th orders to
see him safely to the rear. Time after time demands were made to his
guards to allow the murder of the prisoner. But those two British
bayonets made his life as safe as though he had been in Trafalgar
Square. I could tell by the atmosphere which the incident created that
our Allies thought this regular conduct wholly out of place on a
battlefield, but it fulfilled its purpose, and surrenders were accepted
during the further operations.

Our progress was now very rapid, and except for a few bursts of shrapnel
which continued to fly harmlessly over the front ranks and injure such
as were far behind, we approached our old station, Kraevesk, easily. As
to the method from the military point of view of approaching this place,
the less said about it the better. A single company of British troops
would have held up the whole show and inflicted losses on the attackers
out of all proportion to the object gained. The stuffing, however, was
completely knocked out of the Bolshevik army, and the advance took more
the form of beaters driving big game. Having previously reconnoitred the
whole ground, I again chose the railway for my party. The Japanese
swarmed up through the wooded slope on the right. I chose the railway
because I knew the shallow cutting had a slight curve which would give a
safe line of approach to the station, situated about three hundred yards
behind this low-lying hill. The Japs advanced through the wood in
masses, huge bunches of men without regular formation. On rounding the
curve, I saw an enemy armoured train about four hundred yards distant. A
Bolshevik officer walked leisurely out of our old headquarters and put
one foot on the step of the engine, looking straight at myself standing
on the line. I drew a bead on him with Lance-Corporal's Moorman's rifle.
I do not believe I hit him, but I was near enough to make him skip
quickly into the engine shelter. A flash from the leading gun, and a
2-inch shell passed so close to my head that I fell into the four-foot
way, and felt the top of my skull to find out if it was still there.
This shell exploded about one hundred yards behind me and mortally
wounded two Japanese and injured several others. The machine guns on the
train now swept the wood, where the Japs were advancing, with such
effect that for a few moments there was a regular stampede back over the
brow of the hill. My party had taken cover in the scrub on the left, and
I crawled on hands and k