Part 12

Quartering from this second village, and much further down the valley was a third, conspicuous on another abrupt bluff, which when seen from the distance of the main post, the house tops had the picturesque appearance of toy roofs, sculptured on a pedestal.

The houses on the flat river bank stood out naked on the snow, and in case of attack, could be supported from the main position, for they were well within effective shooting range; but the other, the elevated village, was nearly a mile away, and beside it, on the west, the forest crowded perilously near; gullies were at the base of the bluff which made "dead ground" there, a series of natural trenches for an attacking party. It was a hazardous spot, the Russians would not stay in this distant, treacherous "Death's snare" on the heights; and they wagged their heads lugubriously over the few Americans who persisted in holding it. From the steep side of Headquarters' cliff, the usual wagon road descended, sent offshoots to the two south villages, and trailed off to the concealment of the lower forest.

Week succeeded week in lonely Ust Padenga, where the sad disgarnishment of this tragical, little war was seared vivid in the living consciousness of American soldiers. The Armistice came, but with it no word of enlightenment, until they were led to believe that in the general rejoicing, the stirring movement of momentous events, no heed could be given to the trifling performances of their fantastic, Arctic side show, long since forgotten in France.

Yet strange, the soldiers did not grow deeply embittered, a stoic calm came over all and they became worshippers of the Russian philosophy, _nitchevoo_, votaries of the Fates, burning frankincense at their shrine, praying favor, yet unmoved by their displeasure, indifferent to their whimsical caprice. They became atrophied men, asking nothing of the future and expecting nothing. The doctors said many were cases of neurotic disorder, and others suffered from enteritis and scabies, and ordered rest and the hospital, but the Staff waved the medical men brusquely aside and sarcastically asked who was to hold off the Bolsheviks.

During November, and shortly following the Armistice, two patrols "seeking contact," were waylaid in ambush, and from the first, only one man came back. The officer of the second might have escaped, but to do so he would have had to leave a detachment in distress, surrounded in the forest. He rather chose the hazard of death, and leading the fight, he laid down his life for his friends.

During the weeks of December and January, with their bitter cold and dismal, somber days, trees were felled about the defenses to widen the field of fire, and long, intersecting lanes were laid through the forest like swaths through a standing grain field, so that the machine guns and the automatics might hurl their spray of death at longer range, where skulked shadowed and grisly, white forms. When in the dead and quiet of the night, rockets burst from unknown quarters, flared with ghostly glare and faded in mystery behind inky, plumose silhouettes.

In the cold and the long darkness of winter, there was time for reflection for any one who would be so idle, on the defenselessness of the position, the remoteness from the base, the hordes that were massing on the road north to Shenkurst and meant soon to make "the big push."

Our Intelligence reported that in January the Sixth Bolshevik Army of the north numbered forty-five thousand seven hundred, and the dribbling replenishment of our forces that had come down the railway from open Murmansk, had far from kept pace with attrition by sickness and gunshot wounds. Disregarding our Russian Allies, we did not have six thousand men at all fronts.

By the middle of January, a blighting influence, a devastating, nether presence filled the air, like the spell of an evil spirit, and as capable of being finitely recorded as the testimony of eyes and ears. There was in the atmosphere something closely akin to that heavy, stifling calm, that in the summertime hangs over all, before the wind swoops down and the first, big, pelting raindrops fall from blackened thunder clouds, the advance guard of the drenching storm that descends to earth in howling, unrestrained fury.

All at lone Ust Padenga knew the storm was coming, it was only a question of where it would strike. On the 19th day of January, the dispositions were these: a platoon of Americans held the village on the pedestal, fifty-four allied Russians were in the village on the flat below, and the main body of Americans, some two hundred strong, two Field Pieces, one One Pounder of Russian design, one Pom Pom and forty Russian artillerymen (who funked in the first fight and were relieved by Canadians), were in the backward village on the high bluff.

At dawn, for one hour, enemy batteries from across the Vaga shelled the foremost position on the elevated ground, then suddenly ceased firing, and like grotesque Jacks in the Box, swarms of white-clad Bolsheviks arose by magic from the concealment of the ravines. A succession of long, white lines came from the close forest, and across the open snow of the Vaga came still more advancing, white-clothed men.

Against such bulked masses, resistance was impossible. Three machine guns, burst after burst, tore rending gaps in the coming lines, but they merely welded and kept on.

