Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts

by Dennis Wheatley

  Before the new Arrow edition of this book went to press I wrote a new general introduction to it, wrote introductions for the items that have not hitherto appeared between the covers of a book and revised most of those for the other stories, to bring them up to date. But in this instance I will let the greater part of the original introduction stand. It ran:

  Hitler’s megalomania has led him to condemn an entire army of 22 divisions to a certain and terrible death outside the ‘Red Verdun’ and Voroshilov, coming into the news once more after a long absence from it, has raised the siege of Leningrad.

  During that long absence he and his old comrade, Budenny, have been mobilising and training the great new Soviet armies which have only recently been launched against the enemy with such devastating effect, while the younger marshals have conducted the actual operations. But it is of interest to note that most of these brilliant Soviet generals, including Timoshenko, and Yeremenko the saviour of Stalingrad, were picked by Voroshilov as outstanding young fighting men to be the Corps Commanders of the armies which he personally led to victory nearly a quarter of a century ago.

  The greatness of the Soviet Army’s contribution to the defeat of Hitler has amazed the world. Voroshilov as partisan leader, General, Senior Marshal and, finally, Commissar for Defence of the U.S.S.R., has played a far greater part than any other single individual in the formation, training and organisation of that Army. He will go down to history as the man who, in a little over twenty years, and starting from scratch with an ill-disciplined, ill-armed rabble, forged the world’s mightiest military machine.

  Therefore I felt that, in addition to the story of the first siege of Tzaritsyn (Stalingrad) it would be worth while also to reprint the preceding chapter from my book Red Eagle, since this leads up to it; telling the story of how Voroshilov became a General overnight and of his first great military exploit.

  The Epic Retreat from the Ukraine

  After the October Revolution Voroshilov was given a post in the Cheka. The Bolshevik secret police had, as its chief, Dzerzhinski, a Pole of noble descent, who was a sadist and extremist. Perhaps the most infamous of all the Terrorists, he was determined to maintain the Revolution against every opposition, whatever it might cost in blood, and delighted in his work.

  Voroshilov developed a great admiration for Dzerzhinski on account of his efficiency, and has often been heard to declare: ‘Now he was a real organiser. Damn it all, that’s a man I envied. If I had half his qualities I could tackle my responsibilities without the least trouble at all.’ Fortunately for humanity Voroshilov had not got half Dzerzhinski’s qualities; he lacked the subtle mind of a born spy and he loathed the frightful daily shootings of whole batches of people whose only crime was that the Party wanted them out of the way.

  In consequence, he resigned from the Cheka and was made the first Bolshevik police prefect of Petrograd and chairman of the committee for the defence of the city; but trouble was brewing for the new Soviet Republic.

  Voroshilov’s fire and enthusiasm were wasted in an office. He was sent to his own country, the Don Basin, to raise the workers there in defence of the Revolution.

  When he arrived he found everything in confusion. The officials of the old Government had fled; the natual leaders of the people had gone into hiding from fear of the armed mobs. It was no longer a question of scrapping with the forces of law and order but being overrun by a foreign foe; an uprush of patriotic feeling caused the workers to determine to resist the invader, yet there was no one to guide them and they had no idea how to set about it.

  Voroshilov formed the Lougansk Red Guard and soon had the best part of 2,000 men under arms, in batches, scattered up and down the Don Basin, many of them being old comrades who had served in the fighting squads he had organised twelve years before at the beginning of the first revolution.

  The out-at-elbow bands of factory workers held a great mass meeting at Lougansk. Voroshilov, with other speakers, urged them to leave their homes and take the field against the torrent of steel-helmeted Germans which was pouring into the blazing Ukraine. The speeches were received with acclamation, but it was a great armed mob without any military organisation, and they had to decide who should be their leader. It was here, amidst the din and shouting, that Voroshilov’s future career was settled for him.

  ‘Clim!’ shouted the workers. ‘Clim, you command us! Take command, Clim!’

