Aiding Siberia

An American Nurse in the Russian Civil War

In 1918, Florence Emilie Hoffman was a young journalist working for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. She wrote under the byline of Felicia Forrester, and many of her published writings were tongue-in-cheek spoofs--she was a master of light, frivolous or flippant pieces. Yet she also did investigative reporting, exposing such things as the squalid conditions that existed in Honolulu tenements. In reporting on a barnstormer working the islands, she became the first woman to fly in an airplane in Hawaii.

While she lived a life in relative luxury in Hawaii, Florence Hoffman longed for adventure and wanted to help those suffering in Siberia during Russia’s Civil War. So, when Hoffman’s editor, Riley Allen, prepared to lead a 14-member Red Cross unit to Siberia to help refugees there, she jumped at the chance to join him, setting sail for Vladivostok on November 15, 1918, aboard the Japanese ship Shinyo Maru.

What follows are a collection of the dispatches and letters that Hoffman wrote for the Star-Bulletin and for family, as well as photos she took while working in Siberia, many never before published. As one of America’s first female war correspondents, she offers a first-hand perspective on the history of this era that is as colorful as it is compelling.

The materials are provided by her son Lawson Hill, who is writing a book on his mother’s incredible adventures.

After arriving in Vladivostok, Hoffman and the rest of the Red Cross unit traveled by armored train on the Chinese Eastern Railroad to a Red Cross hospital in Buchedu, Manchuria. There, as a nurse’s aide, Hoffman ministered to sick and wounded Czech soldiers, who were part of the powerful Czech Legion that controlled much of the Trans-Siberian rail line. The Czechs, some who had been prisoners of war and some who had fought on the side of the Tsar’s army in World War I, sought to leave Russia through Vladivostok after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk took Russia out of the war.

January 1, 1919 * Buchedu, Manchuria

Well, we certainly have something in store for us now. Yesterday we received a telegram announcing the pending arrival of 70 tuberculosis patients from Omsk. The train that is bringing them will take away 50 surgical patients. Our new patients will have been nearly three weeks on the train and will arrive tired and dirty and utterly dependent—we already have more than we can handle. I hate losing my nice surgical patients, they were all fine fellows, and are very much like American boys. I watched my first grown man die the other day, and I was the only person with him, and I could not help but think of his mother—he was only 22—so I held his hand a minute although he was absolutely unconscious and had been for two days.

We must get more nurses—but when we telegraphed for more nurses they telegraphed back there were no American nurses available; and our head nurse won't have any more Russians; they are dirty and carry on with the patients. But just think—a hundred and two very sick patients and only three nurses—more patients than they have at Queen's Hospital [Hawaii]. The head nurse will have to turn to and do ward work—and Alice Lynes is going to try and find the time to come over and help.

Well, this is a tremendous proposition—one that is not given to every one to face—and it will give us a chance to prove what we can do.

.... The sun does not come up until half-past eight, and when we get up at 7 it seems like getting up in the middle of the night. We have two Czech soldiers for house servants, and every morning one comes up to fill up pitchers that we left outside the door, with hot water to wash in. He wears big Cossack boots and when he is filling those pitchers he makes enough noise to wake the dead. After he has finished he goes gently to each door and knocks on it for us to get up. It is too ridiculous for words. Now we use that Christmas rattle you put in my box for a rising and dinner bell and those colored balls you sent us were great. I took them over to the patients and they played with them until they broke, and then one of them put one on his head. Immediately a few of the convalescents were so inspired that they dressed up in some awful bathrobes supplied by some Red Cross chapter with color blind members, strapped on their weird Czech swords around their waists, fixed the balls on their heads so that they looked like Turkish turbans, and gave an impromptu vaudeville act. It kept the other patients in gales of laughter for a whole evening, and was a real godsend. The poor performers were rather done up after the show, however—most of them are pretty sick men though they keep a stiff upper lip.

