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At Theodore Borisoff's request, since he is guiding this visit, we read inscriptions engraved on the ceiling. "In memory of the Russian soldiers who fought for France", "Russian troops in France, 1916 - 1918", "The Russian Expeditionary Troops During the First World War". Theodore Borisoff continues his description: "The trajectory of the Russians from Moscow to Marseille via Siberia, the China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal", "The debarcation at Marseille".   On a map of the world, he continues to describe this journey: "Moscow, Vladivostok, Lake Baikal which they crossed via ferry boat, the seas of Japan and China, the Indian Ocean, the canal of the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and Marseille...They traveled over seas and oceans, from Moscow to Marseille, thirty million miles in 104 days. You see?!"

This is the way that the guided tour of the Theodore Borisoff Russian mini-museum has commenced for over 20 years at his place in Carentan, in memory of the Russian expeditionary corps which his father and uncle (Theodore and Vassily) were members of.

The story starts with the Franco-Russian Alliance signed in 1897  by the French President and the Czar after four years of negotiations.

In 1915, my father left with others, from Murmansk or Arkhangelsk. They arrived in Brest.  One hundred and twenty English or Russian boats made the trip between these ports. He came to bring merchandise to the trains headed for Russia. He was given permission to pay a visit to his brother, and was able to convince him to join the group - that was in December 1916.  He took the train back and the ferry boat over Lake Baikal, and then a boat to Marseille. "It was war time; the town gave them a hero's welcome, they and the 50,000 soldiers from Czar Nicholas II's army who had come in 1916-17 to reinforce the allied troops.  The language barrier did not prevent a friendly exchange from both sides:   "we spoke in gestures and used as few words as possible," wrote Corporal Malinovski who later became the chief commander of the Soviet troops under Kruschev.

The Russian soldiers were led to the Mailly encampment and sent, brigade after brigade as reenforcements to all of the "hot spots" along the front: 1916, Mourmelon, February to April 1917 La Pompelle, Courcy as well as Verdun and the Ardennes; 1917, the Marne and Aisne regions; 1918, the north, the Marne, the Somme, the Oise and the Ardennes.  There were also the isolated dramas of La Courtine, Macedonia and the military occupation of Worms in Germany. "In Courcy, the Russians fought like lions," wrote Poincare in 1917. "If France wasn't wiped off the map in that war, it was in large part due to the heroism of the Russians," declared Marechal Foche in April, 1939. "They were simple people, with their dogs, "Mishka", their mascot bear, they played their mandolines and balalaikas, sang their sad songs and adored children" the villagers of Felletin said of them in 1918. 

In 1916 there were 50,000 of them...  by 1918 only 1,700 remained. Thirty-seven thousand five hundred Russian soldiers were killed or disappeared.  Their remains can be found in hundreds of cemeteries situated right on the combat zones, of which the most famous is St. Hilaire le Grand in the Marne region.

Every year there are special ceremonies in St. Hilaire in honor of the Russian war dead, and Theodore Borisoff and his wife are always in attendance.  One can see the French and Russian flags flying side by side, as at La Pompelle.

Theodore Borisoff's father was wounded in 1917 and evacuated to a convalescent home in Le Cotentin. In July 1917, his brother Vasily came to visit him.  "They separated 800 meters from here, at the Carentan railroad station and my father never saw his brother again....or ever found out where he was killed," our guide informs us. "We did research in countless military cemeteries... starting in the Sedan and Rethel, you see, my wife and I, we took tomes of materials and would go through the surnames....to find Vasily. And we found him after several years.  The mayor of Vouziers helped us....he is in the German cemetery of Montmedy in the Meuse where he had been a prisoner of war... Vasily Borisoff 28.8.17;  he was killed one month after parting with his brother.

After the Armistice, Theodore Borisoff the elder never returned to Russia.  Of the 1700 surviving Russian soldiers, only 800 were repatriated by the Soviet government. He married his war sweetheart and settled down in Turqueville in Normandy. He spoke little of himself and what he had been through, and died in 1941.

The visit now comes to an end. The mini-museum will move to Aude where it will expand. Documents and archives will be added, not of the Russian expeditionary corps, but of the soldier Theodore and his brother Vasily.  It a matter of more long and painstaking research in Nanterre or elsewhere.

On June 6, 1944, the village of Turqueville, four kilometers from the sea, was liberated by the allied parachute divisions, before Our Lady of St. Mere, Cherbourg or Avranches, and was chosen as the logistics and stockade point for the liberation of Contentin; water, gas, tanks, munitions and food, etc...  Theodore Borisoff Jr. was 15 years old. He was recruited in the rescue mission of the allied forces... but that is another story.