of wounds; with a dead man’s shin bone in the place of his left upper
arm bone that a Hun shell carried off; with a silver plate in his
head-shell; victim of as tragic an occurrence as might befall any man,
when as a sergeant in the Flying Squadron in France he saw a young
officer’s head blown off in a trench, and it was his own son, Bob
Graham, “Australian Force” on the Railroad Detachment, was missed by
the doughboys when he was ordered to report to Archangel.
There the heroic Bob went to the bad. He participated in the shooting
out of all the lights in the Paris cafe of the city in regular wild
western style; he was sent up the river for his health; he fell in with
an American corporal whose acquaintance he had made in a sunnier clime,
when the American doughboy had been one of the Marines in Panama and
Bob Graham was an agent of the United Fruit Company. They stole the
British officer’s bottled goods and trafficked unlawfully with the
natives for fowls and vegetables to take to the American hospital,
rounded up a dangerous band of seven spies operating behind our lines,
but made such nuisances of themselves, especially the wild Australian
“second looie,” that he was ordered back to Archangel. There the old
general, who knew of his wonderful fighting record, at last brought him
on to the big carpet. And the conversation was something like this:
“Graham, what is the matter? You have gone mad. I had the order to
strip you of your rank as an officer to see if that would sober you.
But an order from the King today by cable raises you one rank and now
no one but the King himself can change your rank. You deserved the
promotion but as you are going now it is no good to you. All I can do
is to send you back to England. But I do not mean it as a disgrace to
you. I could wish that you would give me your word that you would stop
this madness of yours.” And the general looked kindly at Bob.
“Sir, you have been white with me. You have a right to know why I have
been misbehaving these last weeks. Here, sir, is a letter that came to
me the day I helped shoot up the cafe. In Belgium I married an American
Red Cross nurse. This is a picture of her and the new-born son come to
take the place of the grown-up son who fell mortally wounded in my arms
in France. To her and the baby I was bound to go if I had to drink
Russia dry of all the shipped-in Scotch and get myself reduced to the
ranks for insubordination and deviltry. Sir, I’m fed up on war. I thank
you for sending me back to England.”
And Corporal Aldrich tells us that his old friend Bob Graham’s present
address is First National Bank, Mobile, Alabama. His father, an
immigrant via Canada from old Dundee in Scotland, was elected governor
of Alabama on the dry issue. And officers and doughboys who knew the
wild Australian in North Russia know that his father might have had
some help if Bob were at home. With a genial word for every man, with a
tender heart that winced to see a child cry, with a nimble wit and a
brilliant daring, Lt. Bob Graham won a place in the hearts of Americans
that memory keeps warm.
And other British officers might be mentioned. There was, for example,
the grizzled naval officer, Commander Young, whose left sleeve had been
emptied at Zeebrugge, running our first armored train. We missed his
cheery countenance and courteous way of meeting American soldiers and
officers when he left us to return to England to take a seat in
Parliament which the Socialists had elected him to. We can see him
again in memory with his Polish gunners, his Russian Lewis gun men,
standing in his car surrounded by sand bags and barbed wire, knocking
hot wood cinders from his neck, which the Russki locomotive floated
back to him. And many a time we were moved to bless him when his guns
far in our rear spoke cheeringly to our ears as they sent whining
shells curving over us to fall upon the enemy. It is no discredit to
say that many a time the doughboy’s eye was filled with a glistening
drop of emotion when his own artillery had sprung to action and sent
that first booming retort. And some of those moments are bound in
memory with the blue-coated figure of the gallant Commander Young.
The Russian Army of the North was non-existent when the Allies landed.
