Part 9

At Seltzo, it became clear that the Soviets had no intention of running further, and that the foreigners would be fortunate if they held the ground already gained. The tactical abandonment of Archangel having accomplished the effective seizure and retention of everything of value in that port and extended the invader far into the interior, revealing with obliging frankness his numerical weakness, had realized the ends sought by the Bolsheviks, and the signs were now many that they intended to strike back and strike back hard.

Why did not Poole retire to Archangel?

The futility of the attempt to reach the distant Siberian railway with the ridiculously small force at the disposal of the Allied Commander was glaringly apparent to every common soldier.

Why did not Poole, like Joffre at the Marne, shift his policy to meet the exigencies of the military situation, draw in his far scattered fronts to Archangel, construct an enceinte of defenses about the city, and hold on until help came in the spring, or until some definite action was determined for Russia?

Many lives would have been spared and much misery averted had this been done, but the lives of a few men, and the permanent impairment of the lives of many more, do not weigh heavily in the scales with those who sit in the councils of the inner sanctum at General Headquarters and think nothing of the spending of divisions and even army corps. Perhaps it would have been too galling to Anglo-Saxon pride to admit being on the defensive before an inferior people like these poor Slavs who were to be chastised with thoroughness and dispatch. Then, too, it was always safer for Archangel to have the outposts far into the country, and flattered the Allied Command in the belief of still being the aggressor.

When Ironside took command he not only conceded that the Allies were conducting a defensive campaign, but with soldier bluntness declared that the Expedition was in gravest peril. It was too late then to draw in the far dispersed battalions. They would have to fight it out on the wide separated snowbound fronts, and show by deeds the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon. If they failed, if they were faint hearted and even so much as faltered, the entire force was doomed.

On the morning of 19th September battle was joined at Seltzo. A mile of open marsh lies outside, through which the stream at the border of the village meanders from the forest to pay tribute to the mighty Dvina. The only easy approach is along a narrow road that parallels the river and crosses a bridge over this deep icy stream. On this morning of battle the Americans waded the swamp until within fifteen hundred yards, when suddenly from the scattered concealment of the houses there burst such a furious fusillade of musketry and machine guns and Pom Pom guns that they dropped low in their tracks and could go no further.

Two other companies moved through the woods on the flank to assist the frontal attack, but their location was determined by the enemy batteries, and his infantry laid down such a withering fire, that the battalion, exhausted from a day of fighting and a heart-breaking march, without rations and with no cover from the cold and the drizzling rain, was compelled to bivouac that night in the soaking morass, hopeful that with next morning would come promised artillery support, for without it further advance was unthinkable.

All through the night the Bolshevik guns searched for the Americans who were new to combat, ignorant of the ground, and had not an inkling of the enemy strength or his fortifications or dispositions. And at dawn a reconnaissance patrol stumbled into a large enemy force, was scattered and came back with no information, save that the Bolsheviks had assembled in superior numbers and were well supplied with ammunition. As daylight broadened, the shelling from the river became so violent that the attackers had to choose between a further advance or complete retirement; to stay where they were meant destruction.

So with grave misgivings the attack was renewed, although there was still no sign of promised artillery support; machine guns guarding a trench system in the woods killed and wounded many Americans, but the advance would not give ground, and supporting comrades at flank and rear kept up such a sustained unfailing fire that the Bolsheviks were led to believe that the attack had been replenished during the night.

During the fight the American lieutenant colonel "caught in a bracket" had stayed in the rearward village, Yakovlevskaya, but at dusk he emerged with the important Field Pieces which laid down an effective _feu de barrage_ on Seltzo. Hardly had it lifted when the battalion arose and with splendid dash and gallantry stormed forward to the village, entered it and took possession. But the story of Seltzo is the story of the whole campaign. After the infantry, with inspiring display of courage and at great cost, had gained a position, its small forces would be drafted for some other distant hard-pressed front, or the position would be left to the mercy of the Bolshevik guns until no course was left except evacuation.

The monitor which had convoyed the battalion up the Dvina, fearful of being caught by the ice that was expected to creep upstream from Archangel at the beginning of October, but did not actually come until mid-November, went back before the battle and was gone for the duration of the winter. A few days after the battle, the artillery left and was seen no more at Seltzo. Also Headquarters ordered two of the companies to proceed to Shenkurst on the Vaga, the second city in the Province, where it was alleged a large number of Russians in sympathy with the Allied cause were anxious to have a garrison of American troops during the approaching winter.

So it came that there was no artillery to avenge the smashing havoc of the enemy heavy guns in this furthermost Dvina village where one infantry company of Scots, a like number of Americans, and a few Allied Russians held on under terrific shell fire that from river and forest racked and battered them.