When the hospital in Buchedu was closed because the Czech soldiers were sent on to Vladivostok and home, Hoffman was sent west, to Omsk. There she helped care for Russian refugees until the worsening fortunes of the White forces in the Civil War required the mission to return to Vladivostok.

??? 1919 * Buchedu, Manchuria

We are leaving today for "the front”—we have no more definite orders, and will not have until our train gets in. We know we are going as far as Omsk, and everything points to our going still farther to Yekaterinburg. We are going on a Red Cross train which will be anywhere from three to five weeks on the way. We bring our own bedding with us on the train, and are to put four in a coupe, which is about half the size of a stateroom on the Kinau. There is of course no bath on the train, and we will be lucky if we get any water to watch our face and hands in. Coming up to Buchedu we were limited to 1 cup of water for washing purposes. Fancy that -- on a dirty train. But think of it again -- when it lasts for five weeks. And then when you get to your destination, half of the time you can't get a decent bath. In Vladivostok we were obliged to go to the Russian public baths every time we wished to bathe, and up here we can take a choice between the dish pan or the patients’ foot tub. There is no other method available. Mr. Bukeley [a former Honolulu bank cashier, now volunteering for the Red Cross] passed through here a week ago on the typhus train and picked up Dr. Jackson. The typhus train is beautifully fitted up with baths and electric lights and all the comforts of home. We did not see Mr. Bukeley as the train passed through in the middle of the night, but he sent us up the following cheery message: "Aloha—will give you a bath in Omsk." That's rubbing it in for you, isn't it?

I hope when I reach the front to write you a real Felicia Forester human-interest story, but for the time being I have to concentrate on how to lead the life of a sardine and still retain my sweet disposition. I will be all prepared to be packed in oil and spend the rest of my days inside of a can.

As it turned out, because of a lack of suitable housing, Hoffman and the other volunteers had to live out of the boxcar they traveled in from Vladivostok to Omsk. And they would be going no further toward the front lines.

March 24, 1919 * Omsk, Siberia

Ten days of Omsk finds me ready to move on to the next place--just why I don't like this place I couldn't tell you--I just don't. In the first place, it is slow. There is no fighting going on here at all--no excitement. There is no fun in being at a front that is as safe as a Sunday school. Of course, this isn't really the front—the front is 300 miles farther along at Perm and Ufa. [Hoffman is mistaken here; the distance from Omsk to Perm is 800 miles. – The Editors]

I think that the Red Cross is going to establish hospitals in those parts very soon and I certainly hope that I get ordered to one of them. In the meantime there is nothing for me to do but to continue scrubbing the bugs off the refugees. Yes, that is my job--bug scrubbing. Miss Babb and I work in the refugee barracks, and just now we are disinfecting them all, bathing the refugees and disinfecting their clothes.

It is a dirty job. The refugees live like animals, and are just alive with vermin. The barracks are low, long buildings built of logs and any old boards that could be scraped together. These are about 300 feet long and 80 feet wide, and each one contains about 300 refugees and all their goods and chattels. They are heated by huge stoves placed at intervals, and each refugee has a crude little stove of his own to cook by. They never have a window or door open, so there is no ventilation whatever, except what comes through the cracks of the walls. You can imagine that you can cut the air with a knife, and the smell is so strong that it nearly overpowers you. There are no floors to the barracks except the earth that God put there, and a lot of extra dirt that the refugees track in. The plan of the living quarters is like this--there are long narrow platforms about eight feet wide stretching down the length of the barracks with narrow aisles between and another platform overhead.

