Very cool historical find: Pamphlet on the birth of the White Army (Part I)

Ice March

For over a decade the Internet Archive (archive.org) acted as an invaluable resource to historians and casual researchers. Millions of otherwise hard to find documents were only a few searches away. For instance, I was able to locate these two reports from an intelligence officer with the American Expeditionary Force to Siberia during the Russian Civil War.

These reports were included in the FBI file of a far-right publisher investigated for bombings during the Civil Rights Era as supplementary material. The file was then posted on the Internet Archive after it was released under a Freedom of Information Act request totally unrelated to my inquiry. As far as I know, this was the only way to access these reports absent me travelling to a government archive and trying to sort through their collection, which is likely very large and poorly-labeled, by hand.

However, a recent lawsuit from a ultra-liberal Star Wars fan fiction writer has placed the Internet Archive in jeopardy. Much of the website’s catalog has been taken down or will be made unavailable in the future. One of my friends emailed me the following very interesting document hosted on that Internet Archive that is potentially imperiled by this lawsuit: a 1918 pamphlet describing the Kuban Ice March, which is generally considered to be the start of organized mass resistance to the Bolshevik dictatorship. The pamphlet is titled The Volunteer Army of Alexeiv and Denikin.

The Kuban Ice March acted as a creation myth for the anti-communist White Army. Readers of General Wrangel’s memoir Always with Honor will notice that important figures from that book like Generals Denikin and Pokrovsky played prominent roles in the drama. Many of the elite units mentioned in Always with Honor (such as the Kornilov Shock Detachment) were named after men killed during the fighting.

Some background to frame your thinking before you start this document:

General Kornilov was the head of the Russian military before the October Revolution that installed the Bolsheviks at the head of Russia’s government. He had a good reputation owing to his World War I combat record and he provided a great deal of legitimacy to the infant counterrevolutionary movement. General Alexeiev, also well-respected, had been Kornilov’s replacement as the head of the military after Kornilov was arrested for allegedly attempting to overthrow the pre-Bolshevik Provisional Government during the Kornilov Affair (there’s an extended footnote in the body of the text below that describes what this is) several months earlier.

Although Kornilov and Alexeiev personally disliked each other, they came together in the Cossack-controlled city of Rostov in South Russia to create the Volunteer Army to provide organized resistance to the new Bolshevik dictatorship.

The Cossacks are a semi-nomadic and autonomous quasi-ethnic tribal group that occupies the borderlands of Russia. Cossacks are organized into different governing Hosts, each of which is lead by a democratically-elected Ataman. Although there were anti-Russian separatist tendencies among the Cossacks, Cossacks typically were also extremely hostile to the Bolsheviks.

Complicating matters, the Don Cossack government in Rostov was ambivalent towards the Volunteer Army and Alexeiev, already well into old age, was dying of an unknown illness (likely stomach cancer) as he attempted to create a coherent military force from scratch on a budget.

The Kuban Ice March was a series of rolling battles fought by the Volunteer Army after it was forced to flee Rostov following the collapse of the anti-Bolshevik Don Cossack government there. The Don Cossack Ataman, unable to rally local Cossack resistance, shot himself rather than be captured by the Bolsheviks.

The Volunteer Army marched across the frozen steppe in the dead of winter, pursued by several better-equipped Bolshevik detachments that outnumbered them many times over. The Volunteer Army, which consisted mostly of former Russian military officers, won engagements in which it was outnumbered 10-to-1. There was intense combat nearly every day of the Ice March and the Volunteers suffered catastrophic casualties. The Bolsheviks took no prisoners and often tortured their captives, leaving a trail of mutilated bodies in the path of advancing Volunteer forces.

On the march, the Volunteers linked up with Kuban Cossack forces under the command of General Pokrovsky, a non-Cossack WWI fighter pilot who had proven himself to be a fearless commander and natural tactician. The Kuban Cossacks were very impressed with Pokrovsky after a miraculous victory in which Pokrovsky personally led the rout of a Bolshevik force nearly 25 times the size of his own.

Although Pokrovsky provided reinforcements and ammunition, he also brought bad news: his detachment, which included the Kuban Cossack government, had just fled from Ekaterinodar, the Volunteer Army’s planned final destination. The town, which served as the Kuban Cossack capital, had just been seized by the Bolsheviks.

Many other leaders in the future White Army, a term used to describe the loose alliance of all anti-Bolshevik military forces, would complain about Pokrovsky’s frequent looting of the civilian population and tendency to mass execute prisoners and dissidents. Unspoken in conversations about Pokrovsky is his desire to become the Ataman of the Kuban Cossacks, which led him to exercise virtually no discipline over the Cossack forces under his command to protect his popularity.