When the last pannier of ammunition was gone, word was given to blaze a path through to the rear--and double time! And now down the steep hillside the trapped company charged, tumbling and fighting like maddened, cornered animals, until they gained a foothold on the road which stretched out bleak and coverless eight hundred yards to the main village. Some tried to make a run of it over the bottomless, intervening snows, where they struggled piteously like hobbled animals and were killed. But in most part, they dashed in frantic relays down the open road, sprinting forward a score of yards, then flattening on the ground, and so on, rushing and sprawling flat, until the fatal course was run, while every rifle from the abandoned village on the height, and the flanking forest and across the Vaga spurted death, and machine guns rattled rasping death, and bullets lashed the air with the furious cracking of ten thousand whips, or sped fluttering through the snow, and went off whimpering into space, or felled men with sledgelike blows, until the doomed way was strewn, end to end, with the prostrate forms of the fallen ones, and a pitiful few, by some fluke of luck, had gained the shielding hill.

Not ten minutes had been taken in that terrible dash through that valley of Death's shadow, and of the forty-seven who began the journey, six reached the goal of the main village. In the fearful sub-zero temperature, all of the wounded would have perished by freezing, had not a volunteer party, braving the unspeakable, barbarous Bolos (who for some reason held their fire), gone out in the open snow and brought them to shelter. Fifteen were thus accounted for, and the rest lay somewhere beyond sight, "missing in action," that ambiguous, impersonal expression of the War Department, so fraught with mingled hope and dread, harrowing fear.

When night screened the battle scene, the Allied Russians, upon their own inspiration, evacuated the village on the flat, and the next day, the unwitting Bolsheviks began the second phase of their investment of Ust Padenga. Again the artillery, even more violently than the first day, flung hurtling blasts at the deserted village, and late at day, the infantry, grotesque, bobbing objects out on the wide snow stretches, stormed the uncontested position. It was like rifle practice to shoot down those living targets, glaringly open on the white snow, and they were downed by tattering bursts of shrapnel, downed by musketry, downed by awful devastating bursts from machine guns, that moved them row upon row, until the last man had passed to the cover of this village of costly folly, and the snow was dotted with dead and wounded, which, from the distant hill, looked grotesquely like raisins stuck in an immense rice pudding.

On the third day, the surviving village, lying bare on the unsheltered top of the cliff, was the target of a barrage that searched it house to house, until many of the moujik homes were wrecks of smashed timbers, and the trail of human wreckage was a ghastly, unsightly thing. The American doctor went to death, a victim of the shells, because he would not have his wounds bound up while a single, private soldier was not relieved, but he lives with Vaga men as long as life endures, a symbol of moral grandeur and noblest self abnegation, that will ever inspire faith in the immortal, spiritual entity of man.

It was not the Viking Captain who ordered retreat from Ust Padenga. Half of his little company was gone, but he had no thought of yielding. He would have held on until the last dog was hung, if superior directions had not come from Shenkurst. He loved a fight, this antique Norseman, loved the wild, esoteric fury of it. Three times, his men threw back the Bolsheviks, and caught in a contagion of blood lust, they craved still more, maddened by battle, they took hilarious delight in seeing "the Bolos bite the snow banks."

They did not know that pitted against them was the vanguard of an army that by every objective rule of warfare should have crushed this rash, little group to utter destruction; but if Ust Padenga did not know, all at Shenkurst were fully alert to the gravity of the situation. This was the much proclaimed Bolshevik offensive, with its object, the annihilation of the Allied North Russian Expedition; and now as the full fury of the gigantic, impending assault unfolded, the "offensive defensive" theory found vindication, for at the Ust Padenga, little more than one company had stood off a regiment of the enemy.

There seemed small hope of escape for the valiant Vaga men who remained after the fourth night of the attack, when an incendiary shell fell upon the village, sending hungry, devouring flames athwart the curtain of the Russian night, till naught was left of the moujik homes save the gray ashes of "friendly intervention"; but in the confusion of concentration, the assemblage of large numbers and numerous troop movements, the retreating company glided in darkness down the center of the frozen, white covered Vaga, through the very midst of unsuspecting, enemy hosts, and two nights later, reported at Headquarters tired and half starved, the Viking leader among the casualties with a serious wound.

In Shenkurst, the beleaguered city, in point of numbers, the Slavic Battalion, nearly twelve hundred strong, was the mainstay of the garrison, but on trial in a previous attack for one of the two flanking villages, it had made a sorry showing, and in a last stand, was estimated as of uncertain, staying quality. Besides these Russians, there was one full company of American Infantry, the exhausted half company from Ust Padenga, one section of the Thirty-Eighth Canadian Field Artillery, four Two Point Nine mountain pieces, and three trench mortars.

The Bolsheviks had surrounded Shenkurst in an immense, unnumbered multitude. They had mounted one nine inch gun, two six inch guns, four Four Point Sevens and a Battery of Field Artillery, and from three-quarters of the forest commenced to batter down the buildings.

It could be only a brief time before the city would be in ruins, but even more serious was the question of provisions. They were already limited, and in case of siege, no new supply could be brought up until the breaking of the river in May.

