the bend of the river beyond Upper Toulgas, then the screaming
passage of a shell, and the dull, vibrating, smashing roar of high
explosive as it struck near the bridge. Two enemy gunboats were seen
mounted with three inch and six inch guns. Further up the river and
beyond sight was still another craft with six inch guns. Concealed
among the trees, just on the edge of the clearing before Upper
Toulgas, was a complete Bolshevik Field Battery, and these combined
cannon now concentrated on the blockhouse that guarded the bridge.
Shells, tossing geysers of dirt and debris, struck all around, and
ploughed a deep circular furrow within a radius of five yards of the
death house, where seven Americans sat with blanched faces and set
teeth, counting the seconds between the hideous successive whine of
the plunging shells, and waiting silently for certain destruction.
At the edge of Upper Toulgas, Bolshevik infantry stood crouched for
the dash, watching for the strongpoint to collapse under the terrific
pommeling bombardment.
A stack of hay was near the important post, where a shell smashed,
scattered the hay to right and left, and clogged the loophole that
outlooked to the enemy position. The American sergeant in command
sprang from the blockhouse, snatched the obscuring hay, and was back
again, while bullets from the amazed Bolsheviks spurted inches over
his head.
Again the same thing happened, and again the sergeant, Floyd A.
Wallace, with as noble an exhibition of cool, deliberate courage as
man is capable, went out to clear the covered loophole, and did clear
it, but he crawled back with a hole in his tunic from a machine gun,
and his drab coat was soaked deep red from a grievous wound.
It was noon when the blockhouse was hit. It crumpled like paper
under the impact, and one man, drenched with a welter of blood, was
seen to drag himself from the wreckage and crawl back to the priest's
house. I saw this man on the deck of the transport when the
Americans were leaving Archangel in June, every soldier radiant at
the prospect of farewell to the army and Russia, and going home, but
he had not yet learned to smile, and written on his face and deep in
his eyes was the look of one who has gazed at hell.
When the bridge post was knocked out, one American, carrying a
reserved Lewis gun, followed by two more each with panniers of
ammunition, rushed from the house back of the church, and the three,
dashing a few yards at a time, then throwing themselves flat on their
faces, made the cover of a trench by the side of the priest's house,
and, when the Bolsheviks came forward to the bridge, scattered them
with a heavy fire.
In the emergency, a Vickers gun was hastily barricaded against a
church window that looked down on the bridge. A platoon had come
down the hill from the center village when it was seen that the
blockhouse could not survive, and, using the skirmish tactics of the
Indian, had passed through a tempest of rifle and machine gun bullets
to the billet house, and reached the church. These were only a few
instances of brilliant initiative. Nowhere than at Toulgas during
the battle of Armistice Day was there better truth of that French
saying during the war: "Every American private soldier is an officer."
Several times the Bolsheviks felt out the bridge, and the commissars
in rear could be heard urging their men to the attack, but each time
they drew back before the heavy, well directed fire of the Americans,
and, although the artillery smashed the white church and made of the
priest's house a rent and tattered ruin, the defense held at every
point till with merciful darkness the gunboats ceased their cursed
belching, the guns in the forward woods subsided to blessed silence,
and, screened by the shielding night, the Americans were able to
bring in their wounded and send relief to those who had stood at the
most exposed posts without rations or water for many long hours.
On the third day of battle, the Bolshevik batteries were augmented by
two six inch guns brought down river from Seltzo to Andreevskaya, and
all guns as throughout the first two days stayed safely beyond the
furthermost range of our feeble three inch pieces. Despairing of
breaking down the obstinate defense of the bridge, the bombardment
shifted to our fortifications on the forest flank of the center
village, and here for hours high explosive projectiles and clouds of
shrapnel fell at the rate of one shell every fifteen seconds, ranging
from the strongpoints that guarded attack from the direction of the
woods, to a row of huts on the side hill close by, where a platoon
was quartered as a reserve for these outposts.
