Part 6

The main Bolshevik stronghold north of Vologda was at Plesetskaya, some fifty miles south of the furthermost position of the Allies on the railway, from which an Imperial Government highway reached out through Archangel Province northeast as far as Emetskoe, on the Dvina, passing through the villages Kochmas, Avda, Kodish, and Seletskoe, near the Emtsa river. At Kochmas, another road branched east to Tarasovo, thence north through Gora and Shred Mekrenga.

From Shred Mekrenga and Seletskoe, the enemy could have access to the lower Dvina, head off all supply convoys for the Dvina and Vaga columns; and hold the Allies trapped far up stream. Therefore, two more auxiliary expeditions were organized, and, instead of two invading "Columns," the Allied forces, woefully insufficient at the outset, were operating in seven columns, separated detachments, advance parties, outguards, outposts, flanking forces, and all along the Dvina, from Kholmogora to Bereznik, a stretch of one hundred miles, were still other detached soldier groups watching the treacherous way from Archangel, a Cossack Post in one village, a squad in another, in still another a platoon, all without communication and completely undefended in case of real attack.

There was unlimited chance for rear movements along that tenuous, unprotected, communication line. General Ironside would have massacred the Bolsheviks had positions been reversed. The Germans would have annihilated the Allied North Russian Expedition with half the numbers that the Bolsheviks had.

During the winter, several circling movements were essayed, but never on a scale of comprehensive organization; at Morjagorskaya, in February, and at Shred Mekrenga, the enemy came closest to success, but at both places was stopped by the gallant British, and when spring came his chances vanished, the bogging quagmire precluded any further offensive. But while the Bolsheviks did not destroy the Expedition, they soon reduced the invasion to a series of desperate, detached, outguard actions, and the River and Railway Columns that were to have entered Kotlas and Vologda with the coming of the first snow, were flung far and broad over vast Archangel, as the effort "to stage a real show with two men and an orange" wilted with the first snow, a dismal, ghastly "washout."

Even when the Americans reached Archangel in September, the campaign had already assumed a defensive character. Indeed, so serious was the outlook that they were rushed from the troop-ships, shunted off to Russian box cars, and consigned with expeditious haste to the Railway Front.

Nothing of this was known to these new zealous soldiers off from a brief military training encampment to the very heart of war's purple, glamourous adventure. And it is doubtful whether they could have realized the significance of the military situation, even had it been communicated to them. In a few crowded weeks, so many stirring events had thronged their heretofore placid lives that these recruits from Michigan and Wisconsin were buried beneath a bewildering wilderness of amazing impressions through which confused, alien scenes and persons and places trooped in phantom and fantastic multicolored parade, until their minds were stunned beyond the power of further reception.

During the long voyage, a few still civilian in mind, had recovered sufficient equipoise to inquire about the connection between a war in Russia against Germany, but the inquiry was so unproductive, so futile, and there were so many eccentric twists and turns to this stupendous world madness that in most part they soon fell into that fatalistic philosophy of all soldiers; most of them were content to place their unbounded trust in those who sat in the high places and whose omniscience guided from afar. It was far more quieting, vastly more satisfactory.

Once, during that swaying night journey, from Archangel to the battle line, the decrepit Russian locomotive gasped convulsively and stood still by an old station of huge logs, and, under the lurid light of a flaming torch, was revealed a trainload of prisoners, passing north from the scene of hostilities somewhere below. They made an unheroic spectacle, with their shrinking countenances and unsoldierly, nondescript uniforms, so that some American wag, in a spirit of bantering patronage, called them "Bolo wild men," a name that clung to the enemy throughout all the days of the campaign.

But the shabby prisoners, first living sign of real battle, sent a thrill up and down the spines of these young men, who were so ardent for war and knew so little about it. They sniffed the air of conflict, yearned to give the "Bolos" a taste of their quality, and promised themselves that the folks back home would have nothing to be ashamed of when they came under fire.

The next morning the depressing aspect of the dirty, unkempt group of huts where the soldiers detrained almost passed unnoticed alongside the captivating spectacle that stood on the track nearby, a ferocious war monster, with massive plates of steel like dragon's scales, huge funneled naval guns, and locomotive set in rear of trucks which were piled with sand bag barricades where Lewis automatics poked out murderously, manned by a hodge-podge Polish-Russian crew, who were themselves manned by competent appearing, war-weathered British N.C.O's.

A narrow threadlike swath trailed through the stunted starveling forest to the lowering gloom of dull, laden skies, and the hearts of the fresh, battle eager soldiers swelled big as they gazed far down the gleaming rails to the murky mystery of No Man's Land.