The Bolsheviks, confident that the garrison would try to escape from Shenkurst, waited in great masses on the main north road, eager for the coming slaughter; but a native had informed the Allied Command of a secret path through the deep, snow covered swamps, and at midnight, along this unknown route, evacuation was silently effected.

Before the retreat, the Allied Russians were sent as a protective screen along a flanking trail, but scarce had the retiring movement begun, when what remained of them came rushing back in frantic haste, that was altogether unsoldierly, gasping an excited, incoherent story of how two entire companies had deserted to the enemy lines and the rest had fled in desperate fear for their lives.

Many civilians joined this bizarre, midnight march through the snow forest and swamps, and made the retreat a spectacle of wantonous disorder, as stoical men and wailing women strove heavily on, bent under the torturing weight of bundled treasures, which, under duress of fatigue, one by one were reluctantly abandoned, leaving a pathetic havoc of cluttering waste in the trail; and soldiers, weakened by much fasting and sleepless battle nights, lurched in the darkness, fell and lay in the cold snow, and had to be struck and urged on by violent means, so grateful was any surcease from further excruciating effort.

Late the next day, a merciful halt for the night was made at Shaguvari, where a rear detached outpost of Shenkurst had been maintained, and which outnumbering, advance enemy patrols had vainly striven to dislodge. But the disheartening march was resumed in the morning, when the Bolsheviks were reported collecting in force to cut off retreat downstream. So Shaguvari was added to the sum of Russian villages fed to fires of the Allied cause and became another charred ruin on the Vaga.

At villages outside of Kitsa, twenty miles further, trenches were dug in the snow, and barricades improvised of trees, in order that the driven troops might catch their breath. And on the Dvina, now only a few miles away, new positions were taken, where the imperiled River Column could be drawn back, and the consolidated Allied forces stand embattled in a desperate last defense of Bereznik, for if Bereznik fell, all knew it meant the beginning of the siege of unfortified Archangel.

But the delaying action was prolonged beyond the most sanguine dream of hope, and at Vistafka and Yeveevskaya, Maximofskaya and Ignatevskaya, the neighboring villages of Kitsa, the Americans held out, relieved in turns by British troops, and the remaining Slavic allies, who atoned for much by a heaven bestowed blunder that saved a surrounded post of the Americans.

These places, with their unpronounceable Slavic names, will be remembered always by the Vaga men, for here during Arctic February and March days, they fought savage, bloody fights in the mounting snowdrifts, and performed deeds of sublime sacrifice and courage, that will never be known save by those who were there.

They were still at Kitsa, and had not given ground, when the first redolence of spring softened the rasping, winter winds, and made the Bolshevik Commander draw back his artillery in fear of being mired in the yielding snow roads.

Not one of the Vaga men, in the innermost counsel of his heart, had ever expected to live through that winter onslaught, and when all with quiet courage stood ready for the end, lo, the enemy abandoned the field where victory awaited, and left the battle when it had been won. This petty, strange and inexplicable war was freighted deep with countless things of mystery, but none so beyond understanding as the failure of the Bolshevik Command to follow up the capture of Shenkurst.

The feeble, Allied remanent on the Vaga was reeling from the stunning blows of the massed attack, and thought of resistance all hung on the hope of saving Archangel and the life of the Expedition; but when all tensed themselves for the crucial shock, it did not come, the Bolshevik advance weakened and faltered and held back, so that the defenders, panting in terrible exhaustion, were able to suck in the air of reviving strength and hold on. When later the attacks of February and March came, they were sporadic, and lacked the fury, the sustained and vehement driving power of the first assault. Now in spring, it was too late, for Nature with sun and gentle breath had definitely won the battle for the Vaga men, and they crossed the river to safety, leaving in the black, despairing night, two villages flaming, a recessional of ill-will and destruction.

The first boast of "one Allied soldier against twenty Bolsheviks" had been made good, and the Expedition was saved, but by a precariously close margin. In no respect did the Allied Command so underestimate the enemy as in his power of military organization. The miserable "Bolo brigands" that were to have disbanded with the first punishment of Arctic cold, had raised an enormous army, which now, in late winter, exceeded one million soldiers, and the regiments that took Shenkurst must have laughed contemptuously at the undisciplined, untrained troops of the early days of the campaign.

Perhaps it will never be known why the Allies were not destroyed by these Vaga attacks. There were many villages capable of housing great numbers of soldiers south of Shenkurst, and probably in the January thrust, seven thousand five hundred to eight thousand hostile troops were quartered in them, a force that should have swept the Vaga Column before it like chaff in the storming wind, but it did not do so, and one may conjecture that the reason was because Trotsky did not care to hazard the risk of stirring the American people and the British people to an avenging and genuine war by the annihilation of the lone Allied battalions. Greater wars have been brought about by more trivial causes; but the stronger probability is that the Bolshevik soldiers revolted at the staggering slaughter of the attacks over the deep snows.