The enemy had a complete battery of three inch pieces, which he was free to bring up to the edge of the woods beyond the village, and down the river on rafts and improvised gunboats he floated three six inch guns and two Nine Point Two naval pieces, and for days with this combined armament he smashed and blasted until many of the houses became a riot of shredded and splintered timbers, and it was only a question of time before the garrison would be decimated utterly.

On 14th October the Bolsheviks attacked the defensive positions with great vigor, but were thrown back in complete repulse with many killed; yet that night and in the first morning hours the defenders slipped away in the darkness, for under unhindered bombardment the place had become a death's trap where all must eventually perish.

After this escape in the night there was a heart-breaking drag through the mud, until late the next day the tired Allied soldiers found harbor in Toulgas some fifteen miles back. Toulgas is typical of the North Russian village, a group of bedraggled log houses huddled together on a hill, which bends down in a long easy slope to the plain, where, like Seltzo, a stream comes out of the forest and margins another cluster of huts on the flat ground which the moujiks call Upper Toulgas.

This stream is deep and numbingly cold, and has cut an abrupt channel through the yielding soil so that fording it is a difficult feat at best. For an enemy to make the attempt in daylight would be suicidal. In darkness, any considerable numbers cannot fail to give the alarm. A road comes down from the hill and crosses a wooden bridge to the forward village. Watching the bridge is the inevitable white church, and its gaudy minarets, consciously aloof and superior in the poverty of the scene. In the setting of dun barren ground the white edifice flashes in undefiled purity against a low shrouding sky, more black than gray, which rests upon the darker tufted forest.

Across the road is the priest's house, like the others of bark stripped logs, differing from the others only in its greater size. With a little barricading the walls of the priest's house were secure against the lead of small guns, but it was death to stay there during the avalanche of high explosive shells that was poured out by the Bolshevik gunboats.

After the battle of Armistice Day, the bearded priest of Toulgas Church was found amid the hideous battle litter of his wrecked home, the crown of his head cut clean as with a scalpel, exposing the naked brains. Near him were two children, a boy and a girl, sleeping by the guardian who from infancy had taught them of a Providence who watched over the good of earth, and surely would not desert them through this malignant turmoil that had descended to the quiet moujik country with terrible death and indescribable misery like the recurrent plagues. So sleeping, a shell had found the unconscious children, and lulled them to that everlasting sleep. The big shells had a way thus, of stealthily sniping their victim's life away with no mark of their dread approach, as if disdaining the brutality of violence. But again they would pounce down with the atrocity of a fiend, smash head from trunk, and members from the torso, and leave great gaping wounds gushing black blood with unspeakable, horrible ghastliness.

Back of the church, on the same side of the road, is a moujik house with the customary stable attached in rear. A platoon used this as billeting quarters. It was shielded by the church forward, and gave shelter to the little reserve that would replenish the blockhouse at the bridge with men and ammunition, and, if the blockhouse was knocked out, would stand off the Bolsheviks from crossing the bridge.

From the billet house to the church is about thirty yards. The priest's house is nearly opposite the church across the road. The blockhouse was built just before the Armistice fight and stands on the bank of the stream guarding the bridge about twenty yards forward of the priest's house. It is thirty yards over the bridge, and in front of the first line of Upper Toulgas houses, a field, shorn of all cover, stretches one hundred yards to the stream.

Back of the center village on the hilltop the ground undulates almost unnoticeably in a series of folds and reaches a shallow draw. A little beyond this, perhaps two hundred fifty yards, is still another clump of huts known as Lower Toulgas. In this draw, the Canadians built emplacements for their two Field Pieces, which during the first battles were the only artillery for the defense of Toulgas.

The forest gives way for nearly a half a mile before Upper Toulgas. From Upper Toulgas to Lower Toulgas is an ample two miles. From Toulgas, itself, the center village, to Lower Toulgas is a scant three-quarters of a mile.

On the forest flank the ground has been cleared for a space, varying from three hundred to less than sixty yards. This clearance is greatest opposite the upper village. In the lower village it narrows, until in rear the trees close in on the road that leads back to Bereznik and Archangel, affording excellent opportunity of concealment and surprise attack for an enemy that would have the endurance and the hardihood and the courageous daring to march through the deep swamps of the woods.

On the left the Dvina spreads out in a wide expanse, two miles. Opposite the rear and center villages the river banks are high and steep, nearly precipitous, but at the forward village on the flat ground the level is only a few feet above that of the water. Across the river there is not the slightest sign of cover as far as the distant embankment on the opposite shore. The chances for surprise from this quarter are practically none, and without surprise, infantry advancing over the waist-deep snow against machine guns, would have to be possessed of fanatical courage and be in overwhelming strength. The river could be nearly neglected as a source of danger.