There was in the air a peculiar, dispiriting quality, a brooding, pensive, Russian note that cannot be made known except to those who have felt it. Stillness, heavy almost to the point of suffocation, the shroud of skies that hover mourning on the trees, and the shadow of unlifted gloom that reaches out from the forest and bears down upon the spirit with deep intangible melancholy.

Suddenly the quiet was broken by the distant boom of a heavy gun. Then an ominous whine circled from the ground, approached snarling stridently high in air, and fell with a crumbling roar seemingly very near the new soldiers, who, on command, scampered to cover from their erect column of twos on the naked embankment.

A cordon of strongpoints had been constructed around the village, Obozerskaya, and these the Americans took over, tensed for the impending battle.

But inexplicable days passed, and the Bolo did not come. There was not even a feint of attack, and the Allied Command, with short memory for the hazardous nature of its extended position, the apprehension it had felt only a little while before, began to chafe for action, became impatient; again the military fetish of an "offensive campaign" grew, waxed strong, became assertive once more, and again the ambitious vision arose to take Vologda before the snow.

"All patrols must be aggressive," directed a secret order of the officer in command, "and it must be impressed on all ranks that we are fighting an offensive war and not a defensive one."

So American officers, directed by ranking British officers, moved their companies forward to the "offensive war," and four miles beyond Obozerskaya, where a post on the railway bore the Russian characters "Verst Four Sixty Six," they closed with the Bolos and drove them beyond the bridge at Verst Four Sixty Four.

In the counter-attack that soon followed, one platoon of the Americans, separated in the swamps of the woods, was nearly enveloped. It fought until all ammunition was exhausted, and then the officer, Lieutenant Gordon Reese, had no thought of submission. After the last cartridge was gone, the bayonets still remained, and after the bayonet, came doubled fists. At word of command, the platoon fixed bayonets, went forward with a yelling charge, broke down the Bolsheviks by their sheer courage and impetuosity, and the endangered men were able to join the main body of their comrades, repulsing the attack.

Before Verst Four Fifty Eight, Allied aggressive operations were resumed when one of the French companies came back from Archangel to assist in moving against the strong enemy works. There was a bridge at Verst Four Fifty Eight. If this was destroyed, it would take a long time to rebuild and seriously impede the "offensive war" down the Railway. It was, therefore, intended to drive the Bolos back so violently that they would have no chance to detonate the important bridge.

The plan of attack was for a three-fold movement: front, right flank and rear. The French company, supported by the artillery of the armored train, an American machine gun section, and twenty-one Americans, with three Stokes mortars (who were not entirely sure of the use of these weapons) were to hit out at front. The rest of the Americans, two infantry companies, were to form as many detachments and rush the enemy from his east flank and rear at his furthermost trench back at Verst Four Fifty Five.

The frontal assault would wait on these circling movements; a bivouac in the woods, and at dawn, timed together, the three parties would move to the three-quartered battle. The distance through the woods to the enemy rear was "estimated at from six to eight miles."

But, in execution, the plan failed dismally, like many an operation that carries through flawlessly around the military council table, for "estimates" are of little use in the service of battle conduct, where time is reckoned in seconds, and victory measured in minutely fluctuating scales.

The contemplated operation was to approach the enemy flank through one of those lofty, forest aisles, which were cut with masterful, precise woodcraft by the engineers of Peter the Great, entirely transverse Archangel Province. Regularly, narrow lanes intersect these forest aisles, and it seemed to the officer planning this attack a simple thing to follow one of these lanes, and take the course of a north and south aisle until a point was reached opposite the enemy position. He did not know that those forest paths were deep with clinging, slimy morass, and bog that gave no footing, that frequently the main cuttings opened before shallow lakes of open water. There was no reliable map to show these things, and no native would admit that he knew the way.

So the attackers went forth over unknown ground, and soon were stumbling in a blackness so dense that one file could not see even the outline of the preceding file. The sinking bog made the march distressingly arduous, yet for hours the company kept resolutely on, when, without warning, the forest parted and the sodden way terminated in a wide sheet of open water.

It is impossible in the night blindness to know position or location, or how far the exhausting, laborious pace has made. Startlingly near comes the coughing exhaust of a locomotive, doubtless the armored train standing by the Bolshevik defenses on the tracks.

In their jaded and spent condition, the men are ill fit to engage in battle, yet there is nothing to do but have a go at it, so plowing through waist deep swamp and awful, oozing quagmire, they lurch on. Struggling forward, still forward, they are caught and tripped, and sprawl splashing in the cold water and the bog, but they get up and drag on until all are breathing with heavy, sobbing gasps; and under the strain of terrible exertion, all are weakened, some so done in, that they lie in the water like wounded animals on their haunches, and have to be helped forward by others of more physical strength or greater will.

