The tank-commander was Australian, as were both his crews. He wore an expression of permanent disgust on his long face. He complained he wanted to get back to Odessa and from there take a ship straight to Melbourne. He rubbed at his nose all the time, as if it itched. I spoke to him in English as he leaned, sighing, against his tank. ‘I am most grateful to you, sir.’
I was startled by his reaction. I did not know him. He grinned at his men. They had clambered out of their machines and were lounging on the warm metal, drinking from their canteens.
‘Someone who speaks real bloody English.’
The shots continued from inside the church and from the corner of the street where the walking wounded were being executed. ‘Jesus!’ said the tank-commander. ‘What else can you say?’
‘I am familiar with your language,’ I told him. ‘Blimey O’Reilly, not half!’ This to show I could speak the common dialect, as well as what Mrs Cornelius insisted on calling book-talk. ‘I learned in Kiev. I am a Doctor of Science from the University there and a qualified engineer. I have the rank of major.’
‘In whose army?’
‘Loyalist, I assure you.’ I began to explain, but then I had fainted. I awakened in twilight. An Australian soldier was waving a mug of sweet soup under my nose. I was not interested in food. It made me feel strange.
‘You got to eat, mate.’ He was like a Russian babushka. For him, I sipped the soup. Some of it remained in my stomach. ‘They’re bastards, these peasants,’ he said. He was about the same age as me. ‘I hate them worse than the Reds, don’t you?’
‘They have suffered,’ I said.
‘They certainly have.’ He shook his head. ‘Our Russkies are doing horrible things to them now. They’re all bloody savages. It don’t matter what bloody uniform they’re wearin’.’ He sighed. He did not understand. He did not want to be on Russian soil. Like his commander, he longed for the bush of his native outback. ‘We’re going to give you a lift. We need an interpreter and we could do with an engineer. We’ve lost two of our chaps from typhus already. Know anything about tanks?’
‘A little.’
‘Carbs?’
‘I should think so.’
‘Spiffing. Now, then, you have some shut-eye. Some brekker in the morning and you’ll be fit enough to look at Bessie.’ Almost all tanks, I was to learn, were called Bessie by Australians. I have asked more than once why this should be. Nobody knows. He spoke with kind assurance, as one chanting a spell whose efficacy has been thoroughly proven.
I slept in a sack beside a tank. The Russians were piling what little booty they had been able to find on the ground, under the eye of the captain, Kulomsin. He was thought lenient by his men. They called themselves, of course, Volunteers. Few of them were actually that. The Australians were contemptuous of them; ashamed of their association. The French-speaking liaison officer was a Serb. I guessed he was some sort of failed adventurer who had taken up with the Whites in order to save his skin. I breakfasted on bread and more soup, which they thinned with water. They kept their own stores and refused to share them with the Volunteers. They gave me a cigarette. It was milder than I had been used to. It was real Virginia tobacco. I cleaned their carburetor for them and reconnected it. They tested the engine. It ran well enough, but it had been badly overtaxed; driven too hard and too soon. I would have no more trouble servicing it, however, than if it had been a tractor. We were leaving the village. The Whites burned it. For harbouring Reds, they said. I did not see it. I was excited by my first experience of the choking interior of a tank. Those machines were even more cramped than the modern kind, which are Rolls Royce limousines in comparison. We moved slowly ahead. The Australians hardly spoke at all amongst themselves. I asked where we were going. They were joining up with other units, they said, for ‘some real fighting’. By this, I gathered, they meant an attack on a city.
The tank was hot and stuffy. I did not care. In it I felt secure for the first time in over two years. Every so often we stopped. Maps were inspected. I translated between Captain Wallace, the Australian commander, in his tank, and the Russian officer, who had a staff-car. My heart was singing. We were on our way to Odessa! The Serb glowered at me. His function had gone. When I last saw him, through one of the observation slits at the side of the tank, he wore an expression of morbid despair. I was called upon to tune the other machine’s engine as best I could. I was worth, said the Australians, my weight in gold.
All the gold would soon be gone from Russia. You see it in the Kensington antique shops still, just near the Soviet Embassy.
