DreamCatcher Forums - Baron Roman Fyodorovich Ungern von Sternberg

http://www.worldwideschool.org/libra...ds/chap37.html

... The door of the yurta suddenly swung open and an adjutant snapped into a position of attention and salute.

"Why do you enter a room by force?" the Baron exclaimed in anger.

"Your Excellency, our outpost on the border has caught a Bolshevik reconnaissance party and brought them here."

The Baron arose. His eyes sparkled and his face contracted with spasms.

"Bring them in front of my yurta!" he ordered.

All was forgotten--the inspired speech, the penetrating voice--all were sunk in the austere order of the severe commander. The Baron put on his cap, caught up the bamboo tashur which he always carried with him and rushed from the yurta. I followed him out. There in front of the yurta stood six Red soldiers surrounded by the Cossacks.

The Baron stopped and glared sharply at them for several minutes. In his face one could see the strong play of his thoughts. Afterwards he turned away from them, sat down on the doorstep of the Chinese house and for a long time was buried in thought. Then he rose, walked over to them and, with an evident show of decisiveness in his movements, touched all the prisoners on the shoulder with his tashur and said: "You to the left and you to the right!" as he divided the squad into two sections, four on the right and two on the left.

"Search those two! They must be commissars!" commanded the Baron and, turning to the other four, asked: "Are you peasants mobilized by the Bolsheviki?"

"Just so, Your Excellency!" cried the frightened soldiers.

"Go to the Commandant and tell him that I have ordered you to be enlisted in my troops!"

On the two to the left they found passports of Commissars of the Communist Political Department. The General knitted his brows and slowly pronounced the following:

"Beat them to death with sticks!"

He turned and entered the yurta. After this our conversation did not flow readily and so I left the Baron to himself.

After dinner in the Russian firm where I was staying some of Ungern's officers came in. We were chatting animatedly when suddenly we heard the horn of an automobile, which instantly threw the officers into silence.

"The General is passing somewhere near," one of them remarked in a strangely altered voice.

Our interrupted conversation was soon resumed but not for long. The clerk of the firm came running into the room and exclaimed: "The Baron!"

He entered the door but stopped on the threshold. The lamps had not yet been lighted and it was getting dark inside, but the Baron instantly recognized us all, approached and kissed the hand of the hostess, greeted everyone very cordially and, accepting the cup of tea offered him, drew up to the table to drink. Soon he spoke:

"I want to steal your guest," he said to the hostess and then, turning to me, asked: "Do you want to go for a motor ride? I shall show you the city and the environs."

Donning my coat, I followed my established custom and slipped my revolver into it, at which the Baron laughed.

We went out to the gate where the big Fiat stood with its intruding great lights. The chauffeur officer sat at the wheel like a statue and remained at salute all the time we were entering and seating ourselves.

"To the wireless station!" commanded the Baron.

We veritably leapt forward. The city swarmed, as earlier, with the Oriental throng, but its appearance now was even more strange and miraculous. In among the noisy crowd Mongol, Buriat and Tibetan riders threaded swiftly; caravans of camels solemnly raised their heads as we passed; the wooden wheels of the Mongol carts screamed in pain; and all was illumined by splendid great arc lights from the electric station which Baron Ungern had ordered erected immediately after the capture of Urga, together with a telephone system and wireless station. He also ordered his men to clean and disinfect the city which had probably not felt the broom since the days of Jenghiz Khan. He arranged an auto-bus traffic between different parts of the city; built bridges over the Tola and Orkhon; published a newspaper; arranged a veterinary laboratory and hospitals; re-opened the schools; protected commerce, mercilessly hanging Russian and Mongolian soldiers for pillaging Chinese firms.

In one of these cases his Commandant arrested two Cossacks and a Mongol soldier who had stolen brandy from one of the Chinese shops and brought them before him. He immediately bundled them all into his car, drove off to the shop, delivered the brandy back to the proprietor and as promptly ordered the Mongol to hang one of the Russians to the big gate of the compound. With this one swung he commanded: "Now hang the other!" and this had only just been accomplished when he turned to the Commandant and ordered him to hang the Mongol beside the other two. That seemed expeditious and just enough until the Chinese proprietor came in dire distress to the Baron and plead with him:

"General Baron! General Baron! Please take those men down from my gateway, for no one will enter my shop!"

"The wireless, Excellency!" reported the chauffeur.

"Turn in there!" ordered the General.

On the top of a flat hill stood the big, powerful radio station which had been partially destroyed by the retreating Chinese but reconstructed by the engineers of Baron Ungern. The General perused the telegrams and handed them to me. They were from Moscow, Chita, Vladivostok and Peking. On a separate yellow sheet were the code messages, which the Baron slipped into his pocket as he said to me:

"They are from my agents, who are stationed in Chita, Irkutsk, Harbin and Vladivostok. They are all Jews, very skilled and very bold men, friends of mine all. I have also one Jewish officer, Vulfovitch, who commands my right flank. He is as ferocious as Satan but clever and brave. . . . Now we shall fly into space."

Once more we rushed away, sinking into the darkness of night. It was a wild ride. The car bounded over small stones and ditches, even taking narrow streamlets, as the skilled chauffeur only seemed to guide it round the larger rocks. On the plain, as we sped by, I noticed several times small bright flashes of fire which lasted but for a second and then were extinguished.

"The eyes of wolves," smiled my companion. "We have fed them to satiety from the flesh of ourselves and our enemies!"

Anew the motor car was rushing along, sweeping a great circle on the prairie, and anew Baron Ungern with his sharp, nervous voice carried his thoughts round the whole circumference of Asian life.

"Russia turned traitor to France, England and America, signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and ushered in a reign of chaos. We then decided to mobilize Asia against Germany. Our envoys penetrated Mongolia, Tibet, Turkestan and China. At this time the Bolsheviki began to kill all the Russian officers and we were forced to open civil war against them, giving up our Pan-Asiatic plans; but we hope later to awake all Asia and with their help to bring peace and God back to earth. I want to feel that I have helped this idea by the liberation of Mongolia."

He became silent and thought for a moment.

"But some of my associates in the movement do not like me because of my atrocities and severity," he remarked in a sad voice. "They cannot understand as yet that we are not fighting a political party but a sect of murderers of all contemporary spiritual culture. Why do the Italians execute the 'Black Hand' gang? Why are the Americans electrocuting anarchistic bomb throwers? and I am not allowed to rid the world of those who would kill the soul of the people? I, a Teuton, descendant of crusaders and privateers, I recognize only death for murderers! . . . Return!" he commanded the chauffeur.

An hour and a half later we saw the electric lights of Urga...

After the meeting with the Baron my Cossacks became very attentive to me and sought to distract me with stories. They told me about their very severe struggles with the Bolsheviki in Transbaikalia and Mongolia, about the battle with the Chinese near Urga, about finding communistic passports on several Chinese soldiers from Moscow, about the bravery of Baron Ungern and how he would sit at the campfire smoking and drinking tea right on the battle line without ever being touched by a bullet. At one fight seventy-four bullets entered his overcoat, saddle and the boxes by his side and again left him untouched. This is one of the reasons for his great influence over the Mongols. They related how before the battle he had made a reconnaissance in Urga with only one Cossack and on his way back had killed a Chinese officer and two soldiers with his bamboo stick or tashur; how he had no outfit save one change of linen and one extra pair of boots; how he was always calm and jovial in battle and severe and morose in the rare days of peace; and how he was everywhere his soldiers were fighting...