“Why?”
“We don’t know.”
“Well, what about the patients I send over here?”
“We just tell them to go home and wait. We have nothing for them.”
From Stalingrad we took the train to Ordzonikidze, the beginning of the Georgian Military Highway through the Caucasus to Tiflis. After the usual breakfast of Russian tea, black bread, and fresh caviar, which I found delicious, we climbed into four open-topped char-à-bancs, filling them to capacity. Enormous trucks came behind with our luggage. For about two hours we rolled along by the side of the river Terek, which was running dark and going so fast that the only thing I could think of was the streams from Swiss glaciers, but instead of being ice-green, this was muddy, splashing up on the road. The guides told us there had been a two-day, torrential rain, the worst the Caucasus had ever known.
About ten we stopped to stretch our legs at a village. Groups of lusty mountaineers stared at us, grinning good-humoredly as though we were as odd as any freaks in a circus. They gave us cheese and bread; some of us bought wine and tea, not knowing when we might leave. After three hours we were still at the village when finally men with great high hats and military-looking, astrakhan capes rode up on horseback and spoke to our guides who, not being Georgian, had difficulty divining they were trying to say our cars could not pass.
We thought it was just like the Russians to fuss about a few little obstacles, and said there must be some way to get through. Off we went, and our drivers were magnificent. With the stubbornness of tractors we plunged across streams and over rocks; when trees blocked the road, they lifted the trunks, branches and all. We drove on and on, slowly, and at last, towards five o’clock, came to a spot where there was nothing before us—nothing but the mountain side sheer to the swirling water.
Out clambered the eighty tourists, youthful and aged, tall and short, thin and fat. We could see the road begin about a quarter of a mile beyond, a sultry sun smiling on the peaks of the mountains. The river was still rising. One of our guides waded in to test whether we could ford it, and was soon practically up to his middle in the turbid flood. Grant began ferrying old ladies over the deep places and a couple of boys carried the two-hundred-and-ten-pound Professor Ross. The current was terrific, and people kept falling.
After nearly three hours everybody was across. Our leader found a horse, galloped off to secure new buses, which arrived and took us to the town where we were supposed to have lunch. But it was now dark and lunch became supper. More conversations, more consultations, more delay, more mystery. Why did we not start? The answer was that three strange men were sitting in one of our cars—Russians who wanted to get to Tiflis. They were going to have their rights. When pleading, arguing, reasoning could not move them, the G.P.U. had to be invoked; still no results. Not until they had been promised that a bus would leave immediately did they descend and make room for the three of our group whose seats they had usurped.
We rattled off again, only to be turned back. Another long halt and more conversation. Ultimately, since buses had been dispatched from Tiflis to meet us and were waiting about six miles away, it was decided to push on.