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Snovw Trenches
x






*y                                             NDAN STEELE went to the Arcetic Circle with the North
Russian American Expeditionary
Forces because he was looking for
new thrills and new surroundings.
He found them   both. His close
calls with death, the cruel beauty
of arctic Russia and the people
who live there made such a deep
impression upon Mr. Steele that
he felt he must write about them. As he went up the
Dvina River- "Mother Dvina" the Russians call it-as he
moved from the futile defense of one weak, undermanned outpost to another, as he later lay in a hospital
bed, Dan Steele, then Lieutenant Steele, made mental
and written notes for the story that he began writing
when he returned home some ten years ago.
DAN STEELE was born at Keokuk, Iowa, and educated at the University of Wisconsin. In 1917, at
the beginning of the war, he entered the Officers Training Camp at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, and in less than a
year went over with the 339th Infantry to Archangel,
Russia, as a First Lieutenant. There he took part in all
the major operations, being discharged from active service
in July 1919. Shortly thereafter, he took up his executive
duties in the world of commerce. Since then his life has
been just as active as it was while campaigning in Russia.
Among his.many activities he finds the work as chairman of two committees of the Chicago Chamber of
Commerce to be the most interesting.
DAN     STEELE is an energetic man of the thin, wiry
type. He is thirty-eight, looks like twenty-five, is
married and has a pretty little girl of four. When he
isn't traveling he spends his week-ends playing golf.




N
I




1"..........:|.i ~-.1                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        IIi                                                                                                                                                                                                                                d




-- VI -                                                                                              -    ~




N


Snow Trenches




By DAN STEELE


A. C. McCLURG
1931
Publishers


& CO.
Chicago
-/o


Iw II -~lllllI1~~~


`r




Snow Trenches
COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY
A. C. McCLURG X CO.
IN THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA, THE BRIT.
ISH EMPIRE AND THE
PAN-AMERICAN UNION.




-a-  g-   g —   a   a
Introduction
The World War, to most of those who fought
in it, is a memory of long, white, wet roads
bounded by a horse's ears, gray landscapes sodden
with rain and the dismal slime of trenches and
emplacements cut in clay. When one speaks of
the exploits of the American troops he envisions
the France of Vauquois Hill, Chateau Thierry,
Chemin des Dames, the Argonne and St. Mihiel.
And excusably he considers the picture of human
suffering complete in this scene. Here was the
war of "What Price Glory" and "Journey's End."
What need to consider its endless sameness in a
different setting?
Dan Steele's book brought to this reader a
distinct sense of shock. There were other fields
beside France-other deserts of barbed wireother forced marches to a slaughter which had
the merit only of a novel stage. There was the
little contingent that fought in North Russia in
a bitter campaign which had little reason to
begin with, and was doomed to be forgotten in




SNOW TRENCHES
-   -     -      -I V e V- -l W -,- -, —0 w
the end. The men went out. The men came
home, most of them to remain silent amid discussions of a war that was beyond their own
experience-many of them to minimize their
own efforts and to feel that thev had somehow
been cheated.
Thus it is that "Snow Trenches," coming after
all these years, is as new as if it had been presented the year of the armistice. It tells, virtually
for the first time, what happened in that Russian
campaign and will surprise a good fifty per cent
of the war-wise populace who probably do not
remember that a Russian campaign was ever
fought.
Only one who as a soldier faced the foreordained hopelessness of that operation could
have written this book. Only one whose blood
froze in the white desolation of North Russia
could have re-created in words such an atmosphere of bitter cold. The story itself is simple,
the motivation made powerful by the inevitable
suggestion that not one man but thousands fought
this fight. There is an air of unmistakable truth
about it that any soldier who ever heard a shell
will recognize at once.
One learns here that brass hats may blunder
just as stupidly amid hummocks of snow and
mountains of ice as in the wine cellars of a French




IN TRODUCTION
chateau and that men will go to senseless death
just as readily on a frozen tundra as in a dusty
wheatfield or a steamy morass. One puts the book
down with the amazed realization that the limit
of human endurance is something that no tactician has yet calculated.
Robert J. Casey.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Mr. Casey, himself the author of many "best sellers," served in France
with the American Expeditionary Forces as Private, Second Lieutenant,
First Lieutenant and Captain, receiving three citations for bravery. Since
the close of the war he has been a staff correspondent of the Chicago Daily
News, his duties taking him from Chicago to Cambodia and from Easter
Island to Esthonia. We consider his opinion that of an expert.




I




I


Contents




I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
V


Cossacks.........             1
The Americans....... 13
Nadya and Peter......      26
Nadya and Semyonov...   37
Seltzo Captured........   44
Shenkursk...........76
Death at Nijni Gora....      98
Cossacks and Convoys.... 124
Patrols...........            151
Defense of Ust Padenga.. 179
Retreat.....                 201
Nadya Disappears......      211
Shenkursk Evacuated.......  245
Nadya Escapes....           261
Desperate Vistavka....    292
The Raid........ 321
Bereznik........ 344








SnowV


Trenches








I




Snow Trenches
Cossacks.
IN THE CAFE OF THE MEN-FROM-THE-BARGES,
Efim Grigorivich Skverny was buying vodka
for two deserters. His arrogance and affectations
were such clumsy imitations of the mannerisms
of the officers he had seen in the Czar's army, that
he was obviously removed from the cruel, beaten,
hopeless mob by his showy uniform alone. His
instincts were the same as theirs, his lusts as vicious, too. His companions were much impressed
by the glitter of his trappings, which bore a vague
resemblance to the uniforms of the old order.
"I tell you, comrades," he said familiarly,
"there's never been anything like it! Money,
vodka, rations, women,-whatever you like. And
the Colonel has bulging trunks full of gold roubles. Gold roublesl"
The man opposite him drew a grimy forefinger
through a puddle of liquor and scrawled a row of
circles on the table-top.




2            SNOW TRENCHES
"Sounds good, little officer, but we've heard
big talk before. Eh, Mikhail?" He nudged his
friend.
"Yes. That's what the Red Ossipenko told us;
and where is he now, and his hundred men? He
lies at the foot of the big wall of the Cathedral
-or did yesterday. And his men, the fools that
believed him?... God knowsl Perhaps some
of them have his boots and tunic... fine
boots..
Archangel seethed. It had become as an anthill, crowded, disturbed, impermanent.. an
ant-hill across which lay an injured serpent. The
writhing and tail-lashing of the tortured thing
could not drag its body clear of the gritty earthheap. It scored and furrowed the surface, but
the ant-hordes buried it under the swarm of their
millions.
Anarchy writhed across Archangel, a city now
swollen by refugees to a population of half a million. Normally it was a gaunt, dirty, impoverished port, sprawling along the east bank of the
Dvina River where it empties into a waste of
tawny swamp and leaden water at the White Sea.
But the war and revolution had magnified its
every aspect. Its squalor and want were thrown
into sharper relief by the opulence of limitless
military stores which the Allies had shipped into




COSSACKS


3


Russia through this doorway. Cruisers and paintstreaked freighters came and went from quays
where trawlers and barges had discharged their
fish and lumber. In the plain chambers of the
Archangel Provisional Government now were
housed the fugitive ambassadors and diplomatic
corps of all the nations still friendly to Russia.
Deserters from the vast debris of Russia's armies
had sifted back into the city, without rations,
without money, without billets. And through the
streets trooped armed bands of them, their fickle
loyalty claimed first by the White Russians, then
by the Bolsheviki, then by their own instincts to
kill and to rob. A delirium of riots and senseless
bloodshed gripped the city.
"What side is this colonel's company on?" inquired Ivan tentatively. "I've no thirst for facing
a firing-squad."
"Nor I! We've had a bellyful of fighting.
Besides -" Mikhail spat on the floor.
"We all havel" broke in Skverny, filling their
glasses again. "But this is different. I'm not
sticking my neck into any rope, either. We're
leaving Archangel tonight. We're not on any
side. The British claim that transports are on the
way with troops enough to chase the Bolsheviki
back to Vologda. Colonel Eristoff is-going to lay
low till he sees which way the cat jumps. He's




4


SNOW TRENCHES


no fool...As for pay,-you'll get the same as
sergeants in the old army."
"Kerenski money?"
"No! Nikolai roubles!"
Mikhail and the other had their heads together
when he finished. A stolid grunt of indecision;
a thick lisp of persuasion. The pinched stub of
Mikhail's cigarette scorched his flat thumb. He
squeezed the light out, separated the few crumbs
of unburned tobacco, and stowed them away in a
small sack.
"What kind of man is your colonel?-a flogger,
or has he learned his lesson?"
"He's all rightl He was trained in the old
school, but he's fair. He's like a gray wolf: crafty
enough not to fight unless there's little risk, but
game when he's cornered. Don't worry! You'll
like the Colonel..  Listen! I'll give you five
roubles extra if you'll come now. It's your last
chance. The Sokolik's sailing at midnight."
He picked the money carefully out of a leather
wallet and laid it on the table, holding his hairy
red hand over it. The door of the caft banged
open. "Sh-hl" he cautioned. "The Colonell"
A big man, he was. The top of the astrakhan
cap that tilted so jauntily across his forehead
brushed the lintel of the door as he stalked into
the room. The low ceiling added to the impres



COSSACKS




s


COSACKV           5 I


sion of his tallness. In his countenance a certain
nobility of line and feature was contradicted by
vague, unscrupulous expressions and the cynical
hardness of his mouth. Crdelty stared from the
roving black eyes. His nose borrowed its curve
from the Cossack sabre. He wrinkled it now in
distaste to the smell of stale, unchanged air, unwashed muzhik* bodies, tobacco fumes, and spilt
liquor. There was fastidiousness in the trim of
his narrow black moustache and the Vandyke
beard that shaded from his vigorous chin toward
his ears. His uniform, in fit and material, would
have served an aid-de-camp of the Czar. A Luger
automatic pistol hung at his hip. Holding his
riding-whip under his arm, he lighted a long
cigarette and shot a glance at Skverny and his two
recruits.
"Timejto get out of here!" he snapped. "We
leave in just two hours. Get your men and your
stuff on board."
"Very good, your honor!"
"Are these men with us?" He strode toward
them. "Stand up!"
They &icked their heels and faced him in veteran style.
"I am, your honor!" said Ivan, the more
aggressive one.
*Peasant.




6


SNOWO~ TRENCHES[E


"So am I," chorused Mikhail.
"Where are you from?"
"Both from Vyatka."
"Have you seen active service?"
"Yes, your honor. On the Galician front."
"What are you doing in Archangel?".They looked at one another.. Skverny interposed, "They're both loyal —"
"Loyal to what? To their paymaster?"
"They're not Bolsheviki, anyway."
"How do you know? You never saw either of
them before tonight... However, to hell with
their politics! Bring them with you!"
_ —2
"Come, Nadya, darling, get your things ready.
We're leaving this cursed Archangel tonight...
but, mind you, we won't have room for all the
boxes and bags I see lying about."
Colonel Eristoff, noticing his niece's downcast
expression, and the tears starting in her soft, dark
eyes, put his great fist under the oval of her chin
and tilted her face until she looked into his.
"Well, well," he continued, "I thought you'd
be glad to slip out of this brawling, dirty city, with




COSSACKS


7


White patrols playing tag with Red rioters...
and a firing-squad hunting your poor old uncle."
Nadya Ivanovna arose listlessly, with the air
of one being obliged to continue a course she had
hoped to forsake and, stepping to the door, called,
"Anna!"
A young woman having the broad face and even
features of a Georgian Cossack came into the
room and commenced packing under the distraught eye of her mistress. Colonel Eristoff's
restless strut showed him in unwonted high spirits, in contrast to his recent surliness. He came
again to Nadya's side and put his hand on her
shoulder.
"Oh, smile a little, for God's sakel" he begged.
"The British and Americans are due here in a
very few days to hold Archangel for the Allies
and chase the Bolsheviki back to their forests."
"Then why must we leave?" Nadya cried.
"Where can we go? Why must we become fugitives again?"
"Leave that to me, child. We can bargain with
the Allies later. At any rate, we go the richer
by the four million roubles I rescued from the
Imperial Bank to equip our loyal Cossacks."
"Loyal Cossacks!" she blazed. "Are these 'Cossacks,' the scum of Archangel you've picked up?
They're worse than the Bolshevikil"




8


SNOWY TRENC RIE


~. —w — -r~.-,- ~m,~,V- -  ~ --,,~  4~, -. -r ~.  -~,a,,W,
"Call them what you like, my dear, but hurry."
He bellowed for his orderly: "Sergeil Herel"
Semyonov, the Colonel's adjutant, came unannounced into the room, and saluted Eristoff with
ironic precision.
"Captain Niutkin said to tell the Colonel that
the Sokolik is ready, steam up, and the troops and
equipment on board. He is ready to leave when
the Colonel gives the word."
"Find a cart for these things of Nadya Ivanovna's. Nadya, you must hurry! Sergei will look
after the rest."
Nadya abruptly stopped packing and went over
to her uncle. She put her hand in his, and tried
to smile. "Please don't force me to go on this
mad trip," she pleaded. "Let me stay here with
Anna until you are settled. Oh, please! I can
only be a burden to you. There is far more risk
to me from your wild company than to remain
quietly here."
"Nonsensel Enough of this! Damn it! Do you
think I can't take care of you? You'll do as I
tell you!"
The streets leading to the quay were midnight
dark. At rare intervals lamplight shone through
a slit in some curtained window. People on the
streets passed furtively, hugging the houses, avoiding each other. They stepped around those pat



COSSACKS
_ W W W,T


9


terns of light as though dodging puddles. An
air of mystery and danger lay heavy as the darkness. Patrols and reliefs of the guard progressed
more boldly, occasional lanterns showing as they
met, or halted someone for questioning. The city
was under martial law, but the authorities were
not strong enough to keep order.
The Sokolik was moored beside a one-story
warehouse having one broad door on the street
and one at the waterside. A knot of men carrying
lanterns lounged at the street door. A slipshod
sentry, who handled his rifle as though it were a
crutch, roamed from one group to another, assuming a belligerent, officious attitude whenever a
newcomer approached. Beyond, in the eery dimness of the low-raftered building, huge, distorted
shadows of men slid along the walls. The white
rails of a steamer crossed the door at the far end.
A shrill curse.. a scuffle...
"Drop that damn knife, or I'll punch this bayonet through your neckl"
A non-commissioned officer ran from the
steamer and ordered the brawlers to return on
board.
Colonel Eristoff and his party entered the
building and proceeded directly across to the
gangplank. In the smudgy flare of the deck-lanterns Nadya saw more closely the type of men




10          SNOW TRENCHES
her uncle had recruited for his expedition. She
shuddered. A black-hatted Mongol at the rail
pushed his swarthy face impudently forward,
clicked his thin lips, and threw back his head with
a broad wink. He turned aside to the bearded
giant who had been peering over his shoulder.
"Did you see her look at me? The little white
dove! The Colonel had better keep the door
to her cage locked, or the hawk of Chita will
get her."
But Eristoff had seen what had passed. He
brushed in front of Nadya and his great fist caught
the Mongol below the ear, slugging him to the
deck. He gave the prostrate figure a savage kick.
"Learn your place, or you'll sleep on the bottom of the Dvina!"
Anna put her arm around her mistress's
shoulder.
The Sokolik was crowded as an excursion
steamer. Men were sleeping or settling down on
every inch of deck space. Even the companionways were occupied. On the foredeck, a squad
of men were passing chunks of wood from a pile
on the deck through a hatch to the boiler-room.
At the stern, boatmen were attending to the cables
that would connect the barge carrying the company's horses.
Nadya was speedily installed in a closet-sized




COSSACKS                11
- w- w- w- - v —w   P.     w l    Iw-Iw   W 1
cabin just ahead of the starboard paddle-wheel.
She bolted the door and flung herself down on
the hard, narrow bunk. She found relief now in
tears. Her courage and pride had given way to
hopeless terror and a shrinking dread of this gray
cell that would confine her, perhaps for weeks.
For months past, she had followed her uncle in
precarious flight across the breadth of Russia. The
black books of the Cheka had his name underlined in the lists of the wanted. The needy, perilous banners of Denikin and Kolchak had no appeal to this self-seeking adventurer. Patriotism,
self-sacrifice... what nonsense From village
to village they had fled, by cart, on foot, across
forest and river, spurred by fear of capture. Archangel had been a haven when they reached it.
To turn away seemed abandonment of hope...
In that moment of helpless loneliness she discovered an ikon, shadow-hidden in the corner
above her bed. She crossed herself twice and
pressed her hands tenderly against the reassuring
little symbol. She was not quite alone now.
With her handkerchief she brushed the dust off
the tarnished frame and straightened the tiny
candle-holder. "Precious Mother of God, give
me hope and courage," she whispered. Then she
smoothed the blankets on her bunk, blew out the
candle and lay down.




12


SNOW TRENCHES


The Sokolik moved so little that Nadya scarcely
noticed it. Its nose drifted away from the bank
as the current caught it. A muffled bell jangled
below in the engine-room. The old steamer
shivered as the paddle-wheels took hold. Nadya
raised her head to look out of the square window
over her bunk. Directly abeam, the riding-lights
of a British cruiser floated by. Beyond, in Bakharitza, in spite of the lateness of the hour, a few
lights remained. The dark shadow of a motor
launch passed within a cable-length. Over the
quiet water she heard the sound of firing, but
could not distinguish the direction. A reddish
glow appeared above the southern end of Bakharitza; sharp spires of flame followed. Nadya
lay back with a little sigh. Musketry and burning homes! The chaos in Archangel... unimaginable horrors in the desolate, forest-smothered villages beyond.
She glanced again out of the window. The
burning building had fallen further astern. As
she watched, the clouds thinned out, revealing a
patch of luminous silver. The full strength of the
moon poured through, and a shimmering pathway
of moonlight unrolled from her window to the
sombre forest on the far bank.




II
The Americans.
FBOG, A CHILLING DRIZZLE, AND GREAT
sullen swells. The White Sea was bleak and
forbidding. Lieutenant Peter Burns, standing at
the railing of the boat deck of the transport
Nagoya, stared thoughtfully out over the gray
waste toward the other ships of the convoy. Although it was early morning, "Taps" had blown
on the Somali, a quarter-mile distant on her starboard quarter.
"Starting early, today," Burns had remarked
grimly to himself. "It's a pity they couldn't have
waited a few hours and buried the poor devil
on land."
A moment later he had vaguely seen through
the veil of fog, the telltale group of men at the
rail of the Somali, the pathetic wrapped and
weighted figure placed on the teeter-totter. The
seaward end dipped slowly. Down plunged its
burden. His imagination, more vivid than sight,
brought him the rest: the leap of a gray wave
to meet it, a swirl of white spume, waters parting
and closing with a sound of indescribable finality.




14


SN-OW TREjNCHS


14SNOW TRE-NC-HE
Out ahead, a midget beside the transports, a
slovenly, low-waisted trawler, fresh from Archangel that morning, led the way. The Tydeus,
third member of the convoy, trailed astern, now
visible, now hidden by fog.
Burns saw the first trace of land, as they entered
the broad mouth of the Dvina River, in the occasional appearance of clumps of reeds and swamp
grass. The convoy stopped. A small tug drew
alongside. The pilot shouted a guttural inquiry
up to the bridge, then clambered aboard. In
single file, the Nagoya leading, the transports
headed up the Dvina.
The fog thinned out, bringing the shoreline
into sight. Swampy patches grew closer together,
a mingling of gray water and wispy tundra, the
color of dirty straw. On wider stretches of solid
ground were stacks of marsh hay. Lieutenant
Burns came away from his solitary contemplation
of the dreary Russian foreground and reentered
the life of the ship. He walked twice around the
boat-deck, spoke to the lookouts, and went down
to the main deck. The troops were now astir;
the rails lined with men silently watching the
desolate scene float past. Silently, without the
chatter and comment natural to travelers approaching their destination. Rather, with the
attitude of men emerging from some dread expel




THE AMERICANS


11


-_-. -,




rience, fearing that it might return. Watchers
of a hovering doom.
Behind them, in a drab pattern on the deck,
the overflow from the ship's hospital lay on
stretchers in the grip of influenza. The contagion
had trapped an entire battalion in their cramped
quarters below decks. Burns had kept on his feet
in spite of a day of dizziness and lassitude; there
was too much to be done. He had given up his
berth in a crowded stateroom and had moved his
bedding-roll out into the open.
Now, as he turned again to the river banks,
short, stunted pine trees made a smudgy streak
of greenish-black above the swamp. A number
of fishing schooners passed. At a bend in the
river a straggly settlement of squalid black sheds
unrolled. People as sombre and shapeless as
their background came out of the houses to
watch the transports go by. Not an arm was
waved in greeting, either on ship or on shore.
Not through hostility, but rather a lethargic indifference. The Americans' impression: My
God! Has this jumping-off place anything to do
with the war? The Russians': Still the ships
comel
From here on there were frequent villages, and
warehouses along the river. Great barges and
rafts of logs tied to the bank  A saw-mill with




16           SNOW   TRENCHES
rusted tin roof and slim bent smoke-stack sat back
of a long wharf built of millions of squared timbers piled in rows like bricks in a wall. Lumber,
more plentiful than dirt or masonry, sagging into
decay at the river's edge. The ground was higher
here; less swamp and open water. The Dvina
narrowed, and the pilot twisted the Nagoya from
side to side in the treacherous channel. It was
low tide.
Captain Homrne, one of the medical officers,
came up to Burns, looking haggard and overtired. He noticed Burns' pensive attitude.
"Homesick, Pete?" he inquired, putting a hand
on his shoulder.
"Not that, Doc. May be a little low, coming
into a place like this with a half-dead battalion... but I've nothing to be homesick for."
"That so? Haven't you any folks back home?"
"None that'll miss me. My mother died eleven
years ago, and my father is the kind you don't
miss. It's a hell of a thing to say, isn't it?...
I've only seen him a couple of times in the last
few years."
"Haven't you even got a girl?"
"No girl either, Doc."
"No girl, eh Pete? What then... girls?"
"I couldn't name 'em."
"Been disappointed in love?"




THE AMERICANS


17


"Nope."
"I see; just don't like women."
"I wouldn't say that... You're sober most
of the time, but that doesn't prove you don't like
liquor."
"Why bring that up? They couldn't run a war
without either pastime."
"Say, what is this?-a clinic? You ought to feel
your own pulse. You look pretty bum yourself."
"If you felt as rotten as I do, I'd order you
to bed."
"I couldn't go if you did."
"Then here's a prescription for you: don't take
this war too seriously. That's what the general
staff is for."                        4
2
The Nagoya landed at Bakharitza, the Brooklyn of Archangel. The troops had spent their first
night in Russia on the ship, although the sick
ones had been moved to the first crude hospital
the Red Cross had improvised. Now the quay
bustled with the stir of unloading. Hatches had
been uncovered and the derricks were reaching
far down the black pits into the hold to emerge




18


SNOW TRENCHES


to the accompaniment of snorting winches with a
field gun caisson or a huge sling full of rations
or ordnance. Lorries and muzhik carts took these
stores as fast as they were checked by the quartermasters to supply warehouses of the expeditionary force. The wharf was crowded by the entire
curious population of Bakharitza. They stared
at the ship and the soldiers with stolid, expressionless faces. The soldiers stared back and made
friendly overtures with biscuits and cigarettes, or
flirted in English with inquisitive girls. They
were broad faced girls with shawls on their heads
and figures as stocky and broad of beam as the
barges on the river.
Lieutenant Burns stood on the foredeck directing an unloading detail. Some of his men came
up, dragging two bearded stevedores.
"Lieutenant," the corporal said, "these birds
broke into a case of Scotch, and what they drank
in two minutes would have foundered our whole
damn platoon." He pointed to the smallest of
their captives, an owlish shrimp who was having
trouble with his equilibrium. "This guy, here,
had two imperial quarts down each pants leg."
"What did you do with the liquor?"
"Well, Lieutenant, we know where it is..."
"That's no surprise! Listen, Corporal; I'm not
going to look for it. But if any of you get caught




THE AMERICANS              19
with it, you'll have to take the consequences.
And if I see you stewed..."
"You won't sir! Not a chancel Shall we turn
these Polacks over to the guard?"
"Don't bother the guard with them. Just give
them the bum's rush."
Captain Ordway, Burns' company commander,
came up. "Mornin', Pete," he called. "Still
feelin' fit?"
"Oh, so-so, Skipper. How about yourself?"
"I feel like I'd been on a ten-day drunk, but I
can still navigate."
"What's the dope? I hear we're going up the
river."
"That's right. One battalion is booked for the
Railroad Front. Another stays here in Archangel
for the time being, and we're going up to join
the Dvina Force. Not a hell of a lot of choice,
but personally I think we've got the best assignment. Archangel may be softer, but I don't
hanker after guardin' embassies or patrollin' the
streets like an M. P. The railroad detachments'll
be firin' locomotives and livin' in box-cars..."
"And anyway, you didn't serve a hitch in the
navy for nothing. You'll feel more at home with
a boat or two in sight. How soon do we start?"
"The Colonel thinks we can get the men onto
the barges about four o'clock. We'll probably




20


SNOW TRENCHES


pull out at daylight tomorrow. Have you seen
the barges?"
"Just from the upper deck. They look like
Noah's ark..."
"Noah's ark, hell! Noah was too good a skipper to ship in one of those scows. Even the roofs
leak."
"Well I sure hope the change will stop this
damn siege of flu."
"It's bound to, Pete. Wait and see. A day or
two on land and a little drill'll get it out of their
systems in a hurry... This country may not
be as bad as it looks. If the vodka's as good as
they claim, an' the Russki women understand
sign-language, I can make out."
"Leave it to you, old seven-decks. How about
the rest of us?"
"Oh, you can, too... even you, Pete."
"How far up the river are we going?"
"I don't know much more about it than you
do. Headquarters of Dvina Force is at Bereznik,
about five days trip south."
"Who's up there, now?"
"Oh, 'bout three men an' a dog. I believe His
Majesty's navy is represented, too. There's two
or three companies of British troops an' four or
five river gunboats."
"Is that all? Looks like we're in for guard




THE AMERICANS


21


duty, then. There can't be much action with an
outfit that size."
"There can't, eh! These guys know how to use
platoons for regiments. Besides, there may be a
lot more troops on the way. The story goes, Pete,
that we're goin' to drive the Bolsheviki out of
Archangel Province an' hold the territory north
of the Trans-Siberian Railway, so the White Russian crowd can reorganize their armies an' reeistablish the Eastern Front."
"They won't do that with one regiment."
"You never can tell! Anyway, it'll be a new
kind of soldierin'... plenty of variety."
"Yeah! Reindeers or dogs for transport, snowshoes, Polar bear steaks, and snow trenches."
"Boy, that's what bothers me! I'm a warm
weather bird. Now, if it was Mexico, or the Philippines, or Italy... Italy'd'be 0. K. Why the
hell didn't they send us to Italy?..."
— 3
Captain Ordway's company and one other were
rapidly getting settled aboard their new billet,
a long, blunt-nosed Dvina River freight barge
which was moored to the bank two or three hun



22           SNOW TRENCHES
dred yards south of the Nagoya. The other two
companies of the battalion boarded a second
barge just like it.
Each barge had two decks. The lower one, in
the hold, was dark, damp, and retained the
mouldy smells of a hundred fnixed cargoes: lumber, sheep, hides, fish. The upper deck, under a
leaky shed roof, was fresher and less odorous, but
colder. Field ranges, set up by the company
cooks, supplied the only heat for frosty nights
along the arctic circle. Men slept side by side in
long parallel rows running the length of the
clumsy vessels.
A bugle sounded Assembly. Sergeants got their
detachments together and herded them onto the
barges. Gangplanks were pulled up; ropes cast
off. Up ahead, the captain of the Ryolka, the
river tug which was to draw the barges, stood at
the end of his tiny bridge, removed his cap, and
crossed himself twice. Then he jerked the whistle-cord, signalled the engine-room and went into
the pilot-house. Heading into the current, the
Ryolka slowly took up the slack in the tow-rope
to the first barge. Presently a hundred feet of
taut rope stretched between them, and the second
barge responded to the pull. The Ryolka's propeller churned the water more vigorously, her
funnel shooting up black wood-smoke and sparks.




THE AMERICANS              23
"Where the hell did you get that mutt?"
Lieutenant Burns turned around to see one
of the lieutenants of his company storming at
Emede, their company barber. This man was
gaunt and querulous, a school teacher in civilian
life who had brought into the army a nagging
idea of discipline which displayed itself in a petty
insistence upon the most trivial details of military etiquette and behavior. The other officers in
his company were constantly obliged to straighten
out the nuisances arising from his unnecessary
restrictions.
Emede, looking more surprised than guilty,
answered frankly: "I got him off a Russian, Lieutenant. Bought him."
"Stole him, you meanl"
"No, sir! I gave a sack of Bull for him. He's
just a pup... one of them Eskimo dogs."
"Never mind what he is! You'll have to get
him off this boat. We're going up to the front.
We can't drag a lot of curs along."
"Please, Lieutenant, I'll look after him. We
need a mascot. He won't be no trouble."
"That'll do, Emedel You heard me! Pitch
him over the side; he can swim it easy."
Emede picked up his puppy, and Burns heard
him mutter as he turned away: "Guess I'll have
to make a stowaway of you, doggy. If anybody




24           SNOW   TRENCHES
09~~ —W-  W              W   u-N
throws you overboard, it'll be him... an' if
he does, sure as God made airedales, I'll give
his beddin' roll a swim the first time nobody's
lookin'."
"We'll make him a member of the first platoon,
Emede," said Burns quietly. "Just keep him out
of sight for a day or two; I'll square it with the
Captain. Let's see him... Jeez, even the dogs
are funny in this country. Probably won't eat
anything but fish."
Gray day was dissolving into melancholy dusk.
Port and starboard lanterns on the Ryolka had
already been lighted. Each moment it got appreciably darker. Burns lighted a cigarette and
strolled out onto the short foredeck of the barge.
Four men were seated at the prow, their legs
dangling over the sides. He noticed that their
chatter was lighter, more normal than it had
been for days. The gloom of the transport had
left them. He went inside and sought his bunk.
The coffin-dark interior held few signs of the
presence of the five hundred men on board. Far
back, at the stern, a lantern hung from the ceiling. A sudden glow now and then pointed out
the cooking-ranges as the fire-door was opened for
a chunk of wood. The firefly flicker of cigarettes.
The flare of a match. Smothered coughs, repeated
from the same spots on the deck. The brush of




ATHE AMERICANS


25


the wind through open doors or gaps in the
planking. And outside, the slap of the water, the
mysterious hum of the night.
Burns lay long in the quiet darkness before
sleep came. He felt strangely restless, his mind
vaguely irritated by the monotony and inaction.
If, as he had told the doctor, he had no cause for
homesickness, then it was common loneliness that
affected him. A loneliness in the midst of his
own men, whose company had always givbn him
a sense of completeness; a longing for something
unrecognizable. He stared wide-eyed at the lowpitched roof. He turned over onto his side and
held his eyes shut a long time. "Not even a girl
he had told the doctor... but his wandering
thoughts kept returning persistently to the image
of a girl,-an imaginary one, not clear as to feature or coloring, vivid only as the embodiment of
some undefined longing. Speculations regarding
what they would find at Bereznik chased the
image away, but it came back. It was with him
when finally he went to sleep...




III
Nadya and Peter.
IHEY HAD BEEN IN SIGHT OF THE VILLAGE
of Podborya since daybreak. Above the
river, above the bluff, the church of Podborya
rose white and fairylike out of the pine trees, its
gilded, turnip-shaped domes reminiscent of the
Arabian Nights... significant in its unreality;
beckoning, but not promising.
The Dvina stretched ahead straight and wide
at this point, holding back the tug and its barges
to a creeping pace as it surged northward to the
oblivion of the White Sea. As though it expressed the sorrows and distress of stricken Russia, it hurled itself against these venturesome
foreign intruders. Revolution, famine, and terror were family affairs. Mother Dvina might
glide into the hidden solitudes of the north with
a burden of blood and shame on her broad
bosom, and wash out the stain with floods of fresh
water, but she must resent any intrusion from
the outside into the affairs of her family..
a hostile river, muddy, black and treacherous.
The American barges were made fast to stakes




WA YA A IPE TEF.Ri


ROY


NATIVAIUS ANDLI  PETP? ~




in the river bank below Podborya. Colonel
Jordan sent Lieutenant Burns and Malinowski,
Burns' interpreter, into the village to arrange for
a burial place for three soldiers who had died of
flu since leaving Archangel. They followed the
road from the landing-place up to the row of
houses. The church was situated beyond, on
higher ground. Village-folk peered out at them
from doorways and curtained windows. Some of
the bolder ones ventured out between the houses
or into the road. Malinowski spoke to them and
was answered with quiet politeness, the men
taking off their caps. Reassured, they came together in little groups after the Americans had
passed. A primitive people, suspicious. but inclined to be friendly.
A boy, who could say, "Gimme cigarette,"
directed them to the priest's house, where they
were told that he had gone up to the church.
The church appeared large enough to serve a
far richer and more populous parish. Its smooth,
whitewashed walls rose clean and sheer above the
tumbled grass of the churchyard and the muck
of the road. As they approached, it suggested
seclusion and a detachment from the sorrows and
turmoil of the groaning, war-cursed world. A
sanctuary from the hatreds of political upheaval;
an outpost of the spiritual world.




28           SNOW TRENCHES...w  -w —.  r   r   - ~  -— ~ ~ ~   vu~  ~ -~-  --  -~ -.-~Before they reached the door, it opened and a
girl came out of the church,-a girl as slim and
graceful as one of the birch trees beside the road.
She half turned, when she saw the soldiers, as
though to retreat, but she did not walk away.
Burns observed that the first impression he had
received of her slimness had been deceptive. It
was rather the effect of perfect proportions than
of any straightness of line. In fact, the curves of
her breasts and hips appeared almost voluptuous
because of the slenderness of her waist. A supple
figure, agile and vigorous. Her face, with all the
aristocratic fineness of its features, held a wistful, appealing expression of loneliness... lips
whose delicate perfection of form alone kept
them from noticeable fullness; eyes of such softness and depth as to hold all the suffering and
ecstasy of a lifetime.
Fearing she would leave, Burns said quickly to
Malinowski: "Ask her if the priest is here."
But she addressed them first, in charming, if
studied English: "Are you not Americans?"
"Yes, we arel" said Burns eagerly.
"Have you come from Archangel?"
"We left there yesterday."
"What is happening there? Is the city quiet?"
"I'm sorry, I don't know. We weren't actually
in the town. We came directly from our trans



NADYA AND PETER


20


ports to those river boats. They must be expecting trouble, though, because of the number of
troops that landed there."
"Why have the Americans come here, to Russia? Is this to be still another front?"
Burns shrugged. "I only know we're here to
help Russia."
"Then you'll be fighting the Bolsheviki. How
far away are they?"
"I don't know. They're up the Dvina a little
ways," he answered vaguely. A soldier does not
give strangers any accurate information; not even
to beautiful, innocent-looking strangers with bewitching eyes."
"Are you stopping here long?"
"No. Just long enough for a funeral. We
want the priest's permission to bury three of our
men in your cemetery. Have you seen him?"
"Yes. He's in the church. Shall I ask him to
come out?"
"I'll send Malinowski; he speaks Russian...
Tell me, where did you learn to speak English?
Have you lived in England?"
"I had an English governess until the war
started. But I'm afraid I've forgotten a great deal
of it. I've had so little practice."
"Your English is perfect! It's great to meet a
Russian girl who speaks English."




30           SNOW TRENCHES
"Have you met so many who could not?" she
inquired mischievously.
"Not me. But you'll admit it's unusual to find
a girl like you in place like this."
"A girl like me?"
"You said it. The others we have seen have
been fat and stupid and ugly."
"Must I thank you for inferring that I'm not?"
"You don't really live here, do you? Where do
you come from?"
"Just now I am living on a river steamer. We
are tied up at a landing in the Pinega River, a
short distance through the woods from here, but
I come here nearly every day to see Father
Golkin."
"You're not alone, are you? Is your family
here, too?"
"I'm with my uncle. He's all the family I
have."
"Aren't you afraid of the Bolsheviki?"
"How do you know I'm not a Bolshevik?"
"It doesn't seem to matter much. Are you?"
"I hate you for asking!"
"Good. I'm glad that's settled. But, really,
haven't they molested you?"
"Oh, we came after they had passed. Besides,
my uncle is in command of a detachment of Cossacks. I'm well protected."




NADYA AND PETER              31
"Is it part of the Allied force we're being sent
to join?"
"Not yet. I don't know what my uncle's plans
are."
"Are you going further up the Dvina?"
"I don't know. Not right away, I guess. Why
do you ask?"
"I'm wondering when I can see you again."
"Do you want to?"
"Do I!..."
Malinowski arrived with the priest. He spoke
to the girl and took her hand; then looked inquiringly at Lieutenant Burns.
"Father," said Malinowski, "the Lieutenant
wants to ask a favor."
The priest bowed his kindly old head.
"Three of our men have died since leaving
Archangel, and we would like to bury them
here."
The priest bowed again. "They are welcome.
We will care for them as though they were our
own people. When will you bring them?"
"Right away. Will you show us the place?"
As the priest led toward the small, fenced
churchyard, the girl walked slowly in the opposite direction. Impulsively Burns turned toward
her.
"Wait a minutel Won't you come, too?"




32


SNOW TRENCHES


"I'm sorry, but I have to go back."
"How about a little later, then? Can't I see
you again?"
"I don't know... You'll not be here very
long.  "
"But I'll be free in an hour or so. Where will
you be?"
"I am going back to our boat, but I couldn't
have you there."
"Well, where can I see you? Can't you come
back? I don't want to lose you so soon."
"What is one girl more or less to a soldier?"
"That depends upon the soldier, and upon the
girl. My name's Burns. Peter Burns."
"Is it?"
"It is. It's an easy name to remember."
"Do you want me to remember it?" Her eyes
were twinkling.
"That's up to you. Of course I do. But not if
it's any bother to you."
She relented. "I'll remember it, Peter Burns.
It was nice of you to tell me. I was only teasing.. My name is Nadya Ivanovna."
"Won't you come back again? Or, at least, tell
me you'll see me again if I can arrange it."
"Of course I will. And I'll try to come back."
She held out her hand, and turned quickly
away.




NADYA AND PETER


33




Shortly after noon, a silent brown procession
wound up the road from the barges to the cemetery. Three rude carts, each bearing an oblong
box made of rough planks, led the way. Their
escorts marched slowly beside them. They were
followed by squads from all the companies. The
villagers, who could understand a funeral, lost
their timidity and trailed along behind. Lieutenant Burns, busy with another duty, hurried impatiently at his task. The Ryolka had taken on
fuel-wood and was ready to pull out as soon as
the burial-party returned. Soldiers were wandering about the village in little groups, bartering
cigarettes with the natives for eggs or potatoes.
Emede and Coon Dog Evans stood beneath a
window in one of the larger houses, flirting with
two beefy girls in the window above.
"Come on down, kid," Emede urged. "Let's
take a walk in the woods. Promenade... Understand?"
The girls giggled and chattered to one another.
Their attitude was encouraging. Coon Dog tried
his luck
"You!" He pointed. "Usl" He indicated




34          SNOW TRENCHES
Emede and himself. "Walk!"    He grabbed
Emede's arm and took a few steps, pointing to
the woods.
The girls laughed louder than ever.
"What the hell's funny? Are my pants comin'
down?"
Emede made a gesture of disgust. "This damn
lingo's worse than French. To hell with 'em!
Let's find some others."
Coon Dog continued his pantomime, winking
and beckoning with his hand. Perseverance won;
the girls nodded and left the window. In a moment they came out and the soldiers set off with
them, arm in arm.
Burns finished his work and walked swiftly
into the village to find the girl he had met in the
morning. She was not among the villagers on the
street. He went past all the houses, then up to
the church. It occurred to him that he should
not have counted so strongly on seeing her again.
Then he thought, "Surely she wouldn't avoid
me purposely. There's no reason for that. Probably she had to stay on the boat... What a
knockout to find in a dreary place like this!..
Nadya Ivanovna.."
Learning from one of the villagers the direction of the trail to the Pinega, Burns started
along it.




NADYA AND PETER, -


"This is a fool stunt," he told himself. "If she
doesn't want to see me, there's no sense in my
hunting her. If she does, she knows where I'll be.
*.. That girl doesn't belong around here, that's
a cinch. Her dress looked more like Petrograd
than Podborya, or even Archangel. Probably a
refugee.'.
The sound of a bugle reached him. Taps! He
stopped in the quiet of the forest there and listened to the sad, sweet melody of it. A beautiful
and fitting way to say good-bye to a soldier. The
same melody, Burns reflected, to introduce a man
to his eternal sleep that he hears every night
before sleeping. No man could have a more
peaceful, undisturbed resting-place than these
soldiers would have in the little plot beside the
old church. The noise of a rifle-volley clipped off
the last note.
Burns gave up the girl and started back along
the trail. At this point in his experience his
soldierly qualities were of greatest influence.
Promptness, obedience, duty turned him back
from his search. But the sight of Podborya
church at daybreak, the loveliness of Nadya, the
burial of three soldiers, and, now, the thought
of Nadya under the dark, quiet trees set strange,
opposing thoughts in motion. A new and vivid,
alluring image had come to stay with him.




36


SNOW TRENCHES


The tail of the procession swung out of sight
behind the houses as Burns came out of the
woods. Back in the cemetery, four muzhiks with
shovels were throwing the dirt back into three
holes. Burns. met Malinowski on the road and
called to him.
"Come with me a minute. Hurry!"
He led the way back to the church in search
of the priest. Malinowski said nothing, but
wondered at their errand. The priest was not in
the church. Back toward the barges; then they
saw the priest standing beside the new graves.
"Listen, Malinowski!" he directed. "Ask that
priest to tell Nadya Ivanovna that I was looking
for her. Do you get me? And, listen! Tell him
not to let her forget Peter Burns."
The Ryolka gave a warning whistle. Malinowski came running back.
"Did you see him? What did he say?"
"He just nodded his head."




