I'm sure I'm not alone in asking if you find the photo of the truck or one like it to place it on this thread so we all can see it. Please. And, thanks ahead of time. The both of you have bee great in all of the threads where we have asked tons of questions.
On p. 316 King and Wilson talk about the truck and the bodies, also, where the guards were while traveling. They say three (Yurovsky, Ermakov and Lyukhanov) were squeezed in the cab. I hope one of them were smaller than the others because most truck at that time period had a stick shift that came up from the floor on the right side of the driver. I remember as a kid finding myself in this position in an old pick-up truck and it was an unpleasant experince. Then they say that hanging on the outside of the truck were the others (Soames, Lacher, Verhas). Telling us this was Kudrin / Michael Medvedev....
Was he, also, on the truck? Maybe on the running board, if this truck had them.
They combined the weight of 17 people to a weight of about 2,200 pounds plus one small dog, maybe.
The engine, they tell us, was sixty horsepower and the engine was prone to overheating.
To add to this was the uphill grade and then there was the mud....
p. 317 -There had been a rain storm on the 15 the of July.....
Several times the engine over heated and the engine had to be shut off..... If you have ever been in a truck when the engine has overheated, you know it takes a long time to be cool enough to be safe to get the radiator cap off.... because water needs to be added... then off the truck rolled toward the Four Brother's Mine.... at five to ten miles an hour... Two hours for ten miles....
I really think it would have taken them at least more than three or four hours.
If they started at three in the morning that would have made it about six or seven in the morning....
The main reason would have been the radiator and the engine lugging from all this weight.
It was the radiator that overheated, again, that caused the truck to stop next to or in Pig's Meadow... and King and Wilson tell us on p. 318, "nearly four-thirty in the morning". Attempts were made to get the truck out of the muck.... If you've ever watched men trying to get a truck out of the muck, they don't try just once or twice.... so this took more time.
Let us not forget, the eleven bodies had been removed.
The railroad ties had to be found by some hut and then carried to the truck. A tie isn't light. This, too, took time....
Truck was driven out of the muck, the bodies were reloaded and it finally slide into more muck about a mile from the Four Brother's Mine...
p. . 318 "It was now nearly four-thirty in the morning.
Unable to go farther they unloaded the bodies and placed them into "carts they brought"...
Brought? On the truck? If not where did Yurovsky and Ermakov find them and how long had this taken, I wonder?
If the open carts had been on the truck, how much weight is to be added to the already heavy load?
p. 321-2 "It was nearly seven in the morning..." when the bodies, which had been placed in carts, stopped at the shafts known as the Four Brothers.
Oh, let's not forget the meeting with Ermakov's group of guys who had thought they were going to get to execute Nicholas II and the others. That little scene must have taken up even more time....
Since I know King and Wilson took great pains to add up all the events and matched them with the time slots, I wonder, if they should have given these men more time just to get to this point in time. If they do, does that mean certain things could not have happen by the time Yurovsky returned to Ekaterinburg by noon?
AGRBear
