In Rejistza we learned that we must wait until four P.M. for a train going to the Dvinsk front. In the division commandant’s office we found two foreigners who had come across the front the night before. They were on the way to Moscow, and were being checked in as I had been. The commandant asked “Larkin,” whom he knew quite well, if he would take them to Velikie Luki; and on “Larkin’s” saying that he had been entrusted with the task of seeing me to the front, the commandant told him that “Hickey” could see me through. I was sorry to lose “Larkin,” but there was nothing else to be done, and we parted with a cordial wish that we might meet again under more favorable circumstances. “But, God love a duck,—I hope you stay out of Russia until peace comes,” were his last words to me.
When “Hickey” and I finally reached Dvinsk the Poles were shelling the town. The soldier train on which I was traveling stopped two miles outside the city and the soldiers detrained and began marching into Dvinsk to reinforce their comrades. I did not wish to go through Dvinsk. One experience under shell-fire had been sufficiently shocking to my nervous system, and it wasn’t my war at any rate. I protested to “Hickey” that he had been instructed to see me safely across the front, and demanded that he take me to some other point where I could cross. He told me that the papers read that I was to pass through the Dvinsk front. I said that, papers to the contrary notwithstanding, I refused to cross at Dvinsk. Poor “Hickey” crossed to an officer and held a discussion, during which he made a few notes. At the conclusion of their talk he returned to me “If you won’t go this way,” he told me, “we will have to go back on this train seventy-five versts and then drive ten versts across country to the thirty-second division command to get your papers amended. Then you’ll have to return to the same station, wait for a train, ride forty versts, get off and drive twenty-two versts across country to the brigade command of this division, and then from there we will have to drive twenty versts more to the Soviet outposts, where you can get into the neutral zone and start for the Lettish outposts seventeen versts away.”
All my former desire for speedy travel and short cuts seemed to have evaporated. I yielded meekly to this decree and was, I believe, fairly patient during the two days it took us to carry out this long program. When we finally arrived at the Soviet front I was told to start down the road and walk seventeen versts, which would bring me into Lettish territory. Again my suitcase was heavy, or rather it was still heavy, and I protested that I could not walk so far and carry it. But no vehicles were available in that part of the country. My officer informant pointed to a village two or three versts away, across a field, and said: “When you get to that village you may be able to hire a hay-rick.”
Even that comparatively short walk did not appear attractive, but at this particular moment there came around a bend in the road an old Russian driving a familiar hay-rick. He readily consented to take me to the village, and after saying farewell to “Hickey,” and enjoining him to “keep smiling,” my aged saviour and I set out on our journey. A half hour later, in the village, I tried my best, with my still limited Russian vocabulary, to procure another hay-rick to drive me the fourteen versts remaining between me and the Lettish front. Out of the crowd of villagers that surrounded me there emerged a Lettish boy of perhaps fifteen years, who told me in German that he would take me across. When the villagers understood what I wanted, the peasant women insisted that I must have food before starting. I was taken into one of the dingy little homes, where I was served with good rye bread, butter, milk, and eggs, which I ate greedily, I am afraid, for I was very hungry. Not even the thousands of flies that I had to brush away before I could take a bite prevented my enjoyment of this food.
At seven in the evening my boy rescuer and I reached the Lettish front, this time in a hay-rick de luxe, with straw and an old quilt on the slats of the floor. The Lettish officers examined me again, and told me that if I would take a hay-rick and drive twenty-two versts to the Kreisberg station I could take a train at two in the morning that would bring me to Riga early the next afternoon. They gave me food, produced a hay-rick, and, half frozen but safe, I reached Kreizberg and finally Riga, at one the next afternoon.
Feeling secure at last, I left the station at Riga and proceeded up the street towards the De Rome Hotel. I noticed an aeroplane circling overhead, but I had grown so accustomed to war manœuvers that I disregarded it entirely. About two squares further on my way I heard a terrific crash and explosion and turned to see smoke rising from the station I had just left. A German aeroplane had bombed the station, killing seven people and injuring fourteen.
Arrived at the hotel, I asked the proprietor what was wrong. He told me that the Germans were marching on the town, and shelling it as they marched, and that 60,000 of them were just across the river.
My only thought was that I wanted to get out at once. “You can’t go,” he said. “There are no boats running and the German army[[C]] controls the railroad to Mitau.”
Apparently it was as dangerous to come out to civilization as it had been to go into “barbarous” Soviet Russia. I recalled the peace and the kindness I had found inside that supposedly violent land with a great longing.
That afternoon I went to the Lettish Foreign Office to visit the officials who had granted me permission to enter a few weeks before. They appeared glad to see me, but incredulous as to my identity. Was I sure that I had been safely through Russia? Was I still in the flesh or merely a very vigorous and somewhat pugnacious ghost? My young friend who had been so concerned was very eager to know what I had seen. I told him I could indeed confirm his worst fears. The Bolsheviki were people who had but little respect for the sacred rights of private property. I hastened to make my escape before he could ask me about the nationalization of women. I did not want to disappoint him too much.