IV
Nadya and Semyonov.
W       HEN NADYA RETURNED TO THE SOKOLIK
after her meeting with Lieutenant Burns,
she went straight to her cabin. She wondered
if her uncle, Colonel Eristoff, knew the Americans had come. From what he had told her, she
knew that he was waiting to learn of the activities of these troops before declaring himself to
the authorities in Archangel. She was certain,
too, that he would offer the Allies the support
of his so-called Cossacks, if their expedition appeared to offer him the least risk, and the most
regular rations. In spite of her contempt for his
shiftiness and lack of ideals, Nadya retained
some affection for her vain, theatrical, rascally
old uncle. He was her only remaining relative
and protector. Without exception, she despised
and feared this drunken riff-raff her uncle had
recruited. Except for Anna, her maid, the few
women aboard the Sokolik were from the gutters, followers of chance. Thus far, her fears of
trouble had been groundless, although several
times she had been spared a threatened insult by




38          SNOW TRENCHES
the timely arrival of the Colonel. But the muttered comments of some of the bolder ones and
their leering glances showed her by how close
a margin she escaped actual assault.
As she took up her diary, someone knocked at
her door. Expecting either Anna or her uncle,
she said, "Come in!"
Instead, the door opened and closed behind
Captain Semyonov, the Colonel's adjutant. Nadya
arose. The Captain smirked and brushed his inadequate moustache with his right forefinger.
"The Colonel," he announced, "has been
obliged to leave hurriedly for Archangel for a
conference with Allied Headquarters. He will
probably be back in four or five days, but meanwhile, he has left me in command. He instructed
me to tell you that you are not to leave the ship
during his absence, unless," and the Captain
bowed, "unless you are in my company."
Nadya stepped back to the wall, her hand
raised to her throat.
"Gone to Archangel!" she exclaimed. "When
did he leave?"
"About an hour ago."
"But I've only been gone a little more than
that. It's strange he didn't wait for me."
"A motor launch brought the message, and he
left with it almost immediately."




NADYA AND SEMYONOV


39


Completely stunned by this disturbing news,
she reached for the edge of her bunk and sat
down. All her fears came crowding back. She
glanced hastily around the narrow cabin. This
man had never before dared to enter her room
on any pretext. Their intercourse, in spite of his
relations with her uncle, had been formal and
extremely casual. Now she stood up straighter,
unwilling to have him see her uneasiness. With
more composure she said to him:
"Did he leave any other message for me?"
"No, that's all. But he said to me, 'Take good
care of Nadya Ivanovna, Captain.' I told him
I would answer for your safety with my life. And
I meant it, my dear."
He stepped forward and reached for her hand,
but something in her eyes checked him. How he
would have loved to wrap that warm, curving
form in his arms! The drape of her black frock
modelled a figure of bewitching contours. How
alluring those red, arching lips! But his advances chilled against the haughty denial of her
stiffened figure and her set face. He resorted
to reasoning.
"Why should we not be friends? I know
you're lonely and unhappy here with this strange,
rough crowd. I only want to be nice to you."
"I'm sorry, Captain Semyonov. Surely no one




40


SNOW 1TRENC' S


needs friends more than I. I want your friendship..
"That's better!" the Captain interrupted.
"Now we understand each other."
"Just friendship, Captain. You can befriend
me most by not asking for more. I can never
become reconciled to this wretched ship. I only
pray that my uncle will allow me to go back to
Archangel as soon as he returns."
"But that's silly! A beautiful girl like you
should have lovers... if," he added slyly, "she
hasn't them already. Look! I won't hurt youl"
Nadya's nearness and helplessness went to his
head. The Captain had a theory of love-making
that experience had proven for him in numberless affairs. All women, he figured, resisted a
little at first. The more desirable they were, the
longer they resisted. That was natural. He could
understand that. But he had encountered very
few that did not finally respond to his practised
advances. This cold Nadya would be quite different after a few kisses. Masterfully he seized
her. But he was taken off his guard by the fury
he aroused.
She thrust him back by a movement as direct
and unexpected as a flash of temper. There was
panther-like grace and fearlessness in her defiant
posture. The Captain recovered his assurance,




NADYA AND SEMYONOV


41


his admiration and desire quickened by her
beauty and spirit. He started for her again.
From the window-ledge she snatched a long, slim
kinjal, the dagger of the Cossacks, and whirled
to face him.
"Step back!" she warned, "or I'll use this!"
He stopped, swaying slightly.
"Get out of this room! Quick!"
"Put that thing down, Nadya Ivanovna! What
do you think you could do with it? I don't intend to hurt you, but that thing would never
stop me!"
"You'll find that Cossack girls know the difference between the kinjal and a sewing-basket.
I was taught to handle it before I was twice its
'height. Now, go!"
"Oh, come, little pigeon, be sensible! You
know you'll come to me sooner or later; there's
no one else around here you could choose...
stupid muzhiks... and the trash with us here."
"Captain Semyonov, get out of here at once!
If I were to tell my uncle..
Semyonov sneered.
"He'd kill you if he knew you had forced
your way in here."
"No, my dear! You know better than that.
He'd curse and storm and threaten... but only
threaten!"




42


SNOW TRENCHES


The Captain mockingly pulled his cap low
over his right eye, bowed with exaggerated gallantry, and backed out of the door. Nadya
slammed and bolted it.
That beastly Semyonov! Did he think to treat
her as one of those giggling peasant girls? It
infuriated her that he had actually touched a
sensitive point of weakness, an exposed nerve:
her craving for love was ardent and insistent.
Repressed by her aversion to the shoddy, temporary passions of the passing armies, it had
merely gained in strength. Her romantic idealism could never be satisfied by a sordid affair
such as flourished in the garrison towns.
Nadya thought of her conversation with the
American lieutenant. Semyonov's message would
prevent her from going back to Podborya to see
him, as she had planned. She confessed to herself that her heart had quickened a little as they
talked. Out of all the bitter loneliness of her
desolate existence, to have a man appear who
at least resembled the men of her station, and
then to walk away from him without a sign, just
emphasized the loneliness... She tried to recall
what he looked like: the frankness of his eyes,
his eager, courteous manner. He had not concealed his admiration for hers he had begged to
see her again. And he had been sincere and




NADYA AND SEMYONOV


43


friendly, rather than flirtatious. This short, accidental meeting had been the only incident to
punctuate the depressing, anxious days since she
had left Archangel. Would she ever see him
again?... Perhaps the Cossacks would be sent
to join the Americans. She supposed that he had
left Podborya thinking she did not care to see
him again... Sweet Mother of God, how lonely
she wast




v
Seltzo Captured.
EAVING BEREZNIK, WHERE THEY HAD
joined Dvina Force, the American battalion
moved south on their barges to the junction of
the Dvina and Vaga Rivers and were landed at
Shedrova, a small village where the government
road from Archangel crosses the Vaga. There is
no bridge; travelers must be ferried across. Shedrova has a mere handful of log houses stretched
along the road parallel to the Vaga. The primitive homes of destitute peasants, too poor to have
a church. At the upper end of the village the
road bears sharply to the right and disappears
into the forest.
The companies lined up along the road and
marched away to the south. Although the Royal
Scots were holding Navalok, the village to which
they were bound, and they were expecting no
contact with the enemy, the Americans maintained a strict march formation, with point and
advance guard out ahead. This road was one of
the few possible routes from Archangel Province
into the interior of Russia, but in rainy weather




SELTZO CAPTURED. 45


it was scarcely passable because of bottomless
mud and the lack of bridges over creeks and
ditches. The government's only improvement
had been to clear away the forest to a width of
about a rod on each side of the road. A telegraph line, now torn down by the retreating
Bolos,* presented the only evidence of civilization. The forest on either side appeared impenetrable; gray-green stunted pines through which
the wind hummed the low minors of the melancholy northland; slim white birches, spotted with
black; swampy, uncertain undergrowth between.
Here and there indistinct trails led off to some
communal hay-clearing, or hunter's shack. The
recent military traffic over the road had chopped
it up badly for infantry travel, but it was fairly
dry. At a bend in the road, where it ascended
a knoll, the soldiers noticed a row of shallow
trenches sited to cover the road.
"First sign of the war," shouted Emede. "Boy,
that's some Hindenburg Line!"
"Look more like latrines to me," commented
Cantwell.
"You ought to know, kid! You've policed up
enough of 'eml"
"Yeah?"
"Sure!"
*Bolshevik forces.




46          SNOW TRENCHES
"An' you haven't!"
At dusk the column halted on signal from up
ahead. The advance guard had come within
sight of Navalok. Five minutes later, they entered the village and, finding the billets filled by
Scots, camped in the clearing in front of the village. Company cooks installed their field ranges
in the open spaces and had their evening meal
warmed up before night closed down. The soldiers lined up with their mess-kits and carried
their food back to their own campfires.
"What ya got tonight, Red?" Emede called to
the cook.
"Well, now, let's see... We got some nice
thick tenderloin steak, an' some corn on the cob,
an' some blueberry pie, an', seein' it's you, some
nice black tea..."
"Ain't that nice! Still no coffee, eh?"
"Coffee tomorrow, buddy. But you'll find the
stew very nice tonight."
"Jeez, I always wondered why they take the
company comedians an' make cooks out of 'em.
I'll bet you never boiled an egg before this."
"You tell 'em, barber. But I'd sure like to
have some eggs right now."
"I know where Red got his cookin' practice,"
Cantwell offered. "On the tail end of a street
car."




SEILTZO CAPTUHRED


47


MP W- — W- -W-        --  W —     -V — -00
"Give Red a break," cut in Corporal Breen.
"British rations are no bargain, an' you birds
know it. Red was the first cook in the battalion
to talk 'em out of that green coffee, an' he'll have
it cracked an' roasted before the others even hear
about it."
"Let 'em rave, Corp'ral. They got to have
something to squawk about."
2
Reveille before dawn. Sergeant Boyle, always
the first to disturb the men in the morning, blew
his whistle.
"All right, you guys, hit the deck! Snap into
it! This ain't no hotel!"
Some of the blanketed figures moved slightly,
but no one made a sound. The Sergeant shouted
again:
"Come on, corporals, get them squads up! You
ain't unconscious! Young! Garberl... You,
too, Breenl"
"Oh, all right! All right! Hell, it ain't daylight yet!"
"Come an' dress me, Sergeant," called Emede
in a provocative falsetto.




48          SNOW TRENCHES
"Who said that?"
"Who said what?"
"I've got a swell detail fer some o' you smart
alecks..."
Breakfast. The American companies resumed
their march to the south. The road and country
continued a succession of short, twisting ribbons
of forest cutting, but at noon they halted within
sight of the Dvina. Clouds had piled up during
the morning; the expected rain commenced with
pitiless determination. From a few scarcely noticeable drops it increased until the men's slickers deflected sheets of it, and the road became a
mire of gluey mud. A sullen, persistent, chilling
downpour that soaked to the skin. No man could
keep a cigarette alight in it. Through the rain
screen, across the Dvina, the trees divided by a
belt of smudgy gray-black the cloud-smothered
sky and the steaming gray river. At the next halt,
the men squatted on the soggy roadside, never
troubling to move their water-logged shoes out
of the puddles.
"Boy, this weather's just right fer a duck
hunt," Coon Dog Evans observed. "If we had
some bird-shot fer these guns we could have a
hunt, if we could find some ducks."
"That's a bright crack! If we had some more
guys like you we could have a burlesque show."




SPIETZO CAT0J1TRED


40


"Ever been duck hunting', Red?"
"No!"
"You, Emede?"
"Never hunted ducks-just snipes. Why?"
"You'd go fer it, kid. With a good dog, a pail
o' lunch, an' some corn likker you can have..."
"What's the liquor got to do with it?"
"Well, sometimes ya don't get any ducks. Same
idea as a Kentucky breakfast."
"What's a Kentucky breakfast?"
"A pint o' likker, a pound o' steak, an' a dog."
"What's the dog for?"
"To eat the steak."
"Pipe down!" was shouted from the rear.
"You, too, Emedel Don't encourage him."
A depressing silence overtook them. There was
not a laugh in the crowd. They were drenched
into submissive resignation, each man hunching
his shoulders and adjusting his pack to prevent
additional trickles of cold water down his back.
Silently they sloshed into the ruts and resumed
the march.
It was quite dark when they trudged into Chamova. Gratefully the squads hustled into warm,
lighted billets, slid off their heavy packs, crowded
around the big stoves. Removing their soggy,
shapeless boots, they wrung the water out of their
socks and dried their swollen feet. No man was




50          SNOW TRENCHES
critical of the supper that night. Cans of scalding
coffee brought a return of comparative wellbeing. Lights were put out long before the usual
warning of the sergeants.
Burns inspected his squads and wrapped himself in his blanket on the floor, but, tired as he
was, he could not sleep. Wall paper had been
pasted over the rough logs in the walls and ceiling and when the lights were put out, dozens of
cockroaches in the cracks behind the paper made
a dry, scuttling noise. Occasionally, one would
drop to the floor from the ceiling with a tiny
thud. The snores of Captain Ordway, who lay
beside him, emphasized Burns' wakefulness. He
knew that they must move on early the next
morning, and he needed all the sleep he could
get. His body clamored for it. He tried to sleep,
but the thronging impressions against his sensitive mind prevented it. His thoughts were akin
to those of a performer before a Broadway opening: exhilaration, mixed with anxiety; a feeling
of confidence; a hoping for a chance to distinguish himself...  The more he saw of this
weird campaign, the more serious seemed his
own responsibility for the platoon under his
charge. Fighting in these unmarked forests,
where even a platoon became a unit of military
importance, demanded greater initiative and re



SELTZO CAPTURED             51
sourcefulness from the platoon commander than
the routine of trench warfare, where whole regiments are moved as pawns on a limited sector
toward a definite objective. When they left
Chamova in the morning they would enter
enemy territory. They had orders to push on to
Kotlas, and ninety miles of Bolo-defended territory lay between. Probably they would face
enemy fire for the first time before the next sunset. Burns had a clean thrill of pride in thinking of his outfit. He was not afraid of their guts.
He hoped to be equally sure of himself.
Peter Burns had many of the qualities of leadership. But most important of all was that indefinable characteristic that sets any man who possesses it apart from his fellows. It has seldom
been adequately described. Perhaps because it
is composed of a blend of so many other qualities,
such as courage, competence, reputation, generosity, and understanding. In its most vivid manifestation, it becomes glamour. Imagination has
something to do with it. So has romance...
and a human, unspoiled frankness and lack of
pretense.
Moving in the current of his thoughts, indistinct, but exciting, was the face of the girl from
Podborya. It colored his pictures of march and
attack, without replacing them.




52


SNOW TRENCI iBS




fl2  SNOW TRENHE


The rain had stopped during the night, but
the overcast, threatening sky foretold another
downpour. The road, spongelike, oozed cold,
black water when the men stepped into it. It
required real exertion to drag one foot out of
the almost knee-deep mud, which clutched like
quicksand, reluctantly letting go with a sucking
sound. Men floundered and fell, plunging their
arms into it up to their elbows. Wherever possible they broke a path through the soaked grass
at the edge of the trees. At the cost of infinite
labor, the column made seven miles in four hours,
arriving for their noon halt at Shoushoga, a village as crude and unsightly as the others they
had seen.
Shoushoga was crowded with Colonel Dilaktorski's White Russian unit. His men jammed
every house. His two three-inch Russian field
guns were parked alongside the road, bare to the
rain. Between the spokes the wheels were caked
solid with mud. The Russians' shaggy, stunted
artillery and cavalry horses stood patiently at
their picket lines in the spaces between the
houses. Their matted, uncurried coats held the
rain like an autumn bird's nest. They stood
almost hock-deep in rain-soaked manure and
spoiled hay; a bedraggled, dejected, unmilitary
assortment.




SELTZO CAPTURED             53
"A hell of a way to take care of horses!"
grunted Sergeant Boyle.
"Do you call them horses?" said Briggs. "I
never been on a farm where they'd waste feed
on 'em."                                  *
"Even them runts ought to be looked after."
Colonel Jordan conferred with Dilaktorski and
decided to push on and spend the night in Toulgas, eight miles further south. Dilaktorski told
him that he knew from spies and deserters that
the Bolos were getting ready to make a stand at
Seltzo, a big village a day's march south of Toulgas. He was contemptuous of their strength and
predicted no difficulty in forcing them out of
their position, in spite of their numbers. The
condition of the road, he told Colonel Jordan,
made it impossible to move his guns, but he expected to join the Americans as soon as he could
get through.
Colonel Dilaktorski's company differed from
the Cossacks under Colonel Eristoff in that his
men were all volunteers, serving from patriotic
motives, and many of them were ex-officers from
the Russian forces that had fought the Germans
and Austrians on the Eastern front. They were
loyal and dependable to the death. Blindly courageous and fanatically patriotic, they made up in
their zeal and individual skill what they lacked




54


SNOW TRENCrBES


in the usual forms of discipline. They were an
all-star company,-captains, lieutenants, and ensigns, serving in the ranks. Dilaktorski, himself,
had commanded an Hussar regiment during
most of the war.
The Americans noticed as they marched out,
that the Russians had disdained to put out sentries or outposts.... That night they occupied
Toulgas, an unfriendly settlement whose inhabitants plainly showed their hostility.
Engineers and signal corps men, operating behind the American battalion, repaired the lines
so that telegraphic and phone contact was maintained with Dvina Force Headquarters, at Bereznik. The river gunboats, which should have supported them, were held up at Chamova, along
with Dilaktorskis guns, until they could sweep
the river clear of mines the Bolos had planted.
But Colonel Jordan had orders to proceed to
Seltzo in the morning, despite the lack of artillery support.
3.
Lieutenant Burns' platoon formed the advance
guard on the march to Seltzo. Sergeant Hayes
and a single squad made up the point. They




SELTZO CAPTURED


55


marched perhaps a quarter mile ahead of the
rest of the platoon, maintaining contact with the
platoon by signals which were relayed back by
connecting files, spaced between at intervals of a
hundred yards. Burns marched at the head of
the platoon.
Early in the afternoon they arrived at Yakovlevskaya, and the companies were permitted to
break formation for a short rest. Standing on a
knoll at the southern edge of the village, Colonel
Jordan, his adjutant, Captain Ordway, and Lieutenant Burns reconnoitered through their field
glasses the broad low river-flat that spread from
their feet nearly three versts* to a similar knoll
at the northern end of Seltzo.
The road sloped gradually down from the eminence of Yakovlevskaya onto the level plain,
crossing on a log bridge the north fork of a small
stream which flowed into the Dvina at this point.
From  there, it curved to the left and wound
through clusters of bushes and patches of swamp
to the south fork of the stream and climbed the
grade into Seltzo. For its entire length it was
exposed to observation from that village. Yakovlevskaya was set back at least a verst from the
Dvina; Seltzo was right on the river bank.
At first, the panorama appeared devoid of
*A verst is approximately % mile or 1.067 kilometers.




56


SNOW TRENCHES


human activity, but Burns saw otherwise as he
scrutinized Seltzo village itself..... A tall, thin
column of black smoke arose from behind the
houses and in a moment abruptly disappeared.
Presently it puffed up again, but he was sure it
had changed its location. Puzzled, he lowered
his binoculars and looked without them. The
smoke was clearly visible to his naked eyes, now
two spires of it. He raised his glasses. "Helll"
he ejaculated. "I should have known it. Steamboats!"
As they watched the place, a string of carts
filed out of the village, heading north. Following
them, a formless mass of figures crowded out
from between the houses and filtered into the
rectangular patch of forest jutting out from the
corner of the village. The bow of a river-boat
extended into plain sight beyond the bluff and
backed away again, while the smoke from their
funnels exposed several others. The carts on the
road were much nearer now. They were driving
frantically away from Seltzo.
Colonel Jordan turned to the group around
him.
"I guess we'll have our hands full before we
billet in Seltzo tonight. I wish our gunboats were
here. Or Dilaktorski's two guns.... We'll continue the same order of march. Lieutenant Burns,
*~




SELTZO VAPTTTRFfl


5 y


_1M_   qw-   w   __-   __  __  _ -   -   _


-


your platoon will start at once. Caution the
point to be unusually alert."
"Very good, sir."
In precise formation Burns' platoon started
down the slope. For better control, he shortened
the interval between the point and the rest of the
platoon. At the bridge, the leading carts from
Seltzo pulled out of the roadway for the troops
to pass, but Burns halted them for questioning.
Their drivers proved to be peasants from Yakovlevskaya. They admitted freely enough that
their carts had been requisitioned by the Bolos,
to haul hay and supplies. They gave only vague,
unintelligent replies, however, to his questions as
to the size or dispositions of the Bolo force. The
carts that followed, jammed up like motors awaiting their turn in traffic. Then, suddenly released,
they plunged ahead again, lashing their horses
furiously, and toiled up the slope past the church
to disappear within the barnyards of the village.
Watching intently for any sign of Bolo activity
ahead, the point came to within a thousand yards
of the fringe of trees. Burns heard the warning
almost as quickly as the point,-a rifle shot from
the woods, followed by a scattering, badly directed volley. Burns gave them no time to get
the range.
"As skirmishers!" he commanded.




58          SNOW TRENCHES _         _
Clean-cut as a diagram in the Drill Regulations, the platoon broke into squad units echeloned to the left like a series of steps, moving
rapidly to the front. As fast as the squads came
abreast of the leading squad, they deployed in a
thin skirmish line and dropped to the ground,
their olive-drab outfits merging with the tawny
grass.
The troops were thrilled and a little elated by
this first maneuver under fire. The Bolo shots
had been wild and harmless; they had not even
heard the ping that bullets make when they fly
close overhead. The Bolo positions were warming up, however, and an increasing crackle of
musketry arose from them. A runner from Captain Ordway brought instructions for Burns to
move his platoon to the left flank, toward the
river; the rest of the company would go into position on their right, between them and the road.
In a series of short rushes, Burns' platoon gained
a position facing due south toward Seltzo, with
its left flank about a hundred yards from the
river. The fire from the Bolo lines was steady,
but unorganized. Their attention was now divided between Burns' platoon and the main body
of Americans, which had broken into platoon
columns and was coming onto the line. The
second company pushed on beyond the first and




SELTZO CAPTIURED            59
deployed on their right flank, facing the river.
The companies were ordered forward by platoon
rushes. Burns' platoon arose at the command,
trotted ahead a hundred paces, hit the ground
again. When the other platoons came up, they
repeated this advance, and in this manner reached
a broken line of haystacks, bushes, and torn-down
fence, about five hundred yards from the Bolo
front. Bolo machine guns, coming into action,
played like a hose along the American line.
"Commence firing!" Captain Ordway ordered.
American rifles cracked when figures exposed
themselves in the enemy line. The Bolos' aim
was improving. In the intervals of firing, men
slipped out of their heavy packs and placed them
to protect their heads; then, lying on their sides,
tore away with their intrenching tools at the
thick sod.
A big haystack divided Burns' platoon front.
Burns and Sergeant Hayes lay on the ground behind the stack, in sight of all the platoon, where
they could see the rest of the company. Cantwell
and Briggs, Lewis gunners, burrowed into the
side of the stack and prepared a well-hidden emplacement for their gun.
Bolos ran into the open, dragging a pom-pom,
a small, rapid-fire, one-pounder cannon on wheels,
and trained it on the haystack. Several shots siz



60


SNOW TRENCHES


-                             -W-     -  -
zled into the top of the stack. Cantwell cocked
his eye over the Lewis gun.
"Jeez, get that baby!" Briggs urged.
Cantwell pulled the trigger for a short burst,
experimentally. "Higher," he commented. Pompom shells spattered closer.
"Don't let 'em rattle ya, kid!" Briggs encouraged.
Cantwell squeezed his trigger-finger. A longer
burst of Lewis gun fire.... "'At's got 'em!"
Two men beside the pom-pom dropped to the
ground and the rest, carrying a man, scuttled
back into the woods.
A field gun fired from below the village, and
as the shell, which landed far behind them, was
followed in quick succession by three others, the
Americans dug more hurriedly at their individual trenches. Each man now had a small parapet
in front of him, made of the dirt he had scooped
out of the hole at his side. He had concealment
while he remained in a crouching position. The
firing on both sides continued whenever men
showed themselves.
The second company had run into heavy machine gun fire in attempting to cross the south
fork of the stream some distance from the right
of the skirmish line, and had occupied a position
sheltered from the Bolo fire by a projecting ridge.




SELTZO CAPTURED


_61
~9 www.~9


Steamboat smoke arose above the house-tops of
Seltzo. Scattered yells drifted over from the Bolo
line. A boat poked out from behind the bluff.
A bedraggled red flag, from the pole above it,
began to flap idly with the movement of the boat
as it gathered speed. On the foredeck, a gun crew
was swinging a three-inch naval gun around to
face the shore. A crudely painted red star
smeared the paddle-wheel housing above the
name of the boat, Moskva. Lieutenant Burns'
quick eye pictured his platoon and the whole
American line withering under their shrapnel
and machine gun fire if this boat could stop
abreast of that line and enfilade it. Just in time,
he swung his platoon around to face the river,
and fifty rifles and two Lewis guns spattered the
oncoming boat with rapid-fire.
The gun on the boat fired a ranging shot and,
although it went wild, the concussion from that
blast at close range was stunning to the men facing it. Then the hail of fire from the shore drove
the Bolos away from the gun. The Lewis guns
riddled the Moskva's pilot-house and splintered
through the light woodwork of her deckhouses
until it seemed that no one could be left alive
above her water-line. A bell jangled amidships,
then signalled again frantically. Dense smoke
rolled out of her funnel; her paddle-wheels




62


SNOW TRENCHES


churned the water white. She swung out into the
current and, in a long, sweeping curve to the
other side of the river, beat back behind the
bluffs to Seltzo.
It began to get dark. Like the closing of a
closet door, the gray afternoon turned to black
night. No lights were on the plain to mark the
presence of five hundred men. None were visible
in Seltzo, because the bluff intervened. Flickers
of light dotted the nearer windows of Yakovlevskaya, but these were too small and too far away
to relieve the absolute darkness of the plain.
Although they disliked the prospect of spending the night out there, tired and hungry as they
were, the darkness was a great relief. Sniping
from the Bolo trenches was impossible, and the
men could get out of their ditches and stretch
their cramped bodies. And they could send a collection of empty canteens to be filled at the
stream. The Red battery had stopped its wild
shelling. It looked as though they might snatch
a bit of rest.
In the concealing darkness, the third company
crossed the plain to join the others, and rested
for the night in a hollow in the woods on the
right flank. They planned to push the attack at
daybreak. The men were lying close together on
the ground in little groups. The noises of the




SELTZO CAPTRED


63


night were hushed to ominous silence; then it
began to rain. A soaking, chilling downpour that
intensified until it pelted the earth like the spray
from a shower-bath. Every pine-needle dripped
with it. The grassy plain became a swamp that
oozed water wherever it was touched.
In spite of the wet and discomfort, Lieutenant
Burns had managed to fall asleep in his burrow
in the soggy hay. A sudden flash, as from heat
lightning, illumined the broad horizon to the
south. A sudden low-pitched roar followed it and
introduced the shriek of a six-inch shell, which
landed with another crash and roar in the village
of Yakovlevskaya. Burns awoke abruptly..
First the pom-poms, then the field guns, now this
heavier stuff. Probably a Bolo gun-raft, he figured, had arrived from up-river, and was relieving the land batteries. Despite this new menace,
Burns went back to sleep.
Two of these guns continued to send over their
terrifying great shells at monotonous intervals
until morning, but they ranged on the village in
the rear rather than on the skirmish line, evidently thinking the Americans had retired to the
village for the night. So the rain-drenched companies felt that all luck was not against them as
the shells screamed high overhead.
Inexplicably, an hour past midnight, Burns




64           SNOW TRENCES
opened his eyes, his drowsiness gone, his thoughts
on Nadya. He had been dreaming. Instead of
the bleak discomfort of this futile skirmish line,
he had found himself in the warm, seductive
atmosphere of a cafe where he had gone on his
last leave in London... Tinkling glasses, lights
and colors, bare shoulders, red lips, silks, jewels,
the blare of a martial tune, then lowered lights
and muted instruments; the desire-laden whirl of
a dance, the giddy forgetfulness of a cocktail...
of these was his vision composed. Yet the scene
changed, as he awoke, to a quiet churchyard in
a sombre forest, and he thought of Nadya. It
seemed strange to him that she should occupy
his thoughts. He had seen her for so short a
time. The surprise element of their meeting
must be the cause. If he had met her among a
party of friends, with other pretty girls all
around, his attention to her might have stopped
with casual admiration. Their contact, brief as it
was, had awakened unfamiliar, disturbing emotions... Who was Nadya? Why had she not
met him again at Podborya?...Where was she
tonight?
How distressingly lacking in details was the
picture he retained of her. The lovely oval of
her face, the gloss and soft shadows of her dark
hair, the alluring sweetness of her curving lips,




SELTZO CAPTURED


65


slender hands, a form of graceful contours that
quickened the heart-beat... and the memory
of her voice, low and warm, that somehow
brought sadness. It was delightful, but puzzling,
for these intimate reveries to call up the image
of Nadya, illusive as cigarette smoke, yet hourly
more vivid.
Burns lay still for a little time while his acutely
active mind paraded before him a succession of
recollections and hopes. From far!below them
the Bolos' twin six-inch guns rumbled again. The
crescendo snarl of the approaching shells drove
these pleasant fancies from his mind. Yakovlevskaya rose in silhouette against the leaping flash
of their burst; Burns felt, as well as heard, their
tremendous concussion. He stood up stiffly,
stretched, and walked from flank to flank of his
platoon position.
Streams of water were running off every steel
helmet, and down the faces and necks of the men.
The rain flowed in sheets down their slickers. It
formed puddles of sticky mud in their trenches.
Feet became numb and painful from continued
soaking in slimy shoes,-shoes that now held
the water like skin bags, instead of keeping it
out. Most of the men, after fruitless efforts to
keep dry, rested their heads on their packs,
huddled their knees up under their slickers,




66


SNOW TRENCHES


and were carried to sleep by sheer exhaustion.
Briggs sat up. He was shivering from head to
foot. Cantwell, wide awake, twisted toward him.
"Are ya cold, kid?"
"Colder'n a M. P.'s heart," admitted Briggs.
"This won't be so good for some of the guys
just gettin' over the flu."
"They ought to dish out some of that rum the
Limeys have got."
"Got a cigarette handy?"
Briggs reached in his pocket for one, but before he could pass it to Cantwell, it crumbled to
pieces in his wet hands.
"I'll light one for ya," he proposed.
He dried his hands on the inside of his coat
and tried another, with the same result. He
extracted a third and, with Cantwell's help,
managed to light it under Cantwell's carefully
shielded helmet.
"'At a boy!" said Cantwell. "Now light one
for me!"
"Herel This is yours."
Footsteps slosh-sloshed toward them. Sergeant
Boyle bent over them.
"Douse that cigarette!" he warned. "D'ya want
'em to see where to put those damn shells?"
Then, as he splashed away, he suggested, "You
guys had better learn to chew."




SELTZO CAPTURED


67


"Drink, you mean," corrected Briggs. "I could
stand a shot of somethin' hot, Sarge."
"Same here, brother."
-  4
Colonel Jordan had gone back to Yakovlevskaya. A sergeant of the Royal Scots, who had
just arrived with a couple of squads convoying a
wagon train, told the Colonel that Dilaktorski's
guns would leave in the morning.
"If they don't get here sometime tomorrow,"
the Colonel said, "I'm going to bring the battalion back to wait for them."
The rain and the shelling tapered off together,
several hours later. Like the opening of a closet
door, the black night turned to haggard dawn,
the sun trying feebly to penetrate the thick, gray
clouds across the Dvina.
A strong patrol from the right flank company
crept through the still dark woods to reconnoitre.
There was no path to follow, but they picked
their way readily enough through the trees to
the east toward Seltzo. They skirted a small
clearing and halted at a well-marked path, running north. They searched it thoroughly, then




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RSVOW  ITP17RV;1VIN Fl,, LJIIW I~ -LIL~YII WIIY~C
r


proceeded with greater caution. But they could
not see the Red outpost they were approaching.
It took the patrol by surprise with machine gun
fire and ripped it wide apart. The patrol leader
was wounded in the chest; two men were killed
and another missing when they got back to their
company. Intermittent firing continued all morning, and by noon the open-air dressing station
of the medical officer, Captain Home, held twelve
cases.
(Four o'clock in the afternoon came, and the
Colonel'sat in the operator's room with his adjutant, arranging the details of withdrawing his
men to the village for the night. The starosta*
of the village stood before them,-a short, broad
man with gray-streaked hair and beard, who kept
staring straight ahead of him, and twisting his
gray sheepskin cap in his thick hands. He
answered in gruff monosyllables the questions the
interpreter asked him regarding billet space.
Messengers left the room to take the withdrawal
orders to the companies.
Corporal Breen flung open the door and
shouted, "The Russki colonel is here, sir!"
They went out to meet him.
Colonel Dilaktorski had galloped a mile or so
ahead of his detachment and entered the village
aPatriarch.




SEI^TZO CAPTUIRED


69


with three of his men. After the saluting and
bowing which passes for Russian military courtesy, the Colonel became very business-like.
"Where are the Bolshevik positions?" he demanded.
By the interpreter's aid, Colonel Jordan
pointed out the American companies and the
Bolo line, and they arranged the attack. Messengers raced to the companies with new orders.
The Russian detachment had arrived and was
now straining up the muddy road toward them.
The horses floundered knee-deep in the mud,
which spattered their shaggy coats as high as their
shoulders. Their riders, too, were daubed with
it, from their dripping spurs and stirrups, to
their caked boots and trousers. They had been
laboring through these rivers of mud since early
morning. Their whips rose and fell automatically on the benumbed flanks of their mounts.
Many of the horses had torn and bloody jaws
from the jerking at their bits. Behind the guns
and their two limbers marched Dilaktorski's infantry, a small company of them, looking as
though they had helped the horses pull the guns
out of many a bog and ditch.
Dilaktorski led them to a spot below the
church and, stark in the open, disregarding the
target they made for the Bolo guns. They whirled




70


SNOW TRENCHES
Iwwww     -www


------


about and unlimbered the guns facing Seltzo.
The horses were unhooked and driven at a gallop, chains jangling, drivers yelling, to a sheltered
barnyard back of the church. A chatter of commands; a pulling and tugging at the guns as they
were aligned; a squinting through sights and
glasses and a turning of screws as they were laid
on their targets; then,
"Load!"
Dilaktorski raised his hand. The gunners
stood fixed in their stations. He dropped his
hand. Two lanyards jerked together. Bang!
Bang!
The gunners saw two puffs of white smoke dot
the tree-tops near the American company on the
right flank as the shrapnel broke. Too close.
The range was lengthened and, almost as the
report of the shrapnel-burst came back to them,
they fired again.
"That's itl" shouted Dilaktorski. "Search that
line to the river, then sweep back into the village.
Thirty rounds, each gun."
For fifteen minutes they fired as fast as the
guns could be worked, raking the Bolo positions
with shrapnel and throwing high explosive shells
at intervals into the north end of the village and
the rim of the bluff where the boats were known




S1ELTZO CAPTURED            71
to be. The Bolo rifle firing dwindled away.
Their artillery remained silent for a period.
At a signal, the teams were brought back to
the guns. They hooked onto them and followed
Dilaktorski to the road. Slipping and stumbling,
they tore down the slope. The leading outfit
saved itself by inches from plunging off the side
of the bridge into the stream, when the gun
skidded sideways on the greasy, corduroyed approach to the bridge. But they passed it, and
went into action again in the middle of the plain.
This time, their horses were concealed behind
haystacks and the gunners, in a more leisurely
fashion, shelled the rear of Seltzo, the road and
the river. They knew their stuff, these Russians.
And the Red field guns, from a new position in
rear of their old one, commenced blindly shelling
the plain.
Dilaktorski's infantry, meanwhile, paraded
onto the plain toward Captain Ordway's company. They marched in the close-order formation of the parade-ground, jauntily, fearlessly.
Poor, brave remnants of the proud divisions that
had gone singing from their villages at the first
call of the Little Father to oppose with their
bodies the steel tornado of the German advance.
The scourge of the Revolution had bruised them
like a knout. They had passed through its gaunt



72


SNOW TRENCHES


let benumbed and bewildered, but retaining the
spark of fanatical love for Holy Russia, and a
blinding hate for her destroyers. They were singing now, the marching song of famous old regiments whose rifles had been stacked in their last
bivouac. A wild, stirring, barbaric song, reflecting the defiant power of a haughty empire, but
now it had in it an undertone of despair... a
trailing minor chord of doubt.
Burns' heart went out to them as they came
up to the American line. They paid not the
slightest attention to the flying shrapnel from the
Bolo guns. Burns had never entirely outgrown
his boyish admiration for soldiers and battle
scenes. Training camp and military preparation
had merely heightened it. He was proud of his
uniform. The hardships of active campaigning
were the crucibles that tested manhood and soldierly fitness. He watched with quickening pulse
the scattered puffs of white smoke jet from a
curtain of wild shrapnel bursts. The early sunset
reddened the horizon behind them. Then he
had to form his platoon.
Exactly at five o'clock, the three American
companies left their trenches and closed in on
Seltzo. It had been evident to them, as Dilaktorski's shelling  quickened, that the  Bolos
were withdrawing from their forward trenches.




SELTZO CAPTURED             73
Whether they had abandoned the village, or had
retired to secondary emplacements, was not yet
clear. They hardly expected to occupy the place
without further resistance. Faces were set and
serious, and there was little talking as they moved
forward, slowly and in a straight line toward the
foremost Bolo trench.
Burns noticed with pride and confidence the
veteran steadiness of their advance: these lads
could be counted on. He smiled reassuringly at
Corporal Breen; Breen's answering grin was
equally spontaneous. The enemy trenches were
quiet as death. They reached the first of them.
A man, curled up like a sleeping dog, lay at
the bottom of it. Another, arms outstretched in
a cross, leaned forward against the parapet beside
a rusty, overturned Maxim gun. Cantwell secured two hand grenades from the belt of the
former. Briggs wanted to salvage the Maxim
gun, but his corporal restrained him.
"To hell with it," he said. "Leave it bel It
won't shoot."
These trenches were not continuous, nor laid
out according to any known system of fortification. Shallow, inadequate hollows, which made
safety or protection a delusion. A mess of abandoned equipment showed the disorder with
which the Bolos had retreated. The ground near




74


SNOW TRENCHES


the edge of the village was cut up by rail fences
into small fields. Near the outer line of these
fences, as well as in the irregular trenches lay
other huddled forms. One man wore a hood-like
German helmet. It had a small round hole in the
center of the forehead, and a jagged, smeary hole
in the crown. The Americans found an amazing
number of dead to testitfy to the accuracy of
their firing.
Two houses were burning when the Americans
entered the village, and the inhabitants were all
hidden within-doors. Indescribable filth littered
the street; refuse of all kinds which seemed to be
trying to drown itself in the mud,-a dead horse,
broken wagons, ration tins, and everything an
undisciplined mob had thrown out of their billet
windows. Piles of ammunition, stacks of muddy
hay, blankets, uniforms and rations had been
carried out into the road and then left behind.
When billets were allotted and the soldiers
moved into the houses, the civilians came out of
hiding and stood around, gaping curiously. Two
of them who had been wounded, were cared for
by the American medical staff, and in a short
time most of the village-folk became quite
friendly. The soldiers began to clean up the
place. They were considerate of their muzhik
landlords and better tenants than the Bolos.




SEILTZO CAPTURED           75
<i~i~^ ~^ ^i >- - ^* - *r ^> - * —pp -,.
At the south end of Seltzo, an American patrol
which had followed the Bolos to Lipovetz, three
miles south, to avoid counter-attack, was just passing the sentries. Burns stood near them, studying
the line of the river with his binoculars. Above
the trees, beyond a distant river-bend, still
hovered a cloud of smoke. But as he watched,
it dissolved behind the uneven tree-tops, going
southward.




VI
Shenkursk.
UE WEST OF SELTZO, ACROSS SIXTY VERSTS
or more of unbroken forest and swamp,
Shenkursk, largest town in all the north country
between Vologda and Archangel, lodged on a
high, steep bluff on the east bank of the Vaga
River. A clean, prosperous city of churches, convents, schools and homes. Situated high above
the river, its sandy soil was dry and well drained,
which made it a healthful, pleasant resort for
summer visitors from the south. A barracks at
the edge of town had always accommodated, in
pre-war days, a squadron or two of the Tsar's
cavalry. Now, the people of Shenkursk were bitterly hostile to the Bolsheviki and the revolution.
And Shenkursk gave shelter to scores of refugees
and fugitives from the assassin-ridden interior.
With the arrival of the British and American
battalions at Bereznik for operations along the
Dvina, Shenkursk had sent a delegation to Dvina
Force Headquarters to petition help in defending
the place from the threatening Red Guards, who
were organizing at Velsk and Vologda.










SHENKUJRSK


7y7


_qW_ -qSI ENK I TR S        77 -.

