Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 269
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[Page 269]
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Russian officers of the former Tsarist Army, who had been military attaches at the Russian Embassy in England but were left stranded when the Revolution occurred. They were very aristocratic, handsome and highly educated fellows, who were all good linguists, and some of them expert in scientific subjects such as chemistry, physics and mathematics. A bevy of the most beautiful women I have ever seen came down to Waterloo Station to farewell them. We crossed the Channel to Cherbourg and were accommodated for the night in the stately Chateau de Tourlaville a few kilometres away. The next morning the Mission was joined by a score of splendid Army sergeants from famous regiments, and we began a long journey in a special train down through the middle of France to Marseilles, along the coasts of the French and Italian Rivieras to Faenza in North Italy, and down the Adriatic Coast to the Naval Base at Taranto inside the "heel" of Italy, arriving there eight days after leaving Cherbourg.
Every night eight of us slept in our clothes, as best we could, in the same compartment, and got quite used to it after the first two or three uncomfortable nights. Though our train had top priority of passage over all others, it made regular halts of an hour or so at convenient stations to permit our having the main meals in the railway refreshment rooms. To break the monotony of travelling day after day and to allow us to shower and stretch our legs in some sight-seeing walks, we spent nearly a day in rest-camps at Lyons, Marseilles and Faenza, but always returning to our train to travel on through the night.
In France, at brief traffic halts one of us would dash up to the locomotive for a dixie of boiling water to make tea or coffee, but this caper ceased in Italy where all the main railway lines were electrified; however, hawkers were selling one-litre bottles of Chianti red wine on the platforms for one Lira (sixpence) each, so we cheerfully drank it instead of the "cups that did not inebriate".
For two nights we luxuriated in very comfortable quarters at the Italian Naval Base at Taranto, and then for two more in the troopship "Malwa", in harbour, before clearing the boom on a nice