The second day of Rosh Hashanah we line up for the train to Manchuria. Our lieutenant, a moody graybeard in his sixties, who ascribes his low rank to lack of “protection” at Court, tells us we’re lucky. How are we lucky? We will get to ride to the battlefield in comfort, while the enemy, primitive little beasts that they are, will have to walk. He makes “battlefield” sound like a scheduled stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. As for the “primitive” Japanese, I incline to suspect they are not exactly receiving us with open arms.

My friend Glasnik whispers I should let the lieutenant know we would also be happy to walk, and with a little luck the war will be over by the time we get there. But I’m a one-striper, a squadleader, and keep my mouth shut, scowling with authority.

The train has ninety-six cars, each packed to at least three times what it can hold. This way, the railroad is able, on one track, to deliver its quota of 30,000 replacements a month. I try not to think about the men we are “replacing.”

We sit in our compartment, barely able to stir an elbow, each of us still hoarding his own fears and memories. For the moment, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews sit packed together in a pleasant atmosphere of revolutionary harmony. That is, somebody starts out by wondering how many of us will return alive, and soon somebody else ends up proposing that, at the next halt, we surround our officers and kill them all, then make the train go back to Petersburg and proclaim the Revolution.

No one bothers to remember that the officers have all our ammunition under lock and key. Not that it makes much difference. They’re fine talkers and dreamers, our Russians, but hopelessly addicted to authority. When Glasnik wants as usual to add his comments, I quietly shut him up. I know from past experience, no matter which way the conversation turns out, they’ll end up blaming it all on the Jews.

Days pass. We are all stiff and irritable from the lack of space, and no one any longer talks revolution because by now we hate the stink of one another.

But soon we come to appreciate our crowded compartments. The train has to cross Lake Baikal on rails laid over the ice, which often suddenly cracks open into yawning rifts and crevices. To keep the cars from being too heavy, the officers are taken across by horse-drawn sledge, and the rest of us walk, our rifles with their eternally fixed bayonets resting on one shoulder. Forty miles across the windswept ice, with only brief pauses for hot soup from our mobile kitchens. By morning it turns out a number of men have disappeared, probably drowned, and many more suffer from frostbite.

Another week in the unheated train, and one morning we awaken to a strange landscape in which the roofs of houses curve upward like boats, and the trees put me in mind of things that might be growing on the moon. This is Asia. The people here have darker skins and narrow, villainous Oriental eyes. Most of the men believe them already to be “Japs,” having little notion that Japan is almost as far from here as Moscow.

The Orientals scatter like chickens whenever the train comes to a halt and we pile out to stretch our legs. Only some peddlers are willing to approach. The officers drive them away, they might be spies.

At one of our stops we are told to send a detail to a nearby village. They are to fetch five oxen purchased for us to slaughter for food. After a week on little but hard black bread, foul soup, and hot tea, we await their return in high spirits. Suddenly, commotion. Three of our five men come running out of the woods as though pursued by a demon. They report how, passing through a lonely stretch of forest, they were set upon by armed “Japs” who tried to steal our oxen.

We run into the woods with bayonets poised. The oxen are there, unharmed. Nearby, the other two men are lying in their own blood. One is dead of a knife wound, the other is still twitching, trying vainly with his hands to stop the spurts of blood.

Someone grimly says, “Well, the war has started.” We run in search of the killers. Deep in the forest we come upon a group of frightened Asiatic civilians who try to hide from us. Our ranking non-com decides two of the “Japs” must be killed in retaliation for our men. Since we still have no bullets, we’re obliged to use bayonets.

Some friends and I disgustedly head back toward the train. Behind us, we hear a couple of screams, then silence, then a burst of loud wailing. It turns out later the actual bandits were Chunchus (“Red Beards”), Chinese brigands who are so powerful and so well organized they haven’t hesitated to attack and rob even armed Russian patrols.

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Back on the train, gorged with meat, we hear we’re headed straight for the battlefield, somewhere between Mukden and Port Arthur, where heavy fighting is taking place. We’re said to have lost over 60,000 men in one battle alone.

Officers come through the cars now to deliver inspirational talks. How our Little Father the Czar is counting on each one of us. But mainly about the enemy’s cruelty to Russian prisoners. This is to inflame our thirst for blood. In actuality, it has the opposite effect. Most of us are left subdued and depressed. Who wants to get involved with such uncivilized savages?