In this agonizing way, perhaps a few hundred wallowing yards are made, but it is clear that the company cannot go on, and there is no hope of end to the miserable, sinking marsh; so the officers hold council, and decide, not without great reluctance, to abandon their mission, and the word is passed on to the scattered troops to follow back over the way they came.

In the darkness and the trackless morass, this is not easy, as through the endless black night the lost company struggles flounderingly and with little hope, until the heart of all is cold with despair; but more blighting than the knowledge of being lost in the wilderness of Russian swamps, and the depression of abject, physical exhaustion, is the mordant disappointment of failing the expectant French in the coming fight.

At dawn, two soldiers, who, in days of peace, had been timber cruisers in the pine woods of the Michigan Peninsula, led their comrades to ground firm enough for footing, and half dead from fatigue, brought them back to the railway, but too late, for hours before the tumult and shots of battle had reverberated from far advanced ground on the railway tracks; for, at the appointed hour, hoping that the cooperating actions would still develop, the French went in to the attack, supported by the American trench mortars and machine guns, and smashed the enemy from his foremost lines. Directly he rallied and returned in force to the counter-attack in which many French were killed, the trench mortar section was decimated and lost most of the guns, the machine gunners put out of action, and the whole little force was shoved back over much of the freshly won ground to the bridge at Verst Four Fifty Eight, where the Americans stood with braced backs and would not yield.

For two days, the Bolo armored train showered them with shrapnel, and upcasted tons of high explosives that tore glaring, wide wounds in the railway track, till theoretically they were hammered into submission, but when the Bolshevik infantry, in the gray hours of dawn and dusk, approached to take the crucial position, they were always driven to cover by a heroic defense that never failed. So the bridge was held under difficulties that would have shaken ordinary troops and caused them to fall back, but not in Russia, for that was the way of this queer little war. Priceless lives would be lost, much blood run, and stirring exploits of courage and noble sacrifices be performed, to safeguard a little bridge like Verst Four Fifty Eight, or a dirty village that objectively meant nothing. Yet what sacrilege to have breathed this to the soldiers who bled for them; for to those who risked their lives and yielded up their lives, rather than desert some little bridge or moujik village, these signified the shibboleth of North Russia.

For inordinate stress was placed upon these inconsequential, hard contended spots; they became graphic in the imagination, cardinal precepts in some strange soldier creed, altars upon which friends had given all as proof of a comradeship triumphant over self and self desire. Indeed, with the fresh recollection of courageous comrades now dead, their abiding faith in him, and the thought of those far back at home, whose eyes watched from afar with undimmed loyalty, did he not stamp himself as a craven if he failed, a mongrel thing unfaithful to his breeding?

Thus has it always been. The race has carried on by dimly understood, irrational traditions that move men to the profoundest depths and challenge elemental impulses that have descended in transmuted ancestral determinism, we know not how or why. And if we are to endure, it must be by these same primal emotions, that cause men the world over to scorn soft ease and security for the sake of a vague, inexplicable ideal; inchoate conceptions of service; passionate, stirring impulses lacking definition, which are born with life itself, reach down to the bottommost depth of nature and transcend all feeble efforts of analysis and artificial ratiocination.

So it came that the momentous bridge at Verst Four Fifty Eight stood fast, and the Bolshevik attack beat against an unyielding rock until it spent itself by its own fury. Then the position was consolidated, Allied headquarters moved nearly three miles down the railbed, and the dead, in order that there might be no interruption of the renewed offensive, were laid away in white Obozerskaya churchyard, beneath rough crosses of wood, such harsh emblems of life's surcease, and so fitting in this inflexible, cold, repellent north world.

After a fortnight of more scheming and preparation, the forest was carefully reconnoitered, a path that could be traversed was found through the swamps, in a three cornered attack, the Allied position advanced to Verst Four Fifty Five; and pressing on, the Americans and French went forward to still further battle. But now occurred an event more baneful to the Expedition than all the enemy attacks. The month was only October, but in some mysterious way, the French had already received word of the pending Armistice, and entirely unmoved by the disaster that might befall their abandoned comrades, the whole French company quit the front and went back to Obozerskaya in an ugly mood.

"The war is over in France," they argued, "why should we be fighting here in Russia when France has declared no war on Russia or the Bolsheviki?"

Ninety of the mutineers were placed under arrest, and returned to Archangel for confinement.

It is not known whether or not the Bolsheviks were directly apprised of the mutiny, but hardly had the French retired, when the enemy artillery laid down a shaking barrage, and when night came, the lone group of Americans were standing off a great horde of Bolo infantry that only waited for dawn to continue an overwhelming assault.