After weeks of intense marching and fighting, the Volunteers finally arrived at Ekaterinodar. The Volunteer Army briefly besieged the city, however, then Kornilov was killed by a stray artillery round and the army once again retreated back onto the frozen steppe.

Afterwards the Volunteers began a circuitous (and much more successful) return trip to Rostov, picking up new recruits and fighting battles along the way. When the Volunteer Army’s larger combined force reached the outskirts Rostov, which had suffered greatly under Bolshevik occupation in the preceding weeks, they found that the city had been occupied by the (not-hostile but not openly aligned with the Volunteer Army) Germans and declined to enter the city. However, they immediately began preparations for a new (and much more successful) march to retake Kuban territory). After the Germans voluntarily withdrew from the city, Rostov became a major hub of counterrevolutionary activity for the remainder of the war.

The Ice March was an impressive military feat only made possible by brilliant maneuvering and enormous sacrifice. It was viewed throughout the Russian Civil War as the heroic birth of resistance to Bolshevism: An impossible fight against overwhelming odds in which the righteous eventually triumphed.

The following pamphlet was written by Prince P. M. Volkonsky, a Russian aristocrat who primarily concerned himself with religious matters (his life’s work was encouraging the reunification of the Catholic and Orthodox churches). Although the pamphlet provides a history of the Kuban Ice March, it was likely written with the intent to attract always-needed foreign support for the White Army. November 1918, when this pamphlet was published, was close to the high-water mark of the White Army in terms of manpower and territory.

Mentions of Germany as an enemy on par with the Bolsheviks in the text were likely motivated by a desire to appeal to the (soon to be victorious) Allied Powers of World War I, who were always suspicious of the White Army’s alleged connections to Germany (which, although German intelligence gave the Bolsheviks the equivalent of several billion dollars before the Revolution to encourage the collapse of Russia’s government, soon soured on its Bolshevik partners and either passively or actively supported anti-Bolshevik forces).

Wow. That was a mouthful. Here’s the first half of document. The second half of the document (covering the return to Rostov) will be posted in the next few days.

Please, please, become a paid subscriber right now to support my work. These really do help me out a lot.

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The Volunteer Army of Alexeiv and Denikin

A Short Historical Sketch of the Army from its Origin to November 1/14, 1918

By Prince P. M. Volkonsky.

PREFACE.

The history of regeneration and re-establishment of Russia is indissolubly connected with the formation of volunteer armies in different places. All over the whole of the territories infected with Bolshevism, military organisations are constantly springing up in various places. Generally, they have two aims in view the re-establishment of a sane authority and the continuation of the struggle with Germany. These have been sporadic efforts of heroism, but badly organised. There were numberless victims. In the punishment of their opponents, the Bolsheviks raised their brutality to a dogma.

The common, illiterate masses, unaccustomed to political life, supported the Soviet authorities, believing in their promises, in every slander spread by the Bolsheviks against the educated classes, especially the officers. To many the struggle between the patriots and the Bolsheviks seemed hopeless, but those who were strong, bold and devoted to Russia managed to preserve the nucleus of the Russian Army, in spite of all obstacles. As early as November, 1917, immediately after the Bolsheviks coup d'état in the North, legends began to circulate about the so-called “Kornilov's men.” The Reds spoke of them with hatred and alarm, others—with hope and expectation. No one knew exactly either their numbers or their importance. But Alexeiev and Kornilov were there, and that was enough to make people trust and hope, and, as far as possible, help the cause. It was like a distant beacon glimmering through the dark, stormy night.

Eighteen months have passed. An endless, weary time for individuals. But for history, for the nation, it is but a moment. And already a change has come over the spirit of the scene. The Bolsheviks are retreating; they are being surrounded, their reign is everywhere drawing to an end. The people are inimical to them, are rising against them, are trying to shake off the yoke of their oppressors.

The Volunteer Army, from a handful of brave men, has turned into a real army. Another Russian army, led by Admiral Kolchak, is advancing from Siberia, stronger, more numerous, better equipped, and with a vast and friendly territory behind it. The forces are rallying round Kolchak. The Russians acknowledge him as their ruler. It seems as if the dawn were breaking for the Russian people. But the nearer the aim in view, the greater the gratitude for the heroic start made by the Volunteer Army and its leaders. They gathered together, and, to a certain extent, preserved the nucleus of the army—the officers. More than that they preserved the traditions and honour of the Russian Army, as never, under any inducement, did these people enter into any compromise with the foes of Russia—the Bolsheviks and the Germans.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend."

- The Gospel according to St. John.

"Be Conservatives or Socialists, as you like, but love our much-suffering native land."

- General Denikin.

The Volunteer Army

A Short Historical Sketch of the Army from its Origin to November 1/14, 1918.