-


Dvina Force had dispatched two of the American companies under Colonel Jordan, and several
officers from the staff, to form the Vaga Column.
These had boarded the Retvizan and barges at
Seltzo two days after they had taken the place,
and retraced their route down the Dvina to the
mouth of the Vaga. Entering the Vaga, they had
found a more varied and interesting country.
Although narrower than the Dvina, it was still
a large river, flowing swiftly between rugged
bluffs, twisting sharply to right and left in contrast to the gentle meandering of the Dvina. In
spite of the local rains, the low stage of the water
made navigation slow and difficult. The Bolos
had torn up the guiding lights and markers, so
that the pilots had to proceed from memory,
picking their way around the shallows and sandbars. A boatman at the prow of the boat sounded
the depth of water with a marked pole sixteen
feet long, and called off the soundings to the
pilot-house.... In three days the Americans
stretched their legs in Shenkursk.
2
To Peter Burns the three weeks the American
companies had been in Shenkursk passed pleas



78           SNOW TRENCHES
urably and swiftly. Busy days of garrison duty... frequent patrols, spiced with adventure..
clean, warm billets, improved rations... growing friendships with some of the fine Russian
families then making Shenkursk their home...
clear autumn days, tonic in their briskness, bringing grim warning of the imminence of winter in
the bite of their early morning frosts and the
closing down, earlier each day, of the long arctic
night.
The other company had been sent on further
south to Ust Padenga, to hold that village as an
outpost. Occasional patrol clashes showed the
Bolos alert in their strongholds to the south, but
no actual attacks had developed. The Americans
wasted no time before fortifying the place and
making ready to defend it. Their offensive campaign had been called off: Archangel Headquarters had learned that the Allies were sending no
additional troops, and the meager handful at
their disposal would face terrific odds if the Red
Army should make a serious effort to drive them
out.
In Shenkursk a formidable system of trenches
and blockhouses was laid out, so as to encircle
the city completely with a ring of strong points.
Hundreds of native woodsmen, under the direction of engineers, cleared firing-lanes deep into




SHENKTRSK


79


the thick surrounding woods, lanes of death, dividing the forest into narrow strips to prevent an
attacking party from forming under cover of the
trees. Miles of barbed wire made an impassable
barrier in front of the trenches. Veterans of the
hardest fighting on the Western Front said that,
if the Bolos gave them time to finish these works,
a handful of men could hold Shenkursk against
a division. A feeling of confidence and security
grew in both the civilians and the troops. Everyone realized now that the Vaga Column would
have to make a stand, before the winter was over,
against the multiplying strength of the Bolos'
northern army. Supplies of rations and ordnance
stores were piled up in reserve in Shenkursk. It
was made the strongest defensive position in
North Russia.
Troitsa Street cuts the town into two parts,
north and south. It is the "Main Street" of
Shenkursk. Beyond the city it narrows into a
rutted trail probing impudently into forbidding
recesses of unmapped forest. Some said that it
led across to the Dvina, emerging into the open
just below Seltzo, but few had travelled it beyond
Kodima, a squalid settlement thirty versts from
the Vaga. Even hunters seldom ranged further
for wolves or bear. Close to the river, it breaks
through the bluff and descends steeply to the




SNOW TRENCHES


boat-landing. It was the only road out of town
on the river side.
Burns was superintending the construction of
a machine gun post on the bluff just above the
road. From this spot there was a clear view both
ways along the river and far across the low-lying
prairie beyond the river. He could see the dome
of the little church in Nikolaievskaya to the
northwest, and the poor cluster of houses of some
nameless village at the edge of the trees at the
other tip of the triangle of his vision. One of the
Russian workmen, who had climbed part way
down the bluff to chop down a small tree that
obstructed the view, shouted and pointed upriver.
A steamer was approaching.
The sudden leap of Burns' heart surprised him.
The influence of his continued reveries about
Nadya, which had grown more romantic in their
repetitions, tinged his anticipation with nervousness. There was uncertainty in his longing to
have those dreams materialize; his role in the
piece was disturbingly vague. It had been rumored for several days that Colonel Eristoff's
Cossacks had been sent to Shenkursk to join the
Vaga Column, but Burns had given little credence to it. The oncoming boat was too far away
for him to make out its name. He would have
liked to hurry down to the boat-landing to wel



SHENKURSK               81
come it, or even to run up the bank toward it,
but he turned'back -to the fitting of the logs in
the head-cover of the emplacement.
"Never mind the boat, men. You can see it
later."
"How many layers of logs here, Lieutenant?"
"Two. Lay them crosswise. Corporal, send
back for one of those Vickers guns and measure
the height of the loophole from the gun shelf.
I don't think a Vickers tripod will flatten down
far enough to fit. Those three Russkies can start
digging on the trench back to the road."
Burns jumped down into the trench. Foot by
foot, it was nearing completion. For the twentieth time he tried the firing step. He tested the
revetting, directed the leveling of the parapet,
arranged for the drainage of trench and dugout.
A rugged, well-concealed shelter under cover of
which a squad of determined men could break
up the assault of hundreds across the wide, bare
river. A small recess had been provided in the
dugout for the storage of rations and ammunition. When the winter settled down, a sheet-iron
stove would glow red to lessen the cold for the
tiny garrison. Burns felt a warmth of security as
he approved the job, such as a farmer feels when
his winter's supply of stove wood is cut and his
barn loft is filled with hay.




82


SNOW TRENCHES


--- iip           - - — ii        -  - p ^~~~~"^~^
The distant whistle of the steamer signalling
for the landing reached Burns in the dugout.
The muffled whistle-blast diverted his thoughts.... Darkness was settling down. Burns climbed
out of the trench and stood on the edge of the
bluff. Across the river the last arc of the sun,
red as a midnight shellburst, flung the ragged
roof of the forest into sharp relief. He turned
back to the trench to answer a question and when
his eyes again sought the western horizon,
the fiery rim had gone; the twilight haze had
dimmed. Then the darkening sky snuffed it out.
A clatter of shouts and rivermen's noises called
his attention below to the boat landing.
Lights from the decks and cabins of the
steamer, which had been moored at the foot of
Troitsa Street, twinkled in the mirror of the
Vaga. Lanterns moved about on ship and shore,
and ceaselessly back and forth along the gangplanks. A strident, powerful voice, easily recognizable in its repetitions, shouted orders from the
upper deck. Burns heard a scuffle and splash at
the forward gangplank, followed by a barrage of
shrill curses from the bridge. He heard parties
of men go up the street into the town. To the
corporal he said:
"That'll do, Corporal. You can dismiss your
men." Then he hurried down to the riverfront.




S           ENKURSK             83
A three-barred flag of old Russia, too large for
its staff, flapped above the boat. Burns figured
out the name, Sokolik. The Cossacks had evidently gone to their billets, because the decks
were clear except for several boatmen sitting on
the forward railing, smoking cigarettes. A sentry,
with rifle slung over his shoulder, stood at each
gangway. Burns walked along the muddy, sloping bank of the river toward the stern of the
boat. The big flat barge carrying the horses was
tied up close behind the Sokolik, and Burns saw
a number of Cossacks tending the horses by lantern light. These were tied to two long picket
lines running the length of the barge. Yellow
lamplight streamed out of two open doors in a
shanty built of planks at the stern. The horses
looked large and shadowy as elephants in silhouette. There was no roof or shelter over them.
Stacks of hay and bags of feed were piled on the
forward end. No knowledge of Nadya could be
gotten here; he went back to the road.
Lights in the cabins of the Sokolik were being
put out. He was too late. Walking back up the
street, he met Colonel Jordan's adjutant.
"Did you see this Russian outfit?"
"I saw part of them. They're funnier than
Dilaktorski's gang. They remind me of a Mexican outfit... men, women, dogs...




84
0",Ww-W


SNOW TRENCHES
___V-00


"Women?"
"Sure. There must have been a dozen or
more."
"What kind of women?"
"What kind would they be?... Flat-footed
women with greasy faces. Lots of hips and busts,
but you can never tell what shape they are 'count
of their Mother Hubbards, or whatever the hell
they call those sacks they wear. You can't even
see their hair for the shawls. Not much danger
of this outfit goin' wrong-unless the vodka's easy
to get."
"Where are they billeted?"
"I think they put most of 'em in that old Cossack barracks, but their headquarters are in that
white house back of the monastery."
"Want to ramble up that way?"
"Not me!... See you at the orderly room."
3     -
On all fronts the Bolshevik forces grew daily
more threatening. The commissar commanders
of their northern army had peremptory orders to
recapture Archangel. Many battalions of trained
troops, artillery and airplanes had been dis









SHENKURSK               85
patched to hurry the job. They were less hardpressed at this time by counter-revolutionary
activity elsewhere. Of all the Allied forces Vaga
Column was furthest from Archangel. It was
without flank protection on either side, and dependent for contact with its base upon a single
road and telegraph line. It was the Bolos' first
objective. River traffic must stop with the freezing of the Vaga, now overdue. Working to beat
the winter, every available man in Shenkursk and
Ust Padenga toiled at the fortifications.
The wind, which for several, weeks had been
southeasterly, veered around to the north, and
Shenkursk awoke to feel the sting of winter. Up
there, along the margins of the arctic circle, winter does not approach timidly nor with hesitation. It comes down with the swiftness and finality of the closing of a trap. Frost lays a grip of
metallic hardness on the land. The Vaga, which
had been gray and wind-ruffled the night before,
became solid ice from bank to bank by daylight.
The troops in their billets felt the lowering temperature through their blankets, and huddled in
cramped discomfort until morning. Later they
would learn how to keep out the cold.... Two
days later, two sections of Canadian Field Artillery, with four eighteen-pound guns, crossed on
the ice and joined the Shenkursk garrison.




86_          SNOW TREN1CHES
At headquarters they knew that the freezing
of river and swamp would mark the end of their
period of preparation. It would bring the Bolos
out into the open in front, and on flank and rear.
By ski and sleigh they could make these forest
trails their own, and they were at home on every
foot of them. Cold and isolation were their allies;
the Russian winter more valuable than a brigade.
The day after the Sokolik brought Eristoff's
Cossacks to Shenkursk, Lieutenant Burns had
been sent on a ten-day mission to Ust Padenga.
It was late afternoon when he returned, but he
went at once to the Cossack barracks. The sentry
there could not understand what he wanted, and
he felt too self-conscious to try further. He
decided, anyway, that Nadya could not be there;
it was filled with Eristoff's soldiers. He went back
to his quarters, determined to resume his search
in the morning.
That evening, however, the adjutant took him
to a party at the home of the Stornoff's, a family
of refugees from Petrograd. They had been in
well-to-do circumstances in one of the lesser
society circles in that city, but had fled to the
north at the time of the Bolshevik revolution.
They were fiercely partisan to the old regime,
and most friendly to the American and British
allies.




SHENKURSK                             8
W_   "W   _V__ V   -   1   W   "


87


The big drawing room was filled with people
when Burns and the adjutant entered, and a nearsighted young man in civilian clothes was playing
Tchaikovski's 18z2 Overture on the piano. The
buzz of conversation suggested that he was performing without too much persuasion. The haze
of cigarette smoke in the room, and the dimness
of the lamplight made it difficult for Burns to
recognize at once who was there; not many that
he knew, he decided. Camille Antonovna led the
adjutant by the hand and presented him in turn
to each of the guests. Burns followed and was
introduced at the same time. In the far corner
of the room, talking to a Russian staff captain,
he suddenly confronted Nadya Ivanovna....
He could not wait for his hostess; he exclaimed
to himself, although his words were audible,
"Why, look who's here!" Then to Nadya he
called over the adjutant's shoulder, "We meet
again after alll It's sure great to see you again."
Nadya arose with a smile of pleasure and surprise. Camille Antonovna turned around.
"Oh, you are already acquainted?"
"Yes," Burns replied. "We have met before."
He addressed Nadya again. "Pardon mel Perhaps you don't remember... it was at Podborya."
"Of course I do. I am happy to see you again."




88


SNOW TRENC ES


"I heard you were here, but I have been away
ever since you arrived."
"I knew you were here, too."
Camille Antonovna took his arm. "Come
along, Lieutenant. You can come back when you
have met the rest of the people."
He went back at once to Nadya, and pulled
out a footstool beside her chair.
"May I sit here?" he said.
"Please."
"I was afraid you wouldn't remember me. You
know you deserted me at Podborya."
"I'm sorry. But I couldn't help it. I had to
wait on the boat for my uncle."
"But you would have come?"
"Why not? I had no other reason for not
coming."
"I hoped you would have a reason for coming."
"Your hopes develop quickly, don't they, Lieutenant?"
"Not very often. You can't be shot for hoping.
I'll try not to let it happen again."
"Oh, I hoped you might."
"Say, what is this? I hope, you hope, they
hope,-a lesson in grammar?"
"A lesson in patience, perhaps," Nadya
laughed. "Tell me, what have you been doing?"




SHENKJRSK                89
-   -    -    -    - WVOW -W -WI- ------
"Nothing very exciting. Just patrolling, making maps, digging trenches and laying wire. I
spent a week or ten days at Ust Padenga on a
special job. It looks like they'll get some action
down there one of these days."
"I'm sure they will. The Bolsheviki have been
quiet too long."
"Let's forget the military situation.... How
about yourself? I went up to the Cossack barracks to find you this afternoon."
"Oh, I'm not staying there. I'm at the big
stone house where my uncle has his headquarters."
"May I come to see you?"
"If you want to. But I'm not there very often
during the daytime; I'm at the hospital."
The conversation in the room had taken the
inevitable turn toward the activities of the Reds
and all were now listening to Captain Krich, one
of the Russian Intelligence officers attached to
the British staff. It was he to whom Nadya had
been talking when Peter first saw her....
"I don't want to alarm you, my friends, but as
surely as winter is here, we shall have to stand
siege in Ust Padenga and Shenkursk. The Bolsheviki are massing a large army to force us outa large army. It may not be necessary yet, but I
would surely advise making plans to send all the




90


SNOW TRENCHES


women and children back to Archangel, or at
least to Bereznik."
"But the British claim there is not a chance of
their taking Shenkursk," returned Stornoff's slow,
deep, deliberate voice.
"Of course that's what they say. Perhaps they
are right. But why run the risk? You know what
will happen if they do take it!"
"We know, all right. We certainly know."
"We have only a handful of men," Krich continued. "We are many versts from our base of
supplies. We are immovable behind blockhouses
and barbed wire, while the Reds can ignore us
if they like and cut in at our rear. I, too, believe
we can hold them off, but it will be a costly defense. We shall have our hands full without the
distress of civilian casualties."
"Let us dancel" cried Camille Antonovna.
"Why must we forever be discussing this wretched
war?"
She started a waltz record on the phonograph.
The older folks moved their chairs back against
the walls and continued their discussion. Peter
took Nadya's hand and moved into the dance.
"I adore dancing," she told him wistfully,
"but there's been little dancing during the past
year. Probably I shall get out of step and you'll
lose patience with me."




SHENKURSK


01


"You'll never know how little I have enjoyed
dancing until this dance. My dancing leaves
plenty to the imagination."
"Now I know you're just being polite. I have
heard that American girls are wonderful dancers.
Your American dances have been the rage over
here for two years."
"I'd better not tell you, then, how wonderfully
you dance. You'll think I'm insincere."
"Please tell me, anyway.... But this is a
waltz. Anyone can waltz. Won't you teach me
one of the new dances?"
"I'd love to... if you'll let me come over
some afternoon when we can be alone; when we
have no audience."
"Oh, I don't mean anything so business-like.
Here, I'll put on a fox-trot record.."
Captain Krich claimed the next dance, and
Peter sat down beside his host. He was always
completely charmed by the genuine friendliness
of the Russian hospitality and its absolute lack
of pretense. In a muzhik's home, a glass of tea
and slices of heavy black bread would be tendered a guest without apology, without bewailing
the lack of meat or of sugar for the tea. In more
prosperous homes, the guest would likewise be
offered all. A total absence of hypocrisy in this
regard.




92          SNOW TRENCHES
Alexis Petrovich Stornoff offered Burns a cigarette, lit it for him, and devoted himself to their
conversation.
"Before your soldiers came," he said, "Shenkursk hourly awaited its sentence of death. We
had been able to keep the Reds from any serious
outbreak, but they were becoming bolder, and
with a little support from their headquarters at
Vologda, they could have seized the town."
"Wasn't it dangerous for you to remain here?"
"Dangerous indeed! We were prepared for
flight.... And then you came."
"Did you hear Captain Krich's warning?"
"Yes," the old man replied soberly. "We may
yet have to go. I am afraid for my wife and
daughter. If the Bolsheviki were to break
through, Shenkursk would be frightfully punished for opposing them."
"They'll need a lot more than they've shown
so far to break through. It'll take trained troops
and plenty of them to force these blockhouses."
"They have men enough, Lieutenant, to sweep
through to Archangel without stopping at Shenkursk. You must not think the Red Guards you
have seen on the Dvina are typical of the force
they are mobilizing. Those were merely armed
peasants; these will be veterans of the German
and Austrian campaigns."




SHENKURSK               93
"We may be able to entertain them, in spite of
their numbers."
"My dear sir, everyone in Shenkursk knows
that. We are confident of the outcome, but one
must face facts. And the facts point to tremendous odds on their side."
"When Vaga Column gives up Shenkursk, you
and I will be beyond caring..
They fell silent. Peter watched the girls dancing... Camille's quick vivacity, a tall, languorous brunette with smouldering eyes, a quiet
girl who sat alone, the stamp of sorrow on her
face, Nadya's dark beauty and grace, that caught
at his heart.... He imagined a depth to them
he had never noticed in the girls of his casual
acquaintance back home. They would be creatures of extremes in emotion, tumbling for a
trivial cause from ecstasy to despair; flashing from
ardent love to unreasoning hate and back again;
loyal, unselfish, despotic, ever-changing personalities. Old man Stornoff said absently, "How they
love to dance!"
The music stopped. Peter saw Captain Krich,
still holding Nadya's hand, lead her into the
adjoining room. She glanced toward him as she
stepped through the door. Peter danced with
Camille, who held him very tightly. She had few
words of English, and they laughed together at




94          SNOW TRENCHES
the awkwardness of their conversation. But she
was light as a snowflake and a pleasant little partner. The adjutant claimed her, and Peter saw
Nadya and Captain Krich reenter the room. She
found a chair, and the Captain bowed and left
her.
Back again, to dance with Nadya. The thrill
of her in his arms, the nearness of her cheek to
his, her breath, her hair, the movement and
rhythm of her form... he promised himself
much more enjoyment of these. The defenses of
her conversation, the subtlety with which she
checked his too enthusiastic advances, and parried too sudden an intimacy, while apparently
tempting him to dare further, were a new experience for him.
"How'd you like to take a walk when we finish
this dance?" he asked.
"I'd rather dance. One can walk any time, but
the opportunity to dance is rare. You may go,
if you'd rather."
"I wouldn't ratherl But I've seen so little of
you that I'd like to have you to myself."
"That wouldn't be kind to the other girls."
"You're just trying to misunderstand me."
"Forgive me. Perhaps the compliment to myself should excuse it.... Tell me, where do
you live in America? What city?"




SHENKURSK


95


SI TENKTJRISK         9511~__W






"Detroit."
"Is it nice there? I have heard it is where they
make all the automobiles."
"It's wonderful. But at this moment I prefer
Shenkursk."
"Shenkursk? Such a little, simple town hidden
away in the forest?"
"Where are you from? Don't tell me Podborya."
"I was born in Rostoff, a city near the Sea of
Azov, far away in the south of Russia."
The dance ended. Several people arose to take
their leave of their hostess. Burns held Nadya's
arm.
"Did you come here alone?" he asked. "May I
see you home?"
"I came this afternoon, with Camille Antonovna. I should be glad to have your company."
It was pitch dark and snowing when they left
the Stornoff's and started for Nadya's home. The
few lighted windows in the houses they passed
did little more than mark the sides of the street.
Peter fancied a touch of intimacy in the snugness
with which she held his arm and walked close
beside him.
"I'm sorry I'm not going to be in Shenkursk
right along," he told her.
"Oh, are you leaving Shenkursk? When?"




96          SNOW TRENCHES
"I have to go back to Ust Padenga. My company is going down there tomorrow to relieve
Captain Gibbons' company."
Nadya was silent for a moment before speaking.
"How long will you be gone?"
"Probably three or four weeks, unless this
whole front is changed. The other company has
been down there just a month.... By the way,
they lost two men today in a patrol skirmish on
the road south of Ust Padenga."
"It's started already, then."
"What?"
"The Bolshevik offensive.... I wish you
safety and good luck."
"Thanks. Perhaps I can get back to Shenkursk
for a day or so in the meantime. If I can see
you, I'll try... or would you avoid me as you
did at Podborya?"
"Perhaps we'll be ordered away from Shenkursk."
"But if you're not? I'll hear of it if you leave.
There is the telephone, you know."
"All right. Look for me when you come back
to Shenkursk."
As they stopped at the gate of the sombre
house where Nadya lived, Peter took both her
hands in his. He was a little nervous and not




SHENKURSK


97


quite sure of himself, but his voice was earnest
and steady.
"Please don't let me be too hasty. Honestly, I
don't want to make a nuisance of myself. If
you'd rather not see me, just tell me....
There's no use for me to pretend that I'm not
crazy to see you again."
"My dear boy, of course I'll be glad to see you.
I'd be sorry if you came back to Shenkursk without calling. Must a girl confess everything?"
Nadya gave his hands a squeeze and turned
into the house.
'*0




-  44P -   VWWV   W MP   NV ove  ff W


VII
Death at Nijni Gora.
T DUSK LIEUTENANT BURNS' PLATOON HAD
taken over the outpost at Nijni Gora. The
officer, whose platoon they had relieved, told
Burns that they had seen some little Bolo activity
to the front during the day, but that no shots
had been fired. Burns had made his first inspection of the blockhouses and lookouts, and was
sitting with Sergeant Hayes in the lamplit guardroom. A rare talkative mood was upon him, and
he discoursed at some length on his theory of the
arrangements of these defensive positions.
"They probably know what they're doing,
Sergeant, but to my notion, the British have a
disquieting habit of spreading out a few companies of infantry over too much ground. Here
we are, nearly a fourth of the strength of Ust
Padenga, stuck out here a mile and a half away,
without any real purpose."
"Yes, and it's hard on the men to double up
their guard duty that way."
"It isn't as though we were a marching
column," Burns continued, "and required a




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA            99
point and advance guard to delay the enemy
while the main body gets ready for action. There
isn't a thing we can do here that those blockhouses up on the bluff don't do at the same
time."
"This place has never looked good to me,
Lieutenant. The Bolos can work up too close
before we can see 'em, an' it's too damn spread
out for one platoon to hold."
"Well, we're not supposed to hold it against
any real attack. That's another reason why it
looks to me like bad tactics to waste strength on
it. Captain Ordway thinks the same, but British
Headquarters wants it."
"Are you goin' to post that extra sentry on the
path down by the old bathhouse on the right
flank?"
"I don't think so, Sergeant, but we'll look at
it on the next inspection. Have you tried the
telephone?"
"Yes, sir. It's 0. K."
"Who's on it?"
"Bowers."
"And who's his relief?"
"Andrews."
"Goodl Have those spare Lewis gun pans been
distributed to the blockhouse or are they still
here?"




100


SNOW TRENCHES


"They're herel"
"You'd better have them passed out to the
guns. We really ought to have more of them."
"I'll take care of it right off."
"All right. I'm going to grab a little bunk
fatigue."
A hum of conversation from the men off duty
drifted in from the room. Burns lay down.
Two hours later he sat up abruptly, as the
old guard stamped into the room, talking loudly
and shaking the snow from their gear. The second relief had gone out quietly, without waking
him. He put on his fur cap and greatcoat, strapping his pistol-belt outside, pulled on his gloves,
and went outdoors. A thick, wind-driven snow
storm made it difficult to see more than a few
yards. Burns turned up his coat collar in protest
to the snow and the warning bite of the wind,
and headed for the first post, a small blockhouse
at the extreme left edge of the village.
Inside the blockhouse he found Corporal
Socha and three men. The Corporal and one
of them, the Lewis gun between, leaned on
their elbows on the firing-ledge and peered out
through the loophole to the front. The other
two sat on the floor, their rifles pointed upwards between their knees. Burns tapped on the
door and pushed it open.




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA          101
"Who's in charge here?"
"Corporal Socha, sir."
"Everything all right?"
"Yes, sir!"
"What do you see out there?"
"Well, really you can't see much of anything,
sir. This damn snow fogs up everything."
"Move over a minute and let me look."
His vision stopped at the edge of a dip in
the ground, a scant hand-grenade-range from
the blockhouse. It distorted and created fanciful objects thrown back by the whirl of snow.
"This is no good," he told the Corporal. "You
might as well be back in the guardroom. Post
one of your men outside all the time. He can
walk around the blockhouse, but he must keep
his eyes and ears open to the front. Add that
to the orders for this post!"
"Aw right, Lieutenant. Connors, you take the
first shiftI"
Connors extinguished a concealed cigarette,
got up off the floor and went outside.
The sentry at the second post halted Burns
alertly as he came up, before he could distinguish the sentry's snow-covered silhouette. Two
sentries covered this post, which ran fifty yards
along a low fence, and gave perfect observation
to the south.






I, I




102


SNOW TRENCHES


'IV — "W -              V
"Anything to report?"
"No, sir!... Well, that is, Murphy, here,
thought he seen a rocket out there just after
we came on guard, but it's so damn hard to see
anything, we couldn't be sure. I didn't see it,
myself."
"What direction, Murphy?"
"Right straight ahead, sir, where the road
goes back into the woods."
"Good work. Keep your eyes peeled and report if you even think you see another. I'll see
if the other post reports it."
Post Number Three-a Lewis gun detachment
in a sandbag-reenforced shed in the very center
of the village front. A window in the south wall
served as a loophole. They had boarded up
the top two-thirds, but the snow came swirling
through and it was almost as cold within as outdoors. The corporal in charge of this post had
seen the necessity of posting a sentry outside,
and Burns was challenged as he approached.
They had nothing unusual to report, so he passed
on to Number Four, an observation post, like
Number Two, and from there to the blockhouse
on the right flank.
Here he found Sergeant Hayes and Sergeant
Krag, of his relief, talking to Sergeant Komisarek, who was in charge of the post. The cor



DEATH AT NIJNI GORA


103


poral had reported to them that one of his men
had seen a rocket, or had thought he had seen it.
"I think he's nuts," observed Sergeant Krag.
"Yer liable to see anything tonight if ya look
long enough for it. Who the hell'd be shootin'
off fireworks in this snowstorm?"
"No, he's not, Sergeanti" Burns contradicted.
"Murphy reported seeing the same thing. And
as for fireworks-did you ever see a better night
for a surprise party?"
"Jeez, they could parade up here with a brass
band an' we'd never see 'em."
"Corporal, you'll have to post one of your
men outside. You can't see or hear a thing inside this place."
The corporal went out with one of his men.
Burns turned to his two sergeants.
"I don't like the looks of this rocket business
a little bit. Sergeant Krag, keep these posts on
their toes every minute tonight. Sergeant Hayes,
you turn in and get some sleep; but by all
means, post that extra sentry you asked me
about. And make sure nothing happens to our
telephone connection."
Going out into the road again, he stood for
a long time staring off through the night toward
Bololand. For a moment his eyes reported the
picture truly to him; monotonous, unchanging




I






104


SNOW TRENCHES


blackness, unrelieved by any gradations of color,
any lighter grays, any deeper blacks; and before
it all the silent, blurring curtain of snow, felt,
rather than seen. But presently his straining
eyes commenced to deceive, to embellish and
exaggerate the picture. Fantastic images arose
and vanished. Shadowy figures appeared in dim
outline. Was that a body of men moving out
there? Rockets? His imagination showed him
dozens of them. He looked away for a little, and
moved about, to restore his natural vision; then
looked again. The sombre, innocent monotony
of the darkness had returned. As he walked
back to the guardhouse he observed that the
horizon toward Ust Padenga appeared just as
menacing, just as full of illusions as that to the
south. Nijni Gora became the loneliest spot in
the world-as isolated as a tiny island in the
White Sea. What would he not have given to
see a single speck of lantern light up there on
the bluff behind him.
Back in the guardroom, he sat beside the
operator at the telephone, smoking cigarettes.
His long, thin fingers drummed intermittently
against his pistol holster. Sergeant Hayes lay
snoring on the floor. He looked at his watch:
Twelve, five. Once more he went out and
roamed back and forth between the blockhouses.




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA         105
Then, damning himself for his nervousness, he
went back to the guardhouse at the change of
the relief, awoke Sergeant Hayes, and lay down,
himself, for another nap.
The night dragged on. The lamp burned
low and its smoky, uneven flame grimed the
chimney, but no one bothered to trim the wick.
Snores and the sound of heavy breathing came
from the guardroom. The telephone man dozed
a little and rubbed his eyes, then lit a cigarette
to keep awake.
Two o'clock...
Three o'clock...
Four o'clock..
Burns came in again from another tour of
inspection, grumbling to himself that it was "a
hell of a non-union way of assigning guard dutytwo hours on and two off, even if it did come
three days apart." Pulling his coat up over him
blanket-like, for the stove seemed to be losing its
warmth, he sighed and rolled over on his side.
Sleep had barely overtaken him, hardly enough
to more than muddle his senses. Sergeant Hayes
burst through the door and shook him by the
shoulder, calling to him excitedly at the same
time.
"Lieutenant! Lieutenant! There's been some
more of those rockets and there seems to be




106


SNOW TRENCHES


something doing out there. You'd better come
out!"
They hurried out together into the darkness
and chill of early morning. Although the winter
was far enough advanced for the long arctic
night to throw the coming of daylight late into
the morning, the sky had grown perceptibly
lighter. Houses were commencing to stand out
as darker shadows and the forest around them
loomed in patchy tones of black distinguishable
against the sky... the first faint signals of
the coming of a meager dawn.
At the center blockhouse they found the corporal and all three men standing outside, in
front of the blockhouse, staring intently ahead
talking together earnestly. They all started at
once to tell the Lieutenant what they had seen.
"Wait a minute," he said. "Now, Corporal,
what was it?"
"There were two lights, a red and a yellow,
shot up about ten minutes ago, straight south
of here-looked like Very lights. Then about
five minutes later-just before you got here-a
red light went up way around here to the right,
quite a bit nearer."
"You're sure they weren't moving along the
ground?"
"Absolutely, Lieutenant," the Sergeant broke




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA
II   --


107
*w^W- VV


i  _ pWii 1r

in, "I saw the last one myself, an' I'd swear it
was from a Very pistol."
They tested the visibility with field glasses,
but could see nothing. They experienced an
eery feeling of helplessness: some danger threatened them from out there in the shadows, but it
was as vague and elusive as a ghost. One can't
aim a Lewis gun at a vanished rocket. Besides,
what threat to them existed in two Bolo patrols
playing a peek-a-boo with a couple of signal
rockets.
"To hell with it," was his comment.
-- 2 —
Before he had regained the guardhouse, Sergeant Hayes caught up to him and stopped him
insistently.
"Come on    back, Lieutenant!  I'm  afraid
we're in for it! You can hear 'em out there
now, plain as hell. The woods on the right
flank are full of 'em."
The sentry at the special observation post on
the extreme right, closest to the woods, stood
in a niche behind a pile of stove wood. He
had rearranged the chunks so as to hide his head;




108


SNOW TRENCHES


only the spiked tip of his bayonet could be seen.
When they came up beside him, Burns and the
Sergeant lifted the fur-lined flaps of their caps off
their ears to listen. The sentry whispered to
them with such caution as to emphasize the
danger.
"For quite a while I've been hearing noises
like as if you'd bump a rifle barrel against a
mess kit, or like them bags you carry Lewis
gun pans in bangin' together, but now ya can
even hear 'em talkin'. There must be sleighs out
there, too, Lieutenant, 'cause two or three times
I heard a guy go 'Br-r!,' like they do to whoa a
horse. Listen!...
"By God, you're right!"
Through the grey stillness came the muffled
sounds of commotion. Alarmingly they could be
traced far around to the left. Unmistakably,
large bodies of men were gathering out there.
In their boldness and confidence there seemed
little restraint on the noise, little effort at concealment, for Burns could make out the call of
a command, and from a different spot, an angry
argument. They could see the flicker of matches
and cigarette lights.
"Holy Jeez, there's a million of 'em," said
Sergeant Hayes in an awed whisper.
"I'm going to phone the Skipper," said Burns.




DEATH AT NIJII GORA


109


"I'll be right back. Meet me at the center blockhouse, Post Three." To the sentry he said,
"When they come out into the open so you
can see them, report to the corporal in this next
blockhouse. Don't do any long range shooting
under any circumstances-no matter how good
a target you see."
He raced back to the guardroom and buzzed
the operator at Ust Padenga. It seemed hours
until Captain Ordway's voice came over the
wire.
"What the hell's the matter, Pete?"
"I don't want to 'holler wolf,' Skipper, but it
looks like the whole damn Bolo army is gangin'
up in the woods here in front of us. There's
been a lot of signalling and monkey business
going on all night, but now we can see 'em and
hear 'em out there damn close, and if they
make a serious attack on this place our three
lousy Lewis guns aren't goin' to hinder 'em
much."
"As bad as that? I'll have the artillery stand
by and throw some shells over in front of you
if we hear any firing. But, remember, you don't
have to hold the damn place to the last man, or
any of that sort of rot. Pull in if it begins to
get hot."
"Thanks. It may blow over, but I'd give a




110         SNOW TRENCHES
hell of a lot to be behind your barbed wire."
"Gimme a ring in a half hour an' tell me how
it looks."
"0. K. So long."
3
A chatter of firing from automatics and rifles
broke out of the trees on the right as Burns
reached the street again.
"Lord! Already?" he muttered. "Anyway, the
Skipper'll know I wasn't imagining things. This
looks like a real push."
He ran to the center blockhouse.
Every man in this post was squinting over his
rifle; the cover had been taken off the Lewis
gun. Sergeant Hayes and the corporal had held
them back although they were all itching to fire.
"Take it easy, you guys. You'll have plenty to
shoot at."
Burns stepped to the aperture, and as the
lightening grayness of the morning etched more
clearly the details of the picture, his heart
pounded with anxiety. The first wave of the
Bolo attack had pushed forward out of the
woods and was floundering through the snow




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA           111
toward them. A line of disciplined, trained soldiers, steady and well equipped beyond any
Bolo infantry seen at Seltzo or hitherto on this
front. Chauchat automatics, spaced every few
yards along the line, kept up a marching fire
in the manner most recently developed on the
French front. There was even a noticeable
effort to keep their alignment straight and regular as they advanced. An increasing racket of
shouts and individual rifle firing came from them.
A wild stream of bullets snapped and whistled
and whined above the still silent village of Nijni
Gora. The corporal's voice broke the tension
in the blockhouse.
"They shoot like a lot of movie soldiers..
can't see a damn thing to aim at. Probably
think the noise'll scare us."
"Veil, I'm scared!" remarked Sammy Klein.
"Don't brag!"
Burns was oblivious to all except the swarming menace out in front. He stared amazed at
the oncoming attack as company after company
moved into the open. Far back into the trees
more gray-coated lines were forming. A terrifying din swept across from them. In the center
of the nearest line a number of men had
bunched together around a Chauchat gun. The
Lewis gun in the blockhouse on the extreme




112


SNOW TRENCHES


right cracked with a series of short bursts, just
as Burns directed his men to fire.
The Chauchat gunner slipped into the snow,
his gun out of action. The group around him
fell apart. Black humps dotted the snow, but
the gaps closed up and the firing increased. The
din mounted hideously. A man of giant height,
wearing a dress uniform cap bound to his head
by a strip of cloth as though he had a toothache,
forged ahead, brandishing a pistol. The pace
of the advance appeared to quicken. Daylight
lightened the scene. Nijni Gora' poured a
deadly fire into them. The big man out ahead
stumbled and fell. Awkwardly he clambered to
his knees, then pitched head foremost into the
snow. The first line wavered; the second wave
lost its formation, but their places were filled
and the advance continued relentlessly. Burns
shouted into Klein's ear:
"Run back to the guardroom. Tell the operator, for Christ's sake to get the artillery started.
Wait!... Then tell him to disconnect the
phone and hook it on again on the road at the
rear of the village. Tell Sergeant Krag to post
* his relief back of the houses on both sides of the
road, so they can cover our withdrawal. Do you
get it?"
"Positively, Lieutenantl"




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA          113
"God help you, if you don't!"
Burns stepped outside at the rear of the
blockhouse to look around. Klein, running so
low that he appeared to be on his hands and
knees, reached the guardhouse. Burns heard a
muffled groan and hysterical cursing from within
the blockhouse. He found the corporal on the
floor, blood spreading from a bullet hole in the
middle of his forehead. Sergeant Hayes was
bending over him, but the Lewis gunners were
evening the score with cool precision as they
blazed into the Bolo lines, much nearer now.
All at once, around to the left, beyond the
flank of the Bolo lines, a new attack developed.
Out of a hollow, partially concealed strip of
brushy ground scarcely a quarter mile distant
an endless file of fresh Bolo infantry emerged
in column formation. The more imminent attacking party on the right was a scant two hundred yards away. Their shots were now striking
the blockhouses. Others had found a loophole
since the corporal was hit.
Empty cartridge cases, clips and discarded
Lewis gun pans littered the blockhouse floor;
acrid powder fumes poisoned the air. The grimy
faces of the gunners, their caps thrown off in
spite of the cold, were streaked with sweattense, lined faces, dotted with wide, white,




114


SNOW TRENCHES


-114        SNO1)_IV  — W  TRENCHES "P
staring eyes; eyes crammed with the sight of
death, revealing at the same time the mounting
sense of their own peril. Yet, clear and steely
cold, the brains of the guns and seemingly
part of them, they stopped dozens of spots in
the creeping target before them. Sergeant Hayes,
crossing the room, stumbled on the corporal's
wrist. Burns, his fascinated eyes on the new
Bolo advance, caught his breath.
"Time to pull out, Sergeant!" he shouted.
"Take this gun straight back along the road
and join Sergeant Krag. Keep those devils back
till I clear the other blockhouses."
Crouching low, he ran to Post Number One,
on the left; jerked open the door.
"Work back along the road, Corporal. Hurry!
Keep your men back of the houses and cover
the left flank with your gun. Report to Sergeant Hayes. And, for God's sake, hurry!"
The blizzard of lead that now stormed their
front at close range made Burns drop on his
face into the snow as he stepped beyond the
edge of the house. For a second he lay there,
estimating the distance to the next house. He
crawled to it and reared to his knees. The third
blockhouse was within hailing distance, only
thirty yards away. Burns shouted. No sign that
he was heard.




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA
- W   11  0    W   W   V   _1   V


115


"Corporal! Corporal!... Briggs! Briggs!
BRIGGS!... CORPORAL!..."
No answer. Suddenly he noticed that the
Lewis gun in the blockhouse was silent. Not a
rifle cracked from the half-seen loophole. Burns
blew frantically on his whistle. Precious time
was speeding. The deafening uproar from the
crowding attack stunned him.
"Briggs!" he screamed; then wormed his way
on his belly toward the doomed shack. The
Bolos saw him. The cut of bullets seared the
snow above his back. Half way... out of the
battered door Burns saw a wounded man crawl
forth. Hurt in the shoulder, apparently, he
struggled slowly along on his good side. It was
Briggs. Heedless of the snarling fusillade, the
Lieutenant ran to Briggs and hurried him forward with his arm around his waist.
"Where are the rest?"
"Shot!"
"All of them?..."
"Yes! They copped a machine gun burst
through the loophole. Our gun jammed...
Shelter and hope reached out to them, but it
was not to be... Briggs swore and slumped
down, shot in the knee. Burns threw him across
his shoulders and started again. Just at the
corner, a spurt of blood drenched his neck and




i






116


SNOW TrRENWCrHFS


116       h/"V SNOW  '1 - Nfl1


shoulders; the center of gravity of his burden
shifted; Briggs' grip on his arm dropped away.
Burns fell forward onto his face.
Two men seized his arms and dragged him
to cover behind the house. Dazedly he sat up;
instinctively he looked back. Briggs lay as he
had fallen... he had taken the long trail
toward the sundown to join the buddies he had
left in the blockhouse.
Across the road the squad from the first blockhouse was fighting its way to the rear. Firing
furiously for a few seconds, they quieted the
nearest enemy rifles, dropped back to a new
position, and opened fire again. A group of Bolos
had gained the edge of the village. Most of them
bunched up behind the houses, but their commissars drove them  on to the attack. They
poured around the corners into the road to melt
away under the fire from the squads posted behind the houses. Burns joined them.
"Where's the telephone?"
"Herel"
"Where the hell's the artillery?"
"The Russians are on the guns now... The
Captain couldn't make them understand. Something went wrong. I can't reach them at all
now.. the line sounds dead..."
"Dead? My God," he groaned. "Aren't they




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA          117
going t6 help us at all? Just one shell'd do it!"
"Look out, Lieutenant!"
The Bolos had worked a Maxim gun unseen
across an open space to the corner of a shack
on their right flank. Its tripod was set up; they
squatted behind it, fussing with the mechanism.
American sharpshooters drove them away from
the gun. Other Bolos ran up and poured a hot
rifle fire into the American position forcing
them to cover. Again they manned the Maxim
gun; it clattered into action. The man at the
telephone died, clawing at his throat. In the
thin wedge of shelter nine men shrank back
from the crackling torrent of fire tearing past.
Nine men prisoned by an impenetrable barrage
from an overwhelming number of rifles and
machine guns. Fresh Bolo companies reaching
the village closed in on the helpless little detachment.
Burns flashed a glance across the street. Sergeant Hayes' squads were almost as hard pressed.
Burns caught the Sergeant's eye; the Sergeant
shook his head slowly-not a hopeless gesture,
but an understanding one. "If something doesn't
happen quickly" it said, "we're through." Burns
signalled him to move his men to the rear. With
the loss of one man they reached the lee of the
house behind them. Burns motioned him fur



118         SNOW TRENCHES
ther back, then looked out to his own flank.
The Bolos were preparing to rush their position.
"Gimme a hand grenade!" he shouted. "Two
of them! When I throw these, run for it! Join
the others'if you can!"
The Bolo firing lulled; a wild yell arose as
they broke cover. Burns stepped clear of the
wall... the pin stuck and he fumbled his first
grenade; the other soared in a long arc and
blasted death into the huddled gray mob. He
grabbed the other, freed the pin, and hurled it
straight at the machine gun. Confusion blinded
them momentarily, but two or three had broken
through. Burns' automatic accounted for these,
then he turned and ran.
The survivors of the platoon were now together behind a big shack at the extreme rear
of Nijni Gora. The red, leering sun, so cold
that- naked eyes could look straight at it, painted
the killing with hard reality; death had seemed
mystic and less of a shock in the vague gray
dimness of cold and early morning. The fighting developed into a contest between snipers.
The Americans lay back of their shelter, firing
only when the enemy ventured into the open.
Sergeant Krag was trying to tie up a wound
in Prince's shoulder.
The watchers at each end of the, building




DEATH AT NmJNI GORA          119
called to Burns-parties of enemy troops were
cautiously working their way around to the rear
on each flank. They kept at some distance and
crouched almost out of sight, but their progress
would soon bring them to a point where their
fire would strike the unprotected rear of the defenders. The Red battalions, impatient of being
held up by a flimsy outpost, were moving to finish the job.
Frost-benumbed and stiffened, the Americans
burrowed into the snow to find better concealment and steadied themselves for their last stand.
Burns studied the road back to Ust Padenga,
weighing the chances of their getting through
by making a run for it. A half mile would
bring them close enough to receive support
from the blockhouses. It meant suicide or capture to remain where they were. Bitterly he
damned the silent artillery. Then he saw two
sleighs followed by a column of troops heading
rapidly down the slope out of Ust Padenga
toward them. He pointed to them and called to
his men.
"Our only chance is to make a break for it... keep down low for your lives, and don't
bunch together. Sergeant Hayes, lead out with
these men on the left side of the road. Sergeant
Krag, keep your men on the right. One side




120         SNOW TRENCHES
must face about and fire while the other is
moving; these devils will crowd us like hell
when they see us start. All right, Sergeant..."
Sergeant Hayes' group cleared the road in a
bound before the startled Reds knew what they
were doing and forged through the deep snow
crouching low among the bushes. Suddenly
they stopped, wheeled about, and raked the
road with rapid fire. The rest of the men behind
the house flung themselves through the snow
to a point abreast of their comrades. Sergeant
Hayes' squads made another rush to the rear
while the men with Lieutenant Burns took up
the fire.
The Bolos could now see how few were in
the party that had been checking their advance.
They thronged the village, jamming into the
houses in search of loot and warmth. The commissar commanders rushed back and forth,
shouting at their men to organize further pursuit. Hundreds of Bolo rifles searched out the
scant bushes where the Americans crouchedless than four hunted, straggling squads. A
crowded skirmish line formed at the edge of
the houses. The firing redoubled, and they
plowed forward.
Lieutenant Burns, lying full length in the
snow, peered through the tangled snow-coated




DEATH AT NIJNT GORA


121


fork of the bush in front of him, the rifle he
had brought with him from the village carefully
held above the snow. A mob of loose-lipped
mutinous youths with hatchets in their belts was
coming to destroy the rest of his little platoon.
God damn them! Let them come! He shot a
prancing and loud-mouthed commissar who had
run out in front. His men, too, were doing
deadly shooting. But they couldn't live in the
hurricane of lead that lashed them. Sergeant
Krag was hit in the face. Across the road two
men lay still, face down. Still no frontal attack
from the Bolos; they had decided to spread out
and pick them off from a safe distance.
A man near Burns cursed startlingly and continued moaning and swearing indistinguishably.
A bullet had entered his wrist and furrowed his
whole forearm. He sat up, sopping at the blood
with his mitten, staring at it bewilderedly. Presently the black, motionless dot of his head and
shoulders sticking up above the snow attracted
Bolo snipers. He "went West" in a sitting position, his head bowed onto his chest, his back
curved, but held up by some stiffened muscle.
The man behind him, either crazed or inspired,
bolted to his feet.
"I'll give the bastards somethin' to shoot at!"
they heard him mutter. He sprinted down the




122
-- --


SNOW TRENCHES
-,WI...... _V......... -~- -   — '"w - -0~

VF,.   000-  W MP

road to the rear. His buddies prayed for a
miracle..
The exultant Bolo shout spurred him on;
the concentration of their fire enveloped him.
Still he sped on, till a curve of the road hid
him. The Americans cheered; then they heard
a faint cheer from the detachment back on
the road that had left Ust Padenga to help
them. And out of the silent, faithless gun pits
back of the staring bluffs of Ust Padenga crashed
two three-inch shells.
A bitter, sneering laugh rose to Burns' lips.
"Dirty, yellow skunks... Let 'em make tea
in their God damn guns..."
The clean, swift efficiency of the sharpnel increased his bitterness. Rapid-fire... dozens of
flying shells to the minute... high explosives
mixed in. The confident, surging Reds fled
back to cover. Thirty minutes earlier, with this
support, he could have withdrawn his platoon
without losing a man. A gray pall of distress
settled over his spirit, dread burdened his heart.
The fiery, optimistic competence had gone out
of him. Back in those black dingy shacks from
which the flames were starting, and along the
road, were his missing squads... Briggs...
his telephone man...
The two sleighs galloped up; the medical




DEATH AT NIJNI GORA         123
officer in charge loaded on the wounded; the
sleighs wheeled about and galloped back. The
Lieutenant, leading the infantry support, brought
up a detail and helped the survivors back to his
line, then hurried them up the hill to safety.
Burns stumbled along beside him, his head
down, without answer to any questions..