  ‘But I’m no soldier,’ he protested loudly, ‘we must have a military man.’ He tried to wave them away but they still yelled their insistence. A young army officer named Nikolai Roudinev, who had long been a secret adherent of the Bolsheviks, jumped up on the platform and slapped Voroshilov on the shoulder, shouting:

  ‘Don’t be afraid. Clim. Don’t play the fool. Don’t wriggle. Take over the command and we’ll help you. I’ll be your chief of staff.’

  A great roar of cheering rose up from the multitude. Voroshilov gave a despairing shake of his head but agreed. ‘All right, comrades,’ he cried. ‘What the hell’s the good of wasting time? Since you force me to it I’ll take command. Only, bear this in mind. With me shrift is short. This thing is going to be handled in a disciplined manner. You must obey me as though I were a proper general. If you’re afraid to die—you can go to hell. If you’re not—come with me.’

  Thus, all against his will, the ex-pit-boy received his first command direct from the hands of his fellow workers.

  Most of his Red Guards were scattered in townships and villages up and down the country-side; many of these groups were going off to the front on their own, or with other units, so his detachment numbered only about four to five hundred men. There were plenty of cartridges in the munition factories of Lougansk, so they helped themselves to a good supply and set off for Kharkov, On the way Roudinev and a few other ex-soldiers among Voroshilov’s followers gave the men all the training they ever got.

  At Kharkov he made contact with Antonov and other Party men who had come from Petrograd to organise the resistance to the Germans. Isolated groups of the Red Guard were already in contact with the enemy, but they were ill-trained, ill-equipped and in many cases ill-led, so they were falling back, often without fighting at all, upon Kharkov. Poplavski tells us:

  ‘I was Assistant Front Commissar and I first met Voroshilov at the station in Kharkov, after we had retired to the Alexandrovsk line. None of us knew what to do and we were up against the well-organised Germans directed by a single mind. We told Voroshilov the situation and asked his advice, suggesting that we should dig in and make a stand.

  ‘ “Not worth it until we’re better organised,” he replied unhesitatingly. “We shall only lose men and gain no advantage. Continue the retreat.”

  ‘It was a hot time. We had been badly knocked about and there had been a lot of rain. We were coated with mud and looked like devils.’

  To visualise the fighting, think of our own Black Country, or any great industrial area, where open rolling downlands are dotted with grimy, depressing little villages containing rows of small houses all alike; here and there a factory town with its tall chimneys pointing to leaden spring skies. It was open warfare, in which the combatants were fairly safe as long as they could keep the crest of a rise between themselves and the enemy, but that enemy was liable to appear at any moment, or on any side, and machine-guns might open, mowing down a score of men, without the least warning. There was little cover and no connected line; each unit had to fight its own rearguard action and retire when things got too hot for it, without reference to the others. A netwprk of railways linked up the factory towns; there were plenty of derelict trains and plenty of skilled drivers from the engine shops of Lougansk in Voroshilov’s detachment, so, as far as he could, he stuck to the railways and rallied his men at each wayside halt or village station.

  Zveriaka carries on the story: ‘We fell back until we reached Douvoviazodo and there Voroshilov determined on a stand, so we fought our first engagement. We deployed, but the enemy outflanked us. Re
ports came in that other bodies of the Red Guard were falling back and the men got into a panic, but Voroshilov galloped up and down on horseback from point to point shouting: “I’ll shoot the first man who runs away.”

  ‘He jumped off his horse near me, carbine in hand, and the men immediately took up their positions again, but it was soon apparent that all was not well with the units on either side of us. The Germans were well-trained and courageous. They broke through upon our flanks and started to shoot at us from the rear. Voroshilov and his lieutenants consulted as to what was to be done. One of the men knew the district and with him as guide we attempted an outflanking movement. Antonov arrived on the scene with an armoured train and we fell back upon it as a rallying point, but an enemy shell crashed into a truck of ammunition which began to blow up with loud explosions. Many of our men fled in terror. Voroshilov only succeeded in getting the remainder clear from the Germans with the greatest difficulty and we had to abandon the armoured train.

