Kornilov smote his horse and galloped at full speed to the shock troops, though the distance was not great. A flutter passed over the group of men, and they fell into rank precipitately. Kornilov reined in his horse with dramatic violence, like a horseman on a monument, and shouted in jerky accents throwing back his head:
"Thanks, my eagles!
I thank you for the brilliant work you have done, and again for seizing the munitions.... I bow low before you...."
Having received a fresh supply of munitions, the Volunteer Army began crossing the Kuban on a ferry of planks seized by a leading cavalry unit.
At that time it numbered nine thousand men, and four thousand horses.
The crossing took three days.
Troops, carts, ordnance depots and munitions stretched on either side of the ferry in a vast camp.
The spring breeze fluttered the rags of laundry hung on shafts to dry.
Smoke arose from campfires.
Hobbled horses pastured in the meadows.
Elated officers leaped on to carts, endeavouring through their field glasses to make out in the blue distance, the orchards and domes of the promised city.
"Upon my word, we're like the crusaders entering Jerusalem!"
"Ah, but there were Jewesses there, boys, and here there are proletarianesses."
"We'll announce the socialization of women.... Ha-ha-ha...."
"Baths, parks, beer shops...."
No attempt was made from the Ekaterinodar side to prevent the crossing, though every now and then scouts would take a pot shot.
The? Reds had decided to defend the town.
The whole population—men, women, and children—hastened to dig trenches, make wire entanglements, post guns.
Troops of Black Sea sailors arrived from Novorossiisk with guns and munitions.
The commissars spoke to the troops of the class nature of Kornilov's Volunteers, backed up as they were by a "ruthless world bourgeoisie, against which, Comrades, we are waging a relentless war," and swore to die rather than surrender Ekaterinodar.
On the fourth day of their march the Volunteer Army moved to the storm of the capital of the Kuban.
The furious attacks of the Volunteers encountered hurricane fire from the batteries at the Black Sea railway station and the Kuban landing stages.
But thanks to the unevenness of the ground, and the protection afforded by orchards, ditches, hedges, and the beds of streams, the attackers reached the town with only slight losses.
Here the battle began.
Near a white house, known as 'The Farm,' at the outskirts of a still leafless poplar grove on the high bank of the Kuban, the Reds put up a stubborn resistance, and, beaten off, again rushed upon the enemy's machine guns in great numbers and seized the farm, only to be beaten off an hour later by the Kuban Cossack scouts of Colonel Ulagai.
Kornilov and his staff immediately set up their headquarters in the one-storey building.
From there the straight streets of Ekaterinodar, the high white houses, the fences, the cemetery, the Black Sea station, and, in front of all, the long rows of trenches, could be seen at a glance.
It was a bright, windy spring day.
Everywhere floated the smoke following upon shots, and the blue haze thundered throbbingly with the incessant roar of the guns.
Neither Reds nor Whites spared their lives on that day.
A corner room, set apart in the white house for Kornilov, was equipped with field telephones, a table and a chair.
He went into it immediately, sat down at the table, unfolded the map, and became absorbed in contemplation of the next moves of the game.
Two of his aides, Second Lieutenant Dolinsky and Khan Khadzhiev, were with him, one taking up his station at the door, the other at the telephones.
Never had the wrinkled Mongolian countenance of the Commander in Chief been so gloomy.
His greying hair stood up stiffly, and his small, parchment-skinned hand, with the gold signet ring on the fourth finger, lay motionless on the map.
He alone had insisted on this storming of the town, against the advice of Alexeyev, Denikin and "the other generals, and now, at the end of the first day, his self-assurance was shaken.
But he would not have admitted this even to himself.
Two mistakes had been made: the first had been to leave a third of the troops, under General Markov, at the crossing to guard the trains—owing to this, the initial blow struck at Ekaterinodar had been insufficiently concentrated and failed to yield the expected results, the Reds having withstood it, and clinging to their positions, in which they were apparently firmly entrenched.
The second mistake had been to apply the same punitive-expedition tactics in Ekaterinodar as had been used in the villages taken on the way; the town was surrounded (on the right flank, by an infantry division and scouts along the river towards the tanneries, on the left by deep cavalry penetration under General Erdeli), so as to close all exits and entrances, and take reprisals against the defenders of the town and the population—shooting, hanging and beating them, as "bandits" and "mutinous swine."
Such tactics brought the defenders to the conclusion that it would toe better to fall in battle than die on the gallows. (The word spread like wildfire through the town—"Kornilov is going to kill everyone.") Women, girls, children, the young and the old, rushed beneath showers of bullets to the trenches with jugs of milk, cream-cheese fritters, and pies.
"Eat, sailors, eat, soldiers, eat, dear comrades, defend us...." And they continued to carry food and ammunition boxes to the defenders, even when horsemen were galloping about everywhere, especially towards evening, shouting:
"Clear the streets!
To your houses!
Extinguish all lights!"
Thus the first day ended with a balance in favour of the Reds.
On that day the Whites lost three of their best commanders, about a thousand officers and rank and file, and exhausted, without appreciable advantage, more than a third of their ammunition.
And from Novorossiisik, moving through a curtain of' fire, dilapidated trains full of sailors, shells and guns, arrived one after another.
The men leaped straight out of the trucks into the trenches, the too great compactness of their onrush and lack of leadership resulting in enormous losses.
Kornilov sat poring over his map in the corner room.
He already realized that there was no other way out— either the town must be taken, or they must all die.