To defend the three Toulgas villages we had: One company of American infantry; one company of Royal Scots infantry, and one section of Field Artillery, manned by fifty-seven Canadians.

In command of this force was Robert P. Boyd, an American civilian, who, scarcely a year before, had graduated with the rank of captain of infantry from a three months' officers' training school at Fort Sheridan, Illinois.

Shortly after occupation of Toulgas, ice choked off navigation of the lower river, and replenishments of supplies and ammunition had to be brought by small one pony sleighs from Bereznik. The distance was some fifty miles, and the journey by Russian pony was usually two days, but when the snow was deepest, the weather bitterly cold, and the days had but few hours of light, it took three days.

There was a field hospital at Bereznik, vicariously supplied, and attended by a medical personnel of changing nationality, British, Russian and American by turns.

We converted one of the huts of Lower Toulgas village into a dressing station, where first aid was given the wounded; but we had no facilities, no operating equipment, or surgeons, or surgical instruments to care for the serious cases. If a soldier was hard hit and lived, he had to be brought to Bereznik.

Following the retreat down river from Seltzo, there was hardly time for a tactical survey of the situation, for the construction of temporary redoubts on the forest flank and at the crucial bridge, when enemy gunboats opened fire on our positions and for three days kept up a determined bombardment. When dusk came on the third day, the shelling lifted, and when the night grew black there was a roar of many rifles and a mad yelling from the woods as a horde of Bolsheviks fell on the center village. In the darkness and wild confusion, the tumult of battle made by the roar of musketry, the shouting and screaming of many foreign voices sounded like the onslaught of a Division.

But, even with the advantage of overpowering numbers, a night attack to succeed, demands most accurate knowledge of the enemy position, and most rigid control by a leader of his men. The Bolsheviks were not thoroughly trained in these early days, although later they displayed impressive military skill and the utmost cooperation between officers and men; now their lead went high and shrieked through air several feet above the heads of the unscathed Americans, who had concealed Lewis guns in a dugout at the point of the enemy rush and turned these loose upon the massed Bolsheviks, felling them like cattle in a slaughter pen. One American private, swinging an automatic rifle from his hip, shot until there was a semi-circle of prostrate forms before him, some of them fifteen yards away; and once a few of the enemy came so close that they were spitted at the end of the bayonet.

At the height of the fight the Canadians opened up their guns and rained the woods with shrapnel which threw the wavering Bolsheviks into worse commotion and disorder, for while the Lewis guns scattered death in front, rattling shrapnel bullets threatened death in rear, and thus, huddled together in the darkness like stampeded sheep, they were shot down until the fierce exulting battle yells were changed to moans of the wounded and appealing cries for mercy.

At a signal, the Canadian guns ceased firing, the Royal Scots, shooting low and true, went into the counter, and the disorganized Bolsheviks, seized with blind animal terror, lost all semblance of order and fled in violent flight, each man for himself, to the sheltering recesses of the forest.

After this night attack there was nearly a fortnight of quiet on the Dvina, with no outward sign to show the enemy intentions. Patrols went out into the woods and came back with the report that Zastrovia, the nearest village upstream, was clear of hostile troops; but, while the Allied Command took under advisement the opposing contentions of retirement and holding on, the Bolsheviks were assembling large fresh forces of infantry, and bringing heavy guns from Krasnoborsk, preparatory to striking the most ambitious blow yet attempted.

All at Toulgas were aware that the lull was ominous. All knew that this phase of security was a very transient one, and directed by the American engineers, every man who was not on guard duty, worked building log blockhouses, at tactical strong points about the center village, one of them to guard the bridge over the stream to the upper village, where there was a small outpost, which in case of frontal attack was to give the alarm, then retire to the defenses.

The defense centered around the middle village. There were no fortifications to protect Lower Toulgas, and the Canadians in the draw in front of Lower Toulgas had for their protection only a squad of Americans under a sergeant, with a Lewis gun. The great danger in the situation lay in the threat of the capture of the rear village by an attack from the close-edging forest. If this lower position was taken, the garrison would be trapped, starved and cut off from all communication with Bereznik and Archangel. Customarily, there were kept on hand rations sufficient to last from two to three weeks.

When the British Brigadier General R. G. Finlayson inspected the Toulgas area, on 10th November, apprehension of such a rear attack was expressed by some of the officers, but the general could see no real menace from that quarter, and said that it was a military impossibility for a large body of troops to successfully execute a flank movement through the heavy swamps of the woods.