The refugees each curtain off about six feet with old rags and live in this small space--a family of six or eight sometimes to a space 6 by 8. If they have an unusually large family sometimes they have the platform above as well, but as a rule you have one family living bottomside and another on top. In addition to their family, they have their miscellaneous luggage, their filthy bedding, and a few odd utensils. They keep their stove in the aisle. Some of the more prosperous ones have a few belongings like a spinning wheel, and I saw one or two with small hand sewing machines. Everything is dirty and covered with vermin. The refugees have the filthiest habits and live like animals. They are all half sick and seven-eighths starved. Practically all of them have had typhus and have never gotten well again. Half have the scurvy, and some of these are so saturated with poison in their systems that if you poked your finger into them it would make a hole. About every third one has tuberculosis, and some have a combination of all these diseases. And of course, they are all suffering from malnutrition in some form or other.

Occasionally you come across a healthy person, particularly amongst the children--and the Russian children certainly are pretty. It's been all I could do to keep from adopting six or seven. But such shabby little waifs--you can't imagine the rags--it's pitiful. No stockings--just old bits of rags wrapped around their feet, and then those poor little feet stuck into a pair of old boots miles too big for them, and at that some bare toes are sticking out. Some of them have Russian felt boots, and those are the lucky ones, because the felt boots are ugly but warm.

The other day I saw a baby of two wearing a pair of men's boots--apparently cast off by his father. The poor little tot could not walk--he just kind of dragged himself along.

There was a little girl among those whom I scrubbed last week. She was a rosy cheeked little monkey with sparkling black eyes, and she thought it great fun to get a bath. I found out that she was an orphan with only an older brother to take care of her. She danced around the "banya," or bath house, with great glee, and she looked so sweet with her little fat legs and little fat stomach--the only fat one in the whole bunch--that you wanted to hug her. But a terrible catastrophe happened to her. When we had disinfected her clothes and she started to get dressed, she discovered that one of the rags that she called a stocking was gone. She was immediately in tears and hunted frantically all over, sobbing as if her heart would break. We all hunted, too--the head Russian, three Austrian prisoners and myself—but it could not be found. With the thermometer at 40 below, it is something of a tragedy to lose a sock. The next day I got a pair of socks from the Red Cross distributing rooms and brought them to her. She was so delighted, and sat right down and put them on while I tried not to see the bare toes of the kids around me. Poor things--they all need so much--but half the time when you give the clothes to the mothers for the children, they turn around and sell them, and the youngsters have to go without.

Well, I haven't finished telling you about my scrubbing. Just now, as I said before, we are cleaning out the barracks all over Omsk. The refugees are all sent to the banya where I am in charge. I see that they have kerosene put thoroughly on their heads and send them into the bath where they scrub themselves. In the meantime, we snitch their clothes and put them into a sterilizer. Sometimes their clothes are not ready when they come out of the bath and they have to sit around in their birthday suits for fifteen or twenty minutes until we catch up with ourselves in the process of delousing their garments.