VIII
Cossacks and Convoys.
_wm


ETEI DOC IS SENDING         THOSE FIVE
wounded men from your platoon up to
Shenkursk tonight by sleigh. Two ambulance
men will go with them, but I want you to go
along and take it easy for a few days... I wish
to hell there was some high life up there so's
you could forget the damn war, an' dance an'
drink an' see some shows...
Captain Ordway tried to speak casually, but
he was a poor actor. They had threshed out the
tragic annihilation of the first platoon when the
Captain had met the survivors on the bluff that
morning. Lieutenant Burns sat up on the edge
of the bunk on which he had been lying since he
had gotten back into Ust Padenga five hours
earlier. His eyes and shoulders were heavy with
fatigue, and a sense of irreparable hurt. His voice
was dull and expressionless, its ring and enthusiasm gone. A mere narrowing of his eyelids
answered the Captain, then Burns spoke:
"What's the idea, Skipper? Afraid my nerve's
gone, or somethin'? I'll snap out of this by




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS


125


morning. I don't need a leave any more than
you do."
"Maybe not, Pete. But it's your break that
you get it an' I don't."
"To hell with it!"
"You heard me, kid. You're going! I don't
give a damn whether you need it or not. We
don't need you around here for a few days..
Give the old man a growl for me, will you?"
"On the level, Skipper, what's the idea?"
"Damn you, I just told you! You'd think I
had put you on kitchen police. Most guys'd
jump at a four-day leave."
"If I thought it was big brother stuff, or some
of this bull about 'restoring morale,' I'd tell you
to go to hell... You can't force a man to go
on leave."
"Godl You're worse than a Y-man. Forget itl"
2
At nine o'clock, Shenkursk Hospital admitted
the five wounded men from Ust Padenga. Lieutenant Burns followed the doctors and orderlies
around as they took care of them. Lights had
been put out in the big-high-ceilinged wards of




126       SNOW TRENCHES


this former schoolhouse. In a smaller room on
the second floor, next to the operating-room, a
shaded lamp stood on a table at the end of the
aisle. A nurse was seated beside it. She arose
as a patient was brought in on a stretcher, unconscious, and helped prepare him for the operation necessary to save his life. They wheeled
him into the operating-room  and closed the
door. Burns, who had remained outside, paced
back and forth along the hall, alone in the dim,
quiet place. At length, he sat down on a narrow bench at the head of the stairs. For a time
his mind nervously re-enacted the push at Nijni
Gora, as he thought of him who was fighting for
life on the operating-table, one of his boys.
Burns had seen him fall; had seen him carry
on with a bullet in his side until another bullet
had stopped him... He rested his arm on the
railing; his head nodded drowsily.
Captain Home, the surgeon, came out of the
operating-room, buttoning his tunic. He shook
Burns' shoulder.
"Better turn in, Pete. Can't do anything
more tonight."
"How is he, Doc?"
The doctor shrugged. "Can't tell yet. He's
a husky youngster. May pull through."
Burns started to follow the doctor down stairs,




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS


127


but the door of the ward opened and a nurse
tiptoed out and came toward the head of the
stairs. Then he saw the one face that could
lift him out of himself and the brooding melancholy that burdened him....
"Nadyal"
She took his hand.
"Oh, Lieutenant, did you come in with this
poor boy? What a terrible time you must have
had!"
"I came in because they ordered me to...
but we were together this morning at Nijni
Gora. Did you hear about it?"
"I heard. All Shenkursk is talking about it.
I was frightfully worried until I learned you
were safe.  "
"Safe!" he interrupted bitterly. "All day long
I've been wondering why I came through, and
those thirty men back there in Nijni Gora were
stopped. Thirty of the best.. Godl how
they tried..."
"The French have a saying that answers unanswerable questions like that: 'c'est la guerre.'
The bitterness and shock of war demand a new
philosophy. I can be happy that you were
spared."
"It's sweet of you to say that. I would never
have believed they could push through an attack




128         SNOW TRENCHES
as they did. They could never have done it with
the troops we saw on the Dvina. They must have
moved a lot of new units to this front."
"They have never given serious attention to
this front; they have been too busy with Denikin and Kolchak. Too busy organizing. They
are commencing now to drive straight for Archangel."
"There seemed to be thousands of them.."
"Tell me, how long will you be in Shenkursk?"
"The Colonel wants me to leave with the convoy tomorrow for Ust Vaga on an errand of some
kind. What do I care? This morning when we
pulled back into Ust Padenga, I felt as though
my platoon had been thrown away. The futility
of trying to hold such a placel... I was almost
out of my mind. I faced the future with dread
rather than interest and a sense of adventure. My
sense of values was all reversed. Then the Captain talked to me, and I was able to sleep, and
when I woke up I felt refreshed and in a little
less suicidal frame of mind. Coming back to
Shenkursk, I realized that my own feelings meant
nothing, but that I had a new kind of obligation
to the rest of this outfit, who will surely later go
through the same as we did this morning."
"I think I understand..."




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS


129


"And now, I meet you again and, Nadyaforgive me-the outfit means nothing to me if
I can be with you."
"You mustn't say that."
"Do you still want me to pretend?"
"No, but your new obligation, what about
that?"
"I can't help it."
Nadya laid her hand on his without speaking.
He looked at her until her eyes turned away.
"I must go now," she whispered.
"Can't I take you home? I'll wait till you're
through. I have so much to tell you."
"I'm sorry, but I can't go yet. I'm on duty
here until morning."
"Then let's sit here a little longer."
"I wish I could, but they'll be wanting me.
I mustn't let them wait."
"Then I'll see you again just as soon as I
get back. In four or five days."
"I hope you will. Perhaps we can have a little
more time together."
"It won't be my fault is we don't."
"I must go now," Nadya said again. "Take
care of yourself."
"Good bye."
He watched her until she turned at the door
and whispered back, "Good bye."




Itn.RITn)w ITURI'NCrn PR~




1 2'WI - W


-3
The daily convoy of sleighs carrying supplies
for the Vaga Column was lined up in Troitsa
Street in front of Headquarters. Most of the
sleighs travelled empty on their northbound
trip, but they had to move on schedule to prevent a shortage at some of the relay posts. A
corporal and six soldiers rode with each convoy
as escort-not so much for protection against
roving Bolshevik patrols as to prevent the muzhik drivers from stealing supplies or deserting
the convoy with their sledges.
Lieutenant Burns came out of headquarters as
the leader started and took his place in one of
the sleighs. There was no seat in it. A layer of
hay had been placed in the bottom, a sheepskin
sleeping-bag on top of that, and hay piled over
the sleeping-bag. Burns thrust his feet into the
warm bag and settled himself into a reclining
position facing the front. One by one the sleighs
followed at short intervals until the entire convoy
was in motion.
After crossing the Vaga, the trail wound
through a low flat stretch of ground covered with
large bushes. The sleigh track had worn itself




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS          131
- -  -   -    -   -    -V  -4000- -W1
down below the level of the snow so that the
horses trotted in a white trough which reached
up to their shoulders on the sides. It was smooth
and slippery as a toboggan. Burns, without staring about, saw only the back of his driver, the
rump of his horses, the frosty jets of their
breath, the fringing bushes, and the dull sky.
The clop-clop of the short-gaited horses' hoofs,
the creaking of the basket sleighs, and the strange
grunts of the drivers were the only sounds that
came to his ears, and these were muffled by the
thick fur of his earlaps.
The first halt was made at Nikolaievskaya,
about two hours after leaving Shenkursk. The
drivers pulled off the road and tumbled into the
Post House for bread and tea. Burns went indoors to stretch and smoke a cigarette by the hot
stove. He was cramped and cold... Two hours
later, at Rovdino, they stopped for lunch. The
drivers hurriedly flopped an armful of hay under their horses' noses and disappeared into the
houses. The soldiers ate in shifts, three men
patrolling the road while the others ate. The
corporal of the escort came up to Burns with a
can of hot black coffee.
"Could you use a shot of this java, Lieutenant?"
"I'll say so! Thanks very much, Corporal."




132
-- --


SNOW TRENCHES
l]~,.,JW           'IWI-~~~ -WWIZLl~lplL'11rl~i''~ill'lll


-,lt-i -


Burns offered him a cigarette, and inquired,
"What time do we get to Shegovari?"
"We usually get there about five o'clock, travellin' with empties, but these lazy Polacks'll steal
an extry half hour, an' sometimes more, on the
halts, if ya let 'em."
"Do you go beyond Shegovari?"
"No. We go back tomorrow. We make a
round trip every third day-a day up, a day back,
an' a day's rest." He looked at his watch. "Well,
time to get goin'."
During the afternoon the trail entered more
picturesque bits of country. Winding and twisting, dipping and climbing, it would break out of
the trees at the crest of a knoll revealing the
wide, level sweep of the Vaga unrolled beneath
them, and on the opposite side, tall, vigorous
black pine trees, frosted with snow, clinging to
the sheer, rugged bluffs. The forest here was free
of undergrowth; it opened up a succession of
dim, mysterious aisles, carpeted with clean soft
snow, unbroken save where wolf or bear or rabbit tracks dodged among the trees. The luminous clearness of the thin, sharp air brought out
every tree and shadow into such fine relief that the
changing panorama had unusual depth and vividness. From the top of a bluff the trail dropped
straight ahead without a bend for nearly half a




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS


133


mile before disappearing under the arching
branches of the trees on the far slope. Burns, in
a sleigh near the rear, saw the whole convoy
bunch up at the top while the drivers beat their
nags to make them start the decline, then gallop
and skid and tumble to the bottom, and pile up
behind the leaders on the upgrade across the
valley.
His own sleigh coasted into the flying legs of
its horse and upset him, so that horse and sleigh,
driver and himself, turned over twice and landed
wrong side up in a fluffy snowbank. The driver
bustled over to him, ignoring horse and sleigh,
and helped him to his feet, chattering excitedly.
He brushed Burns off so solicitously, and showed
such anxiety in his questioning mutter, that
Burns shrugged his shoulders and laughed. The
old man, finding him unhurt and evidently with
no intention of blaming him, crossed himself and
said fervently, "Slavo Bog!* Slavo Bog!"
It was nearly six o'clock, and quite dark, when
they saw the lights of Shegovari, the largest village between Shenkursk and Bereznik. The
sleighs of the big convoy from the north, which
had pulled in a few minutes earlier, filled the
roadway, and in the noise and confusion of the
Shenkursk convoy's pulling up alongside, Burns
*rhank God!"




134


S3NOWT TRENCHRI09


found the billet of Lieutenant McNair, who commanded the garrison of a platoon from one of the
Dvina River companies. McNair jubilantly made
him welcome.
As they were sitting in McNair's room, exchanging news and rumors, McNair's interpreter
came into the room.
"Sir," he said, "a troika just pulled up to the
Rest Billet, and a woman who calls herself 'Commander Botchkarova' went in. A little guy in a
trick uniform rode with her, and two mounted
men came behind. The little one is outside here
now and wants to speak to the Lieutenant."
"All right. Bring him in."
He went to the door and returned, followed by
a nervous, overdressed man about five feet tall,
whose narrow face sprouted a magnificent spreading black moustache, over rather full, pouting,
babyish lips. Even his jerky salute failed to disturb his erectness. The interpreter translated
what he said.
"Kommandeer Botchkarova presents her compliments, and begs the honor of the American
officers' company at tea."
McNair turned to Burns.
"Who in hell do you suppose it could be? I
don't know any female officers with this expedition."




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS          135
"It must be that Battalion of Death woman.
She's supposed to have been doing her stuff in
Archangel."
"Shall we look her over?"
"How the hell can you get out of it?"
"I thought I'd line up one of the local gals for
you tonight.."
"Not for me, Mac!... Besides, you can't be
rude to the lady general; you've got to do the
honors for Shegovari, as long as you're in charge
of the place.... We may see something funny."
"Tell him," McNair directed the interpreter,
"to present my compliments to the lady and say
we'll be delighted."
Twenty minutes later, taking with them a
present of some sugar and jam, they went to
Botchkarova's room. The room was too small for
her amplitude or her dignity, and too low. In
the far corner, opposite the door, she sat on a
bench against the wall. She made no gesture to
arise or to meet them; her demeanor was that of
one giving an audience. She motioned them at
once to be seated on the benches along the wall
at a right angle to her, and directed her men to
pull up the big table. McNair squeezed between
the table and the bench and took a seat at the
end close beside his hostess, Burns next to him.
The interpreter remained standing.
D:9.:




136


SNOW TRENCHES


The big woman, grotesque in her military
trappings, beamed at her guests as McNair laid
his offering of sugar and jam on the table beside
the samovar. The closely cropped cut of her hair
emphasized the loose fatness of her face; her
jowls bulged over the tight collar of her tunic.
Her bemedalled uniform confined within its
straining limits the bulging hummocks of her
breasts. She addressed them in booming gutturals:
"Have you heard of me?"
"Tell her," McNair said, "of course we have.
Who hasn't heard of her famous battalion? They
know of it even in America."
"Have they any women's battalions in America?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Ask her about the bottles of poison they're
supposed to carry in their knapsacks," Burns
whispered to McNair.
"Don't be a damn fool!" McNair turned to the
interpreter instead. "Ask her," he said, "how she
won that big medal with the gold ribbon."
"I'll tell youl" she said.
She took a huge bite of jam-smeared bread, a
gulp of tea, and arose to give greater freedom to
her narration.
"It was in the battle of Novo-Georgievsk," she




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS


137


began oratorically. Banging on the table, beating
her breast, aiming with an imaginary rifle, slashing with an unseen sabre, she pictured the desperate engagement. The deed of valor by which
she won the medal was reinacted before them.
Then abruptly she culminated the recital by
lifting up the corner of her tunic and fumbling
to pull aside some undergarment to show them
the scar of the wound in her side which she had
received on this historic occasion.
"Seven medals," muttered Burns. "That means
seven wounds, I suppose."
"Don't worry! I'm not going to ask her about
any more. We don't want the damn woman to
undress for us."
"Well, hurry up and drink your tea, anyway.
Maybe we can get away."
At this moment, McNair, with a somewhat
sheepish expression, hunched over toward Burns.
Then he crowded closer toward him.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Burns. "Has
she got cooties?"
"I don't know about that. But the old girl
insists on flirting with me under the table....
She's been rubbing her leg up and down against
mine for the past five minutes."
Burns exploded with laughter, nearly upsetting the lamp on the table; the interpreter, too,




138


SNOW TRENCHES


haw-hawed. The woman, sensing something uncomplimentary to her in their amusement, demanded to know the cause of it. But Burns was
equal to the occasion.
"We were just saying," he explained, "how
jealous the Captain will be when he learns whom
we have had the honor of visiting."
"Let's get out of here," said McNair.
"That'll be Jake with me. You start it."
"Gee, Pete," McNair said when they were outside, "this female hippopotamus may be going to
Ust Vaga, too. That'd be a break for you. Shall
I ask her?"
"Not unless you want me to grab a sleigh and
check out right now."
Burns hurried on to Ust Vaga the next morning, without waiting for the slow-moving convoy,
and passed quickly through Shegovari on his
return to Shenkursk, stopping only for lunch.
4
Shenkursk, when Burns returned to it after
completing his mission in Ust Vaga, seemed to
him changed in spirit and personality. There was
a tenseness about it and a sense of imminent




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS


139
_ W_  -WI


____


danger that had not been apparent before. The
pendulum had begun to swing from hope to uncertainty. Shenkursk had become conscious of
the fact that it was the target for the big Bolo
offensive rather than the starting point for an
Allied push. Volunteer companies of Shenkursk
civilians had been issued rifles and were drilling
in the streets. Lieutenant Burns learned, when
he went to headquarters to make his report, that
two other large Bolshevik armies were converging on Shenkursk: one from Nyandoma, a town
on the Archangel-Vologda railroad, about fifty
miles west; the other from their base on the
Dvina, about the same distance east. Advance
parties of this second force had already appeared
in Kodima.
At Ust Padenga, the Bolos contented themselves with harassing the village with patrol sniping and long distance rifle and machine gun fire,
while the defenders went quietly about their
work of strengthening their positions, aligning
their guns, and rehearsing their lines for the big
show.
Burns learned at the hospital that Nadya was
free for the evening, so he sought her at the big,
dark Cossack house. A tall sentry admitted him
into a small vestibule where another soldier,
wearing side-arms, conducted him into a large
/:




140


SNOW TRENCHES


living-room which extended the full width of the
house. Several Cossacks, evidently orderlies, sat
on a bench beside the door. An enormous brasstrimmed lamp, hanging from brass chains in the
middle of the ceiling, had not been lit, but candles burned on a long, narrow table at the far
end of the room. Opposite each end of this table,
doors opened into other rooms. From the one on
the right, Colonel Eristoff entered, in time to
meet Lieutenant Burns in front of the table.
He wore a long, snug-waisted, full-skirted Cossack tunic of dark blue, with ornamental cartridge rows on each breast and a double row of
campaign ribbons above the one on the left. The
trim of his uniform was cardinal red, as was the
silk shirt that showed in the "V" of his throat,
and his high leather boots. Burns noticed now
that his high, bony skull was almost completely
bald, with hardly any of even the fringing hairs
that are last to go. His ears appeared unnaturally
large as a consequence. He bowed and smiled,
seizing Burns' hand in a quick, wiry grip. His
smile showed large, even, white teeth; he talked
without moving his chin, gripping a thin, gold
cigarette holder in the side of his mouth.
"Ahl I am glad you have come to see us, Lieutenant. You are the first of the American officers
to come as a guest. Please sit down."




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS           141
He clapped his hands and gave an imperious
order to a fat little man who appeared in the
doorway on the left.
"Thank you, sir," said Burns, sitting down.
If their drill is as snappy as that, thought
Burns, as the little fat man reappeared bearing a
tray full of bottles and glasses, they are sure a
snappy outfit.
Cigarettes were exchanged and lighted; then
the Colonel poured out two large tumblers full
of British issue rum. He handed one to Burns.
"To our friendship!" he proposed, and emptied
his glass in a single swift gesture. Burns sipped
his.
"Let us have some music," suggested the Colonel. He called to an orderly.
In the interval of waiting, he turned to Lieutenant Burns again.
"Your drink!" he shouted, pointing to Burns'
nearly full glass. "What is the matter?...
Here, I will show you how we Cossacks drink!"
Burns could not tell the Colonel why he must
remain sober this evening. He took another
swallow. The Colonel refilled his own glass and
poured its full contents gurgling down his throat.
To Burns' relief, the arrival of the musicians,
who stood in the doorway awaiting the Colonel's
command, interrupted the competition.




142


SNOW TRENCHES
-   -   I r W-% r"  V I  i0


- -— M _ —.W


The four musicians threw off their coats and
appeared in bright-colored red, blue, green, and
orange shirts, and full, baggy velvet trousers
tucked into soft-toed leather boots. Each had a
triangular-shaped balalaika,* of different size and
tone. Seated on the floor at one side of the room,
they struck up a quick, hot-blooded tune. At the
repetition of a rousing chord, the bearded man
playing the largest instrument took up the song
in a rich, heavy voice. His eyes snapped and his
shoulders tossed as he savored the full compelling
tones of the familiar melody of his far-off stanitzat
on the Don. The other players joined in the
song,-a fine, stirring chorus.
Excited by the song and a third glass of rum,
Colonel Eristoff finished the song with them.
Grinning, expectant faces appeared at all the
doorways.
"Come in!" the Colonel shouted, beckoning
with his arm; they swarmed into the room, crowding against the walls.
"Play the song of the dzhigitsl"t he commanded.
The Colonel, himself, led a rollicking song describing the daring of Cossack horsemen.
"Everybody sing it! Louder! We have a
guest.
Guitar. tHomestead. tCossacks.




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS
WW   W  -WI      W,


143
w-__ -r,-WI


— ___ —~Fl  ~~.~

The room vibrated to its crashing harmonies.
The Colonel, noticeably tipsy now, had another
Cossack-sized drink. Putting his arm around
Burns' shoulders, he swayed him back and forth,
bellowing into his ear. Burns wondered how
many more drinks it would take to make the
Colonel drunk enough so that he could escape
this impromptu entertainment. He worried
about Nadya. -How could she live in the brawling bedlam of this headquarters? Where could
she be? Perhaps at the Stornoffs', or at some
other friend's. Colonel Eristoff became a despotic
master of ceremonies.
"Where's Zakhar?" he shouted.   "Zakhar!
Dancer"
Zakhar circled the floor in amazing whirling
leaps. His colonel directed the time by banging
on the table. Zakhar faded, panting and redfaced, into a dark, crowded corner; the music
waned, to give an intermission.
"Play the song of the Atamanski Guard RegimentI"
"The sword dance!" someone shouted.
"Now you'll see how Cossacks can dance!" Eristoff yelled at Burns. "To hell with a soldier who
can't fight and drink, dance and make love!"
He turned to the dance, hands on knees, heels
pounding to the music. Another stiff drink of




144         SNOW TRENCHES
-- - --- I
rum pulled his eyes away from the dancer. He
wiped his mouth on his sleeve. The dancer's
flying toe struck a sword-hilt and sent it clattering across the floor. The Colonel gripped Burns'
shoulder and pulled himself heavily to his feet.
"Christ!" he screamed, stumbling into the center of the room to interrupt the dancer. "Is that
how you dance the sword dance? Go get an
apron and dance in the kitchen!"
Cursing the orchestra, he took the dancer's
place, encumbered by the long, heavy skirts of
his tunic; then he tore off the hampering garment
and danced. The orchestra, terrified by their
inability to accommodate their own ideas of
rhythm to his vigorous, badly-balanced steps,
played as though they, not the dancer, were
drunk.
Burns edged around to the door and stepped
into the vestibule. The evening was wasted. He
reflected that two months ago he would have
been the last man to leave such a party. But he
had to go back to his outfit in the morning, and
the yearning in his heart would not let him go
without seeing Nadya. He had promised he
would see her. He thought of sending for herof sending a note. He glanced at the sentry. No!
He would go back to the hospital and leave
word for her there. Perhaps he could spend a




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS           145
----- -1W -WII- --   1   ff -   -w —  w-  -W
little time with her in the morning.... He
went outdoors.
As he reached the crossing of the streets, fifty
yards from the house, a Cossack soldier, hurrying
up, called to him.
"Wait!"
Burns turned around, expecting that Colonel
Eristoff had seen him leave, and had sent the
orderly to insist on his remaining until the party
broke up. Instead, Nadya came out of the house
and approached him. The orderly went back.
"Nadya! Thank the Lord you've comet Where
have you been? I've spent the whole evening at
your house."
"I knew you were there, but I didn't dare to
come in. When my uncle is drunk, it is not safe."
"I understand. How can you stay there? Why
don't you move over to the hospital?"
"There is no room. Besides, I can take care
of myself."
"I wish I could take care of you....
"I'm afraid I'd be a difficult charge. You'd
have your hands full."
"That'd be fine! I'd like to have my arms full,
too."
"Did you have a nice trip to Ust Vaga?"
"No* A dull trip. Listen, dear, where can we
go? I want to talk to you."




146


SNOW TRENCHES


Let's just walk. There's no place to go at this
hour."
"Can't we go back to your room? We can get
in without being seen."
"Oh, no! My room is next to the Colonel's.
He would be sure to hear us and come in."
She took his arm and they strolled slowly up
the street. Ahead of them, the Northern Lights
flared and died, glowed and danced,-an arctic
equivalent to sunset and moonlight. Burns felt
less of strangeness and uncertainty than he had
ever known before in Nadya's company. The
mounting force of his love for her had assumed
proportions beyond his usual restraint. Peculiarly, it had gathered headway without her nearness to encourage it; almost without his consciousness of it. Perhaps Nadya recognized its
existence. But Nadya, the fires of her hot, impulsive, extravagant instincts banked and repressed
by the counterfeit passions of the madmen about
her, had learned caution in her bestowals. She
was strongly attracted to Peter Burns. She
thrilled to the sound of his voice and the touch
of his hand. She knew a loss when he left her.
Intuition told her that he was genuine and
worthy. His frankness and obvious inexperience
confirmed it. Still, the hurt of disillusionment
and the tearing agony of a love which, given in




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS
-......


147




vain, cannot be recalled, were too terrible to risk.
"Haltl"
Absorbed in their confidences, they had followed the road to the edge of town, where a
strongly manned blockhouse and trench system
barred the way.
"Who is there?"
Thirty yards ahead, in the middle of the road,
the sentry stood.
"It's Lieutenant Burns, sentry, and a friend.
We're turning back into town."
"Very good, sir."
"Your soldiers are very thorough in their
guard duty," Nadya observed. "Yesterday, one of
our Cossacks failed to halt when he was challenged, and the sentry ran his bayonet through
his side just below the ribs. He is in the hospital
now, and may die as the result of it."
"Good Lord! That's going pretty far! What
was done about it?"
"I believe the man was drunk. They have
hushed it up."
During their walk back to Nadya's house their
conversation lagged. To Peter, the way was distressingly short. His brain grappled with an
unusual and perplexing problem. He had determined to tell Nadya what was in his heart before
he said good-bye, but he did not know how to




148          SNOW TRENCES
approach the subject. He had hoped to see her
privately at the Cossack house; perhaps to sit
beside her with a lamp burning low in a distant
corner of the room. Nadya had been charmingly
intimate with him this evening, but he imagined
that she had guided their conversation away from
any approach to tenderness or affection. Peter
lacked the subtlety or finesse to create in her the
mood which would invite his avowals. Now, as
they neared the house, the imminence of his
leaving made him anxious and uncomfortable.
He felt his opportunity slipping away. It might
be a month before he would be in Shenkursk
again. She might be gone when he returned. His
own prospects for returning were just as vague;
his next patrol might end in ambush or capture.
They stopped in front of the house.
"Good night," Nadya said, taking her hand
from his arm and turning to face him. "I'm so
glad you came to see me."
"Can't we go inside for just a few minutes?
We can be very quiet."
She shook her head. "Some other time."
Peter stood there unsteadily, feeling that he
had only to take her in his arms to break down
the reserve that separated them. But his lack of
assurance, and her baffling coolness kept him
irresolute and fearful of losing everything..




COSSACKS AND CONVOYS


149


"Let's go over to the hospital, then. We can
sit on one of the benches in the upstairs corridor."
"I'd like to, Peter, but it's too late. Really."
"What difference does it make what time it is?
I have to go to Ust Padenga tomorrow, and it
may be a long time before I can see you again."
"I wish you didn't have to go."
"But you want me to go now..
"I don't really want you to go, Peter. But
what can we do? It is past midnight. We can't
possibly go in here, and it is too late to go any
place else."
"Won't you help me even a little? Why won't
you?... You must know what I want to say
to you!"
"I think I do know what you want to tell me,"
Nadya said softly.
"Then that's why you won't go with me...
Isn't it?"
"I mustn't listen tonight, dear... Perhaps,
when you come back..."
"It's always 'when I come back.' I'm always
leaving, always hoping, then leaving again."
"Do you think it is pleasanter for me?"
"Oh, I don't know. These hit-or-miss visits,
snatched in a crowd, or out on the street, are
maddening. If I could only see you alonel"