I. FORMING THE ARMY.

On November 2, 1917, when the all-destroying wave of Bolshevism was pouring over the whole of Russia and the orderly Don and Kuban territories were like solitary islands in a heaving ocean of disorder, an unassuming, grey-haired old man, on whom a worn civilian suit, evidently not made for him, sat somewhat awkwardly, stepped out of one of those trains which twice a day disgorged at Novocherkassk a crowd of refugees escaping from the delights of the Soviet régime.

This old man was General Alexeiev. He had come to gather together a Russian army, and to lead it to do battle for the salvation and re-establishment of a united Russia.

The formation of an army in the conditions then prevailing seemed to everyone an impossible dream. Few thoughts of the salvation of Russia. Most thought only of saving themselves.

Alexeiev thought otherwise.

The idea of forming a Volunteer Army had first occurred to him as far back as August, at the time of the Moscow Labour Conference, when it had become clear that, thanks to the work of Socialists of various creeds and to the weakness of the Provisional Government, the Russian army was on the eve of complete disruption and ruin. But it was only in November that Alexeiev succeeded in beginning its formation.

He believed in Russia and in the Russians. He raised the rallying cry, and his call was answered by all in whom a Russian heart still beat.

Gradually, from all parts of Russia, generals, officers and cadets began to gather in Novocherkassk. The majority came in civilian attire, many were disguised—some as soldiers, some as workmen, some as chauffeurs. There was no other way of escaping and reaching the Don. The journey was a dangerous one; all who undertook it did so at the risk of their lives.

Many, very many, never reached their journey's end—recognised on the way for what they were, they were immediately shot. Immature youths, almost children, volunteered for the army—cadets and schoolboys. They all came penniless, ragged and starving, exhausted physically and depressed in spirit. All had to be clothed, fed and drilled. The task was not an easy one. At first Alexeiev had to work alone. Later, in the beginning of December, came assistants—the escaped prisoners from Bykhov¹: Generals Kornilov, Lukomsky, Erdeli, Elsner, Denikin, Markov and Romanovsky.

About the middle of December the whole of the military organisation was handed over to Kornilov, while all questions of a political or financial character remained entirely in the hands of General Alexeiev, and these latter questions were by far the most difficult.

In addition to this, the surroundings amidst which work had to be carried on grew more complicated. Public opinion on the Don drifted strongly to the Left. Kaledin, the Hetman of the Don Cossacks, though he sympathised from the bottom of his heart with the idea of a new army, could do but little to help Alexeiev; he could give neither men, nor arms, nor money. The fever of revolution was spreading among the Cossacks; there was a tragedy in every family; the children were Bolsheviks, while the fathers were “counter-revolutionaries.” The Cossack units returning from the front gradually deteriorated and broke up, carrying the infection among their families.

Fighting with the invading bands of the Reds was already in progress all along the borders of the Don territory.

To put it briefly, civil war had broken out on the Don also and every succeeding day the tide of Bolshevism rose.

Again it was the officers and cadets who had to defend the territory, occasionally aided by some of the older Cossacks.

It was under such arduous conditions that the army' was brought into being. There was but little money; its organisers were always in want of funds. But the colossal energy of General Alexeiev (he worked eighteen hours a day for what he often called “My last task on earth”), the iron will of Kornilov, coupled with the witchery of his name, did their work. In spite of obstacles, an army was formed.

The first unit to be got together was the company of Captain Parfenov, consisting of cadets, military and naval, who had come to Novocherkassk after the bloody October and November days in the capitals, and a body of officers who had come to the Don at different times; four hundred of them had already taken part at the end of November in putting down the rising at Rostov.

Later, an expedition was arranged against Tsaritsyn. The expedition was carefully planned and prepared, but at the last moment it was found that the Cossacks were on the side of the Bolsheviks, and declined to set out. The enterprise had to be abandoned.

In the early days of December the formation of a St. George regiment was begun, and at the same time the nucleus and supplies of the Kornilov fighting regiment arrived from Kiev, its commanding officer, Colonel Nezhintsev, having managed to attach men and stores to Cossack units proceeding in echelon formation from the front towards the Don. Then followed the formation, successively, of the naval and first engineer companies of the Chekho-Slovak battalion and, after the suppression of the rising at Rostov, of the second officers' battalion and of the cavalry and artillery divisions.

Simultaneously a number of small guerilla units were formed. They consisted exclusively of officers, of educated men.

On January 14, on account of political complications at Novocherkassk, the Volunteer units were transferred to Rostov. Kornilov rode there on horseback. This precaution was not superfluous, as the axles of the railway carriage in which he was to have travelled caught fire on the way, and the train barely escaped being wrecked; it turned out that sand had been poured into the axle-boxes.

Kornilov was eager to proceed at once from Rostov to the Government of Stavropol or to Astrakhan, whither the Astrakhan Cossacks had invited him. But Kaledin, realising to the full the terrible condition of the Don, held him back, and it fell to the young army to be the first to defend the Don territory and the town of Rostov.

