baggage is inside the enclosure of the transport dock. You will not disclose to any person the name of the transport. And I have ordered taxicabs to be at the hotel at nine in the morning. All officers will appear on the hotel veranda at that hour, with their hand baggage, and ready to get into the taxicabs. The drivers have been told that they are to take us to the ferry building, but at the last minute I will tell them that we are to go to the transport dock. I have assigned the officers in pairs to each cab, and as I call the number of the cab, the officers assigned to it, will enter it, and then wait for the order to move out. Is that satisfactory?”

Trying to keep our faces straight, we decided we were suited. Then the wag in the party asked if we were to keep secret from the hotel management the fact that we were departing.