After that comes the hardest struggle of all, when we have to take away the "shubas," or goatskin coats that most of them have, and send them up to the city disinfecting plant where they can be disinfected without being injured. Such a wailing and protesting and general indignation meeting--but they must relinquish the shubas or leave the barracks, and they generally come around all right in the end. We give them blankets to wrap around themselves until the shubas come back. After they are bathed and disinfected, they are given a permit to go to the isolation barracks where they remain until their own barracks is thoroughly cleaned up, whitewashed and disinfected. Then we tackle the next barracks. Don't have any rosy visions of porcelain bathtubs at this banya. It is nothing but a big room with wooden floors and benches and taps of running water. Each bather has a dishpan and a piece of soap and all the hot water he wants. About 30 generally bathe at once. Yesterday we scrubbed a hundred and fifty in one day--quite a day's work, n'est ce pas? Altogether last week we bathed and disinfected 600 refugees--but there are over 15,000 in Omsk. A great many of them live in "zyemlyankas" or dugouts. They have dug great holes in the ground, lined them with boards, and there they live--snug as a bug in a rug. I should say that several thousand refugees live in the zyemlyankas and what they are going to do when the snow thaws and the water starts to leak into their mansions, I don't like to think about. Miss Babb wants to clean up the zyemlyankas, too, but just at present she can't think of any way to do it. I am hoping that she will never be able to think of a way. Although we are cleaning up all the barracks, our particular hangout is at the Andreivski barracks. These are in a compound about a mile and a half from the train where we live, and I walk over there every day. When I am not scrubbing, I go through these barracks--which are composed of seven buildings--and find out who is sick and who needs milk and can't pay for it; who would work if we found them a job, and who could work but is too lazy. Then we have a little school with Russian teachers, who teach all the refugee children who want to come and are sufficiently clean. We have 300 enrolled now. We are also going to teach them how to sew, and have the material for a dress or suit for each one. Today I took their measurements--for the whole 300--and that also was a day's work. We weren't able to do any disinfecting because the water pipes were broken. I had hoped that they would stay broken awhile, but Miss Babb found another barracks where the pipes were in fine condition and the refugees even dirtier than at the Andreivski barracks. Miss Babb is an enthusiastic scrubber, but my own personal enthusiasm doesn't run so high. As a matter of fact, if it rested with me, I fear the refugees would stay dirty. In the first place, they keep the banya at a temperature of 212 degrees at least, and the place reeking with steam. That's enough to take the pep out of any earnest worker.

The costume that I wear at my work is a very elaborate one. First, there is my regular nursing uniform. Then I put on the big rubber boots that you sent me. After that I put on a sort of yama yama suit with a hood, tied down at the ankles and wrists and around the neck. Underneath the hood I wear a trench cap to keep my head warm when I go outside. Finally I put on an apron to let people know that I belong to the female sex, and with a liberal smearing of kerosene, I am considered bug proof. As soon as I get back to the train, I get out my l'il ole basin and scrub myself all over with hot water and disinfectant, searching carefully for any cooties that might have found a weak spot in my armor. So far I have escaped with only two fleas that are really so harmless that they are not worth counting.

I am really getting quite reconciled to living on a train. My coupe is a "poor thing but mine owne," and I have solved the problem of how to live in a packing box to such an extent that my quarters seem almost spacious now. There are six women living in this coach, including Miss Lynes and myself. Then we have Mr. Baker, head of the refugee work in Omsk, and six Czech soldiers who act in the capacity of caretakers, cooks and chambermaids. We then have another coach--a fourth class box car where four more refugee workers are living, and another box car for a dining car. There are two other box cars used for storing things and work rooms. I now have a little Perfection oil stove which is the joy of my life. My coupe was so cold that everything froze. There would be several inches of ice in my pitcher. One night I spilt some water on the floor and the next morning it was solid ice. It's a great pity my coupe isn't a little larger--we could have some fine ice skating in it.

It seems that every place I go, the bathing question becomes a little worse. In Buchedoo we had only a foot tub to bathe in, and here we have only a basin. I suppose that the next place I will be reduced to a cup and after that, there will be only "pitt."

Everything is so expensive here, and the stores are absolutely without stock--there are no bits of Russian jewelry or anything like that to be had. I have been offered a thousand roubles for my typewriter. Food is so dear, too. We paid 15 roubles for a tiny can of mustard--at the present exchange that is a dollar and a half. Conditions are even worse as you get further toward the front. We hear most terrible tales.

As I said before, there is no excitement in Omsk. The Russians and Czechs have the Bolsheviks just about where they want them. If any Boly gets obstreperous, they dig a hole in the ice, and stick him into the river--a method of execution that is slightly chilly for the Bolshevik but very economical for the munitions department.

July 20, 1919 * Omsk, Siberia

One of the worst phases of refugee life in Omsk, as proved by the statistics of American Red Cross workers, has now turned out to be living in the barracks, or prison camps, which were turned over to the "byergenci" [byezhentsy, “refugees”] when they first fled from European Russia to Siberia several years ago. When the flood of refugees began to pour into Omsk, the city, which ordinarily had a population of 200,000, was already congested with soldiers, and practically without further accommodations for man, woman, child or beast. Yet thousands came and continued to come, imploring shelter and protection of some kind. Almost overnight, what with soldiers and refugees, the population sprang to 600,000, and it is estimated that of these, over one hundred thousand were refugees.