Meanwhile the fighting at the front was increasing, and, moreover, the army had to carry on a struggle with the local Rostov Bolsheviks, who were preparing for an open rebellion.

Bands of the Reds gathered in large numbers on the borders of the Don territory, and in December began their advance on Novocherkassk and Rostov. Closer and closer pressed the ring of assailants. The influx of volunteers was impeded, and by February had ceased altogether, and the army, although suffering constant losses at the front, could receive but scanty reinforcements.

The Cossacks were now breaking up altogether. Kaledin called on the army to help him to defend Novocherkassk, but Kornilov refused, saying to the Hetman:

“To lay this task upon the army would mean to destroy it, and I cannot agree to that.”

The triumph of the Bolsheviks at Novocherkassk seemed inevitable, and the situation of the Don hopeless. Having, finally, lost all trust in his Cossacks, Kaledin shot himself.

The week which began with his suicide was the army's last week in Rostov. The days that followed were anxious and trying. To remain in Rostov had become dangerous, and it was decided to leave the city. The departure was fixed for February 9.

At 5 p.m. a number of men in travelling kit gathered in Paramonov's house. They consisted of Kornilov's field staff.

At the door were several sacks containing small packets of bandages for first aid, and each man took one, "because it might be useful." The word of command rang out, all formed ranks, and Kornilov, resting on his stick, led his staff in person, marching the entire eighteen versts² to Aksai on foot.

They were followed by the army, numbering about 3,500 men. The infantry presented a picture never seen before. It consisted almost exclusively of officers. There were many colonels, and even generals, who had seen service, and beardless cadets and other boys. The rifles they carried put them all on an equal footing.

Pressed by the Bolshevik, leaving a large, wealthy, brightly illuminated city, every moment expecting a treacherous volley from behind, it was not an army, but a handful of bold "Kornilov men," who set out on their unknown and dangerous wanderings, full of sorrow and privation, over dark, snow-covered, desert roads—set out without supplies, munitions, baggage-train, rearguard or sanitary organisation, carrying their wounded with them.

Such was the beginning of the volunteer campaign for the salvation and regeneration of Russia. The fire of love for their native land, the idea of a united Russia, illuminated the solitary, thorny, path of the army, whose faith in its leaders, Kornilov and Alexeiev, was boundless. And this army knew neither defeat nor retreat. Full of enthusiasm, it set out to fight a foe ten or twenty times its number. The Reds at that time already numbered over 200,000. They had all the necessary material at their disposal railways, stores, a wealth of supplies, artillery, ammunition in quantities scores of times greater than what the Volunteer Army had. What the latter needed it had to take from the enemy by main force, sometimes all but unarmed. Each day wove new laurels into its crown of thorns. Its legendary feats of arms and epic marches are the only bright pages in the gloomy history of the last year in the tortured and outraged land of Russia.

Unfortunately, we are unable to tell the story of the army in all its details, and must confine ourselves to a description only of the most characteristic episodes of its campaigns. These may be divided into three periods: (1) Kornilov's march on the Kuban (February and March ); (2) the march back to the Don (April); and (3) the second Kuban campaign (June to October).

II. KORNILOV'S MARCH ON THE KUBAN.

1.

On February 9 the army left Rostov and directed its course towards the stanitsa³ of Aksai (18 versts). Several versts from Aksai it was met by its scouts, who reported that the Cossacks of Aksai had declared themselves neutral," and declined to receive the army. But the prestige of Kornilov's name quickly produced the desired effect, and the army was able to pass the night at the stanitsa. On the following morning it crossed the Don and marched to the Olginskaya stanitsa (nine versts).

There it remained for two days, checked, and made an inventory of such articles as had been forgotten, but brought on later by the wounded from Rostov, and did what was possible for those needing medical attention. Notwithstanding the absence of any sanitary organisation, the almost complete want of drugs and the scanty supply of dressings, not one of the wounded was willing to remain in Rostov ; those who failed to set out with the army overtook it at Olginskaya; a few even struggled along on foot from Novocherkassk.

Altogether these numbered about eighty. There, at Olginskaya, on February 12, a council of war was held. Where were they to go next? Besides the representatives of the army—Alexeiev, Kornilov, Romanovsky, Denikin, Markov, Niezhintsev, and others—General Popov, Field Hetman of the Don Cossacks, was also present; he had at his disposal a body of 2,500 men, which had left Novocherkassk after its occupation by the Bolsheviks.

Three opinions were expressed at the council. General Kornilov wished to proceed to Astrakhan; the majority of the staff was for awaiting events at the Zimovniki (steppe farms), near the borders of the Stavropol Government; General Alexeiev was strongly in favour of marching to Ekaterinodar in the Kuban territory.

