I'm trying to get a copy of "Trail of Hope" from the local library (it's apparently quite popular!) to learn a bit about how the Ander's Army was organized in the USSR so I can trace my family's movements a bit better but perhaps someone here could help me.
Where were the enlistment stations and where were the crossing points from the USSR to Persia
and how did people get to those places?
I read about Krasnovodsk as a departure point with many people boarding ships to go to Persia
and that seems to be the main point of departure.
However another crossing point was Ashkhabad (Ashgabat) which is about 50 km north of the Persian border
on the Trans-Caspian Railway with people being trucked south to the border.
However there is also a another point about 200 km east of Ashgabat where the railway comes within a few kilometres of the border and people could have walked over after they left the train (and keeping in mind that in those days of steam locomotives the trains would need to stop frequently to pick water and coal and also they would be travelling quite slowly even when moving so it might be practical to just jump off.
How did people get to Krasnovodsk?:- apparently the only practical way to get there for large numbers of people is by the Trans-Caspian line which is really a round-about route from western Russia and northern Kazakhstan and in that case why would they not simply cross at Ashgabat (since they need to go through that town anyway) or even just get off the train to the east and walk a few kilometres south across the border?
My uncle Bolek's family was at that point located in northern Tajikistan and he apparently went to enlist and left the family behind until he was enlisted and then could send for them to join him but apparently the door suddenly shut and he got out just in time but his family got left behind.
I know also that he suffered a spell of dysentery along the way to the enlistment station and barely survived but it really disoriented him and left him with only hazy memories of what happened before.
Where would have been the most likely place for him to enlist if he traveled on the TC line west to either Ashgabat or Krasnovodsk?
When he got there according to the records kept by the Polish military attache in Moscow he was the only one? enlisting and he recorded his kinfolk left behind in Tadzhikistan who were Anna (his mother apparently), Maria (possibly a sister of Anna or a cousin of Marcin), and his younger brothers Jozef and Henryk (my father)
but his father Marcin by then was no longer showing in the records so he must have been diverted or died along the way before then.
After he left to enlist apparently little Henryk then decided to simply leave for Persia on his own and apparently without papers or permission or whatever so he would have been "riding the rails" and stealing rides on the TC line when no one was looking.
Many single Polish children were doing this and apparently many crossed at Krasnovodsk but did any cross elsewhere such as Ashgabat or simply get off the train east of there and walk across the border on their own?
I know my father went through Samarkand, etc and apparently on the TC line because he told me so himself when I was in my early teens (although I just could not make sense out of his story at that point)
and he also told my mother (before I was born) that he had reached Persia before his brother
so that would seem to indicate that he crossed at Ashgabat or perhaps even just jumped off the train further east and simply walked across and sneaked through the border area (which would have been lightly guarded in that region anyway).
Could anyone offer any observations on where my uncle and father probably crossed the border into Persia?
Thank you.
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