When the locomotive engine pulling the British carriages broke down, the British soldiers arranged for the 24 ladies and unfit men to be transferred to a Polish train, while they set off in sleighs along the track beside the Trans Siberian Railway Line. The Siberian winter of 1919-1920 was particularly cold and the temperature that evening dropped rapidly to below minus 20 degrees Celsius.
Some of the soldiers had purchased felt boots, but unfortunately, Percy James still wore the British issue boots which were about as useful “as a sick headache”, according to the group’s leader, Leonard Vining. When they stopped for the night, Percy had lost the feeling in a foot that had enormous blisters on the toes and heel. Vining, who knew enough about medicine not to be dangerous, applied goose fat to the frost-bitten areas and bought a pair of pymwy (felt boots) for Percy and these probably saved him from succumbing to gangrene.
Percy had transferred from the Somerset and Cornwall Light Infantry to the 1st/9th Cyclist Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment and in Omsk, he volunteered to help save the British civilians fleeing from the Red Terror. After the war, he was demobilised and returned to his family in Bath, but then married and settled in Bournemouth. I was delighted to be contacted by his family in Canada, who informed me that he helped put out fires during the Blitz in the Second World War and lived to a grand old age surrounded by his grandchildren.
Percy in India in 1918, before deploying to Siberia
Rupert Wieloch 