The Cossacks of the Kuban were also touched with the revolutionary ferment, but not to the same degree as those of the Don, though there were already such nests of Bolshevism in the territory as the Tergovaya, Tikhoretskaya, Kavkazskaya and Armavir stanitsa and other places, while thousands of propagandists and millions of Bolshevist pamphlets were beginning to infect the Cossacks with their virus. Nevertheless, the attitude of the mass of the Cossacks to this movement was a passive one, and there were hopes of recruiting troops from the local population. The mountaineers were especially calm, and even "counterrevolutionary." They had personal accounts to settle with the Bolsheviks. The Circassians were the only race among the local population who from beginning to end had shown themselves rabid opponents of Bolshevism⁴: the Reds had treated them with unheard-of cruelty; the auls (villages) had been sacked and burnt, and all the inhabitants, from old women down to babies at the breast, had been slaughtered. The thirst for vengeance which raged in the breasts of the Circassians may easily be imagined.

The least reliable element of the population were the so-called "uitlanders"—i.e., the Russian immigrants. They possessed no land, or possessed it in quantities incomparably smaller than the Cossacks, and they naturally found the promises of the Bolsheviks to equalise them a great temptation. The local Government, headed by Hetman Filimonov, still, however, remained in Ekaterinodar, notwithstanding the proximity of the newly-formed “Socialist Black Sea Republic," which claimed as its own the Black Sea and Stavropol Governments and the Kuban and Terek territories, with its capital at Novorossük, whence it kept up relations with such revolutionary centres as Odessa and Sebastopol.

In the Kuban territory, principally in the mountain districts. new units were formed for the Kuban and Volunteer armies. It was on these units that General Erdeli and General Pokrovsky worked. There were rumours also of special detachments, such as those of Colonel Shkuro, Bicherakhow and Baratov, which operated somewhere in the mountains.

Finally, there were hopes of coming into touch, one way or another, with the British, who were said to be on the Caspian coast and at Baku.

General Alexeiev's view, supported by these arguments, prevailed, more especially as the other proposals were difficult to carry out.

So, it was decided to make for the Kuban, with Ekaterinodar as the ultimate goal.

The whole army consisted of the following units:

The First Officers' Regiment, commanded by General Markov; the Kornilov Shock Regiment, commanded by Colonel Niezhintsev; the Guerilla Regiment, commanded by Major General Bagayevsky; and the Czecho-Slovak Battalion, commanded by Colonel Kral. The Officers' Regiment included the Cadet Battalion (the cadets and students of the town of Rostov), while the Kornilov Regiment included Simanovsky's detachment and Colonel Korniyenko's detachment of Knights of St. George.

The cavalry consisted of an Officers' Regiment, Colonel Glazenap's Division, and Colonel Kornilov's cavalry detachment.

There were eight guns with six hundred shells. Altogether the army consisted of about 3,500 men.

The journey the army had to face was a long one—about 300 versts, the first hundred being through the Don territory—that is, through a population whose sympathies were wholly with the Bolsheviks. The first day's march to the Khomootovskaya stanitsa (seventeen versts) was uneventful, but the evacuation of the wounded was carried on under the fire of the enemy. The first victim was a nurse, killed when helping to load the wounded.

At every stanitsa General Kornilov called a general meeting of the landowners, made a speech, explained the aim of the army and the purpose of the campaign, and tried to persuade the Cossacks to join. Some did so, but very few, and even those dropped out afterwards.

Parallel to the army, to the east, as had been agreed at the council of war at Olginskaya, marched General Popov's forces. His 2,500 men were a valuable support for the little army. Unfortunately, on February 18, General Popov refused to cooperate with the army any further. This decision was attributed partly to the influence of one Rosen (afterwards he turned out to be no colonel, but a shady character, and was shot), partly to the intrigues of the Cossack Leonov, who had acted as intermediary between Kornilov and Popov. Popov refused to go to the Kuban, and the army had to proceed alone. After the battle of February 24, at Lezhanka, with the soldiers of the once famous 39th Caucasian Division, the army entered the Kuban territory.

The hopes of at once meeting with better conditions of transit than in the Don territory were not fulfilled. The army found itself in an enemy country. True, the Kuban Cossacks did not attack it, but seeing the smallness of its numbers, and fearing the vengeance of the Bolsheviks. They remained passive, and, with few exceptions, gave it no support. On the other hand, the Bolsheviks began to move.

From all the stanitsi, along all the railway lines, countless masses of sailors, soldiers and peasants gathered against the army, having at their disposal an unlimited amount of munitions, armoured trains and all means of transport for the troops. The enemy constantly barred the way, surrounding the army with a closed ring, and forcing it to fight every day and all day long. It constantly had to carry on vanguard actions simultaneously with rear-guard actions. It was only General Kornilov's talent and courage, and his deep knowledge of his unwieldy foe that brought the army out of situations which seemed hopeless, and more than once saved it from imminent destruction.