Even the Ukrainians and Poles are no longer voicing much eagerness for bloodshed. It’s strange to see them so earnest. I wonder if I haven’t misjudged them, if, in past years, it wasn’t really we Jews who were guilty of provoking them to violence purely by our impudent helplessness.

Even one of the officers is overheard to remark, “I thought surely by the time we’d get here the war would be over.”

Another young lieutenant, deep in self-pity, observes, “How can they expect an educated man to go and expose himself to being killed, or crippled for life?”

The common soldiers once again lapse into talk of revolution. But in truth, we all know we’re in for it now, and there is no way back except in some condition we’d rather not think about.

Next day our train lumbers to a halt near a village used as a transfer-point for the wounded. I can hear no sound of guns yet, but our commandant says we are very close to the battlefield.

Hearts beat more quickly as we are marched through the village. Its principal building serves as a field dressing station, and the streets are full of haggard men in Red Cross armbands wearing smeared butcher aprons. The huts, wherever you look, are filled with men groaning, gasping, or horribly still. Some of them lie on the ground outside, listlessly waiting to die. We try to ask the wounded what it was like, back there. They look at us blankly.

Later I run into a Jewish artilleryman I’d known in Petersburg. He has lost one arm but insists it was the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. What he tells about the fighting is enough to make your hair stand on end. I’d never realized how totally unprepared we were for this war. Unlike the Japanese, we have almost no mountain artillery, nothing but heavy stuff, useless for mobile warfare.

I ask, why aren’t the wounded taken to hospitals? Answer: because there are none, at least in this sector. The fact is, our high command had expected to engage the enemy much further to the east, near the Yalu River. But the Japanese had treacherously refused to cooperate.

There is a hospital train on the way. But it was due several days ago and seems to have disappeared.

A couple of idle and oppressive days among the piteous cries and foul smell of the injured and dying leave most of us ready to pray for a quick death rather than the slow one of a serious wound. Then it turns out our commandant had read his map incorrectly and stopped the train in the wrong place. The fighting, at present, is said to be at least another half-day’s journey from here.

They pack us back into the train, and all ninety-six cars continue on their blind search for the war. But we still don’t reach our destination. This time because the Japanese have blown up a bridge about ten minutes before we get there. They must have spies all along the line. We are saved only because God is good and our train, as usual, was late.

The adjutant cables a message to Harbin. They must at once send engineers and materials to repair the bridge. He is told in turn that we are urgently needed at the front. He should find boats and ferry us across, then force-march us the rest of the way, some hundreds of miles, with no mention of food.

Fortunately, none of the boats we’re able to commandeer is big enough to carry our field-pieces, ammunition, or horses, and our commandant, may he live and be well, refuses to send us into combat empty-handed.

We soldiers, of course, are quite content to stay right here, and wouldn’t care if they never fixed the tracks. Except, another troop train now arrives, and suddenly there are thousands of us stranded here with barely enough food for a day or two.

Being on a single-track line, with no nearby spurs for detours, we can’t even send the second train back to get us food. Meanwhile, more trains will be arriving daily, all filled with hungry men.

We are given ammunition for our rifles and told we have to live off the land. The Russian soldier with his peasant background is a natural-born forager. But in this rocky, frozen soil nothing edible has been growing for the last hundred miles. In fact, the only cultivated fields we’d seen all day were of poppies, grown for the Chinese opium trade.

Some men form hunting parties. They are warned not to go too far afield. This area is also notorious for bands of the same Chunchus who some days ago had killed two of our men.

The hunters return at nightfall with the carcasses of some wild, bushy-tailed cats, a mountain wolf, and several large birds which look like hawks or buzzards. Hungry as I am, I don’t share in the feast. Even roasted, the meat smells rank, and I cannot get myself to eat something I don’t know.

A day or two later, more bad news. Thirty miles behind us, a train carrying food was blown up by the Japanese. None of us had known it was coming, but they did. Now we begin really to feel trapped, surrounded by invisible spies, and full of heartfelt resentment against the enemy.

Meanwhile an engineer has arrived and told the adjutant the bridge can’t be repaired. A bypass will have to be built on pontoons, further downstream. Although no building materials have arrived yet, and the tracks behind us are now torn up as well, we’re assured the job will be done in two weeks. All that, without the use of coolie labor, since there is no telling who is a spy. (Although Japan and China were at war only ten years ago, we take for granted all Asiatics will stick together against us.)