  ‘That evening Voroshilov called us together and asked for volunteers to go with him and get back the train. About fifteen men stepped forward and clambered on to a derelict locomotive. The others waited and Clim said quietly: “You can let us go alone if you like but we’re not coming back without that train.”

  ‘The rest were shamed into clambering on board. It was dark when we started out and when we arrived we found that the Germans had retired some distance to dig in for the night; so we were able to save the armoured train without fighting, except for the stray shots they sent at us.’

  The armoured train proved invaluable and they took it with them down the railway line as they continued their retreat towards the south-east.

  General Krasnov had now risen against the Bolshevik regime at the head of a large force of Cossacks. His troops, having cleared the Don country behind Voroshilov’s men and other Red Guard units which were being driven back by the Germans, then took up their positions astride the main railway line, cutting off the Ukraine from Great Russia.

  After the Germans had taken Kharkov, the hastily gathered Bolshevik army went to pieces entirely Antonoy and the other commanders were killed, captured, or took to flight; their staffs disappeared with them. The army that before had only had the flimsiest cohesion was now in utter confusion; it was composed solely of bands of terrified men numbering a few score, or, at most a few hundred, all trying to get away from the enemy, but not knowing in which direction to retreat. They were caught between the Cossacks and the Germans; the two enemy armies had them in a vice.

  Voroshilov’s original detachment from Lougansk was mixed up with this semi-anarchial rabble. At Rodokovo, twenty kilometres north of Lougansk, he held a council of all the prominent men in each group he could get together. He was the principal speaker at the meeting, and explained that the official commanders having let them down they would all be killed unless they acted together. He proposed that they should form the whole mass of stragglers into one unit under a single command and with one headquarters’ organisation. His plan was accepted immediately and, as the only leader of any prominence in the old fighting squads days who remained to them, they unanimously elected him as Commander of all the Red forces in their area. Overnight he was pushed up, owing to force of circumstances and his own popularity, in one jump, from leader of a half battalion to General Commanding the Fifth Ukrainian Army.

  That army had yet to be formed and a plan made to save it from immediate annihilation. The plan must come first and the details later. He conceived the idea that, if only they could make a break through to the east, they might reach the city of Tzaritsyn on the Volga, which was still in the hands of the Bolsheviks. It seemed sheer madness; the Germans were fiercely assaulting their front, the whole of the Don country behind them swarmed With Cossacks, and half-a-dozen rivers lay between them and Tzaritsyn. Everyone declared that his scheme was impossible.

  ‘What’s the good of remaining here?’ he shouted. ‘The Germans will attack again tomorrow, and they’ll slaughter every one of us. We must break through.’

  Roudinev shrugged his shoulders. ‘But Clim,’ he protested, ‘you don’t understand. The retreat you’re suggesting is over a thousand versts. The Germans and the Cossacks will squeeze us to death long before we get to Tzaritsyn.’

  ‘Well, where the hell are we to go then? You’re my chief of staff and I tell you to draft a plan for a breakthrough to Tzaritsyn. Those are my imperative orders.’

  To the accompaniment of violent swearing from the turbulent pit-boy, Roudinev worked out a scheme for this insane enterprise; a forlorn attempt to cross the Don Steppes and reach the Volga by following the twisting track of the railway line.

  The council ended about midnight and next morning a large engagement was expected, as the Germans were preparing to advance all along the front. The mob leaders worked like demons all night; by morning Voroshilov had formed his staff, merged the tiny bands of workmen into larger army units and issued field orders for the defence of Lougansk. About midday the army, now reorganised, took up its positions. Some units, anarchistic in mood and not submitting at first to the new measures, had to be reformed in the rear, and only an insignificant part of the new army was able to be brought into operation.

  Voroshilov galloped from group to group on horseback, assuring the waverers that the Revolution was not perishing as they supposed. He told them that their own participation in the recent fighting was only an episode, and that whatever the difficulties and the dangers they must hold together even if they were all destroyed; because the longer they could hold out and the more Germans and reactionary Whites they could occupy, the more time they would be giving Lenin in Moscow to consolidate the centre of the Revolution, which would ensure him the possibility of leading the whole Working Class Movement of the World.

