The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-06-05

ventures related below were de- scribed by a member of the party who accompanied the Empress to the Crimea.)
 | Copyright, 1919, By The Interna- tional News Bureau, Inc.) The Empress Marie was never nearer death than during the perilous enterprise which landed her on the deck of the British ship Marlborough at Yalta. Encircled by enemies l eager for our blood. we won through, but 1t was a terrible experience and one which I recall with horror. 1 The success of the Lenin Party in- | creased the danger of our position as | prisoners, and when we were re- moved to Ekaterinburg 1t was more | serious than ever. Our guards were | not well disposed towards us, ana | when the growing tragedy of the 18th | of July last came we feared the | Dowager Empress must share the fate of her son. That she did not, | was due entirely to the fact that the | officer in charge of the guards, had compassion on her grey hairs. and | told his men he would defend her 1 with his life, because she reminded l him of his mother.
 | The Dowa ger-Enlp press wished to | have a last look at the dead Tsar, but | we persuaded her that all that could 1 result from delaying our fight was | the complete extinction of the whole suite, and destruction of the hopes of a rally to the Romanoffs. Reluctant l ly we got her away from the ill- | omened town, the guard, under the | influence of the officer of whom l have already spoken, agreeing to her 1 removal out of the district.
 We had not gone very far before we were overtaken by a party of Reds | under a lieutenant of Lenin, who de- | cIared that he had orders to see that l the whole of the party were put to death. Luckily for us the officer in | charge refused to recognize the au- | thority of the newcomer, and told him he was going to take the pris- oners into exile according to his or 1 iginal instructions, and he and his men would resist by force any at tempt to mo1est them. After a heat | ed argument the bloodthirsty Reds | went back and left us in peace. | Chased by Wolves.
 We travelled most of the day by sledges, and were about four months | altogether the journey to the Crimean seat of the Grand Duke Nicholas, who had already fled there, and was living in retirement after relinquishing the command of 1 the army.
 In September of last year the guards told us we would have to shift ourselves and the next day, Septem- Der 18th, they left us. From that time onward our Journey was one of great | difficulty and beset by dangers at 1 every turn. Prowling bands of Reds | were on our track with the sole ob- ject of nlassacring us, and the local | Sovtets springing up all over the country. were eager to prove their | devotion to the revolutionary course by killing off some of the tyrants
 To make matters worse for us the wolves joined in the vendetta, and for one week in October we were at tackled almost daily by bands of hun gry wolves prowling in the neighbor- hood Numerous were the fights we had with those savage brutes, and several of us bear traces of our en- counters with them. Things got so desperate with these hardshfps and dangers that none of US expected ever
 to get away alive.
 We had not however, reached the full extent of the terrors confront ing us until towards the end of Octo-
 Der, when two aeroplanes put in an appearance and dogged our march
 during the day for nearly a week I
 
 these machines seriously meant to
 injure us. for had they been in
 earnest about it they could have end
 ed our pilgrimage by dropping bombs
 on the party.
 It was not until a few days before i Christmas that we finally got to the l end of our long ojurney, and were re- ! ceived at the palace of the Grand Duke Nicholas in the Crimea, near | VoJt W. T spread and followed the normal course of development here, and the Grand Duke was virtually a prisoner : in his palace.
 l Guards Refuse to Kill. Early this year our partial peace
 was disturbed by the arrival of roam
 ing bands of Reds who claimed to , have a mandate from the Central
 Soviet Government to kill all sur } viving ernbers of the Royal Family.
 In particular they wished to kill the
 Crank Dukes Cyril and Nicholas. and
 the Dowager Empress They did not
 want to do the work themselves, but tried to get the guards in charge of
 the parties to do 1t. Fortunately, the latter were well disposed towards us,
 and refused to do the bidding of the Reds.
 Other bands of Bolsheviki leaders
 arrived. and each one of them tried
 to succeed where the others had
 failed. It soon became clear we could
 no longer count immunity , from death, and we began in
 the early part to consider plans for
 escape to the British ships we could see riding at anchor not far away.
 The commander or the British ships
 we could see riding at anchor had not
 sufficient force to land men to assist
 us in escape, and it was clearly un- derstood that they would have to
 make its own arrangements for get , ting down to the boats which we knew would be at our disposal
 Towards the end of March matters looked their blackest, for new de- tachments of the Reds arrived from | different parts of Russia, and were posted to prevent escape to the Brit ish ships From the windows of the palace we could also the ferocious Reds on the lookout for the slightest ? movement towards escape, and our hearts sank within us as we saw the 5 strength of our foes increase daily } until 1t seemed that we were com