It was silent in the woods. The leaves were gone, and the tree-trunks were a pale wan colour in the low, sickly autumn sun. Not a thing moved, except the ice of little woodland pools shivering under our feet. Was it an ambush?
We went uneventfully forward until the trees began to thin, and paused. Beyond, in a little clearing, three soldiers sat around a small fire, perfectly oblivious.
Vladimir Nicolaievitch stepped forward. “Zra’zvuitye, comrades!” he greeted, while behind him one cannon, twenty rifles and a truck-load of grubit bombs hung by a hair. The soldiers scrambled to their feet.
“What was the shooting going on around here?”
One of the soldiers answered, looking relieved, “Why we were just shooting a rabbit or two, comrade….”
The truck hurtled on toward Romanov, through the bright, empty day. At the first cross-roads two soldiers ran out in front of us, waving their rifles. We slowed down, and stopped.
“Passes, comrades!”
The Red Guards raised a great clamour. “We are Red Guards. We don’t need any passes…. Go on, never mind them!”
But a sailor objected. “This is wrong, comrades. We must have revolutionary discipline. Suppose some counterrevolutionaries came along in a truck and said: ‘We don’t need any passes?’ The comrades don’t know you.”
At this there was a debate. One by one, however, the sailors and soldiers joined with the first. Grumbling, each Red Guard produced his dirty bumaga (paper). All were alike except mine, which had been issued by the Revolutionary Staff at Smolny. The sentries declared that I must go with them. The Red Guards objected strenuously, but the sailor who had spoken first insisted. “This comrade we know to be a true comrade,” he said. “But there are orders of the Committee, and these orders must be obeyed. That is revolutionary discipline….”