Without regard to the number of cubic feet of air needed per person for ventilation, without regard for sanitation, hygiene or any of the modern necessities, with no thought except to get them out of the awful ice and snow and under cover, the Russians packed as many as could be possibly packed into dwellings and town lodgings. Hundreds were allowed to live in boxcars in the railroad yards. Thousands lived in "zemlyankas", or dugouts, beneath the ground, which they lined with wood, and heated with small stoves when they could get the fuel. Then finally some of the prison barracks were cleared of their inmates and turned over for the use of the refugees.

This last move was supposed to have solved the refugee problem as far as housing them was concerned. But though the refugees had a roof over their heads, and were fairly warm during the winter, that is about all that could be said for the barracks. On the other hand, a mortality rate of 14 percent, and an average sick rate of 70 percent is but a small indication of the horrors of such an existence.

The barracks were all low, log buildings about 200 feet long, around which in the winter time the snow was piled almost to the window ledges. Each barrack was divided into two sections about 40 feet wide, and 90 feet long, and each section was filled with from 150 to 200 refugees--the average being 300 people to a barrack.

In most of the cases, there were no floors except the muddy clay on which the foundation had been built--to which might be added the dirt tracked in by the refugees. The windows were of the double, storm-proof variety nailed up tight, and additionally sealed by layers of ice and dirt. Finally, double doors made it impossible for any air to get into the barracks except what could sift through the walls. This small amount immediately became polluted by the smoke from small stoves which the refugees placed in the aisleways and corners for cooking purposes, and the fumes from the cheap cigarettes smoked by many of the men. Three hundred people inhaled this stale air, and in turn exhaled poisons from systems fouled by long years of disease and privation.

The barracks were very dark and gloomy. The few windows were so heavily coated with ice and snow as to admit very little light even on a bright day, and with the skies gray and cold as they are eight months out of the year in Siberia, it meant almost total darkness within. That made two counts against the barrack life--no ventilation, and no light.

The third and worst count was the manner in which the refugees lived in these barracks. So many people living in such small quarters could not of course, be housed in the usual manner. There had been built for the former prisoners, long rows of platforms in double and sometime triple tiers, about twelve feet wide and stretching the length of the room, with aisle ways about three feet wide between the rows. Each platform was subdivided again into spaces about six feet by seven, and curtained off from the next space with old rags. A family of six would live in one of these small sections, sleeping on old rags with their scanty possessions piled around them. Another family would sleep above them, and in some cases, a third family over that.

Huddled together like so many animals, covered with filth and alive with vermin, half starved, totally debilitated, they succumbed to almost every known disease. Fully three fourths of them had typhus, and those who did not die, never seemed to regain their strength. Hundreds had scurvy, their systems so saturated with the poison that their flesh fairly rotted off. There were also hundreds with inflammatory rheumatism, and scores with nutritional nichtalopia, or night blindness, brought on by lack of fats in the system from prolonged starvation. Practically every third person had tuberculosis, and some had a combination of all these diseases.

Coughing, expectorating, scratching, tracking in dirt but never cleaning any out, they lived in their own filth, worse than animals, their senses so dulled that they did not even appreciate their own misery. Those who were able to, worked, but the majority of them were either too ill or too listless to care about work even if any could be found for them--which was difficult. They lived the best way they could on scraps of food, and bread from the city, eking out their small store of rubles which they brought with them by selling their few poor belongings.

In many cases, it was incomprehensible how they lived. Light work, such as knitting, spinning, was furnished for about a thousand by the American Red Cross, which also secured employment for those who could and would work.