"Our losses are terrible," said one of the prisoners, "the commissars cannot understand your resistance. We are twenty to one and have many guns. Our Commander expected to take Bereznik in three days, but the soldiers will not attack any more over the snow against your awful machine guns."

The troops at the Vaga battles could not be compared with the unruly, Bolo rabble of the early days. They shot low and were well officered by officers, mostly Letts, who had been trained in Trotsky's military schools at Moscow.

Another explanation might have been in the story of some of the prisoners, but which was never confirmed, that the soldiers had met in a solemn, protest meeting, following the last costly, Vaga offensive, and shot their Commander for his persistence in pushing on, despite the heavy casualties. The fatal potion of Kerensky's Order still poisoned the blood of the Russian army, and although the Soviet soldiers gave exhibition of great bravery, and were well led, they were not great soldiers; they failed in the ultimate trial, and did not go through to victory when stamina and resilience for the last lap would have won.

As the Vaga men had gone furthest in fulfillment of a vain and futile mission, had parried the heart thrust, and beat back its violence, so were they the last to leave, and were still in battle at Malo Bereznik at the close of May, six months after the Armistice, that proclaimed Peace to an afflicted World, and poured cooling balm on a million wounds, so far from feverish, strife torn Russia.

Not until June did they meet their regimental comrades, coming from every compass point of the wide province, save the seabound, impassable north, to assemble at Economia for the homegoing. There the battles of Kodish and the Railway, Onega, the Vaga and Dvina and Pinega Valley were fought again, until the white, Russian snows were hued rose red with blood of recounted slain, until American soldiers sailed away, bewildered still at this gambling murder game, and sacred life--the most contemptible stake in the mad lottery.

Not the Vaga men to idly speculate on causes! They knew full well the colonel's words, and were exalted still by the fervor of their sacrificial avowal, the noblest of mankind--to lay down life for a friend.

PINEGA

19th March, 1919.

C. G. Tours.

HQ: 3407, Following telegram repeated from Archangel quote Information as to future possible relief for this expedition would materially improve the morale of troops after their long winter of Field Service, and it would also assist me in making arrangements for the future. So far I have not received any official information as to prospects.

_Signed_ Stewart unquote.

Repeated to G.H.Q. and Agware.

Wheeler.

"It has always been a cardinal axiom of the Allied and Associated Powers to avoid interference in the internal affairs of Russia. Their original intervention was made for the sole purpose of assisting those elements in Russia which wanted to continue the struggle against German autocracy, and to free their country from German rule, and in order to rescue the Czecho-slovaks from the danger of annihilation at the hand of the Bolshevik forces."

G. CLEMENCEAU. D. LLOYD GEORGE. WOODROW WILSON. V. E. ORLANDO. SAIONJI.

From note, dated 26th May, 1919, Allied and Associated Powers to Admiral Kolchak.

X

PINEGA

The Orthodox Church of Russia is hated by the Soviets with an intense and vehement hatred, for the institution of kings was sustained by religion even more effectively than by the Imperial Guards. Therefore, no opportunity to deride reverend personages and sacred objects is ever neglected by the Bolsheviks, or to violate with leering and uncouth pleasure, the hallowed worship places.

Under the nimbose influence of Red Moscow, the religious precepts of the people will be snatched ruthlessly from them. Harsh and unyielding though these precepts be, they are the only note of spirituality in the life of the moujik, and without them he wallows in a mire of crass animalism. There was in Holy Russia many a homily in patience and honesty and humility; but will these homely virtues endure in the arid waste and the spiritless air of agnosticism?

At Pinega, some ninety miles east of Archangel (and nearly one hundred fifty on the devious road), the cleric party was well fortified, and the outstanding civic feature of the city was the ancient monastery, standing commandingly at the edge of Lake Soyla.

The Pinega monks were quite naturally opposed to the Bolsheviks, but the mayor was a Soviet, and the city was divided in allegiance between White Archangel and Red Moscow when the detachment of Americans came in October.

The Americans' presence shepherded the wavering ones to the fold. A company of Home Guards was organized, and from outward signs the cause of the Allies had ascended to triumph. But the surrounding Bolsheviks were far from disbanded. They gathered in much strength under the leadership of Kulikoff, a competent horsethief, and commenced to plunder the slender, household larders of the peasants in the lower Pinega valley, to whose succor a police force of thirty-five Americans and two hundred White Russians were dispatched in mid-November. This police party penetrated eighty miles southeast and took Karpagora, after an engagement, but early in December was overpowered by the returning Bolsheviks. A few of the Americans were killed, more wounded, and the rest went back to Pinega, posting the White Russians in outlying villages as they retired.