On 11th May 1920, Colonel Charles Wickham closed the British Military Mission to Siberia and took the train to Shanghai, where he caught a steamer and returned to the United Kingdom to start his new career with the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
He was upset that he had to leave behind the British prisoners-of-war in Irkutsk, but he had sent a positive update to the Army Council and Lord Curzon on 5th March and ensured that a carriage full of supplies was left for them with Captain Norman Stilling of the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, who was seconded to the Foreign Office.
The supplies included 58 gallons of rum and 7,758 packets of cigarettes. It was a pity these never reached the prisoners because they ended up on starvation rations, when they refused to work for the Bolshevik commissars. 
Rupert Wieloch 