All the soldiery previously in evidence had moved southward with the
last of the lootings of Archangel and joined the armies of the soviet
at Vologda, or were forming up the rear guard to dispute the entrance
of the Allies to North Russia. The Allied Supreme Command in North
Russia, true to its dream of raising over night a million men opened
recruiting offices in Archangel and various outlying points, thinking
that the population would rally to the banners (and the ration carts)
in droves. But the large number of British officers waited in vain for
months and months for the pupils to arrive to learn all over the arts
of war. At last after six months two thousand five hundred recruits had
been assembled by dint of advertising and coaxing and pressure. They
were called the Slavo-British Allied Legion, S. B. A. L. for short.
These Slavo-Brits as they were called never distinguished themselves
except in the slow goose step—much admired by Colonel Stewart, who
pointed them out to one of his captains as wonders of precision, and
also distinguished themselves in eating. They failed several times
under fire, once they caused a riffle of real excitement in Archangel
when they started a mutiny, and finally they were used chiefly as labor
units and as valets and batmen for officers and horses. They were
charged with having a mutinous spirit and with plotting to go over to
the Bolsheviks. They did in small numbers at times. It is interesting
to note that they were trained under British officers who enlisted them
from among renegades, prisoners and deserters from ranks of the
Bolsheviks, refugees and hungry willies, and, that once enlisted they
were not fed the standard British ration of food or tobacco, the which
they held as a grievance. It never made the American soldier feel
comfortable to see the prisoners he had taken in action parading later
in the S, B. A. L. uniform, and especially in the case of Russians who
came over from the Bolo lines and gave up with suspiciously strong
protestations of dislike for their late commanders.
The Russians who were recruited and trained by the French in the
so-called French Legion, under the leadership of the old veteran Boyer
who is mentioned elsewhere were found usually with a better record. The
Courier du Bois on skiis in white clothing did remarkably valuable
scouting and patrolling work and at times as at Kodish and Bolsheozerki
hung off on the flanks of the encircling Bolo hordes and worried the
attackers with great effectiveness.
The French also had better luck in training the Russian artillery
officers and personnel than did the British although some of the latter
units did good work. It seemed to be a better class of Russian recruit
that chose the artillery. Doughboys who were caught on an isolated road
like rats in a trap will remember with favor the Russian artillery men
who with their five field pieces on that isolated road ate, slept and
shivered around their guns for eight days without relief, springing to
action in a few seconds at any call. By their effective action they
contributed quite largely to the defense, active fighting of which fell
upon two hundred Yanks facing more than ten times the number. Why
should it surprise one to find an occasional Yank returned from
Archangel who will say a good word for a Russian soldier. There were
cordial relations between Americans and more than a few Russian units.
In certain localities in the interior where the peasants had organized
to resist the rapacious Red Guard looters, there were little companies
of good fighters, in their own way. These were usually referred to as
Partisans or White Guards depending upon the degree to which they were
authorized and organized by the local county governments. They always
at first strongly co-operated with the Allied troops, which they looked
upon as friends sent in to help them against the Bolsheviki. Toward the
Americans they maintained their cordial relations throughout, but after
the first months seemed to cool toward the other Allied troops. This
sounds conceited, and possibly is, but the explanation seems to be that
the Russian understood American candor and cordial democracy, the
actual sympathetic assistance offered by the doughboy to the Russian
soldier or laborer and took it at par value.
Further explanation of the cooling of the ardor of the local partisans
toward the British in particular may be found in the fact that the
British field commanders often found it convenient and really necessary
to send the local troops far distant from their own areas. There they
lost the urge of defending their firesides and their families. They
were in districts which they quite simply and honestly thought should
themselves be aiding the British to keep off the Bolsheviki. They could
not understand the military necessities that had perhaps called these
local partisans off to some other part of the fighting line on those
long forest fronts. He lacked the broader sense of nationality or even
of sectionalism. And as demands for military action repeatedly came to
him the justice of which he saw only darkly he became a poorer and
poorer source of dependence. He would not put his spirit into fighting,
he was quite likely to hit through the woods for home.