150


SNOW TRENCHES


"You can, Peter. We'll be together again. But,
just think, I've only seen you four or five times.... Please don't ask me to say things I might
regret for a long time. I'm not being coquettish;
but soldiers come and go in these mad times.
They say things and then forget.."
"That's why I want to talk to you so badly. If
I could tell you...
"I don't want you to tell me yet, dear. You'll
be back again soon, and I'll still be here."
"When I get back, then, can't we go somewhere together? Some place where we can be
alone?"
"Yes, Peter. I promise."




~~~~~~~-W,- -W,- -W    -W-   -W,- - - --  0- 0- -o --- —-------— w
IX
Patrols.
ACK AGAIN WITH HIS COMPANY AT UST
Padenga, Peter Burns found the village in
a state of siege, the nerves of the men wearing
thin from incessant alertness and overwork on
guard and fortification construction. In the days
following their first attack on Nijni Gora the
Reds had concentrated many new battalions in
front of the place, and had moved up ten or a
dozen field guns. No further attacks had been
launched, but their patrols were devilishly active.
At unexpected times during the day and night
they pushed through the forest to some concealed
spot near the blockhouses, or to where they could
shoot down the road, and sniped the billets or
any sign of activity.
The billet which held most of the company
was an unusually large log building, formerly
the residence of the Imperial Forester. It stood
like a target on a hump of ground at the extreme
north end of the village, but they were obliged
to use it in spite of its exposed position. Burns
entered the big front room.




152         SNOW TRENCHES
The men had just finished their evening mess
and were enjoying a little relaxation before the
change of the guard. Private Woodson, a thin,
quiet, studious chap, lay in his bunk, reading a
letter by the light of a candle stuck on the wall
at his head. Most of the other men crowded
around a crap game in the middle of the floor.
They were rolling the dice on a blanket spread
for the purpose. A lamp, perched on a box at
one side, furnished the light, which was dim
enough to cause occasional argument as to the
number of spots on the top side of the bones.
Burns became an interested spectator.
"Ya see, the hand is quicker than the eye,"
remarked Coon Dog Evans, who had the dice.
"She sevens! C'mon, you gamblers, git yore
change out whar the little dice kin see 'em..
Ha! Hot dice! She repeats..
"Repeats, Hell! Gimme them dices!" Shorty
Boyd shook the little cubes until they clicked
like a typewriter. "What're you guys goin' to
contribute?"
"Shoot the ten!"
"Roubles, pounds, or bucks?"
"Roubles, kid; just roubles."
"Aw, right, dices, it's Russki money, but I'm
askin' ya in American.... Gimme seven!..
Hal"




PATROLS


153


Burns moved around behind Shorty Boyd.
"Eight's my point. Dices, ya gotta eight. The
Lieutenant's got his eye on you.... Hal"
"'Nother nine! Come on, eighter-from-Decatur..... Hal"
Sergeant Craig began to get impatient.
"C'mon, half-pint. Roll them bones; don't talk
to 'em. Shoot the eight, or let some guy shoot
that know's how."
"Like you, eh? To hell with him, dices. Take
your time... only eight for me, babies, eight
for me..."
Bianci came in from the rear with his guitar,
sat on the edge of Woodson's bunk and began
to play it softly.
Emede squawked in a high-pitched falsetto, "Is
my father over there?"
Sergeant Craig's deep bass voice answered him.
"Get away from them swingin' doors, little gal."
"Gee, what I'd give for a nice red apple," continued Emede shrilly.
"Pipe down, fer Christ's sake."
-- - 2
The next morning the Bolo shelling started at
daybreak. The window of the room in which the




154


SNOW TRENCHES


officers slept faced south, toward the hidden guns.
Captain Ordway, Lieutenant Burns, and Captain
Knight, British Staff Captain, were shaving and
dressing. Captain Knight set his small trench
mirror on a bench and knelt in front of it to find
a good light by which to brush his hair. The
distant rumble of the enemy guns reached them
with increasing frequency. Most of the shells
were finding harmless targets in the trees back of
this billet, but the Bolo gunners were correcting
their aim. The vulnerability of the billet gave
the men a certain sense of uneasiness; their dependence being solely on the inaccuracy of the
firing. Captain Knight turned to Captain Ordway, his brush poised over his head.
"Well, anyway," he said, "if I have to get hit,
I'm in a good pious position."
Immediately the heavy voice of the guns answered him. He sprang nervously to his feet
and turned around.
"Don't take me seriously" he exclaimed, half
in earnest.
Burns laughed. "I'm not superstitious, either,"
he said.
They studied the effect of the shelling. The
incompetence of the Bolo gunners showed in
other ways than inaccuracy. The shrapnel fuses
were badly set; some exploded harmlessly high in




PATROLS


155


the air, some delayed to burst on concussion,
making a smudgy pit in the broad, smooth,
gleaming levels of snow.
"With all those guns," the Englishman observed, "they ought to blow this village off the
map in two hours. We're lucky they're not
Boche artillerymen."
"There ain't a gunner in their whole outfit
that could hit an elephant with a banjo," said
Captain Ordway. "An' their infantry's damn
near as bad."
"Yes, but when they sling so much stuff over,
some of it's likely to make trouble."
"Let's go, Pete. We can grab some chow on
the way."
"Go ahead, Skipper. I'll catch you. I want to
see Sergeant Craig for a minute."
At a point back of the big billet, where it covered most of the right flank and rear of the village, where the forest swung in close and a trail
made it a probable center of enemy attack, a
commanding strong-point had been built. Rifle
trenches, with log and sandbag head-covers completely encircled a low-built blockhouse and dugout large enough to shelter twenty-five men.
Two Colt machine guns poked their slim black
muzzles through embrasures in the blockhouse.
Firing ledges for three Lewis guns were sited in




156


SNOW TRENCHES


angles of the trench where they had a field of
fire in every direction. Two rows of barbed wire
knife-rests surrounded the emplacement at hand
grenade range. A communicating trench led
back to the corner of the billet. The whole
strong-point had been constructed earlier in the
fall with a view to being almost invisible at a
short distance, and now that the heavy snows
had drifted over, it was marvelously camouflaged.
Other blockhouses of similar strength and construction loomed at every vulnerable spot in the
Ust Padenga defensive system.
Burns met the Captain at the entrance to the
communicating trench and they proceeded together to the blockhouse.
"Believe me, brother," the Captain remarked,
"I'm glad we did a real job on these trenches
before it froze up. We'd have a hell of a time
digging any now."
"I'll say."
They regarded with satisfaction the strongly
revetted trench walls and the well built log
blockhouse capable of withstanding any shelling,
except perhaps a direct hit by high explosives.
Sentries were alert at each end of the trench,
watching the front. The sergeant in charge was
talking to one of the machine gunners about the
relative efficiency of Colt and Vickers guns.




PATROLS


157


Three or four men were policing up a section of
trench floor. As they came to the dugout entrance, the sound of Bolo guns from a new direction made them stop. Burns laid his hand on the
Captain's arm. Not from the south this time, as
the previous shelling had been, but from the
east, across the river, much nearer. Two guns.
No, four!... No, six! In couples the shells
arrived, making a threatening pattern around
their position. The boom of the guns and the
crack of the shells came again quickly. The continued drumming of the guns to the south
showed that these were additions to the Red batteries, rather than the old guns in new positions.
The two officers could hardly overlook the significance of this.
The Reds were massing a force on this front
which should speedily chase the impudent handful of Allied invaders into the White Sea. They
now faced Ust Padenga with at least five thousand troops and fifteen field guns, apparently
plentifully supplied with ammunition. Captain
Ordway's garrison consisted of one company of
United States Infantry, a small detachment of
engineers and hospital men, and two British
eighteen-pounders, manned by Russians. The
defenders of Ust Padenga knew that the Bolos
were preparing for another attack, to wipe out




158


SNOW TRENCHES
I-~^ _~-V_ ~_W__IpW<_p_ ~r  Br


~ l,,-'.-,-.-. -


this tiny force and bring them to the barriers
of Shenkursk.
Methodically, they continued shooting at the
blockhouse and the billet; the shells came closer
and closer. Burns and Ordway saw the roof
blown off a small shed not more than fifty yards
away.
"Those birds must have a line on this blockhouse," the Captain said. "That was no accident."
"They're better gunners than their buddies
down below."
"They must have an observation post out in
front here.. They couldn't see it plainly enough
from across the river to come this close."
"We'd better send a patrol out there as soon
as it gets dark. Sooner or later they'll hit something, if they're directing their fire from any spot
such as that."
"We can't wait till it gets dark." Captain Ordway called to Sergeant Craig: "Send a corporal
and two men to reconnoitre along that trail.
Tell them to look for telephone wire and any
signs of recent Bolo patrol activity. Have your
Lewis gunners stand by to cover them in case
they get chased back in."
The corporal led his two men out through a
slit in the wire between two posts. They flung




PATROLS


159


themselves into the snow at the burst of a nearby
shell; then passed out of sight among the trees.
The shelling continued. Burns and the Captain
studied the trees where the patrol has disappeared. With their binoculars they could see
back into the shadowy depths of the forest for
about a hundred yards, but there was no trace
of enemy activity. Scarcely five minutes after the
patrol had vanished, the watchers in the blockhouse heard the crack of a rifle at a distance of
not over three or four hundred yards. Answering
shots followed, coming from around to the right.
"Just what I thought," said Ordway. "Keep
that trail covered!"
The little patrol, having seen what it was sent
out for, hurried back toward the blockhouse,
without further shooting. The Reds rashly followed them to the edge of the trees. The corporal and his two men crouched behind concealing bushes, waiting for a chance to dash across
the open space to their trenches. Five Bolos came
into view, thrashing around in the deep snow,
looking for the easily frightened patrol which had
fled on sight of them. The Lewis gunners pulled
back their cocking-levers, squinted over their
sights. The Bolos all lurched into sight at once,
heading toward the entrance to the trail. One of
them evidently called a word of caution against




160          SNOW   TRENCHES
exposing themselves to the blockhouse, but it
was too late.... The Lewis gunners had practiced firing at that spot too often to miss. The first
burst dropped three of them. The fourth fell as
he started to run. The fifth flopped into the rut
of the path and started crawling. A drift hid him
from the guns. He was safe... No!... The
corporal stood up, waved his arms at the blockhouse, and ran into the woods towards the path.
They heard his rifle; he fired once; then he reappeared on the trail, called to his two men, and
they ran across to the wire and slid into the
trench.
"Short, but sweet," grinned the corporal.
"Boy, that was a break!"
"Where the hell were thev?" demanded Ordway.
"You know that little hay clearing 'bout a
quarter of a mile in?..."
"Yes!"
"Well, we got to the edge of that clearing
without seein' a damn thing. We looked all over
the place an' couldn't see nothin', so we started
across. Just as we was about to go into the woods
on the other side, Jack, here, poked me an'
pointed over to the right. I looked an', Jeez, I
seen at least a squad of these birds mopin' around
just inside the trees. They hadn't seen us yet,




PATROLS


Ifl


but Tony, the damn fool, takes a pot at 'em..
Then we ran like hell...."
"Didn't they fire at you? We heard some other
shots."
"Sure! Four or five times. But, hell, you know
how they shoot... an' Captain, we was runnin'-don't think we wasn't!"
"Did you see any telephone equipment?"
"No, sir, but these guys were campin' there;
if they'd been a patrol, they'd have been millin'
around."
"Any signs of traffic on the trail?" Any new
tracks?"
"Couldn't tell. Our own patrols have got it
pretty much worn down since the last snow."
"What happened to that Bolo that got away?"
"Got away? Captain, did you think he got
away?"
"Thanks, Corporal. Damn nice work!"
Captain Ordway turned to Burns.
"We'll have to keep them out of that part of
the woods, Pete. It's too close."
The new Bolo battery across the river blazed
away prodigally. The Captain ordered all the
men except the lookouts to take shelter in the
dugout.
"We'll send a combat patrol out there before
daylight tomorrow," Ordway resumed. "Maybe




162          SNOW TRENCHES
we can ambush their observation detail." He
paused a moment. "I think it's your turn, Pete.
Arrange it, will you?... I'd take about three
squads and a Lewis gun. The Corporal can go
along and show you where he ran into 'em
today."
"All right, Skipper, I'll take a shot at it."
-- 3 ---
Lieutenant Burns assembled his patrol in the
back room of the big billet; the squads that slept
there were on duty in the blockhouses. He had
instructed the men to leave behind all unnecessary equipment. They expected to be back in
their quarters within four or five hours and
would not need gas masks, packs, or even canteens and bayonets. They had discarded their
clumsy sheepskin greatcoats and wore thick
leather jerkins over their uniform coats. The
sergeant lined them up for the lieutenant's final
inspection.
Burns looked with pride at the tall, husky,
competent detail. He went from man to man, inspecting rifles, asking questions. Private Cook,
one of the best marksmen in the regiment, smoth



PATROLS               163
ered a cough with his mittened fist. Burns stood
in front of him, looking up into his lean, red
face; Cook was nearly a head taller than Burns.
"Can't you choke off that cough, Cook?"
"I'll try, sir."
"Fall out, and go back to your bunk. We can't
take any chances."
"I can handle it, sir. - Don't worry about me."
"All right. Change places with Bianci." He
spoke to the sergeant. "Have them put on their
patrol suits, and let's go."
The sergeant handed each man a white canvas
smock, equipped with a hood, which they tied
with a draw-string at the throat and wrists, and
which completely hid their dark uniforms. Then
the ghostly party filed out into the night.
They followed Burns and the sergeant, who
had also donned white smocks, and at the blockhouse halted again for final instructions.
The corporal who had headed the morning
patrol, and three men, led off in single file
through the barbed wire. Burns led the main
party, with the Lewis gunners right behind him,
and the rest of the patrol following in a thin,
silent column. The sergeant brought up >the
rear.
It was so dark they could not see beyond a
dozen yards; the men in their white smocks could




164


SNOW TRENCHES


hardly be distinguished by the men in the blockhouse at the distance of the barbed wire. They
could not hear them, either.
Burns felt strangely and unaccountably listless
in starting this patrol, and a little uneasy. Ordinarily, he would be keyed up as though in a
game. A patrol was a contest of wits; the risk
added zest to it,-like playing any game for high
stakes. But Burns was not craving any unusual
risk on this cold, dark, lonely morning. A combat patrol has orders to pick a fight.... Burns
felt like avoiding a fight. Back in a dominating
corner of his mind a disturbing passion to be
again with Nadya, to really possess her, was growing. He had difficulty in centering all his faculties on the conduct of the patrol. He fought with
himself to regain his old alertness.
The cold wind swirled into the pocket formed
by his white hood, and benumbed his lean cheeks
to the bone. It made his feet and hands sting,
and chilled through smock, jerkin and uniform.
The utter stillness of the waning night, further
muffled by his fur earlaps and the hood of his
smock, stirred his mind to eery imaginings. The
darkness rolled in against his eyeballs in deceptive vibrations. He shifted his belt and pistolholster around, so that it hung free in the opening in the front of his kimono-like smock.




PATROLS               165
Suddenly, at the entrance to the forest, he
-stumbled to his knees against an obstruction like
a fallen log. He turned his head to caution the
man behind him, but the man had already
stepped up and seized one end of it.
"Grab the other end, Lieutenant," he whispered. "It's a stiff... the one that 'got away.,
"Don't bother. Let it lie. We haven't time."
Ahead of them, the point had passed out of
sight; Burns quickened his pace to catch up. At
the near edge of the hay clearing, the corporal
had halted to wait for them. Burns passed the
word back for the sergeant to come up.
"Take a couple of men, Sergeant," he instructed, "and circle clear around this open space
to where it meets the trail on the other side. Try
and pick up the telephone wire running to their
observation post." The corporal pointed out the
spot where he had seen the Bolos that morning.
"We'll wait here until you signal from the other
side; then you will act as point the rest of the
way.
The three men stepped off the trail and floundered off through the deep unbroken snow. The
rest of the patrol squatted shivering there, wishing they might keep on the move; sitting quiet
gave the cold a chance to bore, in. Burns set his
mind on the situation facing them. The ser



166


SNO(TW TIRENCHES


geant's little party was out of sight and sound.
Back of their leader on the trail, twenty-two
rifles, their butts grounded on the snow, thrust
their black muzzles upward toward the black sky,
-the shrouded, huddled figures of the men holding them shading dimly into the background of
night-gray snow and snow-covered pine boughs.
"Jeez, I'd like a cigarette," whispered Cook.
"I'd like a snort of rum," said Williams.
"I'd like to be home," added Shorty Boyd.
"I'd like you guys to shut up," grunted the
corporal.
The sergeant sent one of his men back to report to Burns that they had reconnoitered the
fringe of the clearing without finding anything
to delay the patrol any longer. Burns sent him
back with orders for the point to proceed at once.
"Follow me," he whispered to the man behind
him. "Pass the word along."
Noiselessly they started forward again. Burns
examined every yard of the trail as they progressed, so as not to overlook the most favorable
spot to set his trap. The closer to the blockhouse
it could be set, the better. They had already
gone deeper into the forest than he had planned,
but it was most important that they select a position that would give them every defensive advantage in addition to the effect of surprise.




PATROLS                167
The trail made an S-turn ascending a gradual
rise in the ground, narrowing until a man standing in the center of it could almost touch the
trees on either side, by stretching out his arms.
From the crest of this low rise Burns saw that
the trail descended more abruptly, without a
curve or bend, for some little distance. He passed
the word back to halt, and ran ahead alone to
overtake the point.
"I think we'll stop here, Sergeant, at the top
of this knoll. You and I had better see what it's
like up ahead a little ways, but I have halted the
rest of the patrol."
They went on to the next turning; then returned to where the men were waiting.
With elaborate care, Burns and the sergeant
disposed their little force so that each man was
concealed from the front, yet had a clear field of
fire along every foot of the straight stretch of the
path ahead. The Lewis gunners fixed the tripod
of their gun over a low branch of a small pine
tree that held its muzzle just about the level of
the snow, and enabled them to point it unseen
toward the spot from which any Bolo party advancing along this trail must emerge. The riflemen kicked away the snow behind other concealing trees and bushes and arranged rifle-rests to
steadytheir aim, and to keep their weapons from
<:~:.       f, ': *1-.,




168         SNOW TRENCHES
getting snow-clogged. Satisfied with his arrangements, Burns went forward along the path for
fifty or a hundred yards, then slowly retraced
his steps, scanning their position intently for any
evidence that might betray them to the Reds.
He felt certain that the tracks made by the sergeant and himself would not be noticed; no snow
had fallen since the Bolo patrol had passed over
it the previous morning.
There was nothing now to do but wait...
The men were becoming painfully chilled.
The natural tension and nervousness caused by
any night patrol increased with inaction. Most
of the men lacked the mental resourcefulness to
speed the dragging minutes by entertaining
thoughts. The tendency of their minds was to
magnify the danger they were facing... To
Burns' active, vivid mind there was no monotony
in their waiting, though there was impatience,
anxiety, dread, and a healthy desire to be elsewhere. His thoughts kept drifting away, in spite
of his concentration on the coming skirmish. His
heart thumped in a cadence which excitement,
or even fear, could hardly explain. It weakened
him. He did not consciously analyze it-outwardly, he was searching the path for a sign of
the expected patrol-but the tugging force of his
longing for Nadya transformed him into a patrol




-  PATROLS             169
leader who counts the cost of the risk to himself.
Wretchedly cold, he freed his hand from its
heavy mitten and picked the tiny gathering drops
of ice from his eyelashes. Imperceptibly, as slowly
as an icicle forms, his vision lengthened into the
hazy dimness of the trail. Daylight was not far
away.
"I'm goin' to stretch, no matter who sees me,"
muttered Evans.
"Me, tool This damn cold has got me crucified."
Burns took the hint. He stood up. "Stretch
yourselves, men, if you want to. It won't be long
now."
They stamped their tortured feet, and beat
their sides with their arms.
"You'd better rub some snow on your nose,
Corporal," Burns advised. "It's as white as your
smock."
They settled again into their fox-holes in the
snow. Daylight had crept further along the trail.
The men could almost make out its distant turning..
Cook whispered hoarsely, "Here they come!"
-and the cold and discomfort ceased to matter.
Straining eyes sought to verify his warning. The
trail was empty as before.
"For Lord's sake, don't pull that againl!"




170          SNOW TRENCHES
snapped Williams. "I'm jumpy enough as it is."
The lagging minute-hand of Burns' watch
seemed frozen to the dial... It was now broad
daylight.
"Maybe they're not coming," suggested the
corporal.
"That'll be 0. K. with me, kid," offered Williams.
"Watch it, men!" Burns called. "Remember,
you're not to fire till I signal."
A sleigh, drawn by a black horse, its driver
walking beside it, came into sight as suddenly as
though they had been dropped from the tall
tree that marked the end of the trail. They approached at a walking pace. A second sleigh followed it; then others, until the hidden watchers
counted seven. They could not make out what
the sleighs were loaded with, but they noticed
it was heavy enough to force the drivers to walk.
Burns wondered at the strange convoy... This
could not be a reconnaissance patrol or an artillery observation detail-unless they were laying
wire.
A mounted man rode onto the trail and galloped through the deep snow beside the sleighs
to a place at the head of the convoy. Burns sent
a final glance of inspection at the white-wrapped
figures of his men. They were ready. When he




PATROLS               171
NUO-. -            -  1
looked again to the front, he saw a thin column
of gray infantry filing onto the path behind the
sleighs. A surge of apprehension blinded him for
a moment as he remembered Nijni Gora. He
determined to withdraw his little detachment
after the first sharp fury of their attack, rather
than risk them in any prolonged engagement
with such a large force.
The horseman at the head of the approaching
column was close enough now for them to see
him plainly. They judged from his binoculars
and dispatch case, from his smart beaver coat
and the elegance of his horse's equipment, that
he was a commissar of importance. Far down the
path, the gray-clad infantrymen continued in unbroken files... Burns' Lewis gun team looked
anxiously to him for the signal to fire. The sergeant nervously shifted his gaze from Burns to
the now dangerously close enemy and back again.
Every rifle was cocked and aimed...
"Get the leader," Burns whispered to Cook,
one of the best shots in the regiment. He nodded
to the Lewis gunners.
The startling crack of Cook's rifle and the first
burst from the automatic came almost together.
The other rifles opened rapid-fire. Burns studied
the effect.
The commissar on the horse caught it in the




172


2SNOW TRENCHES


chest. He pitched forward against his horse's
neck. The horse wheeled and dashed to the rear,
throwing the sleighs into mad confusion. The
rider, dislodged by this frantic bucking, plunged
headlong, his arms dangling, but the right stirrup caught his foot and dragged it. The crazed
horse kicked and sidestepped to throw the body
off, and became badly entangled in the melee
behind. Finally it broke away and disappeared
among the trees.
Two of the sleigh horses were down and
struggling, but the Americans speedily learned
what the sleighs carried. The Bolos, after the
first panic, gamely made a stand. They whipped
the covers off the heavy Maxim machine guns
that rode on each sleigh, and set them up in the
road. A torrent of bullets snapped into the
bushes that hid Burns and his men. The infantry had melted off the road and, reorganized and
reassured, formed a skirmish line and pressed
forward. In support and encouragement, at that
moment, the Red artillery below Ust Padenga
sent its first volley crashing into the village.
Burns knew from their shooting that the Bolos
had not located their hiding-place, while the firing of his patrol had littered the trail with killed
and wounded horses and men. Repeatedly they
drove the gunners away from their Maxim guns.
X




PATROLS


173


But Burns now realized from the clatter back in
the woods, and from the size of the force, that
he had intercepted, not a patrol, but the van of
a serious attack. His duty was to retire as quickly
as possible.
By signal and command, he started the withdrawal they had rehearsed. First, the Lewis gun
team sneaked back until they were below the
crest of the knoll; then they ran back to the first
turning of the trail and set up their gun again
to cover the path. One by one, the riflemen followed them. The Bolos continued firing at the
hilltop. The gun team moved back to the next
bend in the trail; the riflemen fell back to this
new position. The Bolo firing tapered off. They
had noticed that the Americans had stopped.
"We can get in about one more shift before
they catch up," Burns told the sergeant.
They figured that the check they had given the
Reds would protect them from a dangerously
close pursuit, but Burns remembered the two
exposed stretches of open grpund-the clearing;
and the narrow strip in front of the blockhouse
-and worried about getting his men back across
them without loss.
"Start out in patrol formation, Sergeant. I'll
take the rear, with these three men and the Lewis
gun. When you come to the clearing, double



174


SNOW TRENCHES


time across, and wait for us on the opposite side.
Make it snappyl... Lord! Listen to the artilleryl"
The men needed no urging to move out at a
trot. The trees, were a-rustle with danger. The
frowning sky suggested tragedy. The louder,
faster, heavier banging of the Bolo shelling made
their billets and blockhouses in Ust Padenga
seem a precarious haven. Still, to the hurrying
patrol, cold and wretched, headed for home,
they meant warmth and safety. Back of them
on the path traveled the noises of the Red pack
on their heels. Louder and louder, closer and
closer... The clearing opened before them.
A mounted patrol galloped around the bend
just behind them. Catching sight of Burns and
his men, they pulled up their horses uncertainly;
their leader shouted, their carbines flashed..
"Quick! Follow me!" Burns called.
He broke off the trail to the right, wading
through the deep snow into the thick trees, his
men crowding after him. On the open trail,
they would not last a minute, but the horsemen
could hardly follow them here. Scarcely had
they reached concealment from the path when
they heard the riders pull up at the edge of the
clearing. Evidently they were undecided as to
whether to dismount and follow the little party




1: 1 A rrlD"T-Q


I MY PC..TTJLbT Q              1 f




along the fresh trail into the woods, or gallop
across the clearing and intercept them on the
other side. Burns heard a shot from the position
where the sergeant awaited him. The shrill, almost human scream of a horse, and a clamor of
Bolo yells showed that they had appeared in
the open.
"You go first!" Burns said to Cook, who had
followed him. "Hurry!"
Letting the others go ahead, Burns kept his
eyes trained to the rear, easily keeping pace with
them in the trail they had broken. He knew that
the rapid pursuit of this cavalry detachment,
which had galloped through the disorganized
Red infantry, meant a determined attack on Ust
Padenga, and that the trifling opposition of a
small patrol, now on the run, would never halt
them for long. Even as he changed his position, the Bolos, with a wild shout, charged into
the clearing to cut down the hidden riflemen.
Burns' heart thrilled to the fast tattoo of his
buddies' guns as they stood their ground..
The Bolos must have had half a squadron to
have dared that charge without knowing the
numbers of their enemy. In a moment they
would be fighting hand to hand. Burns strained
into the deep snow toward the clearing which
they must cross.




176


SNOW TRENCHES


"Bring that Lewis gun!" he shouted. "Bust
this damn thing up!"
Through shielding foliage they saw the cavalry
column recoil back upon itself. Maddened,
bleeding, riderless horses bolted in terror, stumbling, colliding with one another, falling down.
Dead horses blocked the path; wounded men
floundered in the smothering snow drifts. Fresh
riders pranced into the open, picking their way
through the fallen, their faces set and rigid.
The Lewis gun team pivoted the tripod as
Burns aimed and fired the gun. From short
range, on its unprotected flank, he raked the
column from front to rear, and saw the attack
fall apart under the murderous fire from its
spitting muzzle.
"Run, nowl For God's sake, run!"
Panting and weak from their exertion, they
reached the trail again on the other side of the
clearing, where the rest of the patrol was waiting.
"Pull out, Sergeant. Quick! Tell the men to
shed these damn smocks and run like hell."
Less than five hundred yards ahead was the
second clearing they must cross to reach safety.
Strung out along the trail like cross country
runners, the harried patrol sprinted toward it.
The first man came into the open, and kept right




PATROLS


177


-, -W- - -W, `W,  -,W- _~W-   -W,   -,W-L  -W-r _-W-  -W,  VVF,r  T
on going. A cheer rang out from the blockhouse.
Captain Ordway met him as he slid into the
trench and leaned against the trench wall, panting as though his lungs would burst.
"Anybody hurt?" the Captain demanded.
"Not yet," the man gasped. "None of us, I
mean... Plenty of Bolos got hurt. We damn
near froze, but nobody got nicked."
"How many did you run into?"
"Captain, the woods are full of 'em. We seen
a half mile of 'em on the trail, an' God knows
how many were behind them."
He lurched over to the loophole and looked
through. Three other men were in the open,
running with dragging steps toward the blockhouse.
"An' believe me," he added, "they're right on
our tail!"
The Captain phoned the other blockhouses to
stand by. One by one, the men of the patrol
crossed the dangerous open space and jammed
around the red-hot sheet-iron stove in the dugout, until only Lieutenant Burns and the gun
team were unaccounted for. Burdened by the
gun, their pace was slow. Close to the mouth of
the trail, but still out of sight, the startling voice
of the Lewis gun showed their position. It
told as well the nearness of the pursuing Reds.




178          SNOW TRENCHES
"Get readyl" Captain Ordway shouted to the
garrison of the blockhouse. "We'll have to help
them back in. As soon as they start- across, open
fire into the woods with all you've got. Make it
too hot for the Bolos to shoot back until they're
safe."
With heart-breaking slowness, three men
limped into the open. Burns and one man were
supporting a third, who clung to them with his
arms around their shoulders. His left leg dangled uselessly. Burns carried the automatic rifle
like a shotgun in the crook of his left arm. The
faces of all three showed acute distress. Step -by
step they came nearer. Burns glanced jerkily to
the rear. The whole fire of the blockhouse flashed
in concentrated fury to form a barrage of death
behind and around them... They made it.
"Take care of Evans," Burns said first. "He's
hit in the knee... We tackled the advance
guard of a big attack, Skipper. I'm damn sure
we'll have our hands full in a few minutes..




x
Defense of Ust Padenia.
B   URNS WAS WRONG WHEN HE PREDICTED
an immediate assault. The morning wore
on toward noon without the Reds exposing themselves to the defenders of Ust Padenga, except
for the smoke of their bivouac fires deep in the
woods.
The cold, pale sun came out. The infinite
forest rolled away in unbelievable leagues from
the meager clearings that contained Ust Padenga
arid its adjoining settlements. Glaring and
smooth, the thick snow buried clearing and forest, river and village, under its monotonous, unfriendly blanket. It would be difficult to conceive a more dreary, depressing, colorless setting
for a battle scene than this. Small incentive to,
deeds of heroism, this bleak, desolate spot, thousands of miles from family and homeland, or
even from the thrill and inspiration of the romantic, trampled, bloody fields of Northern
France. What price in human lives this primitive, dirty score of shacks?... Still, the passion
and sacrifice of men dying at the call of duty, or




180


SNOW TRENCHES


in defense of their comrades, hallows and borrows a bit of glamor from eternity to immortalize the place, drab or distant though it may be.
A sense of brotherhood and unselfishness is
born and rapidly matures under the threat of
common danger.
The violence of the Bolo shelling reached a
peak about noon. Most of the garrison of Ust
Padenga had taken shelter in the blockhouses
and dugouts. The Russian artillerymen in the
village stood ready to fire their two guns, but
had been ordered to hold their fire for an infantry target; they had no observation on the
Bolo gun positions hid away in some obscure
forest clearing. Puffs of black smoke formed
with the flash of each shell burst, then slowly
faded into the smoky haze that hung low between
the houses. An incendiary shell, striking the corner of a small shed, had set it on fire. A moment
later, the billet in front of it broke into flame.
Great, leaping flames swept the sides and roof,
shooting up high and torchlike. Dense black
smoke climbed straight heavenward.
Shortly after noon the artillery stopped
abruptly and remained silent for about an hour.
Then it started again harder than before; and
from two directions the infantry attack developed.




DEFENSE OF UST PADENGA           181
Nijni Gora had sheltered the concentration of
a big infantry force from the south, while the
forest concealed a flanking party of unknown,
but formidable size. With the renewal of the
Bolo shelling the battalions in Nijni Gora attempted to assemble in column formation in the
road. Tricked into carelessness by the silence of
the Ust Padenga's guns, they made a wide, seething, helpless target. These guns had practiced
firing on every stretch of road and forest around
Ust Padenga until they had the range taped to
exactness on every target. With super care they
were now laid to drill a pattern of death along
the crowded roadway.
"Fire!"
"That's Jake!... Faster!... Come on!...
Faster! Faster!... Now drop ten rounds of high
explosives from each gun into the houses...
That'll hold 'em for a little, I guess."
The Bolo guns snarled back in retaliation. A
single rifle cracked from the trees on the right
flank. A sentry who had showed himself slid
back into the trench with a bullet-hole between
the eyes. That sniper could shoot! The movement of Bolo troops advancing toward them,
slipping from tree to tree, brought answering
shots from the marksmen in the trenches. Machine guns came into play along the front and




182


SNOWC)T;   T]RENC TSI1


a heavy rattle of musketry leaped across the
clearing. From Ust Padenga came only the disciplined shooting of men trained to wait for unmistakable targets; from the enemy, the wild,
rackety blazing away of an uncontrolled firing
line. Slowly and clumsily the Bolos were massing for a charge through the apparently undefended strip between the two right flank strong
points. Knowingly the defenders prepared to
receive them. Captain Ordway, from the blockhouse behind the big billet, instructed the artillery to swing one gun to command the opening.
Two machine guns from the reserve were set up
in the village to fire through a window into that
same harmless-looking gap between the strong
points.
The main attacking party, centering in Nijni
Gora, worked up under cover to a line close
against the southern defenses of Ust Padenga and
opened with a thousand rifles on the silent
blockhouses... then the Reds in the woods
on the right flank charged yelling toward the
unprotected space which would admit them
within dagger-reach of the heart of the village
defensive system.
To the shivering, weary spearhead of the Bolo
charge it looked but a short sprint through that
flimsy belt of wire to the warm billets inside,




DEFENSE OF lUST PADENGA


183


and the rations and loot their commissars had
promised, and the sensuous, exciting fruits of victory. But Hell itself was no further distant than
that wire.
The grotesque ballet of wading, plunging,
leaping puppets carrying rifles swept into the
open. A danse macabre, without music; a distortion of rhythm and gesture. Their ballet master must have been a tipsy genius. Such realism!
A stage so crowded that the dancers jostled each
other; a dance floor cluttered deep with snow.
With a breath-taking crash the music started.
From the log-piled orchestra pits rolled the chatter of a dozen snare drums. A bass drum boomed
from farther back... staccato drumming, like
musketry, time and cadence lost, dinned hideously from the grim musicians. Where were the
violins, the brasses, the flutes? From what ghoulish pen the melody?
The movement of the dance changed. With
what artistry the music forced that sinister interpretationl The densely-packed rows of the dancing troupe stopped their forward movement and
flung apart like sparks from a grinding wheel.
Individual figures spun and writhed and slumped
to the floor as though shot... a hysterical dance
tune interpreted by maniacs. Now came the
stage-wide climax-a hundred soloists weaving




184          SNOW TRENCHES
back toward the wings, a hundred troupers on
the stage floor in the rigidity of death. The
dance is over...
What, no encore!
- 2
A thick mist hung over the blockhouses of
Ust Padenga as the reluctant dawn ended a night
of anxious alertness and false alarms. Butch Taylor and Jack Prince, two furred, mittened and
greatcoat-hidden figures, stood on sentry duty in
a bay of the supporting trench of the forward
blockhouse on the right flank.
"Wish it'd snow some more," Prince commented. "Those dead Bolos out there kinda get
my nanny."
"I'm not nuts about looking at 'em either.
Guess we'll see plenty more of 'em though, 'fore
we get out of here."
"Think they'll try it again today?"
"Sure. D'ya know how many there are of 'em?"
"How many?"
"More'n we got in the whole damn expedition.
Kid, we ain't got a prayer."
"No? Well, it'll take more than they had yes



DEFENSE OF UST PADENGA          185
terday. God, I never seen such a slaughter. I can
see 'em yet.. been seein' 'em all night. When
that first shell tore into 'em, Butch, I had to
look away for a second. It was too close... Did
you see how that one shot smeared up the snow?"
"Reminded me of the bust in Kelly pool, or I
guess it was more like bowling... That Russki
gunner sure rolled a pretty spare."
"Listenl... Damn it! they're at it again.
Maybe I'm yellow, but I have to duck every time
I hear 'em coming. Them shells ain't going to
do us a bit of good."
"Are ya wonderin' now whether they're going
to try it again today, or not?"
"That shelling don't prove it; we been gettin'
that for over a week. If they knock down many
more billets, we'll have to pull out anyway."
"Yes, an' there'll be plenty of guys in these
blockhouses that go outta here in a box."
"Jeez, you're cheerful... who started this,
anyway?...
"Did you hear Emede telling about that babe
he had the night before we left Shenkursk?"
"Babe? Behave, Butch! That old hen has got
grandchildren. I seen her. Every jane Emede
gets is a Lillian Russell, to hear him tell it. He's
so used to pickin' 'em old and fat an' ugly he
wouldn't know a chicken if he saw one."




186          SNOW TRENCHES
"That's the hell of it up here-no girls to
spend yer payroll on."
"Boy, I'd like to go to sleep and wake up in
little, old Dee-troit. I got a girl that can make
'em all step... Lives out on John R. Street
with an old maid aunt that's both deef and blind
-least she's wise enough to act that way. I just
call up an' say, 'Kitty, I'll be out quick as I can
change my shirt,' an' when I get there she's all
policed up like I was Edsel Ford. We park ourselves on Kitty's big old sofa, an' I say, 'Come
on over closer, baby,' an'..."
"Yeh, I know! I gotta girl myself. She's got
a shape like the adjutant's horse, but she knows
her apples when it comes to handin' it out...
You've heard how the Norwegians spend their
winters, haven't ya?"
"All right, you guys, you can turn in," growled
the- sergeant, bringing up the next relief.
"Nothin' to report, eh?"
Prince climbed up onto the deep, white path
leading back to the big billet, stretched his arms
and shoulders, and stood for a moment looking
around. The gray mist was rising slowly. The
infinite, monotonous snow that buried the land
looked dry and dim, as lustreless as cotton. The
depressing details of foreground and landscape
which the lifting mist brought gradually into




DEFENSE OF UST PADENGA


187


sight were in but blacker tones of the same grayness. A lone shell whined over from the Bolo
lines. Prince crouched helplessly, but it exploded
with a mushroom-shaped puff of black smoke
several hundred yards away.
Prince decided not to wait for Butch. He
headed for his bunk. He couldn't remember
ever being so drowsy and tired. In four hours
it would be time to stand another turn at sentry
duty-if the enemy didn't attack before thatand it wasn't his loss if Butch wanted to waste
time. Moving at a sluggish walk, he reached the
middle of the unprotected space between the
billet and his blockhouse. The familiar rumble
of the Red battery came again. The choking
surge of dread that Prince could never suppress
when under fire from those inescapable, obliterating guns swept over him. Like the droning of
a squadron of battle planes, but incredibly faster,
the sound of the coming shells flew toward him.
He looked straight through the gathering mists
of trouble and hardship and suffering into the
smiling, beckoning, tempting fields of eternityand looked away again. He flattened his tired
body into the rut of the trail. Six stunning
explosions in a close pattern around him bruised
him as though he had fallen from a precipice.
Jagged, hurtling fragments of steel screamed past.




188


SNOW TRENCHES


188        SNOW TRENCHE
Dazed and deafened, he staggered the rest of the
way to the billet and flung himself onto his bunk
without taking off his boots or coat or hat, ignoring all the smaller things that make for comfort.
Lifelessly inert, he lay there, but breathing noisily
and laboriously.
Another volley burst from those searching
guns-but Prince didn't hear it. He didn't flinch
or dodge. His breathing maintained its regular
see-saw. He was out of reach of the paralyzing
dread the sound of the enemy cannonading always brought him. But he was not out of the
guns' reach...
The stout log wall of the big billet was
shredded into matchwood as a high explosive
shell struck it. Great log rafters hung into the
room like sticks placed for a bonfire. Charred
bits of timber glowed and smoked, but men arrived to smother them before the flames could
start. Prince's body lay in the same position as
before. His breathing had stopped.
"Must have been the concussion."
3
The fourth day of the struggle for Ust Padenga
ended with the American company still in pos



DEFENSE OF UST PADENGA          189
session of the battered village. Bolo gunfire had
demolished more than half of the buildings.
Their infantry attacks, daily increasing in savagery, had almost broken through on each of the
last two attempts. Snipers hidden in the brush
made it unsafe for the defenders to move about
during daylight. Bolo patrols, scouting to the
north, had destroyed wire communications with
Shenkursk. The dressing-station, in an inconspicuous hut in the center of Ust Padenga, had
been overcrowded since the action started, despite the nightly evacuation of the worst cases to
Shenkursk. The faces of the troops in blockhouse and trench and billet were gray with anxiety, and haggard from weariness and exposure.
They could not understand the necessity of the
sacrifice they were making to hold the place, or
at least, if it were necessary, why they were not
reinforced. They had spent their strength to the
utmost. Could they beat off tomorrow's assault
with their weakened and depleted garrison?...
Lieutenant Peter Burns sat on the foot of his
bunk, writing a letter. The window at his side
was carefully blanketed to prevent even the
slightest flicker of light from his candle from
showing to the outside. Burns' tired eyes looked
beyond the top of his writing pad into the dimness. His expression was that of a man troubled




190          SNOW TRENCHES
by thoughts which must have utterance to bring
relief-thoughts more urgent than rest. He uncrossed his cramped legs, put his pencil into his
pocket, and stared at the unfinished letter. He
read this:
"Nadya dearest"I don't know why I'm writing this letter.
You'll never get it. I don't suppose I'll even finish it. I guess it's because I just have to talk to
you a little. You wouldn't let me say what I
wanted to when I saw you last. But, sweetheart,
I can write what I like-can't I? You'll have to
let me tell you when I get back to Shenkursk.
You promised. Maybe I won't get back, dear...
You ought to have listened the last time.
"Outside the Bolo guns are still hammering
away at us. Perhaps you can hear them. Sometimes our own guns fire back, but after dark
they dare not, lest the gun-flashes betray their
position to the enemy batteries. Tonight they
needn't worry-the light from our burning billets make a perfect target. I don't know how
much longer we can hold out. The men have
been wonderful, but their endurance is almost
gone. They are so few, dear, that there is no rest
or relief for them. And so many have been
wounded or lost. I'm   desperately tired, too,




DEFENSE OF UTST PADENGA


191


Nadya... When I see you... If I see you
~    ~  If.~  ~  ~
Burns held the corner of his letter over the
candle flame and let it fall in a curl of black ash
to the floor. Then he rose heavily to his feet
and went onto the road in front of the billet.
Pausing a moment to glance at the lower end of
the village, where the smoldering walls of
stricken houses outlined the standing billets in
dull red, he went north to the blockhouse that
guarded the road.
The sound of approaching horsemen, and a
call from the darkness brought the sentries, with
rifles leveled, to the middle of the road. A single
rider galloped ahead and reined his horse in
sharply at the warning command to halt.
"Lieutenant Douglas," the rider announced,
"with a section of Canadian Field Artillery, and
twenty Cossacks under Ensign Posnokoff."
"0. K., Lieutenant. Bring 'em in!"
The sentries pulled aside the long barbed-wire
knife-rests that barred the road and the column
of black riders filed silently through.
"That you, Burns?" queried Lieutena-lt Douglas, who had dismounted and withdrawn to the
side of the road.
"Yes." Burns held out his hand. "It's sure




1f9.


fQ1V"W      rVTrPV%'1T.Tf n fi




1QQ           Q17ATI V  ACL_? k 7


good to see you, Douglas. Anything new?"
"Plenty, old chap. I'll see you as soon as I've
reported to Captain Ordway. Still up at the big
billet?"
"What left of it. I'll be along later... Hey!
where are your guns?"
"We're taking over from the Russians; we'll
use their guns."
Ten minutes later, Burns followed the mounted
party along the road to the south. The ice-hard
rutted way crossed a quarter mile of open space
before it descended to the bunch of dwellings in
the lower village. Burns' eyes had become slits
narrowed by the cold. They peered through the
narrow opening between the rim of his fur cap
and the tall upstanding collar of his coat. The
picture before him burned itself unforgettably
upon his sensitive mind-smudgy, shifting spots
of red, fantastic shapes and shadows of deepest
black; the mystery and known terrors of the
crowding forest...
The doomed village appealed to him at this
moment as it never had before. The pathos of
it; its helplessness... yet it had been home
and shelter to his men for a month or more. The
lives of his comrades had been spent to defend
it... Then a revulsion of feeling swirled over
his mind. What wouldn't he give to leave this




DEFENSE OF UST PADENGA           193
accursed sty! Dismal, ugly, monotonous hole,
without so much as the sound of a phonograph
or the sight of a woman's face, or a splash of
color to relieve it-But, look! The grandeur of
a leaping flame caught his eye for a moment...
It left in its place the blackness of a coffin lid.
Five or six sleighs stood in the road in front
of the dressing station. Burns entered a small,
one-room shack opposite it and found Captain
Ordway and Lieutenant Douglas having a drink
of rum. Ordway sat on a pile of ration cases;
Douglas sat on the corner of a small rickety table.
"Anything private?" Burns inquired as he
shoved open the door.
"Come on in, Pete," called Ordway. "Have a
shot of this. You're goin' to need it."
"All right, Skipper. Just a short one. What's
the dope?"
"We're pullin' out of here tonight."
"The hell you say! When?"
"Soon as the Bolos have gone to bed."
"Has the phone to Shenkursk been repaired?"
"No, Lieutenant Douglas brought the orders.
They finally got the idea that a damn good company might be more useful helpin' to hold Shenkursk than in stickin' out this private war down
here."
"How does it look in Shenkursk, Doug? Are




104


SNOW        T'''''''''''''''''  IRE7NCHESE~


