then informed that I was an English officer, and if he would surrender I guaranteed his life unless he had committed some greater crime than merely fighting as a Bolshevik soldier.  He made no further parley, but almost ran to me as for protection.  I was standing on the embankment, in full view for miles, and it was easy for the whole incident to be seen.  I took his rifle, with fixed bayonet, and bandolier and fifty rounds from him.  His papers showed him to be a demobilised Russian soldier.  I placed him under a guard of two men with 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 knees in their direction.  I found a deep dyke at the foot of the cutting covered with high weeds, and into this I rolled.  Gradually raising my head over the thistles, I potted rapidly at the gunner, and my party did the same.