When the Allies early in the fall found they could not forge through to
the south, rolling up a bigger and bigger Russian force to crush the
Bolsheviki, who were apparently, as told us, fighting up to keep us
from going a thousand miles or so to hit the Germans a belt—a
fly-weight buffet as it were—and when we heard of the Armistice and
began digging in on a real defensive in the late fall and early winter,
the Provisional Government at Archangel under Tchaikowsky had already
made some progress in assembling an army. In the winter small units of
this Archangel army began co-operating in various places, and as the
winter wore on, began to take over small portions of the line, as at
Toulgas, Shred Mekrenga, Bolsheozerki, usually however with a few
British officers and some Allied soldiers to stiffen them. Although
many of these men had been drafted by the Archangel government and as
we have seen by such local county governments as Pinega, they were
fairly well trained under old Russian officers who crept out to serve
when they saw the new government meant business. And many capable young
officers came from the British-Russian officers’ school at Bakaritsa.
[Illustration: RED CROSS PHOTO
_Canadian Artillery—Americans Were Strong for Them._]
[Illustration: ROZANSKEY
_Making “Khleba”—Black Bread._]
[Illustration: WAGNER
_Stout Defense of Kitsa._]
Needless to say, these troops were at their best when they were in
active work on the lines. Rest camp and security from attack quickly
reduced their morale. And the next time they were sent up to the
forward posts they were likely to prove undependable.
In doing the ordinary drudgery of camp life the Russian soldier as the
doughboy saw him was very unsatisfactory. Many a Yank has itched to get
his hands on the Russian Archangelite soldier, especially some of our
hard old sergeants who wanted to put them on police and scavenger
details to see them work. In this reluctance to work, their refusal
sometimes even when the doughboy pitched into the hateful job and set
them a good example, they were only like the civilian males whose
aversion to certain kinds of work has been mentioned before. When some
extensive piece of work had to be done for the Allies like policing a
town, that is, cleaning it up for sake of health of the soldiers or
smoothing off a landing place for airplanes, it was a problem to get
the labor.
In the erection of large buildings or bridges the Russian man’s axe and
saw and mallet and plane worked swiftly and skillfully and unceasingly
and willingly. Those tools were to him as playthings. Not so with an
American-made long-handled shovel in his hands. Then it was necessary
to hire both women and men. The men thought they themselves were
earning their pay, but as the women in Russia do most of the
back-breaking, stooping work anyway, they just caught on to those
American shovels and to the astonishment of the American doughboy who
superintended the work they did twice as much as the men for just half
the pay and with half the bossing.
It is not a matter of false pride on the part of the Slavic male that
keeps him from vying with his better half in doing praiseworthy work.
It is lack of education. He has never learned. He is so constituted
that he cannot learn quickly. He will work himself to exhaustion day
after day in raising a house, cradling grain, playing an accordeon, or
performing a folk dance. His earliest known ancestors did those things
with fervor and it is doubtful if the modus operandi has changed much
since the beginning, since Adam was a Russian.
The “H” Company boys could tell you stories of the Chinese outfit of S.
B. A. L. under the British officer, the likable Capt. Card, who later
lost his life in the forlorn hope drive on Karpogora in March. One day
he was approached by a Chinese soldier who begged the loan of a machine
gun for a little while. It seems that the Chinese had gotten into
argument with a company of Russian S. B. A. L. men as to the relative
staying qualities of Russians and Chinese under fire. And they had
agreed upon a machine gun duel as a fair test. The writer one night at
four in the morning woke when his Russian sleigh stopped in a village
and rubbed his sleepy eyes open to find himself looking up into the
questioning face of a burly sentry of the Chinese race. And he obeyed
the sentry’s directions with alacrity. He was not taking any chances on
a misunderstanding that might arise out of an attempted explanation in
a three-cornered Russo-Chino-English conversation.
Captain Odjard’s men might tell stories about the redoubtable Russian
Colonel Deliktorsky, who was in the push up the rivers in September.
