The Daily News Letter Portrait of a Military Man

J.T.A. Staff Correspondent

Moscow.

Joseph Fogel, trim and erect for all his ninety-eight years, still wears the uniform of the Russian militia and laughs at suggestions that he has reached the age of retirement. After sixty years of military service—fifty-five of them in the Czar’s armies— he isn’t ready yet to call it a day. Hell resign on his hundredth birthday, he declares, and not a day before.

Fogel is in charge of the railway station at Byelozerkvo, a Ukraine village. His duties are not very arduous and the near centenarian fills them punctiliously. He frequently reminisces regarding his years of military service and the exploits that won him commendation in the Czarist and later the Red armies.

DRAFTED AT 10

Fogel, to piece his story together from his recollections and from the official records, was born in a small town in the Wilno district. At the age of ten he was snatched by one of the press gangs of the day seeking men for the Imperial Army. He served for twenty-five years.

Freed from further duty then, but having no home to return to, he enlisted in the army as a volunteer and was made a cavalry sergeant. He served in that capacity for another thirty years, making a total of fifty-five years of military service in the Czarist army. He served through the Russo-Turkish War, fought at Plevna and Sevastopol, fought through the Russo-Japanese War, fighting at the battle of Mukden and at the defence of Port Arthur. He distinguished himself by his bravery, and won many medals. In 1913 he retired from the army and was awarded the Cross of St. George, the highest military award in the Czarist army.

TESTIFIED ON POGROM

At the time of the Bialystok pogrom, Fogel appeared as a witness against the pogromists, and testified that the soldiers had been ordered by their military commanders to kill and loot the Jewish population. His courage in appearing as a witness, being a soldier on active service, against his military superiors, roused great apprehension for him, and only his unblemished record over so many years saved him from summary action.

When he left the army, Fogel settled in Kovno. The war broke out the next year, and when the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievitch, the commander-in-chief, issued his order that all Jews must leave the war zone within twenty-four hours, he with all his medals and fifty-five years service in the Czarist army also had to evacuate the fighting line together with all the others of the Jewish population.

As he was being evacuated, it happened that at the station of Romen, in the district of Poltava, in the Ukraine, the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaievitch himself happened to see this verteran with the Cross of St. George on his breast and had him called into his compartment and asked him how at a time when the Fatherland was sorely pressed and needed soldiers, a war-scarred veteran, a Cavalier of St. George, should be behind the lines. He ordered him to report immediately for duty. The old man appeared to fall in with the suggestion, but in his heart he decided that he would never serve under the orders of a commander who ordered the evacuation of the Jewish population. He continued his journey with the evacuated population until he came to Byelozerkov, where he settled and did manual labor for his living.

In 1920, when Byelozerkov was evacuated because of the advancing Polish army, Fogel joined the local militia, and was drafted into the Red army as a volunteer to fight back the invaders. When the town of Kaniev was encircled by the Polish military, he volunteered to find out the strength of the enemy and, disguised as a Ukrainian peasant, he went among the Polish troops. His report brought back to headquarters helped to drive the Polish military back from this part of the front.

On a second occasion at the battle of Rzhishtehev, he was captured by the Poles and taken to Kiev, where he was sentenced to death. He was recognized, however, by a General under whom he had served in the Czarist army, who ordered him to be released. He was sent to Zhytomia in exchange for Polish prisoners. The Red army sent him to Byelozerkov, where he has remained to this day.