Clearings occurred at intervals of several miles all along the Vologda railway. Usually they were in the shape of large squares, a half mile or more across, with log stations, several woodchoppers' houses in the center, and near them piles of corded pine to feed the wood burning locomotives. The next day when the supports came up they nearly blundered on a large Bolshevik force massed for a surprise attack in one of these clearings.

With unerring, quick-witted appraisal, the American officer saw that he was outnumbered three to one, but losing no time, he divided his company into three parts and struck out from three directions of the woods, firing rapid fire, making a great commotion and noise, to give the impression of great numbers.

Most of the enemy troops were poorly disciplined and poorly led in these days of the Fall campaign, and this ruse of the three-cornered attack was carried through with such colored theatrical effect that it scored complete success. There was a brief fight, some good Americans shooting at open, closely grouped targets, and the frightened Bolshviks fled in disorder. Not only were the Americans able to relieve their threatened comrades, but the scattered Bolsheviks were followed up to Verst Four Forty Five.

This was the furthermost point of the advance, for soon General Ironside assumed the office of Commander-in-Chief, and the "offensive war" was heard of no more. The campaign became a stalemate, each side awaiting the opponent's next move, and not till November did the Bolsheviks become aggressive again. Then they stormed the positions with great determination, but all posts held and they were thrown back with frightful loss.

The succeeding month, it was decided by the Allied Command to capture Plesetskaya, so that the enemy might be denied a base for winter movement, and the divergent Allied forces of the Railway brought together. But the effort failed. The Russian contingent that was to go on skis around the left, fifteen miles to Emtsa, floundered helplessly, became exhausted and funked out in the deep snow many miles from their objective; also the auxiliary force at Shred Mekrenga could not gain its ground; but most of all, the failure was caused by the members of the Slavo-British Allied Legion, who faithlessly deserted in large numbers and went over to their countrymen, the Bolsheviks, with full information of the Allied plans.

This marked the collapse of the invasion of Archangel, and when the cold of winter had settled, the Red leaders set busily about the task of planning the destruction of the over-extended Allied lines on six unsupported fronts, which could neither retire beyond Archangel, nor be reinforced until the remote coming of spring. It looked as if the great military machine which Trotsky assembled, would speedily crush Ironside's men, and the Moscow newspapers announced that a million Red bayonets would hurl the foreigners to the White Sea, and into it (although the sea was then solid ice), but inexplicably strange, after the failure of Plesetskaya, there were few stirring, winter days on the Railway Front, except once, when a daring Bolshevik raiding excursion on skis snatched one of the rear guns from the French (who had been shamed into returning to the front), destroyed it, and got away in the snow.

Major J. B. Nichols was at this Railway Front, a civilian officer, and the only one of the Americans in senior authority who appeared to possess a heart, and courage, and unfogged discernment. He early grasped the vain futility of the whole campaign and no cajoling or flattery or threats from Archangel could sway his refusal to engage a single man in unavailing patrols through the ambushed forests or in hazardous "blow-offs" between the contested lines, that accomplished nothing save the sacrifice of life. So for the most part the winter defense was a routine of work on the defenses, the dugouts and the fortifications, and necessary reconnaissance parties over the trails, to watch the flank approaches and to keep an eye on dangerous Bolshie Ozerki.

With ready methods of quick transportation, and an increase in the garrison by the coming of the King's Own Liverpools, it became possible to arrange spells of relief, and in March the Americans went back to Archangel.

At the front it was different. There was a tautness, a hushed, dread expectancy in the air, and life, an uncertain thing, was to be lived, like the Hedonist, for the day; there was no time to analyze the causes of one's misery or even to be more than dully conscious of it; pressing urgencies, actual or imaginary, were always occurring, and they crowded out all opportunities for contemplation and introspection.

But there was no pressure in careless Archangel, where harrowing care and disgusting, swinelike filth vanished with a wave of fairy wand and lo, the war with Russia became a magical heroic pageant. Large numbers of unemployed officers strolled the Troitsky Prospect, very merry and bright, an array of bright, varicolored ribbons, like flower gardens, flourishing on their well-arched military chests.

There was the American Supply Company at full strength, which looked very sleek and smug, and groomed well, and well fortified to withstand the rigors of the Arctic winter, who displayed extraordinary capacity for trading with the natives and astounding dexterity in the acquisition of an affluent wealth of Russian rubles.

It made a soldier sick at heart to see the good things stacked high at Bakaritza, the sweets and dainties and tobacco that would have meant so much to the homesick Vaga men and the far Dvina men who were never relieved--the cases and cases of whisky piled in mountainous piles in the warehouses at Bakaritza!