Impetuous to a fault he flung himself and his men into the offensive
movement. “In twelve minutes we take Toulgas,” was his simple battle
order to the Americans. No matter to him that ammunition reserves were
not ordered up. Sufficient to him that he showed his men the place to
be battled for. And he was a favorite.
On the railroad in the fall a young Bolshevik officer surrendered his
men to the French. Next time the American officer saw him he was
reporting in American headquarters at Pinega that he had conducted his
men to safety and dug in. Afterwards Bolshevik assassins or spies shot
him in ambush and succeeded only in angering him and he went into
battle two days later with a bandage covering three wounds in his neck
and scalp. “G” and “M” Company men will remember this fiery Mozalevski.
Then there was the studious Capt. Akutin, a three-year veteran of a
Russian machine gun battalion, a graduate student of science in a
Russian university, a man of new army and political ideals in keeping
with the principles of the Russian Revolution. His great success with
the Pinega Valley volunteers and drafted men was due quite largely to
his strength of character, his adherence to his principles. The people
did not fear the restoration of the old monarchist regime even though
he was an officer of the Czar’s old army. American soldiers in Pinega
gained a genuine respect and admiration for this Russian officer, Capt.
Akutin, and he once expressed great pleasure in the fact that they
exchanged salutes with him cordially.
XXXII
FELCHERS, PRIESTS AND ICONS
Felcher Is Student Of Medicine—Or Pill Passer Of Army
Experience—Sanitation And Ventilation—Priests Strange Looking To
Soldiers—Duties And Responsibilities—Effect Of Bolshevism On Peasant’s
Religious Devotions—The Icons—Interesting Stories—Doughboys Buried By
Russian Priests—Respect For Russian Religion.
During the fall of 1918 when the influenza epidemic was wreaking such
great havoc among the soldiers and natives in the Archangel Province,
our medical corps as heretofore explained were put to almost superhuman
efforts in combating the spread of this terrible disease. There were
very few native doctors in the region, and it was, therefore, well nigh
impossible to enlist outside aid. In some of the villages we received
word that there were men called felchers who could possibly be of some
assistance. We were at once curious to ascertain just what kind of
persons these individuals were and upon investigation found that the
Russian Company located in our sector had a young officer who was also
a felcher and who was giving certain medical attention to his troops.
We immediately sent for him and in answer to our inquiries he explained
as nearly as possible just what a felcher was.
It seems that in Russia, outside the large cities and communities,
there is a great scarcity of regularly licensed medical practitioners,
many of these latter upon graduation enter the army where the pay is
fairly good and the work comparatively easy, the rest of them enter the
cities where, of course, practice is larger and the remuneration much
better than would be possible in a small community. These facts
developed in the smaller communities the use of certain second-rate
students of medicine or anyone having a smattering of medical
knowledge, called felchers.
In many cases the felcher is an old soldier who has traveled around the
world a bit; and from his association in the army hospitals with
doctors and students has picked up the technique of dressing wounds,
setting broken bones and administering physic. Very often they are, of
course, unable to properly diagnose the ailments or conditions of their
patients. They, however, are shrewd enough to follow out the customary
army method of treating patients and regardless of the disease promptly
administer vile doses of medicine, usually a physic, knowing full well
that to the average patient, the stronger the medicine and the more of
it he gets, the better the treatment is, and a large percentage of the
recoveries effected by these felchers is more or less a matter of faith
rather than physic or medicine.
The regularly licensed practitioners as a rule have great contempt for
these felchers, but the fact remains that in the small communities
where they practice the felcher accomplishes a great amount of good,
for having traveled considerably and devoted some time to the study of
medicine he is at least superior in intelligence to the average
peasant, and, therefore, better qualified to meet such emergencies as
may arise.
This lack of medical practitioners, coupled with the apathy of the
peasants regarding sanitary precautions and their unsanitary methods of
living accounts to some extent for the violence and spread of plagues,
so common throughout Russia.