When the American Red Cross first started its relief work among the refugees in Omsk last November, the latter had been living in these frightful barracks for two years and longer. It was impossible to move them out into better and more sanitary quarters for the simple reason that there were no better and more sanitary quarters to move them into. It was impossible to build or even improve those that were there because of the lack of lumber. The Red Cross gave milk to those who were sick and without means of support, gave clothes to those whose need was desperate, equipped a hospital, furnished medicines for a dispensary, disinfected the barracks and their inmates, started a school for the children for whom all education had stopped during the past three years, and in every way tried to alleviate the conditions of misery that existed.

Investigations were carried on constantly in the barracks; dugouts, box cars and town lodgings, and some interesting figures were recently compiled. The "zyemlyankas" which at first were thought to be the most unhealthful of living conditions, because of being under ground and naturally abnormal in every respect, proved to be the direct opposite, and showed the lowest percent of sickness and death. This was attributed to the fact that there were seldom more than two families living in one dugout--in other words, comparative isolation. The barracks on the other hand, showed themselves to be the most detrimental to health and morale.

Of 2517 refugees living in the dugouts investigated by the Red Cross, only 176 were obviously ill, and the general run of good health was high. In the town lodgings and box car, the number was a little higher. Of the 2826 refugees living in the barracks, however, investigated on one average day, 564 were found to be obviously ill--that is, with such diseases as typhus, pneumonia and scurvy. Seventy percent were either ill or convalescing from illness, or so greatly debilitated as to be in a sick condition.

Though the Russian is a hardy race, 14 percent of the people living in barracks succumbed to disease, these being the Red Cross figures over a period of six months. It was nothing unusual for a Red Cross worker, on visiting a family, to find that two and three members of it had died since a previous visit a month before.

These poor human beings are still living in the barracks in Omsk, though a great effort is being made by the Red Cross and the Russian government to build "zyemlyankas" before the onslaught of winter. It is now the end of the third year since these peasants were driven from their little farms by the atrocities of the Germans and Bolsheviks in European Russia. They long for their own little villages and few acres as only an agricultural people can long. There is very little doubt, but that they will be obliged to spend the coming winter in the barracks--one more winter of this degradation and misery. With even more desperate living conditions, scarcity of food, a more lowered vitality, how they will survive another year is a matter not pleasant to think upon.

June 15, 1919 * Omsk, Siberia

To find the needle in the haystack—and for that needle to be your own wife and family lost in the great wilderness called Siberia! It is a reason—one of many reasons—daily events with the American Red Cross—why Red Cross workers stick to their guns through the cold and hardships and many personal discomforts of Siberia. But here is the story.

A Russian soldier named Nikolai Ivanoff, who had been in a German prison camp for three years, was recently released and with hundreds of others shipped to Omsk, the seat of the All-Siberian government. He arrived in Omsk ragged, tired, hungry, homeless. While he had been a prisoner the Bolshevik uprising had occurred. The Red Guards had razed his native village. Three years before he had left his brave young wife and two babies in that village. Were they dead, or were they refugees, fleeing before the horrors of the Bolsheviki? At either thought his heart sank. To be a refugee—homeless in the bitter cold of Siberia, hungry in a land where even the rich could not buy food! He pictured the bare toes of the little Ivan and no small boots to be had in Siberia for the children. And then he could not let himself think of it any longer, but started in to hunt for the three who belonged to him.

It’s something of a job—searching Siberia for a family. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, scurrying in terror before the Germans and Bolsheviks alike, scattering like chaff, have either died or been completely lost sight of. Whole families have been wiped out, leaving never a trace nor a memory to show that such souls had been. Those that survived were sprinkled over thousands of square miles, from Ufa to Vladivostok.

Nikolai began his search in Omsk. More than a hundred thousand refugees live in Omsk. Nikolai tried all the official channels of the Russian government, but there was no record of his wife and babies. They told him to go to the American Red Cross.

