Air Fronts: Theaters of Operation - European Theater of Operation: Hubert Griffith - R.A.F. in Russia - 3. Voyage

R.A.F. IN RUSSIA; by HUBERT GRIFFITH; DEDICATED TO WING-COMMANDER H. N. G. ISHERWOOD, D.F.C., A.F.C., Order of Lenin, and MAJOR - GENERAL KUZNETSOV, Red Air Force ; to the Fighter-Boys of No. 151 Wing, R.A.F. and to their Soviet opposite numbers. LONDON 1942.

CHAPTER III - VOYAGE

August

The voyage to Archangel needs no day-to-day narration, for it lasted more than a couple of weeks, and all the days except the first and the last of them, were singularly alike.

The route followed made a wide northern sweep, so wayward as to be reminiscent of Chesterton's " the night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head," but doubtless wise in all the circumstances. At one time a school of whales (three in number) was observed, spouting. At another time the route followed went so far north that (the time being still August) the sun hardly set at all : walking round the boat-deck at midnight the rim of the sun was seen to have set just below the horizon, and half an hour later it was on the point of rising. (This time it was an inverse anticipation of what was to follow. When the Wing left Murmansk at the beginning of December the " Arctic day " had so far been converted into the " Arctic night " that even round about midday the sun only by its reflections lightened up the snow. There was about three hours daylight instead of twenty-three.)

The liner had been but partially converted into a troop-ship-that is to say, her living quarters remained comfortable and uncrowded, alike for officers and troops. She had recently re-victualled in Cape Town ; delicacies scarce or unknown in England for a year or more, grape-fruit, jam, butter, eggs, the choice of half-a-dozen dishes for breakfast, remained on her menus. The routine for the troops was idleness and well-being, except for a few daily duties. There was a daily " Commanding-Officer's inspection " of quarters, as in usual troop-ship routine, when everything in the airmen's quarters had to be cleaned up and straightened down ; but apart from that there was very little to occupy their time, which was filled in with deck-games, some boxing, evening concerts, and the ever popular " Housey-House."

The liner was further unlike a troop-ship in that she carried a couple of dozen civilian passengers-the members of the Polish Legation, and their ladies with them, going out to Moscow ; members of the Czecho-Slovakian mission going out to Moscow ; Vernon Bartlett, M.P. ; Mrs. Charlotte Haldane ; Wallace Carrol, the American journalist, all going in the same direction ; and Topolsky, the Polish artist, skipping about the ship like a cheerful gnome, and never ceasing drawing.

It was decided to offer to the five hundred troops aboard a series of lectures, to fill in their spare time if they cared to attend. Attendance was entirely voluntary, but it turned out that everyone wanted to hear them ; and the main dining-saloon, that accommodated only two hundred and fifty, was made to do a double duty : there was a morning session of lectures at 11 o'clock, with a repeat of the lecture, for all those who had not been able to get in, at three o'clock in the afternoon.

The civilian contingent, being practised speakers, gave admirable lectures, each on his or her own subject, ranging from Mrs. Haldane's " Domestic Life in Russia," to Vernon Bartlett's " The General European Set-Up "—a sketch of prevailing European conditions. Each lecturer commented on the intelligence and directness of the questions fired at them by their audience of R.A.F. listeners. A series of three lectures was give by an officer of the Wing who had been born in, and lived much of his life in, the Russia of the Tsars, F/Lt. Hodson ; and I gave a lecture (with a special purpose) on Soviet Russia from an historical standpoint.

As it explains and interprets many of the events that follow in this short narrative, the gist of the argument can be given :

" With the exception of two or three of its interpreters and staff officers, the Wing is going out to a new country for the first time. All will have read something about Russia. Ninety-nine per cent. of everything that anybody will have read will have been biased-either exaggerated adulation from writers who pretend that everything in Modern Russia is an earthly Paradise-or else exaggerated detraction, pretending, in past years, that Russia is largely governed by lunatics, fanatics, and incompetents.

" But there is one historical ' key' which, if it is remembered well, may help us all in understanding much that we see and much that we come across in the next few months. It is this :-we are going to what was up to twenty-five years ago-a single generation ago-the most backward country in Europe by some two or three or four hundred years. This is not a matter of fancy. It is a matter of fact. The last French Ambassador to the Court of the Tsars, M. Paléologue, was a personal friend of the Tsar, and a believer in the old régime, and the last person in the world to be called a revolutionary. And yet he says, and repeats more than once in his ` Memoirs,' written about 1914, ` Russia is not a European country like other European countries, merely twenty or thirty or forty years behind the times. It is like the rest of Europe - as the rest of Europe was before the French Revolution, before the Reformation of the sixteenth century, before the Renaissance of the fourteenth century.' He thinks the phrase important enough to repeat it more than once in his diaries of the time. He puts the country, on an average, as being many hundred years out of date - back in the dark ages.

