Chinese Bandits, Japanese Graves, and General Kalmykov

The rest of the bunch left us in the morning so we had all day to look around, which we did to perfection. We were in a valley with high hills all around us. Here there was a small town which did not have more than a hundred people at most. My friend and I had a good time here as up to this we were in Siberia over half a year and we could hold a pretty good conversation in Russian. We made friends with a fellow who had been to Alaska and could talk pretty good English and he gave us an invite to his house for dinner which we sure did take up. We had a fine meal here with some very good vodka. He said that most of the people had left this town as it was raided so many times that they got tired of it and left. He also said that there was a gang of Chinese bandits in the hills not far that would come down on this town any day and take everything they could lay their hands on. This we did not call good news as we did not like to put up any fight with a bunch like that.

In the afternoon we walked around and we found a place in some woods where the Japanese must have had a big fight as all over the woods the Japs had stuck boards in the ground over the graves of the dead ones.

Toward evening General Kalmykov came in here with his armored cars to load his train with coal. When the people found out who it was they beat it to the hills. He broke into most every house and I guess he got all he wanted as he left at night for Shkotovo. We heard that he lost over three hundred men at Shkotovo.