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Not a man believes we’ll be out of here in less than two-three months. I find that by now even the most patriotic Russian blockhead knows that in Fonye’s¹ army nothing ever goes in a straight line.

Soon there isn’t even a piece of stale brown bread left to distribute. Several men have already died of actual starvation or related diseases. One of them is a boy I am asked to give a Jewish burial. But no one knows his Jewish name to inscribe on the wooden marker over his grave. We settle on “Velvel, son of Avrohom.”

Afterward we try to sleep, in order to forget our hunger. But not even the gravediggers had the strength to get tired enough. An officer comes by and tries to console us. War demands sacrifice. The officers are as starved as we are. If any one of us believes him, he keeps it to himself.

Glasnik, who was not at the funeral, suddenly returns in great excitement. He has scaled the top of a nearby hill and spotted smoke from the chimney of a house deep in the woods. No telling who lives there, of course. It might even be occupied by an enemy patrol. But hope revives us. A house means there must be food. That’s worth any risk.

But when it comes to going to investigate, few of my friends feel strong or adventurous enough. Among the five men who end up ready to go, I am obliged to include two Russians, one of them a notorious rapist, which I don’t suppose makes much difference in this case.

By now it’s beginning to get dark. Some of the men fear we might get lost and fall into enemy hands. (It isn’t till after the war that I learn the Japanese, by and large, treated their prisoners quite decently, possibly owing to their ambition to live up to “Western” standards.)

Rather than postpone our venture till morning, when we’d have to share whatever we found with hundreds of others, I propose we go now but take along a machine-gun. This, to us, is still a novel and exciting piece of equipment, and we’ve always envied those who get the privilege of firing it.

But the sergeant in charge of the machine-guns knows we’re on to something, and won’t let us have one unless we promise him an equal share of anything we find. I offer to let him come with us. But, like a good capitalist, he wants his profit without having to work for it. We make the deal. But just as we’re about to wheel out the gun, an officer turns up and wants to know what’s going on. We are forced to make him a partner as well.

Lugging our heavy rapid-fire Maxim gun on its wooden wheels, we push our way into the tangled forest. Whatever glimpses we get of the sky don’t give us enough light even to see the nose on our face. By midnight, it’s plain we’ve been going in a circle. There’s a short, violent quarrel, then we take our bearings once more and continue on. At a quarter past one I spot a faint glow in the distance.

Now it belatedly occurs to me. Who would live so deep in the woods except the very bandits we’d been warned about? In a sudden ambush, our machine-gun would be worthless. We load our rifles and hold them at hip level, ready to fire, and try to proceed as quietly as we can, although our bayonets keep getting caught in the underbrush. But the longer we walk toward the light, the farther it seems. Glasnik wonders if we’re being lured into a trap.

I tell him not to be ridiculous, what do we have that even the poorest bandit would be interested in stealing?

Glasnik points to the machine-gun.

And how do we know they’re bandits and not Japanese?

But we have gone too far to turn back now. Just before three o’clock we get our first look at the actual house. A small, primitive stone cottage with a thatched roof. We quietly set up the machine-gun at the edge of the clearing, where it can cover the house and all approaches to it.

I volunteer to go ahead of the others and investigate. The house is silent. The chimney is cold, and the light in the window is so pale it might be only a reflection of the moon. But inside, a kerosene lamp is faintly burning, and I can see a broken stove, a pair of high boots which seem stained with blood, and two ancient rifles hanging on the wall.

I signal to the others. Two more join me. Together we burst through the door, our rifles poised to fire. A scrawny, Asiatic woman whose age I find impossible to guess lies snoring on one of the straw mattresses. She doesn’t stir at our entrance. We search the room and are delighted to find two bottles of good vodka. Better yet, we open a trunk and find a large loaf of white bread. The two men left with the machine-gun hear us exclaim and come running to join us. There is nearly a fight over dividing the bread. Within moments not a crumb of it remains.

While I try to restore order, the rapist sees the old woman. He is apparently so starved for female companionship, he tears the cover off the bed and, in a typical display of Russian finesse, he throws himself on top of her. She awakens with a scream, dodges under his arm, and lunges for the knife we used for cutting the bread. Then she sees us and drops the knife, crosses herself and begs for mercy. I assure her we’ve come only for food. She glances at the rapist and is convinced I’m lying. But she gives us a pot of sour milk and goes looking for other food she can let us have.

It seems to me she is searching the house as though she were a stranger here too. But she is probably in a state of shock and forgot where she put things. To help calm her down I send the rapist out to guard the machine-gun.