" Now how can we check up on this extraordinary statement ? We can check it up by historical facts. In the year 1914, 90 per cent. of the Russian population was illiterate - 90 per cent. of all the Russian peasant-soldiers, going to fight against Germany, could not read, could not spell out the simplest placard - and did not know if the " Germany " that they were fighting against was a man or a woman or a thing. . . . (In England we have had some sort of Compulsory Education Act for about sixty years.)

" In 1914, the Russian effort at a Parliament, the `Duma,' had been in existence only eight years, since 1906 - and of those eight years several of them had been spent with the Duma dissolved - because it did not agree exactly with the Tsar's policy. In other words, in all of the centuries of Russian history, the people had only been represented with a Parliament for less than ten years. (In England there had been a parliament with a continually-increasing influence since Simon de Mont-fort's in 1265 !)

" Last and most convincing fact of all : - ` Serfdom,' i.e., slavery, the condition when peasants ` belonged ' to the landowner, and were bought and sold with his land just like his cattle - was the general law of the land in Russia up to the year 1861 - up to within three generations ago, up to within living memory. Just think of that ! It means that there are still a few very old people in the country that we are going to, the few people who are now eighty years old or more, who were actually born under ` serfdom,' and can probably even remember serfdom-for serfdom was only abolished eighty-one years ago. It means that at the present moment there are thousands and thousands of middle-aged people in Russia whose parents were serfs ; and millions and millions of people, probably the majority of all living Russians, whose grandparents were serfs. In an historical perspective, to talk about serfdom in Russia is like talking about something that in England was still happening late in the reign of Queen Victoria. (But England abolished its own version of serfdom about the fourteenth century - that is to say about five hundred years ago.)

" From these three facts alone it will be seen that it is pretty generally accurate to talk about Russia as having been at least several centuries out of date at the time when the new Government came into power - twenty-five years ago. Is that point granted ?

" What is the use of making it now ? There is this use :-It may help us to see in right perspective a little of what we are going to see.

" It is obvious that there has been an enormous advance, almost inconceivable in its power and speed and wide scope, in the last twenty-five years. We are now going to a country that is so industrialized and organized and educated that it has been able to put into the field an Army that fights on equal terms with Hitler's - the only army in Europe that has been able to do this - the combined European armies of France and England in 1940 not excepted. . . . This means that the country must have been made modernly ` efficient ' to an extent that is staggering to the imagination, in martial science and industrial science and educational science (for all these things go to making an army that can beat Hitler's).

" But - by just the same token - don't believe that everything can have been done in those short twenty-five years - or that everything can have been done equally well.

" We all know that we are going to a point near Murmansk - that is to say, a point somewhere within the Arctic Circle - a point in the Russian Empire that is about equivalent (in the British Empire) to somewhere in the Outer Hebrides, a land of no luxury, and only the barest civilization, either by modern standards or any other standards.

" If anybody has been misguided enough to tell you that modern Russia is a land flowing with milk and honey, please believe that the milk and honey is not likely to extend so far as the Outer Hebrides of Russia. We are going to what we - with normal English standards - would call a rather ` poor ' land, for it has been putting half its National Budget for years past into the demands of creating the Army that is now beating Hitler's ; and we are going to see only the outer rim of it just as though a Russian Wing were suddenly going to be billeted for a few months in a place called Scapa or Stornoway.

" If by any chance you have read papers, and seen pictures, dealing with modern Russian architecture, culture, science, beauty, leisure - forget it ! With regard to where we are going, it is possible that we will have a camp of wooden huts, set down in a mud-flat - and seeing the geographical situation that we will be in, we will have to grin and pretend that we like it. (It is possible that this would be just about what we would be able to give a Russian air-force Wing that had to camp down, with us, for a few autumn and winter months, in Northern Scotland or Skye.)

" The Russians seem to be doing the fighting - and to be doing it pretty well. Let that suffice for the moment. And that alone is some claim on our good temper and gratitude."

The lecture had a purpose, other than mere filling in time. It was intended to prepare the troops for some pretty rough living. If living conditions turned out better than anticipated, no harm would have been done. The troops would merely be agreeably disappointed.

The voyage draws to an end. The Convoy heads south. Next day the liner arrived at Archangel. The voyage is at an end. Lectures, idleness, late breakfasts, are all at an end ! In the morning there will be movement, and movement in a big way.

The Wing, after its holiday on board ship, will have to become mobile - rapidly.