-v-                      -
they expecting trouble up there very soon?"
"Expecting it? It's therel We got a report that
two thousand Bolos had been sent over from the
Dvina front to make a flank attack from Kodima.
Colonel Graham sent out a strong patrol of
Cossacks under Eristoff to reconnoiter as far as
Kodima. They stumbled right onto this Bolo
crowd and got pretty badly scared, at least. They
lit out for home, every man for himself, and
Eristoff is missing. His men can't tell-or won't
tell-what happened to him. They've been busy
ever since, dividing up his stuff."
"Hasn't any one taken charge of them? Who's
keeping them in order?"
"That bunch of hyenasl I'd rather see them
on the Bolo's side!"
"Speaking of Cossacks," Ordway broke in.
"What the hell are we going to do with this
bunch of ration-wasters you brought along?"
"If you ask me, I'd say send them out as advance party and you'll be rid of them until we
reach Shenkursk. They'll never slow down from
a gallop."
"Well, it won't take us long to get back
either," said Bums.
"Oh, we're to take it by easy stages, my boy.
Sort of keep in contact with 'em all the way
back. You didn't hear the rest of Doug's story,




DEFENSE OF UST PADENOA         195
Pete. There's another flock of Bolos cutting
across from Nyandoma, on the railroad, to attack the other flank. It's no latrine rumor this
time that we're in for a damn high-powered push
on the big town."
"It'll be no bargain for them to take Shenkursk, I'll tell the blue-eyed world-no matter
how many they've got."
"Maybe you're right, Burns," said Douglas,
"but the brass hats up at Shenkursk would rather
get orders to withdraw to Bereznik, instead of
trying to hold the place. You see, the Bolos are
making a push on the Dvina and railroad fronts
at the same time. They're going to force us back
to the White Sea. They have to recapture Archangel by February first, or Trotski won't send
them any more cigarettes."
"But, my God! We couldn't give up Shenkurskl Think of what would happen to the civilians who have taken our side!"
"I didn't say we were going to. But headquarters is expecting a rough time of it."
"Rough time, eh? What the hell kind of a
time do they think this company has been having?" Captain Orway was emphatic. "I suppose
they think the men we've been sending back feet
first from this little picnic down here are just
naughty boys that got their feet wet from wadin'




196


SNOW TRENCHES
- I — -VP VPW -,,


WV W -19r

where their mammas told 'em not to. Take a
squint in that dressing station over there. I tell
you, Douglas, there ain't enough whole billets
still standing in this dump to fill the yard inside
the Monastery wall... Still, I suppose that's
the game-keep the war away from      headquarters."
"Don't worry. They'll get a taste of it...
just listen to those damn guns!"
"As soon as your men have taken over the guns
from the Russkies," the Captain said to Douglas, "we'll start the hospital cases on their way.
They can have both the gunners and the Cossacks
for escort. The rest of us will pull out in time to
reach Shalosha by daylight. Let's get goin'"
4
Jangling trace chains, the clank of bars and
tackle, the scream of iron wheel rims against the
glassy hard-packed rutted snow, curt orderstired men and horses straining in the darkness to
drag the guns out of steep-sided pits. The Canadian veterans of four years on the Western Front
were moving their two eighteen-pounders onto
the road preparatory to leaving Ust Padenga.




DEFENSE OF UST PADENGA


197


The moon, timing its appearance to the moment
when they most needed complete darkness, came
out bright and cold, the color of phosphorus,
shadows shaped like a drunkard's imaginings,
spread across the glistening Arctic night-scene.
Patches of red suggesting falsely of warmth and
life eddied from the still burning buildings, coloring both light and shadow.
The trail leading from the artillery pits to the
road had been traveled by sleighs since the guns
had been brought in several months earlier, but
was entirely unsuited to moving the wide, heavy
gun-carriages. Six teams of hardy Russian ponies,
strung out along the trail, scrambled for a footing and threw all their weight into the harness.
But they were too light. The drivers pulled at
their heads and lashed them with whips. Brawny
gunners tugged at the wheel-spokes. A lanky
giant from Saskatchewan muttered what was in
the minds of all:
"I'd trade the whole outfit of these runts for
one good team of Clydes."
Lieutenant Douglas brought up another team
and more men and the gun was inched into the
trail. Near the road, the heavy gun skated sideways toward a drift-filled ditch. Out of control,
in spite of superhuman efforts to hold it, it
plunged over the edge, sinking almost out of


f 
I




4,




198


SNOW TRENC ES


sight, gun downward in the drift. The wheel
horses were dragged down with it; the whole outfit jerked into disorder. The moon glinted on
the shiny upturned wheel rims, and on the men
and horses floundering around practically helpless in the snow.
Lieutenant Douglas jumped into the drift
among the bewildered group of men staring
disgustedly and cursing in their choicest terms at
the lost gun.
"What do you think, Sergeant?"' he called.
"Is there the slightest chance of pulling her out
of there?"
"None in the world, sirl It'd take all night.
We'd have to dig it out. These plugs can hardly
pull it on the level. Unless you can give us three
or four hours, she's out of action, all right. A
couple of honest-to-God horses could do the job
in a few minutes."
"We'll have to leave it, then. We're late as it
is. The infantry is due on the road in fifteen
minutes. Pull the breech-block out of her and
tackle the other one... If we lose that, we'd
better let them go back without us. We'll have
a hell of a report to make: Took over from the
Russkies and within two hours lost our first gun
in a snow-bank. They couldn't have done worse
themselves. I've got a damn good notion to stick




DEFENSE OF UST PADENGA         199
with it and let the Yanks go on without us."
"The whole section would rather do that, sir,
than leave it here. Just say the wordl"
"No! It can't be done. Captain Ordway
wouldn't leave without us, and his orders are to
be in Shalosha by daybreak... Sergeant! Tend
to that breech-block yourselfl"




XI
Retreat.
" T EEZ, I'M TIRED! I WAS NEVER SO TIRED
J in my life!" said Coon Dog Evans.
"Boy, you ain't the only one." returned Cook.
"Gimme a cigarette!"
"Are you out of 'em, or just too damn lazy to
dig one out?"
"I got some in my pack, but I'm too tired to
unroll it."
"How are you goin' to get your blankets out?"
"I ain't goin' to get 'em out. I don't need
blankets to sleep this time, brother. Besides, we
may have to leave here in a hell of a hurry.
Don't be so damn technical! Gimme a cigarette;
I'll pay ya back."
Coon Dog lay on the floor next the stove, his
head propped up on his pack, his rifle slanted
in the crook of his arm, and his steel helmet
pulled down so that it rested on the tip of his
nose. His cigarette puffed red and gray at the
rim of his helmet.
Cook methodically loosened the straps of his
pack and pulled out his two blankets. He




RETREAT


201


spread them carefully on the floor close to Coon
Dog, and started to roll into them. Coon Dog
opened his eyes.
"Lemme lay on part o' them blankets, will
ya?" he said.
"You're too lazy to move while I spread 'em."
"Lazy, hell! I may be bushed, but I ain't lazy... Never mind, keep 'em all yourself."
"Oh, all right, come on."
The wrapped and muffled bodies of men
jammed the floor so that not one more could
find sleeping space there. The confined air was
heavy with unhealthy odors. It was not even
warm. But outside it was forty below zero, so
the men did not complain. They merely huddled closer together and burrowed deeper under
coats and blankets. They did not even mind the
foul staleness of the much-breathed air of the
place. Fatigue, lack of sleep, and exposure had
drugged them. They lay in a heavy stupor, with
great, blasting shells and visions of pursuit still
crowding the backgrounds of their minds. Men
aroused for sentry duty sat up with automatic
abruptness, without actually awakening. When
they opened their eyes, they groaned and their
senses reeled. Chilled and shaking, numb, unseeing and unthinking, they stumbled out and
braced their feet again in the road facing south.




202         SNOW TRENCHES
Lieutenant Burns had laid down on a bench
near the door of the room occupied by his men.
His drawn and haggard face showed how badly
he needed a few hours' rest. But there was little
relief in the disturbed nap he could snatch while
some other officer commanded the guard. There
would be little rest until they were safe in Shenkursk. The thrill of their stealthy withdrawal
under the eyes and ears of the surrounding Red
battalions had revived him somewhat, but the
cold and the painful drudgery of the march had
borne him under.
It had been four A. M. when they entered
Shalosha. Now it was nine o'clock of the same
morning.
A single sentry stood in the middle of the
road. He stood as fixedly as the charred pine tree
stumps all around him. The painful tingling had
gone from his fingers and toes. Perhaps they
were frozen. What of it? That would mean a
rest in the hospital. Every shred of his vitality
and endurance was concentrated in sticking on
his feet until he was relieved, every effort of will
in keeping awake and alert. Alert? Repeatedly
his head sagged forward; muscles refused to control his eyelids...
A Bolo cavalry patrol suddenly appeared on
the road. They halted within full view of the




RETREAT


203


quiet village. The sentry raised his head with a
jerk. He sighted his rifle and fired twice. The
patrol wheeled and disappeared. Then, from
concealment, they drove the sentry to cover from
their sniping.
The crackle of those shots sounded the alarm
in every crowded billet room. Firing on the outpost-how often had it prefaced a swift attack!
Always it had called the defenders back to the
firing line.
Burns, dashing out into the street in front of
his billet, met Captain Ordway hurrying to the
scene of the shooting.
"What's up, Skipper?"
"Just a patrol, I guess, Pete... But it means
move on again."
"Already?"
"Yes. We don't dare risk it. It's probably just
a small contact patrol snoopin' around to see if
we stopped here, but we can make Shenkursk in
another four hours, an' we're too weak to let 'em
get on our tail again."
"Guess you're right. They've probably got a
lot of fresh outfits that can travel twice as fast as
we can. My platoon'll have to have plenty of
halts."
"They've had several hours' rest. Form your
platoon at once, Pete."




SNOW TRENCHES


204


_. 2.


Foot by foot the toiling column put behind
them the bleak and soundless woodland. They
were not molested. At one place, where a clearing broke through, they caught a glimpse of the
domes and crosses of the big cathedral on the
bluffs at Shenkursk. Then the trail turned; the
dark forest gave way to the scrubby, irregular
brush of the river bottomland; a quarter of a
mile away was another cluster of huts surrounding a white church-Spaskoe. And beyond it,
above its snow-padded roofs, Shenkursk, city of
refuge, nestled comfortably solid and secure on
its wooded bluffs.
A mounted patrol of Canadian artillerymen
trotted up to the head of the column; then it
galloped back to the village of Spaskoe. The
Americans passed some Canadian.sentries on the
road, and halted in front of the church. Captain
Bryden, of the Canadians, found Captain Ordway. He had brought out a single gun to help
cover their retirement. But they were not to go
in directly.
"We're to stop here for the night," Captain
Bryden told Ordway. "We have to cover this




RETREAT


205


flank until the patrol they sent out toward Nyandoma returns."
"All right, Bryden. Glad you're here, old
man. They want us to hold the fort from this
side, eh? Everything O. K. in Shenkursk?"
"Oh, they're a bit jumpy, but nothing unusual. The Cossacks are somewhat panicky. They
went out to do a show on the road to Kodima,
but they got the wind up before they were half
way there. Some of them went over to the Bolos,
and the rest bolted. Their colonel turned up
missing. Nobody knows where the hell he is."
"Douglas told us," Burns broke in. "How long
has Colonel Eristoff been gone?"
"Most of his crowd got back yesterday morning, but there was no sign of him when I left
three hours ago. None of his men can say what
happened... except that they were attacked
by the whole Bolo army."
"The old boy may show up yet. He's a shifty
bird," said Ordway.
"Unless his own men did him in. I wouldn't
put it past them."
Burns walked away to where he could see in
the settling dusk the fairylike, quiet city of Shenkursk. Tired as he was, he could make it in an
hour's walk. Quiet, warmth, rest, and food in
Shenkursk-and Nadya. Nadya, surrounded by




206


SNOW TRENCHES


that mutinous, unruly gang, and her uncle gone,
must be facing a night of loneliness and terror.
And Burns, to whom her safety and happiness
meant more than his own life, was forced to
spend the night within sight of the darkening
road that led to her...
Another night of alarms and suspense. Spaskoe was unfortified and wide open to attack. The
countryside was alive with the converging battalions of the enemy. All night long their lights
and fires and signals warned Shenkursk and Spaskoe of their confident approach. Captain Ordway and the Canadians maintained a guard almost heavy enough to throw a skirmish line completely around the village. That meant frequent
changes of the guard, and very little sleep. But
they were without the protection of blockhouses
and barbed wire, and the enemy was close
enough to strike at any moment.
When morning came, a casual interchange of
shots between American outposts and Bolo patrols opened the day's skirmishing. This firing
grew hotter and more deadly as the columns of
Bolo infantry began to arrive, and rows of their
riflemen came into position. Shortly before noon,
a battery of artillery, rushed forward from Ust
Padenga, commenced firing on Spaskoe from the
roadway behind the Red infantry lines. And al



RETREAT


21


07
WV


-1 — _W_  IW_  TWE W_  EAIT1        2' __ 1   __W


most at the same moment the first shells from
the enemy forces approaching from the Dvina by
way of Kodima, broke over Shenkursk. Then,
really for the first time, the tired American company realized the overwhelming extent of the
Bolo push, and the precarious position of their
entire force.
Captain Bryden's gun went into action at the
first appearance of a sizable group of the Red infantry. At short range, he hurled his shrapnel
into their unprotected front. They fell back to
the cover of the trees. The Americans fired their
rifles and machine guns through the windows
and around the corners of the log buildings,
holding their own in spite of the numbers against
them-the Canadians' guns were evening the
score.
The Bolos were wretched gunners. For nearly
an hour their shells flew beyond, or to the right,
toward the river. Finally they began to find their
target. But they ignored the riflemen and concentrated on silencing the single Canadian gun.
Burns had command of the right flank and
rear. He stood beside the church with Captain
Bryden and Lieutenant Douglas. The action was
quickening. The Bolo skirmish lines had spread
fanwise around half the village. One Canadian
gun doing the work of four. The American corn



208


SNOW TRENCHES


pany, as at Nijni Gora, paying the price of defending an exposed outpost against smothering
numbers. Men were wounded and dying in that
skirmish line whom the garrison of Shenkursk
would badly need when the Bolos closed in...
Meanwhile, signal communication with Shenkursk kept Vaga Column headquarters in touch
with the danger at Spaskoe. Ordway damned a
staff that could sacrifice men in this way..
Hadn't his company paid enough?
Captain Bryden stood at his gun, where the
flying shells now spread their narrowing pattern.
Two of his gunners had already been hit by
shrapnel. The others crouched low behind their
shields and served the smoking eighteen-pounder
with deadly seriousness.
Ordway passed by.
"Shenkursk says we'll be out of here within
half an hour," he called. "Can you stick it?"
"We can stick it as long as you can!"
"That's long enough, old timer."
Burns looked back toward Shenkursk, where
the white puffs of smoke were breaking above the
roof-tops; then watched the grim firing of his
men. He heard Captain Bryden's voice encouraging his gunners, ridiculing the Red battery.
"They can't shoot! Look at them! It's no
wonder the Jerrys won their Russian campaigns."::




RETREAT


209


A shell fragment struck one of the deep-toned
bells in the church tower.
"Time for church!" Bryden shouted. "Come
on, you heathens, say your prayers!... Maybe
they think it's a shooting-gallery..i-. Give the
gentleman a cigar. Come on, gents, who's next?
Ring the bell and get a two-ruble cigar-real tobacco, not that barnyard shredded wheat you're
used to..."
He took the attitude of a barker at a carnival,
covering up with a bit of mimicry his certain
knowledge that they were lost unless the order
to withdraw came quickly.
"All right, you guys, win one o' them cigars
fer the Captain!"-shouted a gunnery sergeant.
"That's lousy!" the Captain yelled. "Let someone else try their luck. Take your time! Don't
crowd! That's better..."
"Better?" growled the sergeant, startled out of
his role. "That's damn near perfect!"
"Once more, now... Give 'em two cigars.. Give 'em a whole damn box... Give-"
He never finished his spiel. An enemy shell
struck the barrel of the gun and tossed it aside,
twisted and useless. Three the gun crew lay
mangled in the snow. A jagged, screaming splinter of steel tore deep into Bryden's leg just below the thigh. He collapsed awkwardly.




210


SNOW TRENCHES


A runner arrived, looking for Captain Ordway.
He brought orders to retire into Shenkursk at
once. Two platoons sent out from Shenkursk to
support their withdrawal were now in position,
deployed across the trail. Their right flank was
already in action with the enveloping Red parties.
up to Burns, he called weakly to the driver,
In echelon, a squad at a time, Captain Ordway
pulled his company, starting them promptly to
the rear in single file. Sleighs of ammunition,
equipment, and wounded men had been moving
back intermittently since noon, but now the entire column cut through the skirmish line in
support, and trudged north out of action.
Burns stood at the rear of the village, checking
up his platoon as they took their places in the
column. But, just at their head, a sleigh driven
by a Canadian corporal, galloped swiftly to break
through. At full length in the bed of the sleigh
lay Captain Bryden, submerged under blankets
and straw, except for his black fur hat with its
gleaming brass emblem, and a slit where his
brave eyes stared through. As the sleigh drew
up to Burns, he called weakly to the driver,
"Stop!" and wriggled his head free from the
blankets. With terrible agony, his lips moved:
"Tell Captain Ordway... I'm sorry... I
can't wait —"




XII
Nadya Disappears.
EHIND THEM THE COLD ARCTIC DUSK WAS
closing in, colorless as the melancholy scene
the darkness was blotting out; ahead, across the
river, Shenkursk on her palisades lay dark and
silent. Blackness, the coldness of death, mystery... The men from Ust Padenga, seeing the
twin funnels of black smoke rising red-tinted
from the southern edge of the town wondered
that the destruction had so soon begun. Ust
Padenga on a larger scale...
At the foot of the bluff, where the trail cuts
through and zigzags upward to become Troitsa
Street, a knot of townspeople had gathered to
watch the troops come in. Burns contrasted their
solemn dubious attitude with the extravagant
welcome they had given the soldiers on their first
arrival; he imagined the sardonic, half-concealed
smiles of the Bolo sympathizers mixed with the
crowd.
Just ahead of Burns marched Malinowski, his
interpreter. One of Eristoff's Cossacks, standing
apart from the rest, peered sharply into Malin



212


SNOW~j TREENC  Sjl


owski's expressionless features. He stepped closer.
His face became excited with recognition.
"Vanya!" he called.
Malinowski looked toward him casually. There
were many Vanyas in Shenkursk. But the spontaniety of his delight transformed him. He
stretched out both arms-the gesture of a Russian, not that of a doughboy.
"Mitya!"
The column was in route formation; no harm
in greeting a friend. The Cossack walked arm in
arm with Malinowski, both talking at once. Malinowski turned around to Burns, tears of emotion in his eyes.
"I knew this man in the Russian army," he
explained. "We were in the same Sotnia of Cossacks in 1907... in Kiev, cuttin' up the Jews.
Now we find each other again, in Shenkursk,
fighting side by side once more."
"Ask him if he was on the raid Kodima."
"He says he was."
"Did they really see any Bolos, or just check
out because it was cold and they didn't want to
go any further?"
"He says the woods were full of them, Lieutenant."
"Ask him what happened to Colonel Eristoff."
"He doesn't know. He was at the rear of the




NADYA DISAPPEARS
-W   WI _V - - _111_ _111W VW   r


213


column when the firing started, and the whole
detachment crowded back and carried him with
them. The Colonel was up ahead, and he never
saw him at all.'
Burns muttered a tired comment. His eyes
took in every single figure on the street.
The shelling had stopped except for an occasional shot from the guns toward the Dvina. In
front of headquarters, a hundred or more men
from the village were drilling in the street with
rifles that had been issued them that afternoon.
The civilians of Shenkursk were going to help
their allies defend it. Most of them had faced
the Germans in the Tsar's forces. At the end of
Troitsa Street, where it led past the barbed wire
into the forest toward Kodima, a great screen of
heavy cloth had been pieced together, camouflaged, and stretched across the street, so as to
conceal from the enemy any movement behind it.
It was quite dark when the men from Ust
Padenga found their quarters and settled themselves to catch up on sleep. The war was no
longer a personal matter to them. The defenses
of Shenkursk were manned by other companies,
comparatively untired, so they expected a few
days relief from guard. Burns left his men the
moment they were dismissed and went to the
hospital to seek Nadya.
%,.




214


SNOW TRENCHES,            r




lip W-      -


T     -WI -w- W

They told him there that she had gone to her
room for a few hours' rest, but that she was expected back on duty early in the evening.
Impatiently, Burns hurried over to the big,
dark Cossack billet.
It now bore slight resemblance to a military
barracks; it reeked of disorder. The floor of the
place was littered with gear, as though men had
dumped their packs the moment they were inside. A half-burned candle sputtered smokily on
the table at the far end of the room. No sentry
was on duty, but Burns made it clear to one of
the men lounging there that he wished to speak
to Nadya. The man made no effort to rise, but
gestured in the direction of the closed door on
the right.
Feeling somewhat embarrassed and uneasy at
having to go thus directly to her bedroom door
and in face of those staring foreigners, Burns
rapped boldly. Several men started to laugh at
a remark made by one of them in a husky whisper, but the laughter choked off abruptly when
Burns wheeled about with a furious threat in
his set jaw...
He rapped again, insistently.
"Who is it?" answered him.
"It's Lieutenant Burns. May I see you?"
"Oh, yes. Just a minute!"




NADYA DISAPPEARS           215
She slipped back a noisy bolt and admitted
him. Burns entered as though it were a shrine.
A thin taper burned under the ikon in its
usual place. The bed, a narrow metal cot, was
covered by an army blanket. The walls of rough
plaster were bare of decoration, but thick fur
rugs piled on the floor saved by a little the impression of cell-like severity, and a tall candle in
a gleaming brass holder standing on a narrow
ledge shone brightly into a small, brass-framed
oval mirror behind it. Shutters had been closed
against the single window of the room.
Nadya had stepped back as she opened the
door, and now she closed and bolted it behind
him before speaking. Burns pulled off his cap
and gloves.
"Nadya..."
"Oh, Peter! You look so thin and tired. Let
me look at youl"
"Tell me about yourself, dear. Thank God I
found you tonight Two days ago I never expected to see you again."
"I know. Your wounded men have told me
how terrible it has been at Ust Padenga. What
a relief it is to have you back, safel"
"It isn't that! But they told me at the hospital
that you were on the verge of a breakdown.."
"What nonsenseI"




216


SNOW TRENCHES


216          SNO —I V 0 W  TRENCHES   W00 - V
"No it isn't! They said you had spent all your
time there without relief, and without sufficient
rest."
"I didn't dare to stay here. When my uncle
did not come back, his men seemed to go mad.
Most of them have been drunk ever since." She
shuddered.
Peter took her hand.
"I can imagine it. What a nightmare it must
have been. You will have to leave this place tonight. I'll find somewhere you can stay."
"Oh, I don't know! I don't know what to dot
My poor uncle may come back..."
"Of course! But we'll hear of it as soon as he
does, and you can go to him."
Nadya looked at Peter more closely. Her hand
tightened in his. He smiled down at her.
"How glad I am to see you, dear," she said.
"But your eyes... you must be desperately
tired! Here, come and sit down."
He sat beside her on the edge of the bed. She
held on tight to one of his hands with both of
hers.
"This last week," Nadya resumed, "has been
an unbelievable dream. It hasn't seemed real."
"I, too, had a dream one night. A different
kind of dream. Shall I tell you about it?"
"Please."




NADYA DISAPPEARS            217
Peter began slowly... "It was the night we
left Ust Padenga. I lay down for a couple of
hours between reliefs, but I could not get to
sleep soundly. I kept dozing off, and then waking restlessly, and dozing off again. But somehow, my excited mind brought me this incident
as clearly as I see that candle now. I was held
at Ust Padenga, within range of the guns;
chained, I believe. And always you were in sight.. Not always clearly, or in the same place.
But my whole soul, my heart and mind kept
reaching out toward you, straining, groping,
through the barrage. Your image appeared in
the blackness of the forest shadows, in the plain
gray level patches of snow, in the void that followed the flare of a star shell. Gradually it became more vivid. It came closer and closer. And
then the most wonderful thing happened; I shall
remember it all my life.. You took my frostbenumbed face between your two warm hands,
and... kissed me..."
He finished, with a throb of astonishment at
his boldness. Something had come to him during those days of separation... a maturing of
all the half-formed love impulses that had been
lying so long in his heart. He had an offering
to make.
He raised his eyes to her, but her motionless




218


SNOW TRENCHES




28N  TNE


profile told him nothing. He felt a catch in his
throat, a tugging in the deep places of his heart.
He knew a sinking of doubt that he could ever
measure up to the love-worthiness of her... A
woman of beauty and soul, he thought great
enough to diminish everything else. She had seen
the flaming torch of the revolution pass by. She
had felt its hot, foul breath without being
scorched by it. She had passion and imagination,
and a love of the half lights. She had strength
to go all the way to the end of the road-or not
to start. Was it the strength of repression, or
sheer cold will? Peter leaned back onto the bed
behind her, so that his arm was behind her waist,
his hand in her lap.
Tired, weak, and uncertain... what a relief
it was to lie back for a moment! He had hardly
the courage to face the answer in her eyes.
Then Nadya turned slowly around toward
him. Her face was just above his, her lips
slightly apart. In her eyes the screen had been
drawn aside and the hunger and loneliness of
her soul stared forth. Her defenses were down.
Gently she took his flushed cheeks between her
soft palms, bent lower until their lips touched.
"Was it like this... Peter?" she whispered.
The stuff of dreams was flimsy and cold beside
the burning, tumultuous abandon of that kiss.




NADYA DISAPPEARS


219


-.
"Oh, sweetheartl Nothing like it! How could
it be? Kiss me again!"
He took her in his arms.
"Why have you kept me waiting so long,
dear?" Peter asked.
"I had to. I was so afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of being mistaken."
"But I told you in every way I could the very
second I met you. You wouldn't listen to me,
but surely you knew. I was sure, myself, at Podborya."
"I knew, Peter. I've thought of you, and
dreamed of you... Yes, and wanted you ever
since."
"Think of the time we've wasted."
"Not wasted, dear. If you only knew how it
made the past few months livable for me. Before you came I hadn't even hoped. Can you
imagine the wretchedness and loneliness of being alone and a prisoner among this riff-raff?"
"My poor sweetheart. I don't think you know
yet how much I love you."
"Say that again. I have often imagined how
it would sound on your lips."
"I love you! More than lifel More than
everything!"
"Are you sure, dear? It would be so cruel for




220          SNOW TRENCHES
you to say it and not mean it, that I've been
afraid to hear it."
"So sure, darling, that I can't believe those
plain words have ever meant so much before."
"Do you know, Peter, in your dream you have
written the first chapter of our love story."
"Anyway, we'll be together now, dear. This
campaign can't last forever... and we'll have
all of the future."
Nadya stroked his troubled forehead with her
fingertips. Peter held her close and laid his
cheek against hers.
"When I think of those Red armies closing in
on Shenkursk from every side," Nadya said, "it
makes everything look sad and dark ahead."
"They can't separate us."
"If they were to break through..."
"Don't worry about that, they won't!"
"And even if we beat them off, it will cost so
many more lives. I am so afraid for you."
"Don't think of it, dear. I'll come through
all right. You'll bring me luck. This will just be
the second chapter of our love story."
Nadya went over to the chest and searched in
the top drawer. She brought back to him a small
oval pin of Georgian workmanship, bearing a
strange crest, which had a half religious significance, half military.




NADYA DISAPPEARS


221


"Keep this, for luck, Peter, and to remind you
of my love. It has been in our family for hundreds of years."
He fastened it inside his coat; then slipped off
his silver identification bracelet and handed it
to her.
"This is all I have, dear. Will you keep it?"
She put her arms around him and sought his
lips again.
A pistol shot tore the stillness apart in the next
room; a chorus of yells followed, and another
shot. Nadya got up. Burns mechanically loosened his holster flap.
"I must get back to the hospital," Nadya said.
"And you must get some rest, dear."
"I'll go with you."
"If you will walk as far as your billet with
me, I can go the rest myself. It is just a little
further."
"Do you think I'll leave until I have to? Tell
me, dear, what will you do about moving? You
mustn't come back here."
"I'll be at the hospital all night. In the morning you can call for me there and then we can
see about moving."
"Can't I see you again tonight? Just for a
minute? When will you have a minute off?"
"Darling, I'm afraid not...You will end in




222


SNOW TRENCES


22           SNOW T                       -,,vHS
the hospital yourself, if you don't go to bed. Besides, the hospital is so crowded, and they are so
short of help.... Come back and see me in the
morning."
"Will you still love me then? Oh, Nadya, I am
so fearful of losing you."
"Peter, dear, you'll never lose me. Since you
have come back, there is a new warmth in my
heart. The soreness and bitterness is all gone,
and in spite of the terror threatening Shenkursk,
I feel like singing."
"There is something comforting about it,
sweetheart, that I can't understand or explain.
But to me there has always seemed something
supernatural about love to make it last through
separations, and maybe even death. Some element of immortality. Have you ever thought
that?"
"Yes. I'm sure of it. A force so great as love
cannot just vanish like a casual thought..."
"There's comfort in the thought anyway, dear.
Death itself becomes less fearful."
They took their lovers' parting in the warm,
quiet little room, blew out the candles and went
out into the night. Arm in arm, they walked to
the hospital. Peter saw Nadya safely inside, then
went to headquarters to get a few hours of muchneeded rest.




NADYA DISAPPEARS


223


NADYA DISAPPEARS —   22


2
At the battalion officers' mess the long table
was full for the first time in several weeks.
"I'd like to see all officers in my room at nine
o'clock," Colonel Jordan said when all were
seated.
The Colonel relapsed into preoccupied silence
at the head of the table. The warm geniality of
a homecoming pervaded the rest of the diners,
although a sense of expectancy, a vague tenseness, colored it.
"Pass the jam, Docl"
"Again? How many jam rations do you rate?"
"Pass it, will you, Pete? Doc thinks he's a mess
sergeant."
"Where's Captain Ordway?"
"Somebody said he was going up to the Canadian officers' mess."
"Sure, they've got a lot of good liquor up
there."
"You don't have to worry about that bird."
"That's one thing I've always admired about
the British army,-they never let the prohibition cranks monkey with it."
"That's the theme of Jack's new song."




224


SNOW TRENCHES


"What?-British rations, but no British rum?"
"No! Two Million Thirsty Votes are Coming
Home."
"Anybody been to the hospital since they
brought Captain Bryden in?"
"Yes, they don't think he's got a chance."
"Burns saw it. What happened, Pete? Shrapnel?"
"No, high explosives. A shell hit his gun and
a chunk tore into his leg near the hip."
Burns finished his meal with as little to say
as the Colonel. Then he walked into the orderly room and spoke to the operator on duty
there.
"Get the Canadian officers' billet for me,
please."
"Here they are, sir."
The operator handed him the telephone.
"Is Captain Ordway over there?" Burns inquired.
"He was," came back over the wire, "but he
went over to headquarters about ten minutes
ago."
"Call British Headquarters," Burns directed
the operator. "Ask for the Staff Captain."
"Captain Selby on the wire, sir."
"Hello, Captain. This is Burns. Is Captain
Ordway there?"




N.ADBYA DIlSAPPERS


225


NADYA DISAPEAR              22
"Oh, hello, Burns. Yes, he's here. For Lord's
sake, come and get him!"
"I'll be right over."
The big front room on the second floor of
the Monastery guest house had been converted
into a club room for the British officers. An
alcove, separated from the -rest of the room by a
big double door, was set apart for the mess. A
low, semi-circular bench covered with leather
faced a wide, open fireplace in the middle of the
inner wall of the main room. Antique chairs, a
heavy carved table and a small portable organ
completed the furnishings. Brass kerosene lamps
lit the place.
As he mounted the steep, dark stairs, Burns
heard a buzz of conversation issuing from this
room, and frequent shouts of laughter. The
room was misty with tobacco smoke, and the
smell of liquor hung in the air. A dozen or more
officers were there.
Captain Ordway saw him as he entered the
room and pushed toward him.
"Come on in, Petel" he called. "I'll get you
a drink!"
"Never mind, Skipper. I came to tell you that
there's an officers' meeting in a few minutes."
"How are you, Burns?" said Captain Selby.
"Do you know everybody?"




226


SNOW TRENCHES


"I'll introduce him!" Captain Ordway broke
in, taking his arm. He led him over to the bench
where several men were sitting.
"This is Captain Brown," he commenced.
"This is Leftenant Edwards. This is  "  He
faced a tall, elderly staff officer, a stranger to
Vaga Column. "This is..." he fumbled. "This
is.. the Queen of Sheby!" he concluded triumphantly.
"Queen of Sheba!" said the staff officer. "Priceless! He might have said Napoleon."
Major McLeod, of the Canadian Artillery, sat
at the organ, softly playing "Annie Laurie." Captain Ordway abandoned his introductions and
went over to his side. Regardless of tune or
time, he started singing:
"I want to go back to Michigan,
That old Ann Arbor town;
Back to all the.. "
Burns interrupted.  "Come   on, Skipper!
They're waiting for us."
"I want to go back to Michigan —" Captain
Ordway persisted.
"He's all right, Burns," said the Major. "He
isn't bothering anyone. Let him have his fun."
"I know, sir, but I have to get him to that
meeting... Let's go, Skipper."




NADYA DISAPPEARS


227


"Listen, Pete!... Go fly a kite!... Waitl
You tell the Colonel that whatever he does is
O.K. with me. With my compliments, ya understand. For Lord sake, be polite to him-military
courtesy, an' all that sort of rot. I'll be along
after a while... Come on, let's sing."
"I'll get him on the phone and you can tell
him yourself."
"That's a lousy ideal Jeez, you're a pest!"
"Say! don't get the idea I give a damn whether
you come or not. Stick around and make a jackass of yourself, if you'd rather."
He said good-night to the rest of the group
and started out the door. At the head of the
stairs, Captain Ordway called to him.
"Wait a minute, Petel" When he came up, he
said. "What does the old boy want?"
"He wants to see all the officers in the battalion together at nine o'clock. I suppose he's
going to hand out the orders for tomorrow."
"Well, I'll go with you, but you can tell the
Y.M.C.A. and ninety-seven chaplains I'm going
to get drunk when he gets through. I've been
savin' up for it."
"But you're goin' to wait till then..." sarcastically.
"S'pose you think I'm drunk now? Watch met"
"To hell with itl Who cares?"




228


SNOW TRENCHES


3 —
Colonel Jordan sat at his table reading a typewritten memorandum. From time to time he
tilted back in his chair, lowered the paper to his
lap, shifted the cigar stub in his teeth, and let
a puff of smoke escape from the valve of his lips.
His officers stood in twos and threes around the
table, chatting together. They were anxious to
get this routine over with and return to their
billets or their duties. Those from Ust Padenga
wanted sleep. He paid no attention to them.
Finally, he looked at his watch.
"Are they all here?" he asked his adjutant.
"All here, sir."
"Close the doorl"
"They might have left us out of it," Captain
Ordway muttered to Burns. "Don't ever think
they're goin' to put our company on any guard
tomorrow!"
"Gentlemen, listen carefully," the Colonel said
slowly. "I have just received an order from Column Headquarters which is very important...
most important. It distressed me so greatly that
I took it to headquarters myself, and questioned
it. General Atherton was as much disturbed over




NADYA DISAPPEARS


229


it as I was, but he showed me the orders he had
received from Bereznik, and they are quite authentic. If it were possible, I would wire our
own headquarters at Archangel for instructions.
But, as you know, our lines to the north were
cut early this afternoon. No chance to get a
message through."
The Colonel laid his cigar on the edge of the
table, and cleared his throat.
"Vaga Column is ordered to evacuate Shenkursk tonight-at midnight."
Burns consulted his watch. Midnight was
less than three hours away. No one could yet
comprehend or believe the tragic significance of
what the Colonel had said. They moved closer
together. He looked up for a moment, and
shifted his feet.
"At twelve o'clock," he resumed, "Eristoff's
cavalry will move out as advance guard. A detail of mounted Canadians will go with them
to prevent any tricks. The Shenkursk Battalion
of infantry will head the main party, followed
by the artillery and Captain Ordway's company.
The rest of this battalion will form the rear
guard. The wounded and hospital convoy will
follow directly behind the Russians.
"The main roads are all blocked by the
enemy, but we will attempt to slip through




230


SNOW TRENCHES


their lines along an unused winter trail leading
out of Vologda Street. They won't be expecting it. The column will form at I 1:45, on
Vologda Street, with its head at Number Four
Blockhouse. The adjutant will give each company commander a copy of the operations orders
which cover all the details. I need not tell
you that it's more than an even break that
we'll have to fight our way through. But the
safety of the whole expedition depends on our
keeping a line of defense between the enemy
and Bereznik. I told General Atherton that
anything men could do this battalion would
do. That, gentlemen, is in your hands "
Acute distress showed on the Colonel's face
as he finished speaking. He looked old and
tired. His eyes took in the faces of his men,
one by one.
It's a terrible thing," he added, "but there's
no avoiding it... I'm sure our country
would expect us to stay here and protect these
people whom we have led to trust us. Personally, if I knew I could never leave here
alive, I would rather hold the place than sneak
out in the middle of the night... and I
know you would. We have no choice."
The adjutant said, "There'll be a massacre
sure, if we pull out of here. My Godl Can't




NADYA DISAPPEARS


231


headquarters see that?  We can't go!  The
Canadians will stick with us. I know damn
well they will!"
Burns looked at Captain Ordway.
"I doubt like hell, Colonel," Ordway said,
"if my company can march forty miles without
a longer rest. They're half dead now. They'd
have to have sleighs."
"Sleighs are out of the question. There are
scarcely enough for the wounded."
"So we held Ust Padenga for this-" whispered Burns, staring straight ahead.
"What about baggage and equipment?" persisted Captain Ordway.
"We'll have to leave most of it. There is
no transport for personal equipment.  We'll
even have to destroy most of the rations. The
men can take with them only what they can
carry in their packs; barrack bags and officers'
bedding rolls will have to be left."
"That's a hell of a note! Just let those bastards walk into the strongest town in North
Russia without firing a shot, eh? And a million
rations-bad as they are! Helll"
"Never mind that junkl" broke in Lieutenant Burns.  "How are we going to get the
civilians out of here?"
"I'm afraid that's their lookout, Burns," the




232


SNOW TRENCHES


Colonel said. "We can't even warn them, for
fear of its leaking out through our lines. Of
course, they'll learn it soon enough, and the
ones that are most in danger can follow us."
"How about the wounded that are too weak
to move? We can't leave them! The trip will
kill them sure!"
"I vote we stay here, anywayl" the adjutant
exclaimed.
"So do I!" shouted others.
"If we can't hold this place, what chance
would we have in some lousy, unfortified village fifty miles up the line? Or are we going
clear back to Archangel?"
"Gentlemen," the Colonel said wearily, "I
can't take the responsibility for disobeying these
orders and run the risk of having this battalion
wiped out. It won't do any good to discuss it
further. I don't know what their plans are
beyond the evacuation. Go to your companies
and get them ready. It is possible for us to
be driven back into Shenkursk, in spite of orders.
But we have to go through with it."
Colonel Jordan looked tired and old, and
utterly discouraged. He walked slowly around
the table and out the door into the orderly room,
alone. Behind him the chatter of discussion
become more excited...




NADYA DISAPPEARS


233


— 4 —


"Where you goin', Pete?" Captain Ordway
demanded, as Lieutenant Burns turned in the
opposite direction to their company billet on
leaving battalion headquarters.
"Over to the hospital. I'll be along in about
fifteen minutes."
"Damn itl You haven't time to be monkeyin'
with any girl tonight, Pete! It's nine-thirty, now,
an' we've got too damn much to do!"
"Don't worry about me, Skipper. I won't be
long."
"Nothin' doin'! That stuff's out, tonightl"
"I'll be ready!"
"Of all the simple, stupid.. Listen, Burns!"
But Burns had walked out of hearing.
The news had already leaked out. Already
the townspeople knew that the grim preparations the companies were making were not
merely for some important patrol. The excited
movements of Russian soldiers on the streets
accounted for their knowledge. Lights flared
on in dozens of houses, the order for concealment disregarded. Hurrying figures dotted the
streets. A sleigh approached, the crisp chop-chop




234


ISNOW TRENCHES


of its horses' galloping hoofs sounding long in
the stillness before it came up.
Burns hurried alone down the middle of the
road. The excited, quickening stir of the town,
the terrible, bewildering, panicky sense of impending tragedy sweeping the town like a prairie
fire communicated itself to Burns' own overwhelming anxiety. He scarcely noticed specific
scenes in his path, but felt the overcharged emotional condition of his surroundings. Faster
and faster he walked.
The hospital buzzed with distracted activity.
Crowded with badly wounded men, many of
them fresh cases, the surgeons of the staff could
see nothing in the journey but disaster. They
were frightfully short-handed, both as to nurses
and medical personnel. Sleighs were commencing to arrive, but they needed so many that it
looked as though the patients would have to
double up, and the nurses to walk.
Burns went from room to room searching for
Nadya. But even in his eagerness to find her,
he remembered Captain Bryden, of the Canadians, who had been wounded at Burns' side
that afternoon. Lieutenant Douglas came out
of one of the smaller rooms, his face so stamped
with shock and loss that Burns' heart stood still.
"How is he?" Burns asked fearfully.




NADYA DISAPPEARS


235


"Gone," said Douglas with trembling lips.
"They had to amputate that leg, and he never
came out of the anaesthetic."
"I was afraid so... I'll never forget him at
that gun this afternoon.... Holding on, to
protect Shenkursk... and now, having to stay
here...
"I really think he'd rather stay, Pete."
Burns patted his shoulder a couple of times
and hurried on. Nadya was in none of the wards
where he usually found her. He ran into Captain Home.
"Doc, have you seen Nadya?"
"Who?"
"Nadya. One of your nurses. Colonel Eristoff's niece."
"Not lately, Pete. Ask my sergeant."
Back along the bustling corridors he went, to
find the sergeant.
"She was here about half an hour ago, Lieutenant," the sergeant told him, "but a Cossack
officer came over here looking for her, and she
put on her things and went away with him."
"Did she say where she was going?"
"Not to me. They were talking Russian, an'
she left without saying anything to anybody.
She seemed plenty excited."
"You don't know how soon she'll be back?"






n




236


SNOW TRENCHIES


"She'll probably show up soon as she hears
we're leaving."
"Tell her. I was here looking for her, will
you?"
"O.K., Lieutenant. I'll tell her."
Burns went out from the busy, bright warmth
of the hospital into the cold, dark loneliness of
the town. A fog of terror hung in the air. The
scurrying people on the street intensified the
impression of loneliness; they were each about
his own business; none had time even to answer
questions. Burns was thoroughly alarmed at
Nadya's absence. For the moment he forgot the
terrible fact of their evacuation orders. A thousand other worries crowded his mind.
What on earth could have caused Nadya to
leave the hospital at such a time and return to
the dread billet she had left with him in terror
earlier in the evening? The drunken, brawling
Cossacks had frightened her then. Now that
headquarters was too busily occupied with the
evacuation to punish, or even notice their misbehavior, she would be in real danger in their
midst. Possibly her uncle had returned. In any
event, she would be safer with the hospital convoy. And she was desperately needed there.
Against the black canopy of the sky ahead a
curving haze of red floated above the rooftops.




NADYA DISAPPEARS


231


— WBurns saw it. Steadily it grew brighter, vivid
fangs of flame streaking across its base. As he
turned the next corner, the startling glare of the
burning building flashed clear. Great Godl It
was the Cossack billet!
The stout walls of the building confined a
roaring furnace, the door and windows stencilled
in fire. Burns raced toward it.
There was no crowd watching the blaze. A
bunch of Cossacks stood out of range of the heat,
picking over a pile of equipment salvaged before the fire took control. Passersby kept beyond
both the heat and the revealing illumination.
Burns saw that it was impossible to enter the
building. He became frantic with worry. He
quickly realized, as he searched among the
people around the place, that Nayda was not
there. Distracted and unreasoning, he was about
to return to the hospital, when Malinowski approached him out of the darkness.
"Lieutenant," he said, "the Captain wants you
right away."
"Listen, Malinowski!" Burns stammered, ignoring the other's message. "Find that Cossack
friend of yours, do you hear. Make him tell you
where Nadya Ivanovna is. Hurry, now!"
"But, Lieutenant, the Captain said come right
back. He was mad as hell."




238


SNOIW TRRENC       S~


Burns' fingers twitched nervously inside his
sheepskin mittens. He pulled the left one off
and shoved the face of his wrist watch toward
the fire. Ten-fifteen. Malinowski watched him
anxiously.
"Then ask one of those Cossacks over there.
I've got to know! I can't go until I do..
She's gone, Malinowskil"
Keeping at Malinowski's heels, Burns listened
to the disappointing tangle of the Russian dialogue.
"He don't know, Lieutenant."
"He's lying! Where could she have gone?"
Burns seized Malinowski's arm. "For Christ's
sake, help mel"
"I don't know, sir! How should I know?...
Waitl Maybe she's at Stornoff's."
To be sure! Why had he not thought of it?
Naturally she would seek the Stornoffs at whose
home he had first met her in Shenkursk.
"Tell Captain Ordway I'll be there in five
minutes."
A new hope came to him as he strode away.
All the way along, he carried the bright, transforming picture of Nayda as he had held her
in his arms such a little while before.  He
thrilled with the suddenness and completeness
of her gift to him. He re-experienced the won



NADYA DISAPPEARS


239


der of her kisses. The invisible, uncontrollable
alchemy of love had wrought in him since his
first sight of her a transformation as miraculous
as a butterfly out of a chrysalis.... And now,
the fear of losing it all, of going out hopelessly
without it, into the death-cold forest alone, lessened the price of death in search of her.
Lights showed through the chinks in the Stornoff's windows. Burns knocked on the door several times before he was answered; then old man
Stornoff's deep voice challenged him in Russian.
"Who is there?"
"Lieutenant Burns! I'm looking for Nadya
Ivanovna!"
Cautiously the old man opened the door and
peered out.
"Oh, come in, Lieutenant! You'll have to
forgive my questioning, but who knows who
might be knocking on this terrible night. Come
in here, by the light."
"Where's Nadya?"
"Is she not at the hospital?"
"Nol She left there an hour ago."
"You must be mistakenl"
"I wish I were. But the hospital sergeant told
me a Cossack officer called for her an hour ago,
and she left the hospital with him. I've just
come from there."










240          SNOW TRENCHES
