Vladimir fon-Berg also served in the Imperial Russian Navy and then for the White naval forces.  A great deal of his pre-revolution and civil war life was spent in Crimea, as a senior officer at the Sevastopol Morskoi korpus (Marine corps).  His civil war memoirs, published by the Military-Marine Union in Paris and whose front cover is displayed here, are called The last midshipmen and describe the Morskoi korpus’ closure and removal from Crimea.

The exotic scene shown here reflects the final destination of the korpus and indeed all that was left of the Whites’ Black Sea fleet – Bizerte in Tunisia.  The peaceful view here is undermined by the rather forlorn naval figure sitting in the tree.  For fon-Berg as for countless others, the lot  of life in emigration was painfully hard to accept.

Posliednie gardemariny / V. f.-Berg (1931)  586:9.d.90.71