Hardly had the Americans withdrawn from one of these huts, when its
roof was smashed with deafening explosion, and then bolts struck
right and left with stunning rapidity like raging messages from hell,
flinging debris and dirt and fragments of wood in wild disorder that
fell down upon the prostrate men crouching in a nearby fold of
ground. The houses on the hill were raked through and through and
many became a chaos of splintered timbers; the air was stabbed by the
sibilant, vindictive snarl of the shells, fluttered and throbbed with
their violent passage, the ground trembled in quaking travail;
shrapnel burst in gray clouds, fell rattling on the house roofs or
plumped down to the wet ground with suggestive vicious thuds, and the
cumulative effect of successive thunderclap detonations was like a
physical pommeling on the brain.
But through it all the Americans held fast, clinging to sanity by
sheer point of a desperate wilfulness and facing the Bolshevik
infantry men with unwavering front, so that they dared not show
themselves and were still back in the forest when night came to heal
the hideous turmoil of the day and still the shaking salvos that
stormed through every hour of light, and would be renewed at first
dawn, for the Bolsheviks never relented in their determination to
take the village Toulgas.
The great Trotsky himself directed the attack. Prisoners said that,
stationed like Napoleon on one of the river craft, he watched the
battle from afar. The Soviet leader made an address to his soldiers
and told them that he intended to keep hammering at Toulgas if it
took all winter to break down resistance of the garrison. The battle
was fought on the first birthday anniversary of the Bolshevik
revolution, and its objective was to sweep through the Allies' lines
to Bereznik, where the soldiers were promised many gifts from the
valuable stores there.
On the evening of this third day we took an appraisal of our fast
failing resources and estimated the prospect of a further stand. If
the attack had settled to a siege, it looked as if there was small
hope ahead, for a quarter of the little company had been hit, and
those who remained were hollow-eyed from fatigue, so weary that they
staggered like drunken men. All night long, enemy patrols prowled
about the defenses, sounding them for a weak point, rifles cracked
and snapped and through the black sleepless hours, machine guns beat
the devil's own tattoo.
There was a tacit understanding in the way each man eyed his mate
that when the fortifications fell there would be a street fight in
the center village and the Bolsheviks would take no prisoners. These
men from Michigan and Wisconsin had come from Camp Custer, and, when
the trial came, Custer's spirit would triumph over flesh and live
again the glory of the Little Big Horn. Likewise in those fighting
ranks were heirs of Cromwell's men and a host of sires whose
imperishable battle deeds have risen to the heights of gods the
strength of mother England's fighting men. So there was no thought
of surrendering Toulgas, and evacuation was entirely out of the
question. If the Bolsheviks were bent upon a determined siege, they
could bring fresh levies of men and new guns from their Dvina
Headquarters at Krasnoborsk, a short distance from Seltzo; but
Toulgas had no new guns to draw upon, and there were no supports and
no reserves for Toulgas.
Our Command decided that the only hope lay in a bold counterstroke.
The Scots relieved the Americans at the outposts, and in the murk of
early morning, on the fourth day of battle, the American company
crept through the noiseless forest and surrounded an observation post
in the woods on the flank off Upper Toulgas. Several Bolsheviks were
killed and the rest fled to the enemy village in panic, with the
report of a great force which had overwhelmed them. The observation
post with many rounds of small arms ammunition was set afire, the
explosions sounded like the musketry of a regiment, and the tired and
discouraged Bolsheviks thought it was a fresh regiment firing unseen
from the unknown depths of the forest.
Fortune plays a great part in war, and uncertainty accounts for many
things that appear inexplicable reviewed from the comfortable
distance of peace; perhaps the most important information that can
come to a commanding officer is knowledge of enemy strength and his
fighting morale, and the Bolsheviks had no such information. They
had lost their Chief Commander Foukes in this forest counter-attack,
and a message from him, found on the body of a runner who was trying
to reach Upper Toulgas, read:
We are in the lowest village. One steamer coming up river--perhaps
reinforcements. Attack more vigorously. Melochofski and Murafski
are killed. If you do not attack I cannot hold on, and retreat is
impossible, 11th November, 1918. 12:30 P.M.
FOUKES.
