Henry Armitage, “The Tunguska Folly of 1919”, (unpublished) We arrived in Irkutsk to the sound of distant thunder. But the booming was too regular to be natural. “One of the big 305s,” I said. “Probably a hundred miles out still.” If we were lucky, it was a hundred miles out. The 305s were not mobile weapons, and if the Red Army was using them, then they had arrived in force and with only one purpose—to sweep over the Republicans like a crimson tidal wave. “Let’s find Rostov,” Carter said. “And quickly.” We stepped out of the train into a swirling chaos that made what we had seen at Vladivostok seem calm. The shouts of commanding officers, the cries of wounded soldiers. The evacuation was in full swing. I looked into the eyes of the men—boys, really—who poured off the train with us, set to replace the wounded being ferried back to Vladivostok, to plug the holes they left behind. In those eyes I saw a fear that was heartbreaking. “The General said you would come, and come you did.”