"Where could she have gone?"
"Oh, I don't know... I don't know."
"A Cossack officer, you say?"
"Yes. That's what worries me. I went from
the hospital to the Cossack billet, and found it
in flames. Then I thought of course she'd be
here. Hasn't she been here at all?"
"Not since yesterday. Oh, dear God! What
is to become of us all?"
Burns slumped despairingly into a chair. His
hands hung loosely over the arms of it. He stared
straight ahead of him through a door into the
dark, unlighted room beyond. The Stornoff
family, in spite of their own distress, was immediately solicitous.
"Maybe she is back at the hospital," the
mother suggested. "She might have returned
after you left. Surely she will turn up all right.
Nadya Ivanovna has lived through some desperate times. She can take care of herself."
"Who could take care of himself alone in this
abandoned place?"
"The Bolsheviki are not yet here, Lieutenant."
Peter marvelled at the courage and resignation
of this little family in the face of this new collapse of their safety and hopes. He straightened
his back.




NADYA DISAPPEARS            241
"Isn't there something I can do for you? I
must hurry back to my company."
"I'm afraid not, my friend. You must not
wait here. We have hidden our horse and
sleigh, so we can manage-unless they find it
and take it away from us. Mother can ride, and
Cama and I can take turns driving and walking. We, too, have had much experience in fleeing from the Bolsheviki. From Petrograd to
Vologda, then to Velsk, last to Shenkursk, and
now... heaven knows. I was afraid, when the
shelling started today, that the civilians would
be forced to leave, even if the soldiers held the
town. But God help us alll if the Reds discover
our flight and strike the flanks of that helpless
column."
Mother Stornoff was crying softly. Every now
and then she would dab at her eyes in a brave
effort to control herself, and would repeat as
though it were a litany: "God will see us
through, father. God will see us through."
Camille Antonovna stood with her arm around
her mother's shoulders. She patted her with little
reassuring touches of sympathy.
"We'll get through all right, Mother." she
said.
The soft dark beauty of her own face was
straightened into lines of distress, but she kept




242


SNOW TRENCHES


back the tears, except for a telltale glitter in the
shadowy corners of her eyes.
"Look for me when the column forms," Burns
said, rising. "Find my platoon, and I'll make
room for you just behind it. We can keep you
from being crowded out. You'll be safer there."
"God bless you!"
"If you see Nadya Ivanovna, tell her nothing
can stop me until I find her."
"Indeed we will, Lieutenant."
With his heart beating as though forced by
some mechanical means, Burns came out onto
the road again. The pathos of this helpless,
kindly family being chased out into the arctic
wilderness to flee for their lives struck at the
most sensitive fibres of his consciousness. Savage,
bitter resentment swept in gusts across his mind,
coloring his reason, muddying the clearness of
his thoughts. He struggled against a baffling
feeling of helplessness. His watch showed it to
be nearly eleven o'clock.
Suddenly it occurred to him that she might
have gone to headquarters in search of him.
Hope again. He hurried there.
"Sergeant, has anybody been here looking for
me?"
"I'll say there has! Captain Ordway has been
here twice, and at least three orderlies."




NADYA DISAPPEARS
W    -w- 00  W      -----


243
__e -w


"Anybody else?"
"No, sir."
Reluctantly, yet with a guilty knowledge that
he had neglected his men, Burns headed back
toward his billet. In the scrambling chaos of
the streets he found the necessity for speed. His
gait became almost a run. At the same time, the
accumulations of unutterable fatigue commenced
to drag him down. Waves of faintness rolled
in upon him, and he fought to overcome them.
Where the Monastery road crosses Troitsa
Street, a woman came up to him and pressed
close against him as he walked.
"Wait a minute, soldier," she said tentatively.
"Come with me to my room."
Burns walked straight along as though he had
not heard her.
"I'll show you a nice time," she continued.
"I'll give you vodka...."
Perhaps he was not actually conscious that she
was speaking to him. His mind was gripped by
torturing doubt and shock. The woman took
hold of his arm; her voice husky and warm.
"Darling, come along with Olga. I'll make
you happy for a little."
"No!" said Burns vaguely.
"Please come, darling. You'll not be sorry."
"No! Nol"










244         SNOW TRENCHES       —,..
"Let me love you and you will forget the war."
"Love! Christ, no!" he shouted roughly.
She screamed curses at him in a foul vocabulary of doughboy obscenity. The shrill irritant
of a harlot's abuse upon the tender membrane
that stretched between him and hysteria made
a lasting scar. Behind him, almost out of hearing,
the hideous monologue began again to some
other hearer.
"Wait a minute, soldier...."




XIII
Shenkursk Evacuated.


F    ER LORD' SAKE, WOP, MAKE UP YOUR
mind!" growled Williams. "You make
me nervous! You've opened yer pack nine times
to put that damn banjo in, an' ya know damn
well ya got to choose between music an' groceries. Why the hell don't ya learn to play a
mouth organ? You can carry one o' them in
your pocket."
Bianci's dark eyes slowly turned on the
speaker. His rich, musical voice came strained
and laboriously from weary lips:
"You talk too much! Make your own pack!"
"To hell with him, Bianci," said Coon Dog
Evans. "Don't pay no attention to him."
Bianci turned away, and speaking partly to
himself, partly to Evans, he continued:
"What does he know? Me, I've played this
guitar ever since I left the old country.. "
"Guitar, eh?"  Williams interrupted.  "I
thought it was a banjo."
"Always when I feel sad," Bianci went on, "it
makes me happy. It don't play quick an' warm








f




246


SNOWCl TRENCHES


in this damn cold, but it tells me anyway 'bout
the blue sky, an' the the sun, an'...."
"Don't ferget the seenyereetas, kid," Williams
cut in.
"Maybe it's lonesome, like me," Bianci mused.
"An' now, when everything goes wrong, an' I
need it most... I gotta leave it behind.."
Evans glanced at his own overstuffed pack.
"Drag it along Bianci," he offered. "I'll help
you tote it."
"Sure, he'll help ya. He's musical, too."
"Pull in yer neck, Williams," said Cook. "He
can have some of your chow. You got enough
stowed away fer the whole squad."
Sergeant Hayes stalked into the room.
"You guys all set?" he called. "It's eleventhirty."
No one contradicted him, but Lieutenant
Burns, sitting quietly on his bedding-roll in the
darkest corner of the room, consulted his watch.
He worked his way to his feet, stood swaying
uncertainly for a moment, then picked his steps
carefully over the men and litter of packs and
barrack-bags strewing the floor. Malinowski
watched him anxiously. He reached the door
and, bracing himself against the wall, descended
to the street.
A weird rustling sound filled the night, as




SHENKUTRSK EVACUATED


247


though great whirring wings swept low above
Shenkursk, skimming the snow-heaped gables
and swooping down into the streets. Trotting
hoofs, skimming sleigh-runners, the scuffling of
many feet, muffled voices twisted by the rising
north wind into a medley of melancholy. Burns
halted for a minute in front of the door, revived
somewhat by the sting of the wind.
"There you are, eh?" challenged Captain
Ordway, his solid bulk shaping itself out of the
darkness. "What in hell's the matter with you?"
"Plentyl"
"This is a swell time for you to turn goofy on
mel Why didn't you come back with Malinowski? We've been looking all over town for you."
"I couldn't, Skipper..  "
"Couldn't, hell! You can't afford to be foolin'
with women tonight! If you'd been drinking.
I could understand it."
"I don't expect you to understand. That's
why I can't talk to you about...."
"The hell you can't! Spill it!"
"If you had a sweetheart in this town tonight,
and she disappeared completely two hours before
we let the Bolos in, what would you do?"
"Do? I'd obey orders!"
"Not by a damn sight! You'd find her!.
And I've got to find mine!"










248         SNOW TRENCHES
"You couldn't stay with her if you did find
her. She's probably getting ready to grab herself a Bolo sweetie." He seized Peter's arm.
"Come on upstairs and get your stuff packed
up and join your platoon!"
Burns jerked his arm away. "I'm going over
to the hospital again. I'll be back in a minute.
My platoon's all ready. It's been waiting for the
signal almost a half hour."
"You're staying herel No fault of yours your
platoon is ready. Listen, Pete! It's eleven-thirty,
and we have to be lined up in less than fifteen
minutes. You haven't time to be chasing all
the way over to the hospital."
"Then I'll run over to headquarters and
phone. I can make that in time. It'll only take
me a minute to get there."
"Phone connection's already torn up. Snap out
of it now for Christ's sakel Not turning yellow,
are ya?"
"Yesl Like at Nijni Gora!"
Captain Ordway softened a little.
"I know what you're up against, old man," he
said. "But there just ain't a thing we can do
about it. If there was, you know I'd be the
first man to give you a hand, Pete."
Burns climbed the stairs again in the Captain's
wake.




SHENKURSK EVACUATED


249


— 2 —


"Everybody outside!" The first sergeant went
from room to room giving the word. "Company
forms on the road right outside. Corporals, get
them squads together!"
Sleeping, fatigue-dulled men responded sluggishly. The shadowy, drab, hummocky floor
stirred as they jolted.
The sergeant blew his whistle.
"Come on, you guys! You ain't any tireder
than I am!"
One by one, too tired to grumble, men detached themselves from the mass on the floor and
got onto their feet.
"Damn it!" the sergeant shouted. "Shake it
up! Fall in! Outside!"
Corporals moved among the still-sleeping ones,
shaking them into wakefulness. Heavy packs
were hoisted onto bent, galled shoulders, and arranged for an all-night carry. Boots, mittens,
mufflers, fur caps and big coat collars received
final adjustment. Lonely men, who walked alone
although surrounded by other men, went out to
face their test. Squad-mates helped each other
and left the room together, each strengthened by




250         SNOW TRENCHES
the comradeship of the other. Except for Lieutenant Burns, still seated on his bedding-roll, and
Malinowski, standing beside him, the room emptied and the company assumed the shape of a
double wall of men in front of the billet.
"Come on, Lieutenant," Malinowski said
quietly.
As though walking in his sleep, Burns crossed
the room. Malinowski, just behind him, stopped
at the door and reentered the room to blow out
the single lantern left burning. Captain Ordway
was giving final instructions to the company as
they took their places in the formation.
"We'll march in column of twos. The trail's
too narrow for a squad. Now, for God's sake,
don't lag! We don't want this company strung
all over North Russia, and we don't want any
stragglers. I know it's goin' to be a tough hike
for all of us, but we can make it. We've got to
make it! God knows, the pace will be slow
enough. Now, then, remember: No noisel No
talking! No smoking!-at least until we're well
across the river, an' it gets light. Platoon commanders will see to it that each man carries three
days' emergency rations. That's all, men, except.. I'm proud as hell of this outfit! The best
God damn company in North Russial... Stick
it out, nowl.. Squads right! Marchl"




SHENKTJRSK EVACUATED          251
Straight ahead, swinging along with rhythmic,
veteran tread, they crossed Troitsa Street, followed the length of the Monastery wall, turned
right onto Vologda Street, and halted. They
pulled off to the side of the road and rested
again.
Burns squatted on his pack at the tail of the
company and watched the hospital sleighs move
past to find their place in the column. Bravely,
resignedly, they came, the helpless muster of the
wounded. Alone, in the dark, or paired in the
sleigh with another blanket-swathed sufferer, they
stared upward through the breathing-slit in their
wraps into the bitter, starless night, or dozed to
the swaying motion of their sleigh. Here and
there, stifled moans arose out of the hum of
movement, but the doctors had been merciful
with their narcotics. The weird, heart-catching
chatter of delirium rode above a sleigh carrying
a single occupant attended by a hospital orderly.
"Where are the nurses? Where are the nurses?"
Burns' overwrought mind questioned incessantly.
A group of a dozen sleighs arrived together.
The nurses were with these. Then the sleighs
stopped coming. The hospital convoy was ready.
And to Burns, every perceptible sound and
sight in that pitiful procession and in the halted
file of ambulance sleighs re-created for him the




252


SNOW TRENCHES


vision of Nadya, and rekindled his hope of finding her. But hope faded.
Now, at the moment of leaving, came a panicky scrambling by the civilian refugees to get in
line. Horses strained through the deep snow
beside the jammed roadway to drag heavily overloaded sleighs carrying all the movable property
of a large family. The youngest child perched on
top of the pile; the father, ploughing along beside the horse, beat its slanting rump with a stick
to hurry it; the rest of the family trailing along
behind, joining their strength to the tug of the
horse when the drifts held it back. Sleighs overturn, and their jabbering owners call on God's
help to right the spilled cargo. A factory-made
sleigh, like those seen on the streets of Petrograd,
trotted by, its jangling bells gagged with rope.
In it sat a man and a woman holding a very
young baby in her arms. The baby cried weakly,
its voice sounding frightened and far away, like
that of a kitten imprisoned in a closet.
And to Burns the ineffectual rush of these terror-stricken families told of the devastating torch
of the revolution, of the fiendish cruelty of the
pursuers, of the stricken, tortured soul of a nation
betrayed, of the mutilated bodies of innocent
ones littering the streets of quiet villages, floating
down to sea with all the foul debris of war on




SHENKURSK EVACUATED          253
the sullied currents of broad, forest-bordered
rivers. The tender cry of the little one moving
northward toward loaded, uncased field guns went
spiralling down through his brain, upsetting the
cool dominance of his will.
Staff officers galloped impatiently back - and
forth, checking over all the preparations. Colonel Jordan rode slowly by, stopping for a word
with each of the company commanders....
The signal to leave lay just a minute ahead....
But to Burns, the efficiency of the staff work, and
the sight of those official instruments through
which this tragic flight was ordered, brought a
whirl of rebellious, bitter resentment to his heart.
Rising abruptly, he passed his resting company, a long, thin black shadow against the snow,
and came to the end of the hospital convoy.
The riders of the advance guard were already
mounted. The drivers of the ambulance sleighs
gathered up their reins in readiness. The Shenkursk Battalion in front of them stood in march
formation. Burns hurried forward, searching
every sleigh and separate figure on the chance
that Nadya had passed him unobserwed. Not a
trace. Back along the road he went, a great, gaping wound in his consciousness, as though he had
suffered an amputation.
From somewhere up ahead, the signal had




254-      NOW TRENCHES


been given. The advance guard moved noiselessly past the outer lines of wire and were swallowed by the forest. The dull steadiness of
Burns' heartache was stabbed by tearing flashes
of hysterical protest against leaving without
Nadya. Until the actual departure of the advance guard he had not really accepted, way
down in his heart, the certainty of their retreat.
It was too terrible to believe.... But, suddenly
he saw in vivid reality Nadya left behind. He
saw her in the Bolos' clutches.... There she
was! Hurrying back to the hospital, she found it
dark and empty. Back again into the town. Some
one in the street told her the town has been
abandoned.... She went frantically to the Stornoffs', to the deserted headquarters of the Americans... Despair overcame her, and she started
along the trail to follow the column. A Bolo
patrol picked her up and took her back to Shenkursk, to the headquarters of the jubilant Reds.
They identified her as a refugee-as Eristoff's
niece. Drunken commissars, celebrating their
victory, seized her....
Burns started blindly back into town. Leave
Shenkursk? Not if a dozen armies left itl
A rough, apelike face under the insignia of the
star and sickle pressed against Nadya's lovely
throat... Burns heard her scream. Then she




SHENKIURSK EVACUATED         255
slipped down, down, out of sight, unconscious.
Burns came out of his hideous rambling, as
Malinowski took his arm and said, "I'll help
you, Lieutenant."
3 -A tearing wind with death in its teeth swept
down the trail from the north across the snowbound top of the world. Snow-plumed branches
dipped heavily, dislodging blizzards of fluffy snow
to ride the blast. The war-dance of the trees was
grim, not inspiring; premonitory, rather than
exultant. The myriad strings of all that vast harp
of the wilderness responded in just one tone to
the lusty fingering of the wind,-a minor tone,
sadly beautiful as the tolling of bells.
The commotion of the trees favored the movements of the troops by smothering any noise
which might be heard by Bolo patrols.
The main body was now in motion, a thin,
sinuous procession a mile or more in length. The
mounted troops of the advance guard two or
three miles ahead had not yet signalled any contact with the enemy. Could it be that they had
left this trail unwatched?




256


SNOW TRENCHES


*PPMPR -IM-O V                "W --  -- -v- - --
As he passed the line of blockhouses and wire
at the edge of town, Burns turned for a farewell
glance at Shenkursk. He could not fight off the
impression that he was leaving behind him in
that doomed placed some vital part of himself,
something irreplaceable out of his life. His passing beyond these blockhouses marked the closing
of an episode the vividness and spiritual significance of which he could never recapture. His
anxiety for Nadya bore down on him more heavily than his pack and kit and all the wearing
burden of his fatigue. Suffering the apathy of
despair, he set his face to the north again.
The trail they traveled comprised three parallel ruts-two narrow glassy ones made by the
runners of the sleighs, a choppy, uneven one in
the middle where the horses' hoofs cut in. The
overhanging bottoms of many passing sleighs had
scooped away the soft snow beside this track so
that a profile of the trail resembled the outline
of the rear end of a sleigh. The snow on either
side of the trail stood nearly as high as the shoulders of the men. Trees bordered the trail so
closely as almost to meet above their heads.
The soldiers, starting the march in column of
twos, soon found it almost impossible to keep
their footing in the slippery outer ruts, and gradually fell into single file in the track of the horses.




SHENKURSK EVACUATED
-..I-  -WI. VW.W-  W   IWO i


257


The thick, stiff soles of their Shackleton boots slid
like skis. The canvas thongs with which they
were tied soon cut and chafted their ankles until
they became swollen and raw. Fortunate were the
men who had traded them for the felt boots of
the Russian natives.
For the first slow mile or two every eye and
ear in the column was nervously alert for some
sign of pursuit. It seemed impossible for so large
a force to move undetected through the massed
battalions the Bolos had thrown around the
town. Perhaps the unexpectedness of the move
would save them. Gradually even the risk and
the fear of attack were unable to quicken the
dropping senses of the toilworn outfit. Step after
step into the buffeting wind was bought at the
price of superhuman effort. Heads were bent
low to find the scant shelter of the man in front.
No halt could be ordered until the zone of
greatest danger lay behind.
As the night advanced, the men's resistance to
the intense cold diminished. Exercise and excitement had made its discomfort incidental at the
start, but now it pierced the thick layers of clothing like driven nails. Burns soon gave up wriggling his fingers or swinging his arms or any of
the natural attempts to warm himself. He no
longer cared what the toll of the frost might be.




258


SNOW TRENC   S-C[E~


25  SNOW _ E _ _ _   _


The tingling, throbbing pains in his feet and
hands had been succeeded by a pale numbness.
The cold had driven the blood back from his
extremities, until the only vital warmth he could
feel in all the bitter universe of frozen things was
a small area near his heart. The frost from his
breath spread and thickened on his muffler and
collar and cap. He had tried breathing through
the loosely knit meshes of his muffler, but it had
frozen solid. His mouth was chapped and sore
from eating snow to quench his thirst, since the
water in his canteen had turned to ice.
Presently the trail sloped steeply downward
and the smooth flat width of the Vaga River
freed the creeping column from the prison of
the trees. The freedom of the bare river-plain
was rather sensed than actually observed. It was
still too dark to see further than a few yards,
although the snow made a sharper contrast to the
black figures on the trail than when they had
marched under the gloomy trees. Still no alarm
from either advance or rear guard.
As Burns looked indifferently along the way to
the far bank, the strange manner in which the
dimly-seen shapes of his comrades up ahead faded
into the distance and the night communicated
something mystic and unreal to him... as
though those melting into that black infinity were




S INKIJRSK EVACUATED


259


"P W-             "'  -   o- -W   -WIW W 40O   WM
actually outdistancing the miseries of this terrible march and, fantastically, as though he himself were approaching a separation from all his
madness and pain and heartbreak.
At Nikolaievskaya, three versts further on, a
fifteen-minute halt was ordered. But while the
soldiers crowded into the few poor houses for
warmth and drinking water, the trail hummed to
the passing of the interminable line of homeless
families.
The wind died with the night. A dozen versts
lay behind. The lagging of men too weak to
keep up had elongated the column to half again
its starting length. Not a few had fallen out at
the side of the road, unable to continue without
rest. Some of these were carried on sleighs commandeered at Nikolaievskaya; some resumed the
march behind the main body, finding a place
among the fugitives; some had to be helped by
the rear guard. Every man gave all he had.
There was no room in the straining heart of a
single one for selfishness or meanness. Silently,
doggedly, far from cheers or applause, they stumbled through the snow; a resistless, overwhelming human enemy behind, the merciless, steelhard northern winter ahead.
From the south, as dawn arrived, the unmistakable growling rumble of a Bolshevik battery,




260         SNOW TRENCHES,,, -  -.,,,,.  -.,,  -,. -.,.  - - ---  -
apparently opening its bombardment of Shenkursk, told them their flight was as yet undiscovered. Nervously, they quickened their gait for a
moment, then fell back again into the pace of the
treadmill.




XIV
Nadya Escapes.
W       HEN NADYA LEFT THE HOSPITAL EARLY
in the evening of the evacuation, she had
not been told of the orders to give up the town.
The Cossack officer who had come for her had
said that he would take her to her uncle. He had
given her no time for questioning. Hurriedly,
she had put on her wraps and had followed him.
He led her rapidly to the western edge of the
town, where he took a path to the left of the
road, and stopped at a small shack, hidden in the
darkness. Nadya drew back a pace in surprise
and inquiry. Dark as it was, she noticed that her
guide looked carefully about to see if they were
observed. Then, without knocking, he pulled
open the door and entered. She paused for a
moment irresolutely. His hoarse, "Come in!" issued out of the darkness. She stepped boldly into
the unlit room beyond.
"Close the door!" The Cossack's voice rasped
in her ear. They were standing close together in
a narrow, closet-like vestibule.
"Where is Colonel Eristoff?" she demanded,




262
__*"


SNOW TRENCHES


complying, nevertheless, with his curt command.
"He is just inside. We dare not open the other
door until this outer door is closed; the light
would show clear to the road."
"What place is this? Why do you fear the
light?"
"This is Kharin's bath-house. You will see why
we must not be discovered."
Nadya thrilled with suspense as her companion
carefully opened the inner door. Was her guide
telling the truth? Was her uncle truly waiting in
the dim room beyond? It puzzled her that he
should be here, instead of at his own billet. Perhaps he was wounded. What if he were dead?
She followed the Cossack.
An untended lamp turned down low provided
the only light on the inside. The room was small,
low-ceiled, and chilly. Rugs had been nailed
clumsily over the only window. A pot-bellied
iron stove filled one corner of the room, a low
bunk of crude planks the other. Nadya leaned
over the head of the bunk.
With cameo-clearness, against the rough blankets, her uncle's lean face stared at the roof.
Thick, stubbly whiskers deepened the shadows
on his sunken cheeks. His long, aquiline nose
seemed thinner and more hawklike than usual. A
turban of blood-stained bandage swathed his bald




NADYA ESCAPES


263


skull. His closed eyes, deep-sunk in their bony
sockets were partly hidden by the lower fringe
of the bandage.
In the dim light and the cold Nadya was unable to detect any sign of living warmth in the
old man. Clutching the top blanket, she wheeled
around to the silent Cossack.
"Is he dead?" She raised her voice. "Tell me!
What happened to him? How did he get here?"
"I was beside him on the Kodima Trail two
days ago when we ran into the Bolshevik infantry
moving this way. At the first heavy firing from the
enemy, a detachment of our Cossacks on the left
started backing away in disorder. The Colonel
galloped over to them and commanded them to
stand fast. I saw him slashing at them with his
whip and threatening them with his pistol. Suddenly they stampeded into the forest, carrying his
horse with them. In the fighting that followed,
our whole company was scattered disgracefully,
and made its way back into Shenkursk in disordered groups, every man for himself... The
Colonel was not seen again, and I was certain he
had been killed or captured. A number of our
men deserted to the Reds, as you know. It
seemed probable that he had fallen into their
hands.
"This afternoon, old man Kharin, who was re



264


SNOW TRENCHES


turning from a charcoal-burner's shack deep in
the forest, stumbled on a saddled horse standing
beside a man lying in the snow. He recognized
the Colonel, crumpled there unconscious, threw
him over his horse, and brought him here. He's
had a bad scalp wound-I don't know how deep
-and probably stuck to his horse until almost
within sight of the town. I met them and came
here with them. I put that bandage on his head.
It was all I could do. He was alive when I left
him, but I don't think he's got a chance."
"Why didn't you bring him to our billet, or to
the hospital?"
"It wasn't safe. The men would have killed
him."
"Then we must take him there nowl I'll stay
with him while you get a sleigh."
"It's no use," the man argued sullenly. "Besides, there are no sleighs to be had."
"Then steal one! We must get him to the hospital. Hurry! now."
He left the shack without further comment
and, as Nadya realized after he had gone, without
committing himself to return. She gave herself
to her patient. After brightening the lamp and
piling wood on the embers in the stove, she unfastened the collar of his tunic and straightened
the bed coverings. A suspicion of movement in




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265


his pulse encouraged her. She looked about the
room for a basin and some water. There was a
copper bowl on the floor beside the stove, but
no water. It occurred to her that an old woman
lived near by, whom she had befriended during
the flu epidemic earlier in the winter. She would
go to her for help.
Within a few moments she returned with a
pail of water, a roll of clean, homespun linen
cloth, a chunk of bread, part of a chicken and,
at the old woman's insistence, a bottle half full
of vodka. Gently, she unwrapped the old bandage and cleansed the wound. Her patient stirred
slightly when the cold water touched his head,
and his set lips fell apart. She poured a swallow
of the raw liquor into his mouth; then pulled a
chair over to the head of the bunk and sat down
to wait.
She had no means of judging the passing of
time, but her anxiety increased as the lamp
burned lower and lower, and no word came from
the man she had sent for a sleigh. Finally, she
could stand the uncertainty no longer; she went
outside to look around.
A hundred yards away the streets of Shenkursk
teemed with activity. Nadya was sorely puzzled
by the mad rushing about and the careless show
of lights. She could not account for the noise




2 ti


SNOW TV IRENCHESE3




266  N _  -E-SV  _


and bustle, which she could see was made by
civilians crowding the streets; there were no soldiers at all in the thronging crowds. She weighed
the advisability of going herself to find a sleigh,
but decided to remain with her uncle... he
might return to consciousness while she was absent, and try to get up.
2
The man on the improvised bunk of rough
planks threshed about in delirium, making incoherent efforts to speak. His racked and tortured
body seemed to vibrate in harmony with the
chaos outside, although the hysteria was dying
out in the streets. Finally, out of the mumble, he
framed a few disjointed sentences his hearer
could interpret:
"There they come!... God! Look at them!
Stand fast, you devils, stand fast!... Fire!..
Firel... Here!...
His voice trailed off again into indistinct
sounds, half moan, half snore. He flung his body
over restlessly so that he lay uncovered, one
shoulder over the edge of the bunk. The' girl
watching him was at his side instantly, moving




NADYA ESCAPES


267


him back tenderly into a comfortable position,
tucking the covers warmly around him. She laid
her hand on his hot forehead below the bandages,
her finger-tips caressing, soothing, as her tongue
quieted him.
"It's all right, dear. The Bolsheviki can't come
here. Go to sleep now, it's nearly morning."
Then, to herself, "Poor old soldier... poor
wounded head.... Ah, God help him!"
For a short time he lay motionless, his breath
coming more regularly. She turned up the lamp
enough to keep it from going out, then relaxed
into her chair, a thick shawl around her shoulders, her heavy coat about her feet. Sleep approached, but her clamorous nerves and her
anxiety for her patient kept her partly awake.
She dozed, half conscious of her surroundings,
unaware of the flight of time. The wounded man
stirred dully, arousing her, but as he became still
again, she returned to her nap. Presently, sleep
overcame her so that she did not see the gray
signal of dawn creep through the chinks in the
small window to compete with the smoky flicker
that survived in the lamp. Cold crept in with it,
to find no competition from the dead ashes in the
stove.
A thunderclap jarred the stillness somewhere
out in the surrounding forest; a tremendous




268         SINOW TRENCHES
V  =                   -        -0    "V-V
crash struck nearby. The wounded man sat up
as though hit.
"Stand fast, you devils! They can't shoot
straight, I tell you!... Here, you...Fire!
He flopped back again, apparently still asleep.
Nadya had jumped up to attend him, instantly
wide-awake. Now she stood for a second unable
to move as several loud explosions succeeded the
first crash. She shuddered. With a sensation of
dread, she realized that the Bolos were commencing the new day's shelling. The thought of hundreds of great shells blasting into houses crowded
with women and children, and of the hospital at
the mercy of enemy artillery burdened her mind
with tragedy. She had no fear that they could
break through the ring of stout blockhouses defended by the trained and gallant American companies, but she had been too close to the fringes
of war to underestimate the price the defenders
would have to pay. The sweetness of her constant vision of Lieutenant Burns was tinctured
with the bitterness of worry. Yet she buoyed her
spirits with hope and the anticipation of seeing
him again within a few hours.
The room had become a refrigerator, its
draughtless chill penetrating all her clothing,
numbing her tired, aching body. She started a




NADYA ESCAPES


269


new fire in the cracked stove, huddling close to it
as its warmth reached out. Her brain throbbed
as she considered plans for moving the wounded
man. She could see no way except to leave him
for a little while. Perhaps some one would come.
The shelling was over as unexpectedly as it
had started. Daylight whitened the window pane
where Nadya had pulled the rug aside, and lightened the gloom of the interior. A startling racket
of machine gun firing surged out of the fringe
of trees less than two hundred yards away. Nadya
flew to the window to look.
Several machine guns, squatting where the
road ran out of the forest, were spitting away at
the blockhouse at the edge of town a few rods
from her window. The blockhouse, surprisingly,
was mute. The guns quit firing while a knot of
gray figures who had worked their way cautiously
into the open studied the town through field
glasses. Nadya saw a sleigh with two men waving
red flags of some sort drive out past the blockhouse, halt at the barbed wire to open a passage,
and gallop over, gesticulating madly, to meet the
Reds. All went back into the trees.
"What deviltry is this?" Nadya gasped. "Where
are the soldiers? Where is the garrison of that
blockhouse?"
Her wildest flight of imagination failed to pic



270


SNOW TRENCHES


270l        SNOW TRENCHES         _W_"P  O
ture the actual situation. Momentarily she expected the Canadian and Russian artillery back
in the town to retaliate. The treacherous troops
who had opened the way through this blockhouse
would be punished. Oh, God! What had happened?
Then came a spectacle which snuffed out the
last brave spark of hope and courage she had
been cherishing so tenaciously,-the entry of the
Bolo pack into Shenkursk. It crushed her beneath the overpowering weight of absolute despair. She shrank back into the dingy, squalid
little room, her heart-beat turning cold and
feeble. What, in God's name, had gone wrong?
She knew that some terrible disaster had overtaken Shenkursk; that the catastrophe dreaded
above all else had wiped out everything she held
dear in the world. Fear was not her strongest
emotion, though its black, weakening pigment
colored all her perceptions. Stronger than fear,
vivid as a priest's picture of Hell, deep as the
tearing, inconsolable grief of a mother beside the
open grave of her child, was her suffocating sense
of utter loss. Brokenly, yet drawn by a wicked
fascination, she leaned against the window casing
and watched the Reds move in.
There was nothing warlike, triumphant or
grand about this victorious advance; nothing




NADYA ESCAPES
_  _i _ _W1 iW   ' '   ~y __p_


271r


-----   - -   WOV


stirring or patriotic. Rather, as a cloud of locusts
swarms over a field of ripe grain, blighting and
consuming it, they came; as the dull gray lava
rolls down a volcano side, burning, smothering,
destroying everything as it passes.
A cavalry detachment advanced timidly, feeling its way, the riders clinging together, with no
pretense at military formation. Nadya thought
that the sudden barking of a dog, or a shot fired
close by, would set them scampering back into
the woods. A group of commissars following
them showed greater assurance. In the pilfered
apparel of Czarist officers they appeared very
splendid, but the gilt and trimmings, worn as a
muzhik wears his smock, could not disguise their
lumbering clumsiness. In her disgust, Nadya,
without thinking, almost started to call Colonel
Eristoff to the window to observe them. Somewhat more martial in appearance was the next
unit of this singular parade, several companies of
sailors from the Baltic fleet, whose bravery and
ferocity were unmatched by any of the mob that
followed. They began a coarse, wild song, its
guttural accents chilling Nadya like a sentence of
death. The town swallowed them, and a little
interval elapsed, with the road bare except for
stragglers. Back among the houses Nadya could
hear frequent rifle shots.


I








272


SNOW TRENCHES


272   SNWIOWW TRENCHES'"
The voice of her patient called her from the
window.
"Water!... a drink, please."
As she held the cup to his lips she saw that his
fever had subsided. She recognized with relief
that his delirium had passed. He was looking
into her face.
"Nadya." He spoke with difficulty. "Nadya,
dear, where are we?... I remember the skirmish on the Kodima road. The Bolsheviki...
God! there were thousands of them!... What
happened, Nadya?"
"Your men took to their heels. Farinoff's detachment deserted. You were wounded and missing for two days. No one but God knows how
you got back here. Miroff called for me at the
hospital last evening and brought me here. He
left to find a sleigh so that we could move you to
the hospital, and hasn't returned." She paused
for a moment, undecided as to the wisdom of
telling him of their danger.
She went back to the window. The road was
again filled with the motley columns of the Red
Guard. As though they were going to a county
fair they sauntered along-rifles slung over their
shoulders, axes at their belts; some with other
parts of a Russian soldier's equipment, but most
in the everyday garb of a muzhik.




NADYA ESCAPES


273


Suddenly a man in close-fitting furs and shiny
leather boots passed directly in front of her window, crouching low to find concealment, moving
rapidly through the snow toward the forest. He
gained the barbed wire and started to clamber
over it, looking back fearfully over his shoulder.
Some one behind him fired a rifle; a scatter of
shots followed. The fugitive made a leap; became entangled in the wire; then Nadya saw that
he had been the target. He lay crumpled in the
snow, one arm ludicrously pointing upward,
caught on the wire. Obviously he was dead, yet
the column on the road broke and several men
ran at him. A bearded man in sheepskin cap
went first and, as he approached the body, lunging through the drifts, he pulled his axe from his
belt. When he reached the man on the wire,
he raised it...
Nadya turned away from the sight.
"What is it?" the Colonel asked. "Where are
we, Nadya?"
"The Bolshevikil" Her face was white and
tragic. "We are in Kharin's bath house. Nobody
knows we are here except one old woman who
lives three or four houses away from here-and
her I would trust with my life...."
"Well, now I can go back to my quarters. You
can go for a sleigh; I will be all right.... Why,




274          SNOW TRENCHES
Nadya, what is the matter? You look so strange."
"It's nothing. I expect it is because I am
tired."
The Colonel eyed her inquiringly.
"You'd better start now, dear. It won't take
long, and then you can have a good rest."
"I'll go in a little while. Here, let me fix those
blankets.... Please try to sleep again; I'll take
a nap in this chair.
His eyes closed, and Nadya, too, snatched a bit
of sleep.
In the evening the patient was much brighter,
and asked for something to eat. Nadya gave him
a piece of chicken and some bread. Presently he
noticed that the lamp had been lighted.
"The devil! I must have slept all day. Come,
dear, you must go at once and get that sleigh.
We don't want to spend another night in this
miserable place."
Nadya sat on the side of his bunk and looked
straight into his eyes. She took hold of the big
fist he had flung outside the blankets. There
was a break in her voice, but she controlled it.
"I can't go. We have to stay here until you
are stronger.... The Bolsheviki have taken
Shenkursk....A little later, I'll go out and see
what I can learn. But we'll be safe here, dear,
until you can get onto your feet."




NADYA ESCAPES             275
"Have taken Shenkursk? Impossiblel" He
tried to sit up, but his throbbing head, as well
as Nadya's gently restraining hand, stopped him.
What devil's nonsense is this?"
"Lie still, dear; you must get stronger...
We'll find some way to slip out of here. It's only
a hundred yards to the trees. Once we reach
them, we can strike across to the Allies' positions
on the Dvina. But you must save your strength.
In a few minutes, after the streets are clearer, I'll
get all the news-and some food."
"Shenkursk in the hands of the Reds-Christ!
I can't believe it. What God-cursed thing happened? Who blundered? Where in Hell are our
troops?" The Colonel's excited voice rose shrilly.
His incredulous mind strove to figure out the
possibilities of this unbelievable announcement.
"Sh-hl Not so loud!... I'll go out in a
minute and see what the situation is. It will do
no good for you to lose your head and perhaps
do something reckless. Look! I'll turn down the
lamp; try to sleep a little more."
The Colonel responded with a noncommittal
grunt, but Nadya knew that his resourceful brain
would grope through the night for schemes for
their safety.
About eleven o'clock she put on her shawl and
coat-a quilted jacket such as peasant women




276


SNOW TRENCHES


wear-extinguished the lamp, and slipped quietly
out into the dark and stinging cold. The light
streaming from a low window in a nearby house
attracted her; standing on tiptoe, she could see
within: the room was filled with Bolshevik soldiers in all stages of preparing for the night. At
least three squads were jammed in, some lying
down to sleep, some sitting up on their places
on the floor, talking and smoking. Four had
squeezed into the wide bunk on top of the big
stove.
Picking her way along the snow path, she
reached the house of her destination. Apparently there were no Bolos quartered here. She
went quickly through the door at the back of the
house into a small room, where she was greeted
by the old woman-very surprised and alarmedwho had been dozing in her chair.
"Nadya Ivanovnal You here?" She lowered
her voice and limped over to close the door into
the front rooms. "You mustn't come here, child;
the house is full of Red soldiers. Oh, why didn't
you go last night?"
"Tell me, babushka,* what has happened?
How did the Bolsheviki get in here?"
"The Allies gave up the town, my poor darling, at midnight last night. They retreated to
Grandmother.




NADYA ESCAPES


277


the north. Hundreds of families followed them.
The streets of Shenkursk are already red with
the blood of those who remained. They won't
harm me, but... I'm terrified for you... Is
your uncle-alive?"
"Yes, he's much better. But we need food.
Can you help us?"
The motherly old woman, rummaging about
in various cupboards, put bread and tea and
some smoked fish into a large covered basket.
Nadya took up the basket and put her arm
around the old woman's shoulders, looking up in
alarm as the door to the front creaked open, admitting a short, burly man who closed the door
deliberately and stood with his back against it.
The dim lamp flared full in Nadya's face as
though to betray her. It made the squat, broad
nose and rough blond fuzz of whiskers on the
intruder horribly clear.
"Well, old woman," he grunted, raising his
eyebrows at the sight of Nadya. "I thought I
heard voices. Who's your guest?"
Nadya retreated toward the outer door, while
the old woman stepped in front of the man, explaining that she was a "neighbor's daughter,"
but he shoved her violently aside and, with incredible quickness, caught Nadya by the wrist.
To stop his exultant jabber, which she feared










278         SNOW TRENCHES
would attract his comrades in the front room, she
allowed him to pull her over to the light. She
even contrived to force a smile, after the manner
of peasant girls, and the man became immensely
pleased with himself, believing he had made a
conquest. Nadya's bright beauty, unusual under
such a head covering, made the man's eyes shine.
He attempted in a blunt phrase to compliment
her. Holding him with her eyes, Nadya sidled
around to the other edge of the table, now holding the Bolo's hand instead of remaining in his
grasp. She stammered a bashful reply to his gallantry, her coquetry winning him completely.
He looked at the old woman, irritably remarking
that she had better clear out. She went to the
outer door and opened it, the Bolo taking his
eyes off Nadya to watch her. Quick as a cat,
Nadya darted through the open door, the old
woman slamming it after her in the Bolo's face.
Having a second's headstart, she dodged into
the open door of the barn, cowering into its
darkest corner, as the house door flew open and
the man rushed out. She was afraid he would
heard the brittle ice-crust crunching under her
feet, but he ran out to the road, then returned,
swearing, to the house. Creeping out into the
open, she hugged the houses closely on her way
back to the shack and was not molested.




NTA TIVA K'FiV. A TVDt




NTACIYVAR VQJVCIATV           279


279
-O- _


She had been gone longer than the Colonel
expected and he had imagined all sorts of terrible happenings. He insisted that they would
need nothing more until he could go for it himself. The scalp wound which had grazed his
skull, nearly killing him, healed rapidly and he
was soon able to sit up and move about the shack.
Hour after hour, day after day, the terror eddied
around their hiding-place. On the fifth day,
when they ran out of food and he insisted on
going after it, Nadya argued that her old friend
would not know him, and that she would run
less risk of discovery than he. Reluctantly, he
gave in.
Nadya waited until nearly midnight before
starting. No lights gleamed in the windows of
the sleeping town. The old woman was waiting
for her, as she had waited expectantly every night
in the darkened back room. She let Nadya in
without showing a light, whispering what she
had put into the heavy basket she handed her.
Nadya regained the out-of-doors undisturbed.
The path was empty and still. Light of heart,
she walked briskly along it. A frosty, creaking
noise in the hard-packed snow caused her to look
around, Could she distinguish a black shape
there behind her? Then she imagined she could
see several figures following, but they refused to




z






280


SNOW TRENCHES


solidify, and dissolved into the velvety darkness.
She was positive, however, that the steps continued as she darted along the path. She dashed
breathlessly into the shack, fearful that the light
from the inside had showed itself through the
door.
"Are you awake?" she whispered. "I'm so
afraid a man is following me. I didn't see him,
but I heard steps quite plainly."
"Put out the light!" he ordered.
In the darkness he reassured her.
"Probably it was some young fellow going
home from his girl's house. If you weren't close
enough to see him, how could he have recognized
you?"
"Sh-h!" she warned, touching his sleeve.
Nadya fancied she could hear something brush
the window pane; could see an oval of lighter
gray against the rectangle of midnight darkness
which located the window against the still
blacker wall of the shack. Was that the hideous,
fleshy nose of her pursuer flattened against the
glass?
Nadya gripped the Colonel's arm.
"Lookl The window! Is that a man?"
The Colonel sat up, swinging his legs over the
edge of the bunk. He held Nadya's hand. Both
listened intently, straining their eyes to catch a




NADYA ESCAPES            281
glimpse of any motion behind the window. They
could just see the color of the night, velvety and
deep. They could hear one another's breathing,
their least movement, the awesome hum of absolute silence. A gust of wind brought a scraping
at the corner of the shack. A thump, snow-muffled, issued from the same corner. Nadya dared
to change her position. Both gasped as the log
burning in the stove crackled loudly.
"How nervous we are!" the Colonel whispered, lying down again.
"Wait!"
From the door-latch came a genuine click.
The bath-house which sheltered them, like
most in North Russia, had a vestibule between
the main room, which contained the stove, and
the outer door, so that in cold weather a bather
could go gradually from the steamy interior into
the frosty out-of-doors.
At the click the Colonel sprang up again. They
heard the outer door swing inward. The Colonel,
seizing a big chunk of stove wood, stood behind
the second door, which opened into their room,
Nadya standing transfixed in the far corner. A
footfall sounded in the vestibule; another nearer;
then a strident voice:
"Where are you, barishna?* Let's have a light,




*"Girlie."






282         SNOW TRENCHES
will you? I can hardly see in this blackness."
A hand, sliding its way along the wall, reached
the inner door. Shuffling footsteps. The door
pushed open and the man spoke again:
"Where are you, little dove? Don't hide! I
know you're here."
He groped forward.
"Damn it! Answer me!... I'll find youl"
He fumbled for a match, scratched it on his
coat sleeve and held it up, its flame illuminating
the same horrid face Nadya had seen on her first
visit to the old woman's after food. Nadya suppressed a scream. The man caught sight of her
and started for her.
Colonel Eristoff, standing tense behind the
door within arm's length of him, allowed him
to take one step. His stout club flew upward,
scaring the intruder as it banged against the ceiling. It plunged downward with all the Colonel's
weight and strength, striking the man's thick
head, crushing him to the floor.
"Light the lamp!" the Colonel called guardedly
to Nadya. "Stick that blanket over the window."
He bent over the prostrate man; loosened his
clothing; made a swift examination.
"Hm-ml" he grunted. "His fur cap saved
him."
Action seemed to revitalize Nadya.




NADYA ESCAPES


283


"We can't stay here any longer!" she exclaimed
with an expression of dismay. "This man may
have told others where he was going. At any
rate, he'll be missed."
"Yes, we'll have to get away tonight. Tell me,
what road is closest? What part of town are
we in?"
"The eastern section. We're not over a hundred yards from the Kodima Road."
"That means that we will have to strike out for
Toulgas. God! What a hope!"
It was a sobering thought that they must embark, without a plan or preparation of any kind,
on a fifty-verst trip across the frozen wilderness
to Toulgas, on the Dvina River, which was held
by Allied troops and White Guards. It would
be a ticklish thing to win past the outposts of
Shenkursk at this late hour when no man could
be abroad without arousing suspicion.
Nadya put her arms around her uncle's neck;
she burst into tears.
"Oh, I'm so afraid. If only you were well and
strong...."
"Me! Don't worry about me, my dear. Do
you think I'm not strong enough to outwit those
stupid devils and take care of you? If only you
can stand it. Come, now, we've been in tighter
places."




284


SNOW TRENCHES


She brightened considerably under his reassuring confidence.
"I can make it. You'll see. Here, let me help
you."
For his own use the Colonel stripped the Bolo
of his cap with its red star, his knee-length overcoat of heavy gray wool, and his thick, warm felt
boots. He forced a choking gag into his mouth,
binding it fast by a rag around his head, and
