Stands Among The World's Most Stands Among The ... - Index of

This story in terms of terror, callousness and sheer brutality finds little to equal it in the history of
mankind. Here is a glimpse of that tragedy; a small part of the whole that stuns the mind in its horror.
THE EXPULSIONS
"At 0730 hours on June 1st, I went with Major Davies to Peggetz Camp... at the camp I saw a very
large crowd of people, numbering several thousand, collected in a solid square with women and
children in the middle and men around the outside. There appeared to be an evenly spaced cordon of
uniformed men round the whole crowd. A body of fifteen to twenty priests was assembled in one part
of the crowd, wearing vestments and carrying religious pictures and banners. At 0730 the priest
began to conduct a service and the whole crown began to chant."
"Cossacks and soldiers alike have vivid memories of that scene. Towering over the crowd was a
wooden platform with a makeshift altar and a large cross. Around the platform were the priests, all in
brightly colored vestments.....
Davies addressed the crowd through an interpreter and told them that it was time they began loading
(to be transferred to the Red Army). He writes that, 'The only result was a tightening of the crowd.'
He told them that they had half an hour in which to finish the service, and when this time was up he
gave them another half-hour. But there was no sign that the prayers were about to end. Davies then
realised 'that appeal to this crowd for voluntary movement was useless and that they would have to be
forcibly evacuated.'
He formed his men up along the unfenced side of the square. Some were armed with pick-helves,
others with rifles loaded with live ammunition. The riflemen had bayonets tied to their belts. He
gave them the order to fix bayonets."
Major 'Rusty' Davies described how his men executed a perfect drill movement 'like guardsmen at
Buckingham Palace', after which he didn't think the Cossacks; men, women and children would resist.
They did.
"Even when the soldiers advanced into the crowd with their clubs and bayonets, the Cossacks carried
on praying and refused to move. Like a herd of animals facing an attack by predators, they had
hidden their women and children in the middle of the crowd, while along the edge was a line of young
men resolved to defend the tribe. In Davies's words, 'the people formed themselves into a solid mass,
kneeling and crouching with their arms locked around each others bodies.' The soldiers tried taking
hold of individual Cossacks and pulling them away from the mob. Ivan Martynenko remembers how
'the whole crowd trembled and rocked as the soldiers tugged at it, but they were not able to prise
anyone away'". - The Last Secret. Lord Bethell
Major 'Rusty' Davies went on to describe how an isolated pocket of 200 people were loaded onto
trucks: "As individuals on the outskirts of the group were pulled away, the remainder compressed
themselves into a still tighter body, and as panic gripped them, started clambering over each other in
frantic efforts to get away from the soldiers. The result was a pyramid of screaming, hysterical
human beings under which a number of people were trapped. The soldiers made frantic efforts to
split this mass in order to save the lives of those people pinned underneath, and pick-helves and rifle
butts were used on arms and legs to force individuals to loosen their holds." - Major 'Rusty' Davies
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