In the city of Omsk the American Red Cross handles over 25,000 refugees. Some live in huts and houses, some in zyemlyankas or dugouts scraped out from under the snow, others live in box cars, and several thousand in barracks. The Red Cross holds complete records of them all.

Nikolai plodded hopelessly over the snow to the barracks, and inquired of the byergenci (refugees) for his family. No one knew Marie Ivanoffa, and the little Ivan and Olga—they were not there. He was about to turn away when he saw a Red Cross worker. He asked her about his wife—his young wife and the two babies. Did she know where they were? The Red Cross woman looked in the Red Cross records, and there they were written down, Marie, Ivan and Olga. Yes, all were living, no, not in the barracks but in a zyemlyanka. The malchik [little boy] Ivan was sick, but the American nurse came to see him every day. They had all received clothes from the Red Cross distribution rooms. The wife did sewing for them, and earned 60 roubles a week—not much but enough to keep the little stomachs full.

The Red Cross woman told him how to find the zyemlyanka, pretending not to see the tears that trickled from his brave Russian eyes, and dropped on his shabby uniform. He thanked her brokenly, lips trembling, and hurried off to the zyemlyanka. It was only five minutes’ walk from the barracks—five minutes after three years!

In early August 1919, with the approach of fighting, Red Cross workers were ordered to evacuate Omsk and travel back east to Vladivostok. There, Hoffman  served for a time doing publicity work for the Red Cross, finally departing Russia for Hawaii in December. While in Vladivostok, she reflected in a letter to a Honolulu friend about her time in Omsk.

It may sound very attractive to live like that but I tell you, it does not take long for the novelty to wear off, and one feels that one could dispense with the romance for a little more comfort. There were hundreds of people living in the railroad yard--there was no place for them to go. We had the British mission on one side of us and the French mission on the other, with all kinds of Russian and Czech generals with their staffs behind and in front of us. And the Russian railroad had the time of its young life switching us all over the country. You could never depend on finding your car where you had left it when you went out, and many's the long hour our party has spent hunting for their abode which had moved since they saw it last. This is lots of fun, especially at night with the thermometer at 40 below.

It is surprising how one can get used to things, however. At first the engines shrieking up and down the tracks, and the scraping of the wheels used to annoy me, but after awhile it sounded like the song of a nightingale--almost. And then we used to have midnight visitors--because we were a Red Cross train, everyone who wanted anything from a bottle of ether to a job in the horse marines, used to come piling on board and rout us out of bed with his demands. Russian and Czech soldiers would saunter through at all hours to look us over. Finally, one night when we had been aroused three times, the last man wanting to know if we had his wife, we decided to barricade the doors, and strictly insist that our callers choose daylight hours for their visits.

So finally when I had the chance to come to Vladivostok and get away from the bedbugs and dirt and noise and congestion and be able to get a bath once in awhile, and to clean up, why I jumped at it.  I came back with Mr. Allen, who is now a major, by the way, and "Kid" Walker and two other Red Cross women.  We hitched our cars onto a regular passenger train and made the trip in two weeks, which is very good time.  .   .   .   .  We came back in a third class coach, but when we got on board we discovered that since anyone had seen it last it had been converted into a dining car.  We unscrewed the tables, put them into the kitchen, curtained off a space for the girls, put in cots and traveled like that.  Kid Walker and Mr. Allen raved over it, especially enjoying the ventilation as compared with ordinary third class coaches.  Personally, I could have dispensed with some of the ventilation for a few home comforts.  For instance there was only one exit to this car, and this was right up against the engine. Therefore, when we wished to go back to the Red Cross box car where we had our meals, we had to wait for the train to stop, dash wildly back and climb aboard.  Sometimes the train would start up again before we had made our destination, and then we would have to risk life and limb by leaping onto the steps while the car was in motion--which is all very well in moving pictures, but not in Siberia.