Odd People

by Basil Thomson

  In Prince Youssoupov’s house there was a dining room in the basement. From this a winding staircase led to the first floor, with a landing halfway giving into the hall. On this landing was a small room. On arriving at the house Rasputin was conducted into this dining room, where bottles of madeira and port were set out. The conspirators had previously obtained from a chemist a drug known in Russian as ‘cianistii kalii’, which was said to have a very quick action on the heart and to be tasteless when taken in wine. It was in the form of a white powder contained in glass tubes and the quantity introduced into the wine was believed to be sufficient to kill twenty men. During the afternoon the potion had been tried upon one of the dogs in the courtyard and the effect was immediately fatal.

  They sat down at the table and Youssoupov plied Rasputin with the wine. There was nothing in this, for Rasputin, like most Russian peasants, had a strong head and was always ready for carousal. He was quite unconscious that there was anything unusual in the taste of what he was drinking, but as time went on and conversation flagged Youssoupov began to realise that the poison would not act upon such a man. He made an excuse for going upstairs to the little room on the landing, where his friends were waiting. The Grand Duke Dmitri lent him his revolver and he went down again, feeling, as he said, that he was not acting of his own volition, but was under the direction of a Higher Power. He found Rasputin leaning on his hands and breathing loudly as if he was not feeling well. At the end of the dining room was a large ikon. Youssoupov went and knelt before it to pray for strength to do what he had to do for the salvation of the country. Then Rasputin got heavily to his feet, came over to the ikon and stood beside him. Youssoupov rose, put the pistol to Rasputin’s side and fired. Rasputin uttered a terrible cry and fell backwards on the floor, where he lay motionless. There was a doctor in the little room upstairs and Youssoupov went to call him. All came down with the doctor; some were in favour of firing another shot to make sure, but the doctor, on examining the wound, declared that the bullet had entered the heart and had pierced the liver and that clearly the man was dead. Then they went upstairs to consult about a car in which the body was to be removed. This took some time and then Youssoupov, in whose mind the idea had been working that Satanic power might have kept the man alive in spite of his wound, went down alone into the dining room to make sure. The body was still lying in the same place. He felt the pulse: it was not beating. He opened the monk’s robe to feel the heart. At that moment Rasputin, with a terrible cry, sprang up and seized him by the throat. He was throttling him. Then superhuman power came upon Youssoupov, who flung him down on the floor: he lay without motion.

  With the horror of this incident upon him Youssoupov ran upstairs. The Grand Duke, the doctor and another officer had gone away for the car and only Poroskewitz, a member of the Duma, was left and he had a pistol with three cartridges left in it. To him Youssoupov poured out his story. They came out on the landing with the intention of descending the staircase and, looking down, they saw the bullet-head of the monk coming up the staircase. He was on all fours like a bear. They shrank back into the room and saw him stagger to his feet on the landing and go through into the hall. They followed. Rasputin fumbled with the door leading to the courtyard, dragged it open and went through into the darkness. The two men ran to the door and saw him against the snow as he was crossing the courtyard. Poroskewitz fired three shots, but he still ran for several paces and then fell close to the gateway which led from the courtyard into the street. Youssoupov had with him a rubber truncheon such as the police use and, finding him still alive, put an end to him with that weapon. It was then seen that one of the revolver bullets had hit him in the back of the skull and still he had lived.

  Poroskewitz returned to the house and while Prince Youssoupov was standing irresolute by the body there came a knocking on the gate. The police had been alarmed by the revolver shots and had sent an agent to make inquiries. It was a critical moment because the body was lying only a few feet from the gate. Youssoupov opened the gate and admitted the man, placing himself in front of the body. The policeman wanted to know if anything was wrong. Youssoupov took a high tone with him; said that the Grand Duke had been dining there and had just left in a car; that he was slightly merry and had fired his revolver at a dog in the courtyard and had killed it: that was all. While he was speaking he was edging the police agent towards the gate and at the mention of the Grand Duke the man seemed to be satisfied. It must be remembered, too, that the high rank of the person he was questioning may have had its effect. The report he brought to the police station, however, did not satisfy his superiors. He was sent back to make further inquiries and this time he went to the front door and was admitted without Youssoupov’s knowledge while he was engaged in dragging the body across the courtyard. When the Prince re-entered the house he heard voices in the sitting room upstairs. There he found that Poroskewitz, who was a very excitable and nervous man, had blurted out the whole truth and said that they had killed Rasputin. It was a desperate moment. Youssoupov quickly intervened, saying, ‘Look, he has gone clean off his head. When the dog was shot he said, “What a pity it was not Rasputin,” and now it has become an obsession with him and he thinks that what he wanted has really come to pass.’ After a good deal of talking he succeeded in getting the policeman to go.

  There was now no time to lose. Several things had to be done. A dog had to be found and shot and laid exactly in the position of Rasputin’s body in order that the blood marks on the snow might be taken for the blood of the dog. Scarcely had this been done when the Grand Duke’s car arrived. In Russia grand-ducal cars used to carry a flag on the bonnet which exempted them from being stopped by the police. Together they carried the body into the car, took it to the bridge and dropped it into the frozen Neva, where it was found some three days afterwards.