With Foukes, four of the five commissars had been killed, and now
when the frightened survivors of the detached outpost spread the
alarm of overwhelming numbers of Americanskis in the forest, the
Bolsheviks were seen fleeing Upper Toulgas in skeltering disorder.
The Americans dared not pursue, for to do so would have revealed
their true strength, and they were outnumbered four to one. Besides,
they were too elated at being rid of the enemy to give him the chance
to return to the attack. They contented themselves with taking
prisoner those stragglers who could not keep pace with the leaderless
rabble that dispersed into the forest.
A row of houses isolated near the stream at the edge of Upper Toulgas
was suspected of being the dwelling place of unfriendly peasants.
The Bolsheviks used these houses as vantage points for sharpshooters,
and in the counter combat a number of prisoners were taken from them,
so now, when we gained the upper hand, "sniper's row" of huts was
condemned, the peasants were cast out with their scanty possessions,
and as the first snow filled the air and spread an apron over the
drab colored ground, the homes of their fathers became a sea of
crackling flames, and the poor moujiks, women and children sobbing
hysterically, and men with mute sadness and uncomprehending
resignation on their bearded faces, set forth to begin life anew.
The prisoners taken in this battle of Armistice Day, all except one,
expressed no martyr's devotion to the cause of the Soviets. Some
spoke of being impressed in the Red army at the point of the bayonet,
and being kept in the ranks by the same argument. Others said that
they had joined to escape starvation, and there appeared to be
something plausible in this assertion for as far as we had gone into
the interior the people of the Archangel villages were in desperate
want. The Bolsheviks had commandeered all available food supplies
which at best were not bountiful, barely sufficient to sustain the
life of the villages through the long cold winter; a few potatoes
with a little wheat which the peasants had cached in forest dugouts
sustained life in some manner. Later had not the Allies doled out
rations of flour and other food stuffs from Archangel, many in the
Province would have perished of slow starvation during that winter of
1919.
The ration of the Bolshevik army was ample enough; a portion that
looked princely to the moujik: a _funt_ (fourteen ounces) of meat,
one and three-quarters _funts_ of bread, with tea, sugar and tobacco
for every soldier.
If the stories of the prisoners were true and not inspired by motives
of gaining sympathy, one could believe those Russians of the
_intelligencia_ who asserted that the Bolshevik party was a minority
party of terrorism, and that very few Russians were ardent Soviets.
Even Lenine himself, once said that of every one hundred Bolsheviks
fifty were knaves, forty fools, and probably only one a sincere
follower.
Two highly cultivated artillery officers, who had held commissions in
the Imperial Army, gave themselves up shortly after the battle of
Armistice Day and told a tale of being forced into the Bolshevik army
by the threat to kill their families if they refused. They said that
all Bolshevik officers were ceaselessly observed by spies who were
quick to report to Staff Headquarters the slightest symptom of a
wayward disposition, or the suspicion of any gesture of mutiny.
Few of the prisoners wore any regulation military uniforms. In
appearance there was nothing, except the carrying of firearms, to
distinguish them from the moujiks of the villages. Both were clad in
like _valenkas_, or felt boots, dirty, gray, curled, high fur hats,
shapeless dun-colored tunics. Many of the villagers were in sympathy
with the Soviets, and despite all vigilance, there was an active
system of espionage between many moujiks and the Bolshevik leaders
with which it was impossible to cope. Our Intelligence received
information that the rear attacking party had been conducted to our
lines by a prominent resident of Toulgas, and sometimes the enemy
showed amazing knowledge of our forces and the state of our
fortifications that must have come from those in whose houses we
dwelt as unwelcome guests.
There was but brief respite after the four days' battle of Armistice
Day, for the American engineers set all hands vigorously to work on
the winter defenses. Around the center village, blockhouses were
built on the forest flank, and at front and rear at points distanced
from two to three hundred yards one from the other. Coils of barbed
wire were transported over the snow from Bereznik and strung in wire
aprons between the strong points. Every blockhouse had an automatic
rifle or a machine gun, and some at the more important posts had two,
all targeted and trained to lay down a devastating, enfilade fire
along the connecting wire barriers. A few Colt machine guns that
were air cooled arrived, and helped the morale immensely, for they
had no difficulty functioning in the very low temperatures. Then,
when there was more time, the blockhouses were reconstructed with
heavy timbers and piled high with sand so that they became bomb proof
to anything except the explosion of a six inch shell, and even along
the unfeared river bank there were placed two small blockhouses with
machine guns.