The day following, Armistice Day, at dawn there was a crackling of rifles in Upper Toulgas, then the crash of guns from the river, as a great number of Bolsheviks swarmed from the forest, deployed in perfect order, and advancing in squad rushes, drove the little outpost back to our main lines. Timed, it seemed almost to the moment, came the roar of musketry far at rear, the staccato rattle of machine guns and dominating all the din and tumult, the ringing Cossack _Hourra! Hourra!_

Our surprise was complete. Hundreds of dark figures sprang from the woods and closed in on Lower Toulgas.

Had the Bolsheviks been Germans, they would have immediately rushed the Canadian guns, and the story of Toulgas would have been one of massacre. They did rush the guns, but not until it was too late. The march through the forest had been an exhausting one, and the Bolshevik soldiers were very tired and very hungry. A few critical moments were spent searching the houses of the captured village. One of the Commanders, Melochofski, a stalwart giant of a man, with a high, black fur hat, entered our hospital billet, and flourishing his arms, gave a loud-voiced order to kill the invalided soldiers. The British medical N.C.O., with rare tact and extraordinary presence of mind, placed rations and two jugs of rum before the big Bolshevik leader, who helped himself liberally to the spirits and under their benign influence momentarily forgot about the execution.

Probably in this way and in ransacking Lower Toulgas, not over three minutes were lost, but never were three minutes more costly, for during that time the Canadians swung round their guns, and, when the Russians rallied to renew the attack, they were met by muzzle bursts.

Nearly a hundred years before, at Wilma, the iron veterans of the Grand Army had been shaken by that blood chilling _Hourra! Hourra!_ of charging Russians; but now it only made those leather faced men at the guns laugh with the wild, delirious delight that comes only to the born fighting man, then only when the fight is at its height. They swore fine, full chested, Canadian blasphemies that were a glory to hear, crammed shrapnel into their guns, and turned terrible blasts into the incoming masses that exploded among them and shattered them into ghastly dismembered corpses and hurled blood and human flesh wide in the air in sickening, splattering atoms. While all the time the American sergeant and his single squad kept up an incessant fire with his Lewis automatic, and those Canadians who were not hit, and were not needed at the guns, worked the bolts of their rifles with the energy of fiends, so that the crackling of small arms sounded like the bursts of machine gun fire from the emplacements, and deceived the Bolsheviks, who thought it was the fire of machine guns. These Canadians had used the rifle often in the untracked places of the Western World, were well schooled in marksmanship, and now when the target loomed big and at extremely short range, they covered the ground with dead.

The mere weight of those approaching great numbers would have shaken and turned ordinary troops, for the onslaught was not stopped until less than fifty yards from the guns; but the Canadians were not ordinary men and they gave not the slightest hope of being turned. They would have stood by with their bayonets to the last, and when the Bolsheviks saw the unyielding determination of these Western savages, to whom fear seemed unborn, and knew that more devastating death storms of shrapnel awaited further advance, their morale broke down, the front wave hesitated, panic spread with telepathic swiftness, and in the control of overpowering fear, the whole force bolted and scampered like rabbits to the covering trees. There they were rounded together by the remaining commissars, and from places of concealment directed a hot fire on the guns.

So quickly were they reorganized that fifteen minutes after the assault had been turned back, the Company of Royal Scots, hurrying across an open field to the support, were subjected to such a blighting fire that the ground was strewn with the huddled figures of their dead and wounded.

As the day advanced the chief commander of the Bolsheviks was killed and three other commissars were picked off and killed. The march through the marshy forests had been made at tremendous toll in vitality, the advantage of surprise had now passed, rations were running low, and, unless the attack could be pressed with renewed forces, there would be another bivouac in the wet and cold, for the Canadian devils watched Lower Toulgas, and, at the first sign of occupancy, hammered and pounded and shook the houses with high explosive until they were untenable utterly. During the afternoon an American force from the center village pushed back a band of riflemen that hung at the fringe of the woods, and, as evening fell, the enemy fire grew less sustained and it was evident that unless reinforcements arrived, the attack would fail. But hours passed and no reinforcements. The rifle reports sounded more and more erratic, and, as the night wore on, there was only the sporadic crack of a few snipers in the rear woods, who held on hopefully waiting for the supports that never came.

Prisoners said there were six hundred and fifty in this rear attack and an equal number had taken the upper village, where they kept up a steady volley fire, but seemed to wait upon success of the rear party before storming our fortifications. Therefore, far forward in the blackness of the night, the Canadians sent forth two salvos, to let this frontal attacking force know that the guns were intact and that a fight was waiting beside them.

So ended the first day of the battle of Armistice Day. There was firing all through the night from Upper Toulgas, and luminous flares burst startlingly from unexpected places in the blackness, but after the failure of the rear movement, no further sustained and determined attack was attempted.