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Show "DEATH TRAIN" IS STEADILY MOVING Shunted On From Station to Station, Sta-tion, Covering 4,000 Miles in Russia. RESCUED BY U. S. RED CROSS Scatters Victims of Disease Along Railroad Line in Siberia Amer. icans Save the Survivors at Razdolne. Tokio. For rhe second time word comes our of Siberia of a "death train" traversing the 4.000 miles of railroad between the Ural front and the Pacific, Pa-cific, shunted on from station to station, sta-tion, with help denied .until word of It reached the American Red Cross. In the spring a train loaded with typhus ty-phus victims distributed its dead across the land. The lutest death train carried in addition to the typhus the dreaded spotted fever and cholera. Word of the presence of this train on the main line betweeu Irkutsk and Vladivostok reached American Red Cross headquarters in the latter city a few weeks ago, and preparations were started immediately to succor what survivors there might be of the callous cruelty these stricken soldiers of the Kolchak army had been subjected sub-jected to. Major Riley Allen, executive execu-tive secretary of the American Red Cross in Siberia, who is only just recovered re-covered from an attack of typhus himself, him-self, organized a hospital train to meet the death train, going out with it. Dr Rakltin, of the staff of the American Red Cross hospital at Russian Island, who has also been laid low with typhus, ty-phus, accompanied Major Allen, with nurses and aids. Doctor Dies on Train. The death train, they had last heard, was at Nikolsk on August 27, where the Russian authorities had simply passed it on, as all other Russian officials of-ficials had done at every station for weeks. Just before the train reached Nikolsk the doctor aboard it had died of cholera. Seven of the 150 sick who had survived to reach Nikolsk died the next day. Their bodies were dumped out of the moving train by wrecks of men who had not the strength to dig graves, even If they might have had the inclination. As things were going it was only a matter mat-ter of time until their own festering bodies, crawling with typhus lice and foul with living for weeks In mi-cleaned mi-cleaned box cars, w-ould be rolled out of the side door to become a center of Infection for the countryside. The Red Cross train caught up to the death train at Razdolne, where It lay on a siding near a barracks in which American troops were quartered. quar-tered. These soldiers were doing what little they dared for the pest-ridden sufferers, having run so many risks, in fact, that they were all put into quarantine quar-antine when the medical authorities discovered the facts. Until these American soldiers, In a more or less rough and ignorant way, offered some help, the patients in the death train had received nothing from the troops they had met except alarmed ordws from commanders to be on their way. Before reaching the death train the Red Cross officials had made arrangements arrange-ments to bring the typhus and cholera patients to the Russian hospital at Nikolsk, which had been fitted up by the Inter-Allied sanitary committee, and permission had been obtaiued from Colonel Lewis, of the American army, to use the inter-allied wards of this institution. But the Russian railroad rail-road authorities at Nikolsk proved to be like the hundreds of others along the line and refused to permit the death train to be brought there, and the Russian military command refused to permit the patients to be brought Into the town under any circumstances. circum-stances. Neither' woul'd the Russian military authorities at Razdolne permit per-mit the sick to be removed from their filthy box cars to, any building In the town. Finally, after long parleying with Vladivostok, permission was given to house the sick at Nikolsk on condition that they be cleansed first and brought there In sterilized and sanitary clothing. The Red Cross report showed that there had been fifty deaths aboard the train between the time it had lett PernI and the time the rescuers reached it at Razdolne. Being refused help in all directions, the Red Cross workers did the only thing possible. They ran the death train out on the prairie and extemporized extem-porized a field hospital. Otie by one the living skeletons were taken from their train, their clothing stripped off and burned and the men given a scouring bath and then placed aboard the Red Cross train. The effect of the clean clothes, the kindnesses, in such contrast to what .they had previously undergone, and the hope finally held out for recovery Was almost miraculous. |