When the snow mounted high and icy winds stung with the sting of
wasps, Toulgas had become a fortress, well nigh impregnable, unless
her defenses were penetrated from within, or the attack came in
hopelessly overpowering numbers.
But scarce had all this preparation commenced, when came glorious
news of the Armistice. The war was ended, and it was taken as a
matter of course that the coming peace would extend to the war of the
Arctic Circle.
From the outset the soldiers never had any rampant enthusiasm in this
strange conflict with its motives of mystery, but while the struggle
in France went on they stilled their questioning doubts and followed
the work set out for them by their officers in the uncertain belief
that somewhere back of the scenes at Paris or London or Washington
those in the high places had charted a wise policy beyond the
comprehension of a common soldier; and that in some devious,
undisclosed way the campaign in Russia was necessary, was playing its
inexplicable part in completing the defeat of the Germans. Even when
weeks elapsed and no announcement of change in policy was
forthcoming, the men were patient and did not complain. But when at
the end of November, Consul General Poole sent word from Archangel
that the Americans in North Russia would continue at their tasks to
the end, knowledge came to the soldier with stunning reality that the
great struggle in which he was prepared to die had no relation to the
war with Russia, in which he probably would die, that he was engaged
in a war which had no assignable reason for its being, in which many
of his companions had already been killed, and the end was not in
sight.
The uncertainty, the isolation of the distant snowbound fronts, the
ever present prospect of being trapped by enemy occupation of the
villages along the extended communication line, and now that the
excitement of the fight had waned, the depressing monotony of the
days ground down the spirit of the men. They commenced to lose
heart. Life became a very stale, flat, drab thing in the vast
stretches of cheerless snow reaching far across the river to the
murky, brooding skies and the encompassing sheeted forests, so
ghostly and so still, where death prowled in the shadows and the
sinking realization came home of no supports or reserves along the
two hundred miles of winding winter road to Archangel.
Week follows week, and November goes by, and December, and no word
comes from the War Department. No reassuring message to the
perplexed Commander-in-Chief, defining the purposes of the war, its
duration, when relief will come. No word comes and the soldier is
left to think that he has been abandoned by his country and left to
rot on the barren snow wastes of Arctic Russia.
Men move about wintered Toulgas emitting great clouds of vapored
breath, shuffling over the snow in the clumsy Shakleton Arctic boots,
wrapped in great coats against the bitter, deadly cold; on their
faces the condemned look of felons from whom all hope has fled.
In the dismal huts of the village soldiers are packed with the
crowded moujik families like herded animals, where the atmosphere is
dank and pestilent with an odor like stale fish. Filth is on the
floor and vermin creep from the cracks and crevices of the log walls.
In December and January there are only a few hours of feeble
shadowing light, then tragic blackness blots out the snows and the
mournful woods and the skies of melodrama. With night the tiny
windows are shrouded with board coverings, a candle flickers in the
low ceiling room, unless the issue is exhausted, then a bully beef
can is produced, filled with bacon grease and an improvised rag wick
which flutters a hesitant glimmering through the heavy gloom.
There through the long dark unwholesome hours, the Americans sit and
think thoughts more black than the outside night. Red, hateful,
revolutionary thoughts like those of the maddened mob that rushed
Louis Seize to the guillotine, and that would threaten the stability
of any nation. Black thoughts of their country and the smug, pompous
statesmen who with sonorous patriotic phrases had sent them to exile;
of the casual people at home and their damned complacency and their
outlook on war as a gorgeous heraldry of youth, a gay, romantic
adventure.