Kornilov marched at the head of the leading column, covering dozens of versts with his confident stride; thousands of times, like the other fighters, he stood amidst a hail of bullets and of bursting shells. But he went on alert and bold, instilling his confidence into each and all. The army followed him blindly, capturing rebellious settlements, crossing railways, fording and swimming in the rivers of the Kuban.

The Bolsheviks could not hold their ground when the officers' battalions, erect, in open order, coolly, without firing, often with their rifles slung on their backs, advanced on their dense ranks. The enemy would then run, leaving supplies, shells, boxes of cartridges and rifles, wherewith the army renewed its scanty stores. But the fighting was no child's play; the ranks of the army grew thinner, yet continued to move towards its goal.

The advance was seriously hampered by the wounded: they were not left behind; there was no one with whom to leave them, and their numbers kept increasing, and there with the difficulties of accommodation and transport. The ambulance carts were placed in the middle of the army. Surrounded, as it was almost continually, on all sides, the army had to cover its wounded with a strong rear-guard. Kornilov led it so capably that the train of wounded was never once under gun or Maxim fire. At first the wounded were few, no more than about one hundred, but towards the end of the march they numbered over a thousand. The train then consisted of nearly as many carts, and covered only 8 to 10 versts daily; as roads were non-existent, the path lay through deep mud. This wounded train was a terrible encumbrance to the army.

But what else was to be done with these unfortunate men? As it was, many of those wounded who could not move from the field of battle perished, and they either shot themselves or asked their comrades to shoot them, lest they should fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks alive. The latter did not spare even the dead; they mutilated them, cut them into pieces, or burned them.

The care of the wounded, not only in the ambulance train but on the field of battle as well, lay mainly on the sisters.

Each regiment had several of these devoted, self-sacrificing women with it. Many of them did the work of regimental doctors, and often one might see their frail figures bending under the weight of their medical cases, running under fire from ditch to ditch to apply the first dressing to the wounded ,There were no male orderlies ; the sisters did their work as well. Many of them were killed in battle, many were brutally done to death and mutilated by the inhuman Bolsheviks. All these martyrs were wives, sisters, or daughters of the Volunteers.

2. ATTACK ON EKATERINODAR AND DEATH OF KORNILOV.

In the beginning of March, when the army was seventy versts from Ekaterinodar, news came that the town had been surrendered to the Bolsheviks, and that the Kuban Government (which was friendly to the Volunteer army) had taken refuge in the hills. Here were new disappointments, new complications. This news had a depressing effect on the spirits of the army, and changed the whole plan of campaign.

In Ekaterinodar they had hoped to find all that they needed enormous supplies of artillery, munitions, reinforcements, and rest. All this had fallen to the enemy. Again, the question arose, “Where to go?”

Alexeiev wished to continue the march to Ekaterinodar and storm the town, but General Kornilov was anxious for the safety of the army. It had been on the march for two whole months, amidst constant fighting and arduous conditions. It needed rest before such an assault, and reinforcements and ammunition. All this could only be found beyond the Kuban, among the foothills of the Caucasus, in the hospitable villages of the mountaineers. There, too, they might meet the detachments of General Erdeli and General Pokrovsky. And there they decided to go.

On March 4 they captured the Korenovskaya stanitsa.

There was a characteristic episode during this battle. The stanitsa was taken after an obstinate defence by the Bolsheviks. Kornilov rode out into the principal square and up to the Government offices of the settlement, and mounted on to the roof to survey the disposition of the enemy. At this moment an officer sent by General Bogayevsky, commanding the rear-guard, galloped up to report that the Bolsheviks had received strong reinforcements to the number of eight to ten thousand men from Tikhoretskaya on the east and Ekaterinodar on the west, that they were advancing in dense masses, and that large reinforcements were necessary.

General Kornilov sent a reinforcement of twenty men. When the messenger replied that this was not enough, General Kornilov answered: “It is enough, against this band it is enough.”

At the same time he gave orders to silence the battery which was covering the advance of the Bolsheviks, but allowed only ten shells to be used for this purpose. The result was the silencing of the battery and the flight of Bolshevist hordes before a handful of daring men. The bullets were still whistling through the streets of the stanitsa when Kornilov went in to receive bread and salt from the inhabitants.

From Korenovskaya they turned aside from Ekaterinodar, and moved to the south-east, towards the Ust-Labinskaya stanitsa, beyond the Kuban.

By this manœuvre Kornilov led the army out of the danger into which it was thrown in consequence of the surrender of Ekaterinodar. But this march, especially after Ust-Labinskaya, was a trying one—perhaps the most trying which had fallen to the lot of the long-suffering army.

