BACK FROM BAKU

Northern Advocate, 1 February 1921, Page 4

BACK FROM BAKU

! WHAT OUR MEN ENDURED FROM | THE BOLSHEVISTS. ! A PERSONAL STORY. H.JVI.S. Heliotrope brought honK England the officers and men of the navy who were sent from Baku for the defence of Persia. It has been stated that this forc e was being suit out for an attack on Russia: a smail body of 50 men or so seemed quite inadequate for that enterprise. The story of the expedition by the party was summarised by a correspondent of the "Morning Post." He says:— At the railway station as soon as we arrived at Baku we were put under arrest. We were not allowed to proceed and th following morning we found the Bolshevist army train alongside. We were in cattle trucks and we had to stay there till some hours later some Bolshevist soldiers came up, who were quite friendly in their expressions. They especially. thanked us for the British uniforms,-of which they were in possession, sind Which had ibeen sent out to Deniken's force. A little later on they wanted us to be photographed With them; this we refused, and then they got very angry and came in and looted the truck. An officer in charge at last gave us back our gear. The soldiers had taken a certain amount which we could not recover, We were left five days in the truck in the station.

NO CARDS ALLOWED

At 9 o'clock one night a Comnvssaire came and said he was going to mov e us into the town. Afterwards we were marched a mile to the Extraordinary Commisssion, where we were searched and everything taken away. We- were put into, one room, where there were 250 prisoners. One of our men started to play a game of cards. These wer e snatched away by a soldier, who said that cards were not permitted in 'Soviet Russia, but later on we saw him and some others playing with these very cards outside our room. We were given only a small piec e of plain ibread, and in the afternoon were marched off to the Bailoff Prison, a'bout two miles away. They told us we were going to nice rooms, but when we got there we found we were limited to three ceils, and each of these cells had a 3 mall barred window, a slot in the door, were only 12ft square, and 12 men were put into each. The first thing the Boshevists did by way of welcome was to shove in a packet of rice through the door. The sanitary arrangements were abominable.

: For the first, fortnight . only one half-hour morning and evening was allowed for exercise. Later the prison regulations were some.what relaxed. The food consisted of one pound of black bread and some rice. After aibout three weeks everybody got very thin. The Dutch Consul was approached, and he sent in from day to day, and a very useful man was Mr A. 'Seaman, who contrived, by some means, (to foe free, 1 although an Englishman, and who, gave us most substantial help. BRITISH! CONSULTS FATE. After the first three days the British Consul, "who was a prisoner, was suddenly taken away from tfte cell, in which he was with us, and -placed m I a condemned cell, with the intimation'

that he was to be shot with two others. Twice ithat night he was tjid that h e would 'be shot at dawn, and each night for six nights lie was told the same','thihig. Finally lie was removed from there very ill, and put into a prison hospital. There was no great advantage in this, as the hospital had no medicine, and only thing was that the boards upon which we slept, instead of being on the floor, were put on bedsteads.

The hospital was full of typhoid and jtyphu s patients, and people with other diseases, and there was no medicine. The Russian dead used to be carried out in sacks. We wero attended by doctors who could do nothing, having neither drugs nor supples. We were constantly searched in th e cells in the 'hope that we had money on us, and anything we got from any source became loot for the Convmiissaire. The condemned ceil was next to on e of ours, and each night a man was taken out about 11 o'clock and shot against the wall underneath our barred window. Naturally, this gave some of us tha "nerve." We could see the flashes of the rifles and the face of the Commissaire when he gave th e order to fire.

We left this place in August, and wont to ,a gchool, but the accommodation even there was very ibad indeed, and then we missed our pound of black 'bread 'because somebody started th e rumour that the baker was robb'.rrf. and they would lock up ail the bread regardless of the prisoners until it had been verified. W« wer<! aible to carry out some cleanliness

when we got mto the school, and the most amusing thing was that th? guards—who could neither read nor wiite, nor even count the number of prisoners—at last came under the control of tin* Consul, who was a prisoner with us, and he used to Write out the order s each day, even to the extent of putting on e of the guard in ord.Ts for having been drunk. The Prime Minister of the Republic, Ni.ri« inanrii, came and inspected us, and said that all the workmen in the town were. jealous about our superior ac eommodation. A SENTENCE OF DEATH. The church close to u s was usc-d for th e purposes of propaganda, and one of the leading men was a Communist, who used to perform antics in the prist's gown in the church. I- was the centre, for the Communists, but th,, Bolshevists got tired of them, and sentenced this man to death. He had been denying the existence of a God, and th e first thing he did on being senteced was to send for a Russian priest, who was a prisoner with the British, asking for absolution.

The discipline in the Red Army was absurd. They did not ear e what the troops did, and whatever punishment they got there was always an aminesty reducing it, and the remainder could fee evaded by bribery.

j On Novem'ber 7 our men were released and were sent down to the Georgian frontier in open carriages with no windows, and with women and children in the train. They were stopped for a day and. a half at the frontier amidst snow and very bad weather, whilst the Bolshevists search ed through the remainder of their gear. 'Colonel Stokes was waiting on te other sid e of the frontier, and the difference was enormous. Instead of the wrecked and ruined railways and of Russia they had restaurant cars and sleeping cars, and after dinner that night all the sailors got up spontaneously and sang "God Save the King."