Regarding the spread of disease and plagues through Russia caused as
above stated by lack of sanitary conditions, a word or two further
would not be amiss. In the province of Archangel, for example, a great
majority of houses are entirely of log construction, built and modelled
throughout by the owner, and perhaps some of his good neighbors. They
are really a remarkable example of what may be done in the way of
construction without the use of nails and of the modern improved
methods of house construction. It is an actual fact that these simple
peasants, equipped only with their short hand axes, with the use of
which they are adepts, can cut down trees, hew the logs and build their
homes practically without the use of any nails whatever. The logs, of
course, are first well seasoned before they are put into the house
itself and when they are joined together they are practically air
tight, but to make sure of this fact the cracks are sealed tight with
moss hammered into the chinks. Next the windows of these houses are
always double, that is, there is one window on the outside of the frame
and another window on the inside. Needless to say, during the winter
these windows are practically never opened.
During the winter months the entire family—and families in this country
are always large—eat, sleep, and live in one room of the house in which
the huge brick home-made stove is located. In addition to the human
beings living in the room there are often a half dozen or more chickens
concealed beneath the stove, sometimes several sheep, and outside the
door may be located the stable for the cattle. Nevertheless, the
peasants are remarkably healthy, and in this region of the world
epidemics are rather uncommon which may perhaps be explained by the
fact that the peasants are out of doors a large part of the time and in
addition thereto the air is very pure and healthful. Sewerage systems
and such means of drainage are entirely unknown, even in the city of
Archangel, which at the time we were there, contained some hundred
thousand inhabitants. The only sewerage there was an open sewer that
ran through the streets of the city. Small wonder it is under such
conditions that when an epidemic does break out that it spreads so far
and so rapidly.
One of the most familiar characters seen in every town, large or small,
was the _Batushka_. This character is usually attired in a long, black
or gray smock and his hair reaches in long curls to his shoulders. At
first sight to the Yankee soldiers he resembled very much the members
of the House of David or so-called “Holy Roller” sect in this country.
This mysterious individual, commonly called _Batushka_, as we later
discovered, was the village priest. The priest of course belonged to
the Russian Orthodox Church and whose head in the old days was the
Czar. The priests differ very greatly from the ministers of the gospel
and priests in the English-speaking world. They have certain religious
functions to perform in certain set ways, outside of which they never
venture to stray. The Russian priest is merely expected to conform to
certain observances and to perform the rites and ceremonies prescribed
by the Church. He rarely preaches or exhorts, and neither has nor seeks
to have a moral control over his flock. Marriage among the priests is
not prohibited but is limited, that is to say, the priest is allowed to
marry but once, and consequently, in choosing the wife he usually picks
one of the strongest and healthiest women in the community. This
selection is in all seriousness an important matter in the priest’s
life because he draws practically no salary from his position and must
own a share of the community land, till and cultivate the same in
exactly the same manner as the rest of the community, consequently his
wife must be strong and healthy in order to assist him in the many
details of managing his small holdings. In case she were such a strong
and healthy person, the loss of the wife would be a calamity in more
ways than one to the priest as is apparent by the above statements.
While the religious beliefs and doctrines of the average peasant is
only used by him as a practical means toward an end, yet it must be
admitted that the Russian people are in a certain sense religious. They
regularly go to church on Sundays and Holy Days, of which there are
countless numbers, cross themselves repeatedly when they pass a church
or Icon, take the holy communion at stated seasons, rigorously abstain
from animal food, not only on Wednesdays and Fridays but also during
Lent and the other long fasts, make occasional pilgrimages to the holy
shrines and in a word fulfill carefully the ceremonial observance which
they suppose necessary for their salvation.
Of theology in its deeper sense the peasant has no intelligent
comprehension. For him the ceremonial part of religion suffices and he
has the most unbounded childlike confidence in the saving efficacy of
the rites which he practices.