At night, after a short rest at Ust-Labinskaya, the army directed its course to Nekrassovskaya, where it had to pass two days, nearly all the time under the fire of the enemy, as it had no more shells with which to silence the enemy's battery.

On the morning of March 7 the army crossed the Kuban, partly by ford and partly by ferry. Thereafter fighting continued for six days in succession, from March 6 to March 11, until the Volunteers reached the mountain villages, where they were able to rest. The Circassians, though despoiled by the Bolsheviks, greeted the Volunteers hospitably, and gave them all they could. They were exhausted and uneasy. And no wonder. Two days earlier, in a neighbouring village, the Bolsheviks had driven together some 250 boys, placed them in a row with their faces to a fence, and shot them all.

The old Circassians treated General Alexeiev with especial respect. The oldest of them approached him and bowed low, placing his hand on his heart. Alexeiev responded in the same manner. Then the old man unexpectedly stroked him on the cheek as a sign of especial respect and good-will.

At last the army could rest, and there was a rumour, too, that Erdeli was not far off. All connections with him had been lost since the departure from Rostov. Whether his detachment and the Kuban units under Pokrovsky had turned their steps after leaving Ekaterinodar was absolutely unknown; scouts were sent out to find them, but the search was unsuccessful. One can imagine the rejoicing when on March 11 a rumour ran through the baggage-train that a liaison body of cavalry had arrived from Erdeli's detachment. Cheers were heard, followed at once by shouts, "Silence, this is Bolshevik provocation i.e., a rumour circulated by the enemy.

As a matter of fact, Erdeli's detachment, along with the whole Government of the Kuban and Pokrovsky's forces, was some forty versts away at the Kaluzhskaya stanitsa, where on March 11 they had had an engagement with the Bolsheviks.

Their combined forces consisted of 2,500 men, who were worn out by the unequal struggle with the enemy. They were eager to meet the Volunteer Army, but did not know where it was, though they tried by every possible means to find it from the very beginning of the campaign, i.e., since February 26. During the night preceding March 7, the wireless apparatus erected in the Shendji aul (village), hundreds of versts away, had been sending call after call: "Kornilovtsi! Kornilovtsi! Volunteer Army!" But there was not, and could not be, any answer. They did not know that Kornilov had no wireless installation.

But on March 11, when the engagement at Kaluzhskaya was scarcely over, when the cheers had scarce died away with which the troops had greeted General Erdeli, the leader in the fight, a report ran along the line that certain Circassians had galloped up, crying "Kornilov, Kornilov!" And bringing the news that his army was making a forced march to join up with their detachment.

These rumours, too, were judged to be of a provocative character, and when in the twilight the baggage-train, quartered in a wood ,was approached by a scouting party of fifteen men with white badges on their caps, they were taken for spies, surrounded and taken to the staff. The scouts turned out to be messengers from Kornilov, and on the following day the stanitsa was ringing with joyful shouts "Hurrah, Kornilov! Hurrah!" A detachment of the Volunteer army was marching down the street.

Such was the long-hoped-for and yet so unexpected junction of the forces. The rejoicings were general. Everyone, both great and small, was reassured. All the units were now combined under the command of Kornilov.

It was decided to march on Ekaterinodar and take it by storm. On the way to that town, from March 16 to March 24, six engagements took place.

Most characteristic was the engagement of March 17 at the Novo-Dmitriyevskaya stanitsa, where a difficult task fell to the First Officers' Regiment.

It rained from the early morning, at first slightly, afterwards heavily. For eighteen versts the Volunteers had to march knee-deep in water, across swampy ground. They were all soaked to the skin. At 4 p.m. came frost and wind. The men were covered with ice. Their coats and cloaks were as stiff as if they had been starched; men and horses could scarcely move. Then came a storm of something between snow and hail, and at 5 p.m. the troops came to a river, separating them from the stanitsa, a torrent some 70-85 feet wide, swollen with rain and snow. The frozen detachment halted, uncertain what to do. Then their commander, General Markov, rode up, and, shouting "Forward! Follow me!" plunged into the river. The officers plunged in after him, holding their rifles high above their head. "Rather damp," jested the general, up to his breast in water, and striking out against the swift current. A portion of the troops were taken across on horses, two by two. On the other bank they had to be lifted off half-frozen. as they were unable to dismount. Kornilov himself also rode across. Soaked with water, he entered the stanitsa along with the troops. The Bolsheviks did not expect an attack in such weather, and had settled comfortably in the houses. Few of them escaped alive. The stanitsa was occupied almost without loss, and late in the evening, Kornilov, stiff with ice up to the waist, but rejoicing, was counting the booty.

In the annals of the army the engagement at Novo Dmitriyevskaya is called the "Icy fight." It is under this name, too, that it will pass into history.