  The battle began at about two o’clock in the afternoon. The Germans flung a whole Corps against Rodokovo. The battle went on with varying success; about six o’clock, Voroshilov ordered the right wing to make a counterattack, and routed the enemy. Two batteries, twenty machine-guns and two aeroplanes were taken. The enemy fled, leaving behind a large number of dead and wounded; Voroshilov had won his first battle. The Bolshevik success was only temporary, however, and a far-flung outflanking movement by the German cavalry compelled him to fall back again. He retired on Lougansk and established temporary headquarters there.

  An officer named Sokolov tells us: ‘I had under me some men from Lisichan. When we were retreating from before the Germans, I managed to collect a crowd from some of the broken units numbering altogether 450 bayonets and 75 sabres. I reported to M. L. Roukhimovich, the Commissar for War at Lougansk. In the hotel apartment he occupied, I found a stranger of medium height with chestnut hair, a stern face and keen penetrating glance. As I entered the room the stranger immediately broke off his conversation with Roukhimovich and deliberately looked me up and down from head to foot. Roukhimovich introduced us saying: “This is Comrade Vodoshilov who has just been appointed as commander of the newly created Fifth Ukrainian Army. Your unit is to be included in it”

  ‘Voroshilov looked me up and down again attentively and said: “You’re a former officer, aren’t you?”

  ‘ “I am.”

  ‘ “Rank?”

  ‘ “Reserve cornet—rose to staff captain.”

  ‘ “Party member?”

  ‘ “Former Left Social Democrat.”

  ‘ “Your unit?”

  ‘I gave him detailed information on the make-up and condition of my unit, and added that I expected to be ready in about a week. Voroshilov said: “I know the Lisichan boys, the Menshevik influence among them is strong, but we’ll see. Perhaps the Bolshevik thread you speak of will prove itself; then something good may be made of your unit!”

  ‘Two days later I was ready to meet the commander’s train at the rendezvous he had given me. About four o’clock it arrived, but nobody got out. I went to the staff coach and found Voroshilov discussing forthcoming operations w
ith his chief of staff, Roudinev. When he saw me he said in a tone that permitted no discussion: “Comrade Sokolov, I expect you at Kavanye in two days from now.” Then he turned to Roudinev and the rest of his staff with the words: “Come on, what are we waiting for!”

  ‘That abrupt termination of the conversation threw us all into confusion, as not only myself but all the others naturally expected that he would want to inspect this new unit which had just come under his command. Roudinev and I suggested that, but he replied: “I’m not used to parades. I’ll get to know your men in battle.” Then turning to his staff, he added: “Come along, get a move on. We’re late as it is.” ’

  In Lougansk, Voroshilov and his staff worked like furies. Among them was a local tailor, a cross-eyed fellow named Shchadenko, an old friend of Voroshilov’s and destined to become, with him, another of the great fighting leaders. The Cossacks were eating up the country through which the newly formed Fifth Ukrainian Army must pass to reach Tzaritsyn. They would be starved into surrender unless they took adequate supplies with them. Derelict trains were filled with all the food they could lay their hands on. Others were loaded with cases of cartridges, hand grenades, shells, from the now silent munitions factories, others again with the goods of the wretched people of the district. Thousands of refugees were flooding in; old men, women and children, many of them dependents of the Workers’ Army. The Germans were coming. These non-combatants could not be left behind. Every engine in the Lougansk shops was put into use, and a huge convoy of trains organised, occupying both lines of the double track. Under the intrepid leadership of the completely inexperienced but courageous civilian soldier the terrible retreat began.

  The difficulties were immense. Day after day, night after night, they were attacked by the Germans or the Cossacks. Rearguard actions were fought every day. The pace of the retreat was the pace of the last in the long double strings of trains, and there were frequent breakdowns. Many rivers had to be crossed and often the bridges needed repair, having been partially destroyed by the enemy. The line did not run direct, but north to Likhaia before they could head due east towards their goal.