Minutes later, he sees her hobbling by outside with another pot of sour milk and, crazed with passion, he charges at her once more.

The old woman shrieks like a goat, the sour milk spills, and we all pile on, trying to separate them. After a wild scramble, I get up covered with sour milk and somebody’s blood. The rapist apologizes. He says he can’t understand what came over him.

We continue to search for food. Deep inside the stove, I find a pan of something that looks like blintzes. We stuff it all into a stocking made of some blanket-like material.

Now, ready to leave, we decide also to take the rifles hanging on the wall. But the woman starts to plead with us, half in gestures, half in Russian. They’ll kill her if the rifles are gone. “They?” Who is “they”? Her babbling grows so incoherent, the devil only knows what she’s talking about.

But I still don’t like to leave rifles where someone could use them to shoot us in the back. We reach for the weapons to make sure at least they’re unloaded. The old woman starts to scream again, and suddenly drops to the floor like a stone.

Abruptly sobered and ashamed of ourselves, we pack up to get out of there. It is nearly four in the morning. We assume, whoever “they” are will bury the old woman if she’s dead.

But as we start to leave, I find Glasnik has decided to search the chicken coop. Now, in a shaken voice, he calls me over.

Inside, my foot stumbles against something soft on the floor. I strike a match, and we are overcome with horror. Here lie the murdered bodies of a man and a woman, obviously the real owners of this place. He, with the hard hands and stocky build of a woodcutter, has been killed with his own axe.

No wonder the old woman had searched for food as though she didn’t know her way around. Her accomplices, then, to whom the rifles belong, cannot be far away.

The rapist is the most indignant. While we’re discussing what to do, he goes around acting as though he ‘d suspected the old woman all along. If only we hadn’t interfered, he would already have found out everything.

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It is near dawn, and we are dead tired. But the majority votes to set up an ambush with the machine-gun. None of us has ever fired at a human target. I think that must be part of the attraction. When the bandits return, we will avenge their crimes.

My belly has a pleasant glow of bread and vodka. Yet the whole incident has left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps it is true that war turns men into beasts. But I would have preferred for us to start back and leave the punishing to God. We, after all, have stolen too, and perhaps murdered as well. But the two Russians are dying to use the machine-gun.

Day breaks, we’re barely able to see straight any longer, and still no sign of the bandits. Maybe they know we’re here. By eight o’clock we’re ready to give up, when we see nearly a dozen men approach in single file, two of them carrying a quantity of chickens between them on a pole. A fierce and dissolute-looking bunch, armed with rifles, axes, knives. I look at them and know I would have hated to meet them in an open fight.

How glad I am now we have the machine-gun. The bandits cautiously approach the hut. The rapist has his finger curled around the trigger, panting with eagerness to fire a burst. But do I know for certain these are bandits and not merely woodcutters? Have I the right to judge them by their appearance alone? I motion to the rapist to wait another moment. This proves to be a bitter mistake, because there’s suddenly a cry of warning. The old woman we had left for dead stands in the door of the hut, waving her arms, shouting.

While I stare at her in astonishment, and the rapist foolishly still waits for my signal, the bandits, quick as mice, scatter for cover. Within seconds, they’re deployed, crouched behind trees, their rifles searching for targets. That’s what I get for being slow to shed blood. Now, even if we’d wanted to leave them in peace, it’s too late.

I signal the rapist. He, instead of traversing, fires a long wild burst at the middle of the group. Even so, our opening volley seems to kill or wound nearly half of them. The others, with incredible speed, vanish back into the woods. The old woman too has disappeared. One of their wounded is screaming. The rapist wants to keep on firing, but the gun has already overheated. Across the clearing, the chickens on their pole lie in plain sight. Rut none of us dares to go fetch them.

We pack up and start running. The heavy wheeled machine-gun slows us down, but, being personally responsible, I refuse to let it be abandoned. We keep looking anxiously behind us, and try to listen for any sound of pursuit. At the same time, of course, we cannot know if they didn’t cut ahead of us and set up an ambush.

But no one interferes with us. Perhaps they took us for a larger unit. We pause just long enough to fill ourselves with water from a spring and to finish every last one of the blintzes. I have some regrets now about leaving the chickens, but at least we’ve made sure there is nothing left for the sergeant and the officer waiting like capitalists for their unearned share. In that small way we feel we have struck a blow for the Revolution.

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¹ Fonye is a common Russian nickname.