The other stanitsas on the way to Ekaterinodar were not captured so cheaply. The engagement at Smolenskaya lasted twelve hours. The Bolsheviks had enormous supplies of shells, and did not spare them, firing even at solitary horsemen. Every fifty shells of the enemy the army could reply with only one. Nevertheless, one stanitsa after another passed into the hands of the Volunteers.

When Alexeiev and Kornilov rode into Elizavetinskaya, the last stanitsa before Ekaterinodar, the Cossacks greeted them with a ringing of the church bells and a procession of all the priesthood with their banners. Old men and young besought them with one voice:

“Save us from the Bolsheviks, we cannot bear them any longer!”

On the very first day the stanitsa gave the army eight hundred Volunteers. The enthusiasm was immense. All went confidently to the coming storm of Ekaterinodar; no one doubted or could doubt its success, though to the 17,000 Bolsheviks who at first were in the town with thirty guns, the army could oppose only 3,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and eight three-inch guns with 700 shells.

The first assault was made on March 26. The town was all but taken on that day. Unfortunately, the newly-formed Kuban units defending the railway line, who had never yet been engaged in battle, failed to stand the enemy's fire and retreated. This enabled the Bolsheviks to bring up reinforcements. They drew all their reserves into the town and continued to hold it in spite of their enormous losses.

The attack continued till the fifth day, and every day it seemed as if the town must fall, yet the final victory could not be secured. The Bolsheviks rained shells upon their foes: light and heavy guns thundered day and night. According to a modest estimate, during the first four days no fewer than 40,000 shells were fired; this against the 700 shells of the Volunteer Army.

The losses of the Volunteer Army were severe; the average per regiment was 70 percent; the regiment of St. George was reduced to less than a company; in the Kornilov and the Officers' regiments there were left but 25 to 30 men per company. The number of wounded already amounted to 1,200 men. Experienced fighters were replaced by raw recruits.

Colonel Niezhintsev, the commander of the Kornilov regiment, and a favourite with Kornilov and the whole army, was killed. The scanty ammunition was coming to an end. On the morning of March 31 the last 10,000 cartridges were issued.

On the preceding day the Bolsheviks had received new reinforcements. Yet no one had any doubt of final victory; the belief in victory was inspired by Alexeiev and Kornilov, who insisted on continuing the assault. The staff lived in the farm a little wooden house in a copse on a hill, whence a bird's-eye view of the town could be obtained. The copse was constantly under fire, which increased in volume, especially on March 30. On that day the shells fell alongside the farm buildings, and everyone advised Kornilov to change his quarters, but he was preparing a final blow for March 31, and so remained there.

Fate decided otherwise. The army received a blow which no one expected. On the morning of the 31st Kornilov was killed by a shell which burst in his room.

His death fell like a thunderbolt. No one could believe it, and when the fact could no longer be doubted, all were afraid to speak of it; the Cossacks did not say Kornilov is killed," but pointed upwards, saying “He is there.”

The spirit of the army was broken at once. Though, by the wish of Kornilov himself, the command passed into the hands of General Denikin, who was popular, and an experienced leader—yet to continue the engagement under the circumstances was too great a risk. At a council of war it was decided to break off the attack, and extricate the remnants of the gallant army from the grip of the Bolshevik hordes.

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1. These were some of the most senior leaders of the Russian military before the October Revolution that put the Bolsheviks in power. After the Czar was overthrown in the earlier February Revolution, a weak liberal (though not communist) parliamentary system called the Provisional Government took control. The Provisional Government was unstable and was eventually ended up in the hands Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky. In an extremely confusing series of events known as the Kornilov Affair, Kornilov (at Kerensky’s request) prepared troops to take control of the capital St. Petersburg after a failed Bolshevik uprising. There was a series of misunderstandings and miscommunications (the exact nature of which is still unclear) between Kerensky and Kornilov, which lead Kerensky to proclaim that Kornilov was attempting a rightwing coup. After Kornilov’s forces dispersed before entering St. Petersburg, Kornilov and other senior military leaders were arrested by Kerensky and imprisoned on dubious charges. These military leaders later escaped from Bykhov prison after the Bolsheviks overthrew Kerensky and the Provisional Government. To conservative Russians, it seemed as if these men had tried to save the country shortly before the Bolshevik takeover. These military leaders were almost universally held in high esteem for their actions, though it’s unlikely that they were actually attempting a coup during the Kornilov Affair.

2. A verst is an archaic Russian unit of measurement. It represents a little over a kilometer.

3. Cossack village

4. Circassians are a non-Russian ethnic group found in large numbers in the North Caucuses. They’re part of Russia’s Muslim minority, as a result were very hostile to Bolshevism. The Bolsheviks frequently made organized religion a target of their attacks, and played up existing racial and religious tensions in an effort to encourage violence against groups opposed to their rule.