The Glass Ele-phant
By © Anton
Vendamencs, 2017
Chapter 2 / My Father’s Military Record
[The following military record of my father in
English by way of my nephew Christopher Abers with the assistance of his wife
who translated it from Russian. Comments within brackets [], as well as all
links and asterisks are mine (AV).]
..............................
1916 August 1—I volunteered [age 24] for
military service and joined the Reserves 6th Engineering Battalion
and was made part of the 8th Company.
1917.February 21—I volunteered to study at
the Constantine Artillery Academy in Saint Petersburg Constantine
Artillery Academy in Saint Petersburg and was a 1st level volunteer.
May 23—I was
promoted to assistant lieutenant at the war academy.
July 1—I was
made head of my class and Sergeant Major of the Battery.
August 15—I
graduated from the war academy and was made part of the army/marines, promoted
to lieutenant, and was sent to the artillery brigade.
September
4—Did my best to be transferred to Riga and with that in mind accepted a post in the Reserves 1st
Mortar Battery, submitting my previous post to another officer. Once my
training was completed, I took a two week leave of absence and went to Riga.
While there Germany unexpectedly invaded Latvia; with great difficulty, I
avoided being captured and returned to Saint Petersburg. There I was sent to
the Reserves 1st Mortar Battery.
September
15—In the regiment, I was registered in the 3rd Mortar Battery and
was a commanding officer for new recruits of the “Martevoja Battery.” I was a
student technician—an official committee member for Moscow’s Military
Engineering Academy.
October—From
here on out what I write will be based on my memory, for records in Rostov were
destroyed.
November—Following
the October Communist Revolution, due to conflicting ideology, and having received
threats from military leadership, I resigned from active military service and
was transferred by the Moscow Military Engineering Academy to the Ukraine,
where acquaintances helped me find a job as a manager for the Nadejadinskij
coalmine*. This coalmine belonged to the Defense Department; there I worked as
military personnel. I began to work in the coalmines in November of 1917.
*I am
unable to locate Nadejainskij on a map, though it surely must be located in the
eastern part of Ukraine, where most coal mines are located. As I scanned place
names on maps, one name stuck, re https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhia , as it seems a possible alternate spelling for Nadejadinskij.
1918 August—Resigned as manager [at
the coal mine].
November—The
Ukraine was ruled by Hetman and German occupying forces. In Kharkov, as refugees, in
appalling conditions, lived the four women of my family*. To provide funds for
them, I made a trip to Riga** going through occupied territory—Baranovichi and
Vilnius.
*The four women could only have been my father’s three sisters
(Marija, Anna, Marta) and his mother. Marija, so I was told, died of typhoid
fever somewhere in Russia. The others survived and became part of my extended
family.
**The funds in Riga were provided by my granfather, who with his second
wife were publishers of the best known and largest Latvijan newspaper in Riga,
the Latest News (Jaunākās Ziņas).
1919 January—Having received funds
in Riga, I headed back with the hope of swiftly returning with my family to
Latvia; for I assumed that the Hetman Government was still standing. January
was spent traveling to Kharkov.
February—The
Communists invaded Kiev and I was trapped under
the communist regime. To avoid being drafted by the communist army, I enrolled
in the Kharkov Institute of Technology as a 5th year student and
thereby was freed from draft duty.
June 3—The
White Army, General Denikin, occupied Kharkov and I was mobilized.
June 6—On my
request, I was sent by the White Army to work in the 2nd Railway
Battalion.
September—As a
junior lieutenant, I worked as a train station superintendent, performing
various technical jobs related to train movement. Then I was transferred by my
superiors from the 2nd Battalion to the 4th Railway
Battalion. There, at Headquarters for Army Transportation, I was ordered to
work as an aide-de-camp and was a lieutenant for communications.
1920 February—By order of General
Denikin, was promoted to Senior Lieutenant.
April—After
the fall of Rostov, as the
White Army retreated [it is worth reading the last
section of this link, re ”Commanded White Volunteer Army”—AV.] I was made an
officer in charge of the technical military train and later an aide-de-camp for
several railway defense brigades at Army Headquarters. My frequent requests to
be relieved of my duties in the Denikin Army and be given permission to return
to Latvija were denied; the same was happening with all military officers
from Latvija; for the Denikin Army did not recognize Latvija as a sovereign
nation. I also sought the help of Latvija’s representatives to the Ukraine,
Jansons and Bahmanis but...
April—General
Denikin ordered all Latvijan military personnel to be freed from military duty*.
I then left the army and traveled from Novorossiysk
through Istanbul and then to Latvija.
May—In Warsaw, I placed myself at the disposal of Colonel
Hartmanis of the Latvijan Military who then ordered me to Riga. There,
I promptly submitted myself to military debriefing.
......................................
Comments: I gather from the text that my father’s
loyalties were with the tsar, if only because with the capture in 1919 of Kiev
by the communists, he enrolled in the Kharkov Institute of Technology to escape
being drafted into their army, but with the arrival of General Denikin was ‘mobilized’
(apparently willingly) into the White army.
When in 1941 my father was being deported to Russia, his
closest companion on the train and at the Astrahan prison, so called Little
Kremlin, is said to have been a Latvian military officer by the name of Ozols.
Apparently, he found strength in such company. He is said to have commented to
his fellow deportees that he expected that his family, too, was being deported.
.......................
The dough of the doughnut in the Primal nightmare (see
EC642) is sucking into itself, by means of a quantum energy jump, ever more
objects. I suspect that the empty core of the doughnut is a visual
representation of what the Chinese philosophers call Qi or Chi. Just because the wind is
invisible does not mean that it is not there.
Constantine ArtilleryAcademy in Saint
Petersburg http://russiatrek.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/artillery-museum-st-petersburg-russia-1.jpg
Novorossiysk through Istanbul http://ports.com/sea-route/port-of-istanbul,turkey/novorossiysk-commercial-sea-port-ncsp,russia/
No comments:
Post a Comment