  The next morning there was an interrogation at the police station, but the same story was adhered to and the police could make little headway. It is said that the Czarina was pressing for extreme measures against the assassins, but that the Czar, who was about to return to the Front, refused his consent. People who were about him at the time said that he had never seemed more cheerful than when he heard of Rasputin’s death. The assassins were banished to the Caucasus and to Persia.

  When will the romance of escapes during the Great War be adequately written? There were stories of Russian peasant prisoners escaping from internment and wandering over the frontier into Switzerland not knowing that they were in a neutral country, living in the woods like wild animals, with hair and nails grown long, unwashed, unkempt, half-naked, subsisting upon food taken from the farms at night and eaten raw. There was one, better authenticated, of a Russian officer who, after five days’ wandering, succeeded in crossing the frontier into Holland with his pursuers behind. The Dutch had recently changed their uniform into field-grey, the colour worn by the Germans and, seeing a platoon of grey-coated soldiers in front of him, the wretched fugitive turned back and re-crossed the frontier in full view of the German sentry, who shot him dead.

  Who knew at that time that a necessary part of the equipment of an escaping prisoner of war was pepper, because the German dogs would scent him at night in his lair and raise the neighbourhood by their barking? But if he scattered pepper about his resting-place the dogs would sneeze and slink off home in silence.

  Though there were escapes of British officers and men and civilians from internment in Germany, I believe that only one German officer succeeded in escaping from Donington Hall and reaching Germany. This was Gunther Plüschow, an aviation officer from Tsingtau, who escaped in his machine when the fortress was captured by the Japanese, made his way to Shanghai and thence to San Francisco and New York. Here he obtained a false Swiss passport as a fitter under the name of Ernst Suse, with which he embarked for Italy. But to his great indignation our interpreter at Gibraltar spoke such fluent German that he was betrayed into unguarded observations. He was arrested and sent to England, where, after
many vicissitudes, he proved his identity as an officer and was interned at Donington.

  His escape from Donington Hall was managed with great skill. On 4 July 1915, he and an officer named Treffitz reported sick and remained in bed. At roll-call the NCO ticked them off. It was raining hard and they had no difficulty in slipping away to the outer enclosure and hiding in the bushes. At 6 p.m. the doors between the inner and outer enclosures were locked and they remained outside. Other officers were occupying their beds when the roll was taken and at 10.30 ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’ was sung from the windows to inform them that they had not been missed. They climbed the wire entanglements and made for Derby, where they separated, each man finding his way independently to London.

  In his book published in Dutch, Adventures of the Tsingtau Flying Man, Plüschow gave an account of his proceedings while trying to board the Dutch packet, which did more than justice to his courage and endurance and less than justice to the truth. According to this narrative he spent his nights in Hyde Park, suburban gardens and in a lair under a timber stack at Greenwich. Twice he was plunged into the stinking mud at low water and nearly drowned while setting out in the dark to swim to the mooring buoy. But, in fact, as we discovered too late, he eluded the registration regulations by passing his nights with different women, at whose rooms he was not called upon to register at all, for he was amply provided with money and he knew London well from a former sojourn in 1913. He boarded the buoy to which the Princess Jidiana was moored, climbed the cable and hid himself in one of the lifeboats. Probably he stole a landing-card from a sea-sick passenger, or he may, as he says, have walked ashore without one, unchallenged. At any rate, he landed at Rotterdam and was accorded an ovation by the German colony at a public luncheon arranged by the German Consul.

  In May 1916, when the last batch of German officers was received at Donington Hall, it was reported that the prisoners were plunged into deep depression by the news from the German front.

  CHAPTER 18

  RECRUITS FOR THE ENEMY

  ISUPPOSE THAT some day or other one of the Assistant Provost Marshals who served in France will be moved to publish some of his experiences. Most of his work was dull and uneventful, but every now and then there flared up one of those sordid little tragedies which human nature, under the stress of war, is apt to give out. One summer day in 1916 the APM at Boulogne received from an Australian escort a grimy envelope on which nothing was written but, ‘The APM, Boulogne. Herewith Jim Perry.’ (Perry was not the name.) He asked why he should receive Jim Perry and what Jim Perry had done. About this the escort knew nothing at all. All he had to do was to deliver Jim Perry and bring back a receipt for his body. For the rest, the APM had better ask Jim Perry himself. Perry, when produced, turned out to be a well-educated young man born in South Africa, with the marks about him of having undergone a rather strenuous experience, but in this there was nothing unusual as far as the clients of an APM were concerned.