Sometimes it almost seemed as if malignant Bolshevism had poisoned
the air, for once in February when the situation looked worst and
nothing seemed certain except annihilation for the whole garrison,
the American soldiers at Toulgas threatened, unless promised early
relief, to walk out like disgruntled factory hands. The same thing,
but with a more serious aspect, occurred in an American company at
Archangel; and the French on the Railway had, at first rumor of the
Armistice, flatly deserted and returned to Archangel. At Kodish a
company of British refused to fight further in this indefinite war,
and among the first conscripted Russian troops there was serious
mutiny resulting in much bloodshed.
But there was nothing mutinous in this expression of opinion at
Toulgas. It seemed the only course to civilian soldiers who were
schooled in strikes under an industrial system where the strike has
always been the concerted expression of disapproval by those who toil
in the ranks. When the nature of a mutiny was explained to these
men, they felt a burning shame for what they had done so unwilfully,
and never again, throughout the many discouraging, hopeless days that
followed, was there the smallest hint of protest from these civilian
American soldiers.
When the days were shortest, the commissary transport broke down, and
for a time the principal ration was corned beef that was frozen in
the tin, and a nauseating mixture of vegetables and stewed meat that
had been alternately frozen and thawed in the tin, and when eaten,
gave some loathsome skin diseases and others dysentery.
Cooking and eating were the only breaks in the melancholy monotony;
there was no diversion, no relaxation, no recreation, and the divine
gift of humor which was the salvation of the Western soldier, was
denied to the soldier of North Russia, for humor springs from buoyant
spirits, the wells of radiant health, and the Americans on the Dvina
were so physically depleted that in February the medical officer of
the First Battalion reported that one-third of all those on active
duty should be committed to the hospital without delay. But these
sickened soldiers could not be sent to the hospital without
abandoning the undermanned posts that guarded the garrison.
Robbed of physical resistance and broken in spirit it was pitiful to
see strong men and brave men become shrinking cowards, filled with a
vague, sapping dread, under the uninterrupted strain and the
depressing influence of the long nights. Fidgety sentinels were
constantly seeing lurking Bolsheviks conjured by their morbid
imagination from the menacing shadows of the woods, and there was an
epidemic of accidental self-inflicted wounds, which always occurred
at the ticklish, unsupported, advanced positions.
The doctors pronounced many as cases of neurasthenia induced by much
loss of sleep, unbroken fatigue, and continual drain upon the nervous
forces. They looked solemn and dubious and said it was demanding too
much of human endurance to expect the defense to hold on without
relief through the many winter days that stretched ahead.
One January night, terrible in the severity of its cold, all hands
"stood to" and waited for the rush from the woods, for sentinels had
heard the muttering of many voices and had caught the movement of
bodies among the trees; but no attack developed, and in the morning
the tracks of timber wolves were found approaching almost to our
wire, where the pack had stopped to sniff the scent from these
strange tenanted loghouses, standing apart on the snow, like outcasts
of the village.
The few sentinels kept far in advance at the front village were
always having jumping nerves, and robbing exhausted men of precious
sleep; but once in truth they were nearly surrounded during the night
and escaped by a miracle. So it was decided to burn the houses, as
"sniper's row" had been burned in November. Some two hundred
peasants were turned out in the snow, and Upper Toulgas became a
dirty smudge on the whitened plain over which our range of visibility
extended far to the forward woods, and our field of fire was
increased comfortingly.
The High Command passed out word that Arctic conditions would
preclude any active fighting, but the prisoners spoke differently.
They said that the Bolshevik Staff expected the Allied soldiers to
die like flies in the cold winter, that the enemy intended to strike
when the cold was most bitter, the snow deepest, and so they did.
In January, with a temperature forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit,
at midnight, Bolshevik batteries from across the Dvina commenced
shelling Toulgas, and continued for fifteen minutes a bombardment
that went wild in the dark and struck harmlessly far from our works.
Directly the last shell had been fired, enemy infantry advanced in
the open and rushed our front posts. In the darkness there was
frantic, wild fighting and struggling in the deep snow, shrill yells
and a confused babble in a foreign language, the hideous moans of the
wounded, the ringing commands of the commissars in rear, urging their
men forward to sure death, and the prolonged explosions of machine
guns spurting a rain of bullets over the heads of the attackers to
warn them of a death that waited in rear if they turned back.