CHAPTER FOUR: Ufa

Late July 1919.

The uprising had been short lived and mercilessly crushed by detachments of regular Red Army and Cheka troops. Few from Raskalnov's Brigade survived and those that did had only one option ... run.

Dovid and Avram headed East, reasoning that if they could work their way behind the lines in territory occupied by the White Armies, they would be able to avoid the vengeance of the Cheka and disappear into the vast countryside beyond. Even if the Government were able to reverse the misfortunes of the recent war efforts, they would be thousands of kilometers from the front and safe from the Cheka.

It turned out this was a wise plan because the Reds were destined to turn the tide once more by the autumn and reclaim the Eastern territories by the end of the year as the Whites retreated.

24 hours after the escape they had paused on the road and Avram had spread a map on the ground, pinning it down with stones as the edges flapped against the winds; they were miles from anywhere.

'So, where?' Dovid had asked as he finished the last bit of bread and cheese in his pack.

'Beyond the fighting my friend. We want to stay well clear of both armies. Here!' His finger stabbed at the map and Dovid squinted at it.

'Siberia?'

'Yes but not so deep we can't easily come back when it's all settled down. West of the Urals I think ...'

Dovid scanned the area of the map Avram's fingertip was indicating. 'What about that place, it's in the shadow of the mountains, a city so we can vanish in the crowds and it looks like the biggest one past Kazan'

'Ufa? Looks as good a place as any. Now, before we go on, what do you say we finish this last bottle and drink to Aleks?'

Dovid rooted in his pack for the quarter full bottle of starka and solemnly the two friends drunk to the memory of Petrov and other fallen comrades.

The next three weeks had passed monotonously; each morning they woke and began to walk, sometimes tramping along to the sound of the empty road and sometimes passing close by towns and villages but avoiding human contact when they could, which was relatively easy as there were vast tracts of land to traverse between settlements.

At first they foraged for food in the woods and countryside, catching and cooking game and eating fruit when they came across it. Early on and at Avram's insistence, they had ditched all insignia marking them out as soldiers and sold their rifles at a town they had passed through although they kept pistols and knives hidden with ammunition in their packs.

With the money from the rifles and the money they already had with them, Dovid and Avram were able to buy supplies along the way and trade their trousers and tunics for civilian attire which eliminated the last remaining signs that they had been soldiers. Reluctantly Avram had also parted with his great coat and replaced it with a fur like Dovid's but of lesser quality.

Every night they slept under the stars or in a warm barn if one could be found and as they started to look more like civilians and less like soldiers, they relaxed enough to interact more with peasants and town folk they chanced upon along the way and were able to speed up their journey with lifts on the back of straw covered carts and once in the back of a lorry that stopped for them when they hailed it on the main road.

Both men's thoughts turned to religion as they contemplated their place in the world. Always solicitous of their race and pride as Jews, Avram and Dovid had when soldiering, fallen out of the habit of observing the religious side past the absolute basics and sometimes not even then for when a soldier is hungry, keeping kosher ceases to be a viable option if the choice is eat or starve.

Many long hours of travel had been occupied with discussion of politics and the disgust both felt with the kind of men who sought power within the Bolshevik government. They had seen ideals turn into regimentation and Avram suspected that what had happened to free volunteers like Raskalnov's Brigade and others who buckled under the emerging regimentation of the army, would also occur generally throughout society.

'Soon,' he had said, 'We will be no better off than we were under the Tsarists and we would have exchanged one form of elite for another.'

'How long,' he had posed the question '... before the new elite decides to purge itself of the Jews?'

These conversations had led both men to consider that maybe they were better off sticking to their own kind rather than trying to integrate into a mixed society that would end up turning on them.

'In fact,' said Avram on the 5th day of their journey, 'Why stay here at all?'

Dovid had frowned. 'You mean in Russia? Well I can tell you Lithuania is no better, so where?'

'Think Dovid Gilevich, think! If we stay six months or so in Ufa until the situation in the Ukraine calms down, then we can head south west to Odessa, take ship to Constantinople and then on to Palestine!'

'The Holy Land!' Dovid responded in wonder. It had never occurred to him but now the idea had entered his head, he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it before.

'Yes!' continued Avram. 'There are men there ... Jews like us, ready to fight to have our land restored to the Jewish people. We could join the fight and help reclaim Zion (Israel). What do you think?'

Dovid smiled. Maybe there, in the land of their fathers he would feel free to start again and perhaps he would marry again and his sons would grow up masters of their own destiny.

What he replied was simply. 'Da.'

***