COSSACK ADVENTURER

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 111, 10 April 1934, Page 2

COSSACK ADVENTURER

3.45 P.M. EDITION

EXPERIENCES IN RUSSIA. LUNCH CLUB ADDRESS. Stated to have been one of Hie most romantic and colourful figures who had passed across the stage of Russian events since 1914, Athaman Kalmakoff, the Cossack adventurer, formed the subject of an interesting address given to the Palmerston North Citizens’ Lunch Club to-day by Air J. G. Doyle, of Alaliarahara, who lived in Russia during the days of the revolution, and was for ten years in tlie diplomatic service in Alanehuria. Air A. Y. Pizzey presided and visitors welcomed were Alessrs T. Stringer, AV. Williamson, Jfl. AY. Ward (Palmerston North), J. AYright (Plimnierton) and J. Whittle (Awahuri). Kalmakoff was first a schoolmaster, said Mr Doyle. He was sallow-faced, slightly built, had straight black hair and a pair of keen black eyes. The order had gone forth from the Czar to mobilise for war, and when it reached Constantine, in Eastern Siberia, the school-bell rang furiously. Horsemen assembled, men were mobilised and they left for the Front, among them Kalmakoff. Next the scene was laid at the foot of the Carpathians, where the Siberian rifles occupied the left centre, and the advance was held up—they could make no progress. Beiore them stretched a river down which floated whirling ice-bllocks. Kalmakoff and a companion, Alarsaloff, were under-officers. They killed a bullock, took the skin and with basket willows fashioned a fra.il craft in which at night they crossed the river. Good fortune favoured them. They landed and hid among the rocks. They saw an Austrian held sergeant walk up to an apparent cliff face and open an armoured door. They followed and found themselves in the outer room of a huge munition magazine. The sergeant was stabbed as lie emerged from the inner room, they lit a slow fuse and left, locking the doors. They plunged into the river and reached the other side again safely. Before they were halfway across tlie magazine exploded, completely destroyed the Austrian outpost and all supplies of ammunition, and left the position so exposed that the Russians crossed on a pontoon bridge without difficulty at liigut, and the advance proceeded. Kalmakoff and his companion received the Third Class order of St. George s Cross. Later they qualified for the Second Class order and finally the First Class, making them Cavaliers of the Order of St. George. The latter order was the reward for an exploit in which both l figured. They passed through the Austrian lines and after lour days reached a heavy bridge, the only one capable oi carrying siege trains, which they intended to blow up. Alter lying in the water for 48 hours Kalmakoff got his chance and fixed six gun-cotton charges under the centre span of the structure, which was well-guarded, lie blew it up just as a train carrying the largest Austrian siege guns then known was passing over. Injured in tlie head by a Hying piece of metal, he was invalided out of the service, but returned to the fighting arena again in the last-phases of the war, when Kerensky was Premier. AIMER THE AY Alt.

With the war ended, the Cossacks found themselves 14,000 miles from home, and transport was at a discount. They retained their military organisation and managed to get a train after some difficulty and adventures en route owing to the partiality of some Black Sea sailors, also on board, for vodka. Bolsheviks were overrunning the country when the Cossacks held a session and Kalmakoff was proclaimed Athaman (chief). With /00 men lie commenced a 3000-mile journey in the depths of winter, deciding to make for China, and the speaker was with the detachment until it finally surrendered there. Seventeen young Cossacks were at one place so badly frozen that both feet of each had to be amputated. On the _ sledge route the men were formed into companies, each breaking the trail for half a mile in turn. The track of the journey was marked by the bodies of those who perished from the cold. Some thirty healthy men of the original detachment, and many invalids, reached China. There a treacherous Chinese general invited the Cossack officers to dinner and arrested them. The few capable men of the ranks were marched to the frontier and handed over to Bolsheviks who shot them for their overcoats. Kalmakoff, taken further into China, made a hid to escape, but died from a volley by the Chinese soldiers. The few ill men who survived a long and severe winter were placed on board a ship. Another year went by, and the speaker was attending the Feast of Easter in an Eastern church when, yielding to supplications, he placed money in black, fingerless hands —and as lie looked a.t them he wondered if ■they were those of a survivor of that brave Cossack party. The speaker was accorded the vote of thanks on the motion of Air A. D. Campbell.