  Jim Perry’s story deserves to live. As soon as he heard that war had been declared he left South Africa in order to join up in England. He was drafted to the Officers’ Training Corps, but finding the corps uncongenial, he deserted and walked off to a certain Australian battalion which was then training in England for the Front. There was a free and easy way about the Australians that pleased a fellow colonial. They welcomed their new recruit and did not think it necessary to report his arrival to the officers. The privates collected some kind of a kit for him from among themselves and as a roll-call never seems to have been taken in this particular battalion, Perry was able to serve with them over two months in England and afterwards to accompany them to France. He was five weeks with them in Abbeville and then they were moved up to the front line. Here he was with them for five weeks more and he might have continued to be an Australian soldier until the Armistice but for a mishap. One day the battalion came out of action with a good many casualties and the younger officers organised a spy hunt. The first step was to do what they had never done before – to call the roll and during this unwonted ceremony it was discovered that they had with them one man more than they ought to have had. Here, obviously, was the spy. Jim Perry was put under arrest and the subalterns held a consultation. The remedy was obvious. Jim Perry should be shot at sight. They were about to carry out the decision of the meeting when one of them said that he remembered reading somewhere that you never shot a man without reporting first to the colonel, so this formality was complied with and the colonel, who saw nothing in the verdict of which he disapproved, remembered to have read somewhere that you never shot a man without first reporting to the brigadier. This was a great disappointment to the subalterns, who were all for action stern and swift.

  Now the brigadier happened to know something about military law and he pointed out that as no court-martial had been convened and no evidence had been called, whatever else was done no shooting could take place. This annoyed the battalion excessively. The decision came just at a time when they were leaving their rest camp and they had no intention of taking with them into action an unmasked spy. Perry could not be shot, but he could be left behind, so they took him into a barn, handcuffed his hands and feet round the post which supported the roof, locked the door and went away. There Perry remained in this extremely uncomfortable position for two whole days and then the South African angel which watched over him ordained that another Australian battalion should march into the village and require the barn, should break down the door and find Jim Perry. He seemed to want food and water very much, so they fed and watered him and made a pet of him and when their turn came to return to the trenches they wanted to take him with them, but here the colonel intervened. To him there seemed to be something irregular about taking a man whom you have found chained to a post into action with your battalion even as a mascot. He reported the occurrence and asked for instructions and these were that Perry should be sent to the base. It was under these circumstances that an escort of the Good Samaritans had brought him to Boulogne with the grimy envelope.

  Even an APM has a heart and this one decided to send Perry to England to begin again at the beginning – in other words, to enlist in any regiment that came handy and draw a veil over his past and as Perry had no money he pulled out of his pocket a £1 note. Perry looked at it dubiously and said, ‘Money? That’s no use to me, sir. I have plenty of money of my own. What I want is my chequebook.’ And this turned out to be perfectly true. Perry’s father was a wealthy man and the son had a banking account.

  Later in the war a large number of German Army reservists in Spain and South America and a certain number of German prisoners of war taken on the Russian Front who had escaped from Siberia began to cross from America in the hope of reaching Holland without being recognised at the English port as enemies. It was a regular business with the German Consulate to furnish them with forged passports. They were Swedes, South Americans and Dutchmen, according to their papers, and they assumed the nationality of the language which they happened to be able to speak. Sometimes we knew when particular persons were coming; at others the naval officers at the ports had to use their own intelligence and very well they did it. There was one rather pathetic case in which I almost wished that they had been less successful. It was reported from Kirkwall that two of the stokers on a Swedish ship were men of above the ordinary education of stokers and that they were on their way down to London. I examined them separately. The first gave in rather quickly. He was the last kind of person who could have hoped to pass muster as a stoker. He had not even succeeded in making his hands rough. He was a Viennese reserve captain of artillery, who had relations in Paris and had been called up straight from the bank in which he was employed. He took his internment as a prisoner of war with perfect philosophy. It was one of the ordinary accidents of war and he would rather be interned in a British camp than under the appalling conditions that prevailed in Siberia, but it did seem hard to have been taken prisoner twice in the same war after walking some thousands of miles across
Asia. I sometimes hear from him still. When I first saw the other man I thought that our boarding officer had made a mistake. He was a sooty, smiling, alert little person and he slouched into the room with the regular stoker’s lurch. He answered all my questions and picked out on the map the little village in Sweden where he was born. He talked Swedish with apparent fluency and his hands were as dirty as anyone could expect from a stoker. Nevertheless, we sent him to Cannon Row for further inquiry. Cannon Row was his undoing. He had guessed that his companion in adversity must be in a cell not far from his and as the place seemed very quiet he thought it safe to call him up in German through the ventilator. He did not know that a German-speaking police officer was in hearing. His companion replied and the flood-gates of our friend’s eloquence were opened. ‘They got nothing out of me,’ he shouted. ‘They really believe that I am a Swedish stoker. How did you get on?’ (No reply.) ‘The proper way is to bluff them and if you do it well they will swallow anything.’

  When he came before me next morning I told him that he had played his part very well indeed; in fact, that if he ever cared to try his luck upon the stage I was sure that he would make a fortune. He grinned a little uneasily, I thought. ‘And now,’ I said, ‘since the game is up you might wash your face and hands, put on a collar and write a letter to your friends in Vienna, asking them to send your military uniform in order that we may treat you in internment as an officer.’ His whole manner changed. Instinctively he pulled himself to attention, gave me the name of his regiment and the address of his friends and before he left the room he clicked his heels and walked out of it like a trained soldier. To this day he does not know where my information came from.