tied him so tightly that he would not be able to
move until released. He donned the captive's
wraps, finished the vodka in the bottle the old
woman had given them and with Nadya warmly
bundled up, carrying the food, resolutely left
the shack.
The bracing air stimulated the Colonel after
his confinement. With Nadya close at his heels
he made straight for the road. Before they
reached it he stopped for a second in study; then
retraced his steps to Kharin's stable, which was
behind and under the same roof as his house. He
felt slowly along the wall to the left until he
found Kharin's horse. Untying the halter-shank,
he led the horse outside to where he had seen a
sleigh standing in the yard. The harness lay in
a tangled heap in the sleigh-bed. Numb fingers
and the darkness delayed the unfamiliar task, but
he finally got the horse hitched to the sleigh. The




NADYA ESCAPES             285
Colonel jerked the clapper out of the sleigh-bell
in the yoke, which tinkled warningly once or
twice. At length they got onto the road, headed
north, apparently undiscovered.
"Too bad we have to take the old man's
horse," Nadya whispered.
"He'd offer it if he knew our need," muttered
the Colonel.
Straight ahead, a hundred yards distant,
loomed the sentry that blocked their road out of
Shenkursk. At the regular, even pace of people
who are on honest business and have nothing to
hide, they approached him. Thirty feet away, he
challenged, a sleepy, mechanical, "Halt! Who's
there?"
"Ivan Kolkin, comrade, and my old mother,"
Eristoff replied. "Going to Sergieffskaya."
They continued to advance until they were
face to face with the sentry. He stopped their
further progress with his rifle.
"You can't leave here tonight unless you have
a pass from headquarters. Have you a pass?"
"Certainlyl"
The Colonel commenced to fumble in the
pockets of his coat. Nadya sat in dejected silence
on the straw-filled sleigh-bottom. The Colonel's
leisurely search failed to produce the pass.
"Well, where is it?" demanded the sentry.




2RO


RNOWTCT~ TREINCH H;IL9


2,f w     NOW TR ENC1T E —


"I'll find it." The Colonel pulled off his
gloves. "If I'd known you'd ask for the cursed
thing, I would have held it in my hand. I've
been back and forth along this road so often, you
know," he commented good humoredly, "that I
didn't think I'd need it."
"Well, you do need it! Those are the orders..  Why are you taking the road at this ungodly hour?"
"My old woman has to get home. I have no
room for her with me..... Wait! Here it is!"
He tried with half-frozen fingers to smooth out
a crumpled piece of paper he found in one of his
pockets. The darkness bore down on them. He
held it out negligently toward the sentry.
"Got a match?" he asked the sentry, withdrawing the paper to grope in his pockets. "Want a
cigarette?"
"Show me the pass, first. What the hell are you
wasting time for?"
"Just as you say, comrade. Don't blame me if
you can't read it without a light."
"Strike a matchl"
"I haven't got a match. Light your own!
You've got my pass, now. Make up your mind
whether you're going to let us pass, or if I have
to go back to headquarters to find out why."
"Don't worryl I'll tell youl"




NADYA ESCAPES


287


He lowered the butt of his rifle to the snow,
holding the muzzle in the crook of his arm, and
reached in his own pocket for a match. Eristoff
eyed him narrowly. He took off his gloves and
stuffed them under the flap of his coat. A flame
of light flared up from the match; the sentry protected its starting fire in the cupped hollow of
his heavy palms. Then, pinching its stem in the
thick forefinger and thumb of his right hand he
tried to straighten out the paper Eristoff had
given him. The cold and his clumsiness hindered him. If he could have seen beyond the
match-flicker into the cold, glittering ferocity of
Eristoff's widening pupils, he would have fled, or
screamed for help. But he was busy with his
match and the paper. His match burned out.
He swore and lighted another.
Eristoff towered over the sentry as he leaned
forward. The sight of the man's match-lit, weasel
face, with its tiny droplet of ice on the tip of
his nose, nearly caused him to lose control of
himself in a hysteria of fury. The gods that attend the daring were beside him again. Like a
sprinter awaiting the starting gun, he summoned
his strength.
Lunging forward, he gripped the sentry's
throat between his muscular hands, his quick
fingers pinching in deep to secure his hold. The




288


SNOW TRENCHES


match puffed out; the sentry's hands groped ineffectually at the sleeves of Eristoff's coat to tear
off that choking grip. Eristoff forced him backward and down into the snow. The night-black
world turned soundless, too, as those powerful
thumbs clamped down on his throat. Presently
Eristoff dragged him over to the sleigh and
pitched him in beside Nadya. He picked up the
fallen rifle, secured the horse's reins and, climbing into the sleigh astride the Bolo's prone body,
started the horse at a gallop for the concealing
shadows of the forest.
"Once more we give them the slip, eh?" he
called to Nadya. "We'll dump this swine in a
little while, and a thousand Red Guards cannot
find us when our trail leaves this road. We'll be
fifteen versts from Shenkursk before it occurs to
them to look for their missing sentry outside the
town."
Gradually the solitude and peaceful hush of
the unrolling forest trail exerted its soothing influence on Nadya's nervous agitation. The sentry
lay under a clump of thick bushes a mile or more
behind them. The Colonel now rode with her in
the sleigh, weakened and irritable as a result of
his tussle with the sentry. Half way to Sergieffskaya, he located the tree-stumps that marked the
snow-buried entrance to the narrow, difficult




'NADYA ESCAPES


289


trail which he knew led across the wilderness
without encountering any village or settlement
to Toulgas, on the Dvina front. Along this seldom traveled path their horse made slower progress, and the sleigh rocked and bumped, sometimes upsetting. The snow-laden branches of
bushes and trees brushed them. Once they found
their way blocked by a thicket stretching straight
across the path, and the Colonel had to spend
many precious minutes floundering about in the
track behind them to find where they had missed
the turning. It began to snow.
Nadya rode with her eyes closed most of the
time. She was able to relax, but did not feel
much like sleeping. For the first time she could
look back over the happenings of the last few
days, and she tried to put together the puzzling
pieces of the picture. It was easy for her to understand the necessity of the Allies evacuating
Shenkursk. Many of the Russians in the town
had foreseen and predicted it. But what had
happened to Peter? Why had he left without seeing her?
The consuming ardor of her no longer suppressed love for him brushed aside these questions and the slightest temptation to doubt. Her
heart told her that Peter had searched for her.
She was sure that he had been forced to march




290
"P 400 -

SNOW TRENCHES


away with his men carrying a load of heartstricken anxiety for her that she could almost feel
across the desolate wastes that separated them.
For months before their last meeting on the
night of the evacuation, she had resisted the
promptings of her heart to surrender to this
urgent new love. With all her heart she had
wanted to embrace it. But she had been afraid... afraid of disappointment, of bereavement,
of disillusion. She had determined to be sure of
it, or to pass it by. Certainty and trust had come
to her. Peter's love for her was sacred, as real,
and as dear to her as her hope of motherhood.
She had swept aside the last of her barriers and
reservations when he had held her in his arms on
that terrible night, when the sweetness of their
being together had made the menacing danger
of the Bolo guns a consecration of their whispered vows,-a ritual of peril.
Sensitive to all the values of the love he had
expressed, to every shade of truth both spoken
and unsaid in the devotion he had offered, she
had found it all genuine. Intuition reassured
her. With passionate, absolute abandon her heart
had responded. A spark as inextinguishable as
the soul had been born in her breast,-a tiny bit
of living fire that would go on burning even beyond death. It warmed her now.




NADYA ESCAPES             291
She could picture through her closed eyelids
the thin winding column breasting the snows on
the trail beside the Vaga... glancing furtively
to the rear, then straining forward again with
heart-rending slowness toward some new line of
snow trenches to the north. With terrible vividness, she could see her lover watching through
tragic eyes the efforts of his men to carry on
beyond the breaking point... and to carry on
himself. And with some inner vision she could
see how brightly the living spark in his own breast
flickered amid the deadly grayness of everything
around it. A tender smile touched the corners
of her lips as sleep came.




xv
Desperate Vistavka.
TPETER BURNS NO LONGER CARED WHAT
happened; whether the column halted, or
dragged tortured step after tortured step onward.
Hope was mockery. By what thin cord life itself
was held, he could not have told.
He had been without sleep for forty-eight
hours when they slipped out of Shenkursk the
previous midnight, between the closing, clutching fingers of the overwhelming force of Bolsheviki which surrounded the town. They had
marched until nine-thirty in the morning, thirty
desperate versts to Shegovari. Then, at three
o'clock in the afternoon, pursuing Bolshevik
riders overtook them, and an hour later the harried column resumed its flight northward, just
as a battery of Red artillery fired its first ranging shots on Shegovari. A close pursuitl Too
close for a weakened column hampered by many
sleighloads of wounded, and a file, endless it
seemed, of helpless refugees straggling behind.
Since four o'clock the column had struggled
an additional fifteen miles, and now the occa



DESPERATE VISTAVYKA


293


sional gleams of yellow lamplight from the windows of Vistavka, suggesting warmth and rest,
were too inviting to pass. To the south, across
the curve of the Vaga, they saw dim patches of
red above the sombre pine-tops where Metvieff's
Russian cavalry unit of the rear guard had fired
the north end of Shegovari.
The wounded were in pitiable condition, many
of them so weak that a civilian doctor would
have feared to move them in a cushioned ambulance. When they had been bundled into sleighs
at Shenkursk hospital, wrapped in blankets and
sleeping-bags and packed with hay, they were
almost too warm. Then, as the short-legged Russian ponies jerked them over the rough trails,
the bitter cold crept through their coverings and
chilled them numb, or made them burn with
fever. To their muffled ears the crunch of horses'
hoofs, the creaking of sleighs, and the moan of
the wind in the trees sounded a miserere. As the
halt was ordered, men slumped to the ground
almost insensible. Burns squatted at the side of
the road, his head on his breast, too numb even
to fumble in his stuffed pockets for a cigarette.
On either side of him, men lay formless in the
snow. At the rear of the column stragglers
strained to catch up, and the high-piled sleighs
of refugees took advantage of the lethargy of the
till0




294


SNOW TRENCHES


troops to forge through the deep snow beside the
roadway to a safer position up ahead. A light
snow shook down on them. It was almost ten
o'clock at night.
2 -Burns found an old grandfather, two daughters and the husband of one, and a swarm of
children in the billet to which his first two
squads had been assigned, but these doubled up
stolidly to make room for the soldiers. Burns
pulled off his frozen Shackleton boots and socks
and chafed his feet until the blood came tingling
back. Then he toasted his benumbed hands
against the warm brick side of the big stove.
Rolled into his two blankets on the floor next
the stove, with all his clothes on and with his
pack for a pillow, he had a warm bunk. The
heavy, stale air of the place, warm, and with the
odor of crowded rooms, had a narcotic effect on
him after the sharp, stinging winds of the outof-doors, but he found it difficult to sleep for a
time, as his mind re-created the fantastic impressions of his last night in Shenkursk.
The courage and confidence with which they




D)ESPERi~ATE 'VISTAVRAVICA


2905


DE  P     VTSTAV-           2
had manned the defenses of Shenkursk that night
to await the assault of the Bolo hordes had been
dissolved into a hysteria of hopelessness. All
sense of values had been upset. The swift, desperate patrols along the lanes to the south, the
maddening pound of the guns, the strained questioning faces of the civilians, the stark upturned
faces of his men lying stiff in the snow, the agonizing tramp, tramp, slide, slide of the retreat,
Nadya gone, the relentless pursuit.. images
of heroism and terror swam past his eyes.
Nadya gone! His fire and spirit, his interest in
the game, his very desire for life had gone with
her..
After a long, long time he slept.
At the first hint of the colorless arctic dawn,
Vistavka bestirred itself apprehensively; the villagers to learn what danger to themselves this
precipitate troop movement threatened; the soldiers reluctantly to take up axe and pick again
in the heavy labor of constructing defenses.
Burns breakfasted on corned beef, hard bread
and coffee. They had abandoned all provisions
but these in leaving Shenkursk, and new convoys
with rations and stores had not yet reached them
from the north-no sugar, no jam, no canned
milk, no flour, tobacco almost gone. Burns muttered again with profane insistence:




296          SNOW TRENCHES
W VV-v W a-W ----W-of
"Why in hell did we give up Shenkursk? A
far safer place than this dump'll ever be, no matter how many sand-bags we fill... just made
em a present of enough chow and cigarettes to
feed the whole damn Bolo army till Spring."
Messengers from the north brought word in
the night that they must prepare to hold Vistavka indefinitely, and a frantic bustle ensued.
Log shacks at the end of the village pierced with
loopholes became blockhouses. Burns' platoon
spent the morning filling sand-bags. They dug
the dirt from holes under a house where the
ground was protected from the frost; outside, the
ground was frozen solid to a depth of eight or
nine feet. They reinforced the thick log walls
with heavy rows of sand-bags to make them bullet-proof.
That noon, they wolfed down more of the
bully beef and biscuits, then toiled on until after
dark. When their strength was spent and they
could no longer shovel and lift, they dragged
back to their billets, ate more bully beef, biscuits and coffee, and rolled into blankets on the
floor again. Before retiring, Burns drew hot
water from the samovar into his cup, and painfully scraped six days' growth of whiskers off his
raw face.
Another day of wearing labor on the block



. DESPERATE VISTAVKA


297


houses; three more meals of monotonous sameness; another night of restless sleep. By day and
night, the prospect of another bombardment, and
more desperate fighting in this squalid unfortified village, instead of a promised relief and long
rest, which they had bitterly earned, wore away
at their will and even at the foundation of their
reason.
Jim White, one of his best machine gunners,
grasped  Lieutenant Burns' arm.    His face
twitched strangely. He looked about to cry, yet
there was a dryness about his eyes that denied
it. Burns was worried by that expression; he
had seen it before, when men do crazy, irresponsible things. All men could not endure the same
amount of this punishment. He spoke to White:
"What's wrong, Jimmy? This won't last. Snap
out of it!"
"Oh, God! Lieutenant. I can't stand it. I'm
losing control of myself. I'm not yellow, Lieutenant. You know I'm not yellow. Don't you?
But I'm almost out of my mind."
"Hell, no! Jimmy. Course you're not yellow.
Just get your mind off it for a minute. Go inside for a little. Let somebody else do the worrying. We'll get relieved in a few days."
In the awful cold, men stood in line for their
turn at the shovels, so as to warm themselves a








298


SNOW TRENCHES


little by exercise, digging trenches in the drifted
snow along the crest of the bared knoll on the
left flank. Strong points and machine gun nests
were sited, and breast-high parapets of heavy logs
from demolished barns and outbuildings built
in front of the snow trench-line. The engineers
laid knife-rests of poles and barbed-wire along
the front of the trenches in lieu of more permanent entanglements. They built fires on the
spots selected for dugouts to thaw through the
iron-hard dirt so that their picks could take hold.
Vistavka buzzed and clattered and seethed with
activity, until gradually a ring of makeshift defenses surrounded the village.
On the fifth day, an Allied plane, reconnoitering to the south, was fired on a short distance out
of Vistavka, as it flew low over a roadway
crowded with guns and sleighs. The Reds were
moving a large artillery force against Vistavka.
Infantry patrols to the south the next day discovered and tore up a mile or more of field telephone wire running to a spot in the woods which
gave perfect observation on the village. That
evening, a Bolo patrol, appearing at the edge of
the woods, sprayed the road with several bursts
of machine gun fire.
The garrison of Vistavka, already driven to a
cracking point, summoning their last reserves of




DESPERATE VISTAVKA


299


strength, worked more feverishly on their defenses. Burns lay down to fitful sleep with dull
dread in his heart, resigned to an indefinite prolongation of all the hell they had just come
through: bombardments, night attacks, exposure
to the arctic weather, fatigue, hunger and the
sapping, weakening disintegration of soul and
mentality.
From midnight on, Vistavka could hear men
stirring about in the dark woods to the front;
men shouting to horses; the snapping of branches;
vague metallic noises-and at breakfast time the
expected shelling started. A wild fusillade of
firing blew up from deep in the woods, the shells
landing at random, most of them a half-mile or
more from the village houses; ranging shots from
at least a dozen guns. Inaccurate and amateurish
shooting though it was at the start, exciting the
derision of the troops in the village, it persisted
extravagantly until some of the guns found their
target, and a high explosive shell crashed into a
large billet, blowing out one wall and setting it
afire.
In the absence of proper trenches, men stood
in the lee of the larger buildings to protect themselves from the shelling. This gave better cover
than could be had indoors, although no spot in
the open was safe from the flying metal. The




300         SNOW TRENCHES
inertia of standing helpless and inactive, dodging
death from an unseen, inaccessible foe-for their
infantry never appeared-was maddening and
nerve-racking. After dark, with three houses
sending up flames and sparks into a sky that
seemed to press down on them, smotheringly
close, the civilian dwellers of Vistavka prepared
to abandon their homes; to look for shelter somewhere to the north, away from the menace of the
guns.
The soldiers were asleep when the starosta of
the village went from door to door awakening
the people to tell them they must leave. Cook
and Williams, of Burns' platoon, sat up sleepily,
coming widely awake as they learned what had
caused the weeping of the forlorn little mother
that had been so kind to the soldiers in their
billet.
"Jeez, that's a shame!" Cook told Williams,
who was grousing because they had disturbed his
sleep.
"Shame, nothin': They'll be better off to get
away from the shootin' An' so'll we."
Cook stood around, dumb and helpless, but
sympathetic, as the women tearfully gathered
up their precious trifles, stowing them away in
baskets and bundles, while the men, going to
the barn, trotted out their old horse and hitched




DESPERATE VISTAVXA          301
him to the sleigh. He stood outside when they
packed the sleigh with all the household stuff
of a muzhik's home, squabbling as to which
should be left behind-a small plow or a basket
of cloth and old clothes.
"Lord, that's tough!" he observed. "That's
sure tough."
He gave the old man a packet, nearly full, of
Ruby Queens.
On top of the sleighload they perched the
youngest child, crying. Cook caught the child's
little white puppy and placed it in its arms,
where the puppy too, began to cry. The women
each took charge of a chicken or two. The old
man led a reluctant cow, which bawled mournfully at short intervals. A rooster crowed angrily
and was answered by all the roosters in the village. At last, the sturdy father leading, tugging
at the horse's head, the little family joined the
melancholy procession of its neighbors and
moved away to the north.
3
Before daylight, the troops were driven out
again to take shelter behind the buildings as the




302         SNOW TRENCHES
Bolshevik guns resumed their firing. The pounding of the guns was more deadly this morning;
the Bolos now had the range. The CanadiaA artillerymen behind Vistavka replied bravely, but
it was an unequal duel, with all the heavier guns
on the other side-the Reds firing from perfect
observation; the Canadians firing blindly, with
none. Relentlessly the shelling advanced along
the road, sniping at certain houses until they
were hit, then creeping forward till they struck
another house.
Blue and shivering, Burns stood behind his
billet, alone, his ears ringing and his nerves
jumping. For the most part, his mind was in a
state of fatalistic calm; his body unresponsive,
inert, like a spring that is uncoiled. His will,
too, was inert. But his nervous system, battered
and throbbing, betrayed him sometimes into un-.reasoning symptoms of hysteria. Watching the
houses across the road with tired lack of interest,
a twinge of horror took him.
Over there, behind a tiny log shack they had
named the "Ritz-Carleton," a corporal had been
standing with two men. A 4.7 howitzer shell
came tearing out of the forest and, plunging
down on the steep end of its trajectory, bored
through the eaves above them and blasted into
the ground at their feet. As its smoke drifted




DESPERATE VISTAV:KA


3-03


away, a blackened crater, some- twisted timbers
and a few bright red streaks in the snow remained. That was all.
A fierce emotion flashed into the void of his
consciousness-a seething hatred of the out-ofreach forces behind those bloody shells; a longing to see them over the sights of his rifle, or to
have them within reach of his bombs. A weak
flicker of mental energy in a mind slipping down,
down, down, into the pit of unreason.
The first and third reliefs of the guard lay
asleep on the floor of the guardhouse. The windows of the place, blown out by the explosions
around it, were crudely boarded over, but the
arctic wind, creeping through the chinks, chilled
the interior despite the red-hot stove. Almost as
much smoke came out of the front of the stove
as went up the chimney, the acrid fumks of
burning wood making the men cough and sneeze..and it made their heads ache and their eyes
water and smart. At first change of the guard
after midnight, the sergeant of the third relief
began to search among the prone bodies for the
members of his relief. Their only lamp, its chimney broken, gave so little light that he awoke
most of them before he found the men he wanted.
Lieutenant Burns waited at the door.
Burns went from post to post with the relief




304


SNOW TRENCH S


304         SNOW —ENI-ESo
as the guard was changed. He went back to the
guardhouse, but felt uneasy watching the sleeping men. Sleep did not appeal to him just then.
He went out into the night again and wandered
restlessly between the outposts. Presently he
reached Cook's post, an exposed spot on the extreme left, which faced a tongue of woods reaching far down into the ravine. He could see nothing out there except the indistinct line where
the trees began. Through his thick earlaps and
muffler, he could hear nothing but the mysterious nightly hum of the wind in the forest. The
frost from his breath grew and hardened on the
fur edges of his cap and on a new growth of
ragged beard. The deadly cold stabbed the bottom of his lungs at every breath. He had no
sense of the passing of time. The moments tarried endlessly.
From beyond the rim of the parapet came a
sound, just loud enough to catch his attention.
He listened intently... the sound of singing.
"What the devil?" he wondered.
He noticed that Cook had stopped his pacing
and was listening too.
"If you want to be a Badger
Just come along with me,
By the bright, shining light,
By the light..




DESPERATE VISTAVK30
m___-i


3055


_W_ _M_ -_V W


"Good Lord!" he muttered. "What's that bird
up to?"
The singing was issuing from their listeningpost, half-way down the ravine, where Jimmy
White of his platoon was on duty.
"By the bright, shining light,
By the light of the moon."
Lieutenant Burns started swiftly down the
path to this hidden post, flung out a couple of
hundred yards beyond the line of snow trenches,
but turned around briefly to call to Cook:
"Get the sergeant of the guardl"
Going to the limit of his post, Cook called to
the next sentry to summon the sergeant of the
guard.  The sergeant hurried up as Burns
emerged from the path followed by White, the
sentry, who was jabbering about "his privilege
to sing if he wanted to... and to hell with the
Bolos... To hell with the lieutenant, too, for
that matter... yes, an' the whole damn army."
"Cook, you'll have to take his place until the
next relief," Burns said. "Sergeant, take this
man back to the guard-house, and bring out another man to take Cook's place. I'll have the two
posts on either side divide it until you get back."
"What's wrong with him, Lieutenant? Stewed?




306         SNOW TRENCHES
"Nol He's off his nut."
"No wonder... Off his nut, eh?... No
wonder," the sergeant repeated curiously. "Nuts,
eh?... No wonder."
Left alone in the still and freezing dark, Burns
found his own mind straying off at strange tangents; White's breaking down symbolized to him
the disintegration of all their little force.
"Couldn't stand it, eh," he crooned to himself,
"Poor Jimmy... No wonder. Who can stand
it if Jimmy couldn't?... What the hell am I
saying?.."
He heard the party coming to relieve his men,
when from over the trees to the south he saw a
sudden flare of red; heard a distant boom; heard
the rumble and whine of the coming shell; felt
it burst with a devilish metallic bang; felt it with
his entire being as it twanged on taut nerves,
frayed to a snapping point-the thunderous tomtom of the guns playing the overture to that
symphony from hell. The shelling had started
for another day...
Another day to try the endurance of mind and
muscle. Another creeping succession of hours of
bombardment from an enemy that was obviously
grinding them down to helplessness and despair
before striking with his infantry-an enemy that




DESPERATE VISTAVSA          307
-V          -11   IV   'W -1I -IW -q  -1   IV -  -W -W low
refused to show himself. Another day of watching their few remaining billets blown up, as the
village was levelled by high explosives.
Standing in the door of the guard-house, Burns
watched the flames sweep over a two-story building of logs. Shrapnel broke over the house next
to it and a man rushed into the street. He had
dropped his rifle and was hurrying down the
middle of the road toward the first-aid station,
oblivious of the bursting shells. His left arm,
curiously twisted, he held out from his body, a
thin stream of blood trickling out of a huge
mitten that looked full of it. His, gait was the
pathetic result of his trying to run at top speed
and still avoid jarring that tortured arm. A low,
continuous, distracted moan came from him as
the pain grew more intense.
Burns watched him limply until a medical orderly came out to take care of him. The wounded
man was Jimmy White-the singer of the listening post.
"Oh, well. He's lucky, at that. They'll take
him back out of this rat-trap an' put him in a
warm, soft, safe bed... An' give him pajamas
an' some decent chow... An' a good-looking
nurse'll hold his hand an' treat him nice... A
nurse..." The vivid flash of his own memory
washed away the rest of the picture. A fresh




308


SNOW TRENCHES


wound reopened in his heart, swooningly painful. "Come back, Jimmy. I'll go instead."
The drumming guns quickened their cadence.
"Oh Christi What's the usel"
- 4 --
Now came the Bolshevik infantry, surging up
from the south, twelve thousand strong or more,
fresh and overconfident from the captures of Ust
Padenga and Shenkursk, flooding the narrow
roads and villages with its battalions, under orders to smash the flimsy positions around Vistavka and chase the handful of defenders into
the White Sea. Perhaps the Allies would run
again, as they had at Shenkursk. Scattered bursts
of machine gun fire and snipers' rifle shots
snapped out of the forest to the front. Casually,
indifferently, as though in a trance, the garrison
of Vistavka stood in the blockhouses and behind
the crude barricades. They were scarcely aware
that the artillery fire had stopped.
They had small incentive to hold these battered ruins. They were too hopeless, too desperately weary, to regard the coming attack with
either excitement or fear. Too near the last gasp




DESPERATE VISTAVKA


309


to realize that they must hold back the Bolos at
this point to prevent their comrades on the
Dvina from being outflanked and annihilated.
To many in the thinly-manned trenches of Vistavka the coming attack would bring reprieve....
Burns found himself a few yards to the right
of the machine gun post that covered a strip of
woods where the enemy could approach under
concealment to a point dangerously near their
defenses. The gunners there were methodically
limbering up their Vickers gun; pouring some
water into its water-jacket; blanketing it against
the cold; arranging their belts of ammunition.
"Whoever sent these damn guns to this country was sure smart," one said.
"You tell 'em!"
"Water-cooled guns, when it's fifty belowl"
"I wish we had the half-wit here to run 'em."
"Don't worry, kid. You'll be glad we got 'em
in a minute."
"Do you know what they use for water on the
Railroad front?"
"I don't want to know."
"Guess!"
"To hell with it! Hurry up those beltsl"
To his right, at intervals of a couple of yards,
Burns saw haggard, bearded faces, lusterless eyes,
drooping expressions... other men of his pla



310         SNOW TRENCHES
toon, stretching away to a blockhouse which sheltered a Vickers gun and a Lewis automatic.
Bianci was on Burns' left, between him and
the exposed machine gun, Cook was on his right.
Burns observed Cook as, with veteran skill, he
fixed a place where he could aim his rifle with
his head shielded by two heavy logs. Then he
watched the Bolos going into position.
Far back among the trees the forest was aswarm
with troops in gray-green, moving off the road in
long columns, keeping out of the open, bearing
always around to the left in an encircling movement. An increasing hubbub came from them.
Burns leaned against the parapet drowsily. The
Bolo fire` was strengthening. Sniping shots, no
organized firing as yet. They were too busy finding their places, now spreading far around to the
left. Company after company, they poured in
endless procession from the road into the forest
-the gray-green of the Red Guards, the muzhik
dress of civilian Communist units, the blue of
the sailors from the Baltic fleet.
The emergency hospital undertook to evacuate
their wounded to the rear, to make room for
fresh casualties. The first sleigh, hesitating a moment until it realized it was free to go, dashed
off down the slope to the north. A second sleigh
started. The first entered the shelter of the trees,




DESPERATE VISTAVKAL


311


its driver beating his horse madly. A man in
muzhik's sheep skins, an axe at his belt, stepped
out into the open at close range, and fired pointblank at the wounded man. He worked the bolt
of his gun and fired again, twice. The figure in
the sleigh shuddered convulsively under its sleeping-bag; its head lolled back.
It was White-the singer of the listening post
— dead.
— 4 —
The Vickers gun on Burns' left began to fire
a crackling series of short bursts. A machine gun
from the woods replied. Burns knelt down deliberately to get the protection of the logs where
the parapet was thicker. Bullets were splintering
into the top logs above, him, punching little
holes, like nail-holes; sending up tiny puffs of
snow, crackling, snapping, whistling through the
air. Cook, beside him, crouched in the same
position. Both were suffering miserably from
the cold. Cook mumbled something stupidly:
"'Just before the battle, mother,' eh, Lieutenant?"
"Huh?... Oh, yeah."




312


SNOW TRENC ES


The Canadian artillery, with a visible target
for the first time, fired furiously into the rim of
the forest on the left, and the gray-green troops
melted back into the trees. Still they crowded
off the road in ceaseless files. Detachments of
them were now maneuvering into line facing the
village. The firing of their riflemen redoubled.
More of their machine guns opened up.
Cook reared up to his firing niche. He swung
his rifle over, aimed at a skulking Bolo, hit him,
then fired again, unenthusiastically.
Burns heard a faint sob to his left and, looking
over, saw with a catch in his throat, one of the
Vickers gunners fall back into the trench, his
helmet awry, blood from his head flowing into a
stiffening scum on the snow.
"Look outl" yelled the other gunner. "There's
a sniper up in those trees! Lay low!"
Cook gave the treetops his listless attention.
The machine gun on his left continued to fire,
theI surviving gunner keeping it warm. Presently, Cook noticed the top of a tall pine tree
sway unnaturally, a small flurry of -snow shaking
down from one of the branches. He fired at
the spot,-no result. He aimed a little higher
and shot again. Nothing happened.
A wild, barbaric clamor issued from the woods
before them; a volley of Bolo firing; then, line




DESPERATE VISTAVKA


313


after line, the Red infantry pressed forward,
coming into the open at the edge of the trees.
Their front ranks floundered heavily through the
unbroken, waist-deep snow, their rifles now making a hellish din. There were dozens of automatic rifles among them-Russian-type, Lewis and
Chauchat-which kept up a marching fire after
the manner of the French gunners. At the rear
of the village, too, the Bolo attack was forming.
They had completely surrounded the place.
The defenders were pouring into them a
deadly fire from all the guns they could muster
and, as the Bolos emerged from the trees, many
fell wounded into the snow. The Canadian
artillery blasted clear an area on the left, so that
the Bolos were forced to make their main attacks
directly from the front and rear, where the guns
were blinded by higher ground.
Cook, seeing continued movement in the tree
that hid the sniper, fired again at it. The treetop quivered. His hunting instincts aroused, he
took another shot.
Bianci slumped down with a low cry, crossed
himself, died... Burns stooped to straighten
him out and rolled him over so that his face was
turned to the rear wall of the trench. There was
no grimace on the still lips, no lines of terror, or
of pain, even, on the powder-smudged forehead




314'        SNOW TRENCHES
and cheeks. Bianci looked at peace. On his face
was a singular expression of readiness to go.
Burns had been fond of Bianci... always willing, lighthearted, romantic, and musical Bianci.
It did things to his flagging, fatalistic disinterest
in life to see how Bianci took it. Burns picked
up Bianci's rifle and took his place at the barricade.
The second machine gunner was hit in the
chest; his gun silenced. Cook knew now that he
had to drop that sniper, or stop his next bullet.
He held his gun steady, took a deep breath, and
fired again at the movement in the tree.
"Got him" he grunted.
A rifle pitched out of the treetop and clattered
to the ground in a shower of snow. A heavy
body leaned far out, clung despartely to its
hold for an instant, then crashed headlong.
Another groan brought both Burns and Cook
to the side of the wounded gunner. Burns
clumsily helped him to a more comfortable position, wrapping the blankets from the gun around
him. Cook tackled the machine gun.
"Never mind, Tommy," he said. "I'll run yer
damn gun fer ya. I dropped the bird that
plugged ya. He tumbled outa that tree like a
God damn turkey."
A blizzard of lead pelted the barricade. Slowly




DESPERATE VISTAVXA           315
the gray-green lines plowed forward, split wide
open in places where the metal from Vistavka
tore into them. They were half-way down the
ravine.
Burns worked his rifle until it smoked and
sizzled where it touched the snow. Cook gripped
the handles of the Vickers gun; trained it on
the nearest mass of the enemy; pressed down the
trigger until the whole belt of cartridges was
spent. He could not miss that crawling target
at such close range. Screams and curses sounded
through the racket of the guns. Bianci's abandoned rifle spoke faster in Burns' hands in deadly
rapid-fire. The Bolos reached the bottom of the
ravine, their rear ranks pressing forward stubbornly over the trampled snow and the bodies
of their fallen ones.
Cook, with difficulty, inserted another belt into
his gun and ran it clattering through. He was
a sharpshooter, not a machine gunner. Would
nothing stop those swarming devils out there?
Lieutenant Burns' heart quickened its beat.
His dulled mind commenced to react to the
imminence of their danger. If the Reds won
past the wire, Vistavka and the whole Vaga
Column were lost. Slowly the deeply-rooted
sense of duty and responsibility in Burns' distorted consciousness began to reassert itself. His




316
-WI _V


SNOW TRENCHES


loss of Nadya gave him no excuse to sulk or quit.
Her belief in him, wherever she might be, was
ample incentive for his greatest sacrifice.
A trench mortar back in the village lobbed
over one of its great cans of explosive. It tumbled lazily over Burns' head and fell roaring
into the enemy front, strewing the snow with
wounded men, causing the whole line to waver.
The short arctic twilight had commenced to
lower. The enemy was slowly winning up the
slope.
Cook now worked his gun desperately, but
suddenly it jammed-and he could not fix it.
Burns glanced at him anxiously. He seized the
cocking-lever himself. Over their heads were
flying more bombs from the trench mortar, as
its crew kept two or three in the air at once.
The Bolo fire was spitting in their faces.
Cook grabbed one of his hand grenades, pulled
the pin, and hurled it far down the slope.
Goodl They were within range. These high
explosives made frightful gaps in the Red lines.
The bottom of the ravine became as the sunken
road at Waterloo. Still, by weight of numbers,
the enemy rolled in toward them. Cook's bombs
flew madly. His tall, rangy figure bent and
snapped upward with fantastic speed and rhythm.




l


0
I


i
iI
II
i




DESPERATE VISTAV1KA


317


And each time that long arm shot out, a hand
grenade sailed down the slope.         1
His left shoulder felt stabbed, then crushed,
then paralyzed, as the force of a blow spun him
half around. Burns saw his game struggle, as he
fell to his knees... He was up again. He
seized another bomb, but could not pull the pin
as his left arm hung limp and useless.
Hooking the ring of his grenade over the
sight-leaf of the Vickers gun, he jerked hard
with his right hand, forcing the pin out, and
flung the thing into the ravine. He gave a
shuddering gasp of pain as his wounded side
was wrenched from the throw. That side
dragged him down and down. He struggled
frightfully to hold himself erect against the
awful tugging. His senses reeled and he wilted,
falling over the gun. The gun upset. Cook
slid off.  He opened his eyes for a second,
twitched'his head toward his wounded shoulder,
and passed out again. Burns propped him into
a half-sitting position. He pulled the Vickers
gun up straight, cleared the jammed cartridge
from the breach, and opened up with it.
Spared, alone, of the little group around him,
Burns came back to himself. From the swift
surge of pity for his comrades' sufferings, from
the tenseness of that critical moment, and from




318


SNOW TRENCHES


the desperate need of action, he had a rebirth
of morale-a second wind of the spirit. In a
flash, he cared.
Over and about him flew all the bombs and
bullets and shells that Vistavka could throw in
her last despairing, hopeless effort to check the
attack.
Squinting down the barrel of the gun, Burns
could see the jumbled masses of Bolo infantry
pressing closer. He could see the effect of that
spray of metal from his gun. He could not
see cruelty and hatred in the faces that packed
that foreground. He saw no semblance of the
conqueror's exultation. Instead, was agony and
the abandonment of hope. And the frenzy of
terror that brings men to madness....
And then it was, in the twilight, when it
seemed almost as though God Himself had
turned Bolshevik, that the long gray-green wave,
rolling out of the forest to engulf them, broke
in a surf of blood along the barbed wire.
With the village all but in their grasp, the
confident Red battalions, lacking the final punch,
bleeding to death, filtered back into the forest,
to save their living remnant and to tend their
wounded. The Americans ceased their fire and
let them go....
Vistavka had its own terrible wounds to nurse.




DESPERATE VISTAVKA.


319


__ I   _ _-, I-_ __I -  qf  I -   W   " I IV,W -__ _


"W


The village was in ashes; the defenses riddled
by enemy fire; rations and stores blown up;
and of the garrison a scant handful remained
unhurt, and these too utterly spent to carry on.
As soon as the darkness closed down, the survivors of Vistavka assembled on the road to
withdraw to Kitza, the next village, five versts
north. That spectral ravine, which had become
a valley of death, sent a strange dread through
them, a nervous impatience to be away. From
it rose the ghostly cries of wounded men.
Through the snow which began to come down
thickly, as though Nature herself had sickened
of the scene, rose the spirits of those weaker
ones whom the cold was claiming. Beyond the
ravine, in the forest, flitting lights bobbed
through the trees and cries sounded faintly
from Red sanitars* with their sleighs combing
the woods for wounded. After an interminable wait, the artillery wheeled out of their gunpits and lined up on the road.
Burns raised his eyes to the tops of the snowmuffled trees, now thrown into mystic tones of
red and shadow by the flames from the burning
of Vistavka. A pattern of snow-flakes, glinting
and descending, dropped silently toward him
out of the vault above the trees. A big, lacy
*Stretcher-bearer




3:20


SNOW TRENCHE S


320  SNOW TRENCRES
crystal caught on his eyelash-a thing as rare
and perfect as beauty itself. But to Burns, the
flashing facets of its myriad-sided form looked
dull as paper, its corners rounded, its colors dim.
It typified the monotony, the terror, and the
suffering of this fantastic campaign. The men
were leg-weary from floundering through it,
eye-weary from seeing it, brain-weary from the
soul-numbing drudgery of fighting its encumbering grip. Burns saw it, too, as a feathery pall,
wider than a whole province, thicker than any
pile of bodies.
The snow whitened the timbers of the burnt
houses. It hung on the forms of the men waiting there in the roadway. It muffled the sounds
of their departure as they finally staggered to
their feet and crept away.




i F
XVI
The Raid.
A   SHORT CANDLE-END FLICKERING ON A
bench at the rear of the shack made the
only light in the place, except for the dull glow
of the oblong stove in the center of the room.
This bench was fastened to the wall and ran
around all four sides. Every square inch of
space in the shack was occupied by sleeping
men, but a foot or two on the bench beside
the candle. A jumble of field-telephone equipment was there. It was a matter of little choice
to the half-frozen men when they came in from
outpost whether they seized a strip of floor or
squabbled for a bit of bench. The bench was
cleaner and not so crowded and smelly, but
further from the stove. The reek of men in
wretched discomfort filled the shack; scorched
leather, woolens and sheepskins, wet clothes and
shoes, tobacco, wood-smoke, sweat and grime.
But, with the temperature outside at fifty below,
there were none who spent their short resting
spells seeking the fresh air.
Lieutenant Burns, in command of the posi









822


SNOW TRENCHES




_122  SNOW TRENCHES- _V


tion, sat by the candle, within reach of the
phone. His lean face looked haggard and discouraged in the strange slanting shadows the
candle threw toward him. His thin fingers fumbled with some object under the flap of his
breast pocket. Finally, he unclasped it and
held it in the palm of his hand. Covering it,
so it would not be noticeable to his men, he
looked at it for a long time. It was the token
that Nadya had given him on the night they
became separated. After their kisses...
Suddenly the snores and grunts of the sleepers
were interrupted by an explosion, sounding tremendously loud, from within the room-an explosion rather like the boom of an automobile
tire blowing out than that of a grenade or shell.
The men all sat up jumpily.
"What the hell was that?" Burns demanded.
"Me, Lieutenantl"
"Who? What was it?"
"Me! Tonelli! I putta can o' stew on the
stove to warm, an' she blew up."
"For God's sakel Haven't you learned to
punch a hole in a can before you heat it?"
"It's a hell of a time to play cookl" said
Corporal Breen. "Pipe down!"
"Just like the dumb, lousy Wopl" said Butch
Taylor.




THE RAID


323


"Yahl" said Tonelli. "You jumped like a
Bolo shell she come in."
"Aw, go to hell!"
"Now, I gotta no more breakfast," Tonelli
mumbled to himself, turning over and over in
his too small space.
"Lie still, damn you, an' shut upl One more
crack outta you an' you'll find yer can in a snowbank."
The telephone buzzed; Burns grabbed it.
"Yesl"
"Private Evans, at the post on the bluff-"
"Yes, Evans."
"The Bolos are movin' men, Lieutenant, into
that patch of brush just ahead of us here. Not
many, yet. Mebbe a patrol. Just want to let
you know."
"I'll be right out."
He picked his steps among the prone bodies
to the opposite corner of the shack, and put his
hand on the shoulder of a man half-sitting, halflying in the corner.
"Sergeant. Sergeantl Take charge here till
I get back. I'm going out to that listening post
on the bluff."
"O. K., Lieutenant."
The sergeant arose sleepily and stumbled
over to the telephone.




324


SNOW TRENCHES


When the Allies had abandoned Vistavka on
the night of the almost successful Bolo attack
a few days previous, they had occupied Kitza,
a larger village five or six versts north. Kitza
was likewise situated on the bank of the Vaga
River. Because of its location on the line of
communication half-way between Shegovari and
Bereznik, it had been fortified somewhat during
the fall and winter. It had blockhouses and
barbed wire enclosing it, and plenty of billeting
space. The road to the north made an L-shaped
turn in the middle of the village and crossed
the Vaga River at this point. Directly across
the river, almost hidden by the crowding trees,
was Kitza's sister village, Ignatovskaya, nicknamed "Ignatz" by the men. The artillery in
support of the Kitza area was stationed there.
Vaga Column Headquarters, in arranging this
defensive position, followed the same tactical
principle they had employed at Ust Padengathat of an outpost flung out a mile or more in
front of the main line of blockhouses, strong
enough to break up or seriously delay the formation of any large attacking party, and to prevent the annoyance of patrol alarms. In this
case, the outpost comprised a mere skirmish line
hidden in the forest. With consummate care to
hide them, a series of machine gun posts had




-I~






THE RAID


325


been laid out in a circle two or three hundred
yards across, so as to cover every possible direction of approach. Engineers had taken apart
the walls of a large square shack, had dragged
these heavy, prepared logs out to the forward
position, and had set up the shack again in the
center of this ring of outposts to serve as a shelter for the men who were resting between reliefs of the guard.
Two platoons of infantry were sent out to
this forward position each evening at seven
o'clock to serve for twenty-four hours. Then
they were relieved by two other platoons. Each
platoon was obliged to spend one day out of
every four on this nerve-racking, exposed outpost. While on duty there, each man spent
two hours in the snowy skirmish line, then two
hours in the stuffy warmth of the shack, and
so on, until their relief arrived.
Burns was now in charge of this forward position for the third time. since their retirement
from Vistavka. He dreaded every cold, dragging
minute they had to spend out there, but he had
acquired a new grip on himself since the shock
at Vistavka had scattered the gray fog in his
brain. He was again alert, competent and resourceful, saying little, but unsparing of himself in the care of his men. When Private




326


SNOW TR^ENC 6


Evans called him, he went immediately along
the narrow, deep path to the listening post on
the bluff.
Coon Dog Evans and Williams lay prone on
a nest of pine-boughs with which they had lined
a concealing hollow scooped out of the snow.
This post was perched on a knob of the bluff
which reached out toward the river and gave
observation across a broad curve of the Vaga to
the south. Through binoculars, in the daylight,
they could watch what was going on in Vistavka,
and could follow the road along the rim of the
bluff for more than a mile.
Burns crawled in beside them.
"What's going on?" he whispered.
"Move over this way a little, Lieutenant,"
Coon Dog directed. "Now look straight ahead
0.. you see that thick, V-shaped clump of
bushes where that bare pole sticks up?"
It was so dark that at first Burns could only
make out the difference between snow and
shadow.
"Further right, almost on the edge of the
bluff... see it?"
"I think I see the place, but I can't see anything moving."
"They're out of sight now, but just before
I called you we saw three guys sneak into




TE RAM


327


them bushes over there. Didn't we, Williams?"
"Sure did!" Williams said. "Heard 'em, too."
'"Prob'ly just a patrol snoopin' around," Coon
Dog added, "but it's so damn close we oughta
open up on 'em if many more show up."
Burns lay there patiently for a number of
minutes, straining his eyes into the shadowy
pockets ahead, listening intently for any snapping of branches, or other sound of human
presence. An icy wind, skimming the blufftops
of the Vaga, sawed its way into the depths of
the forest. No other sound came to them.
Their foreground was innocent of movement.
Burns rose to his knees.
"Can't see 'em now, can you?" he asked.
"Not just this minute."
"Well, keep your eyes open. I'm going back.
Telephone if you see any more of them. We
don't want any unnecessary firing, but don't
take chances."
2 -The relief had changed twice. Coon Dog
Evans and Williams were again on duty at the
listening post on the bluff. The approach of day



328


SNOW TRENCHES


light indicated that Burns' detachment had survived without mishap the most dangerous half
of their turn on the forward position-the surprise-haunted hours of darkness. The men on
reserve in the stuffy guardhouse slept noisily.
Burns dozed, in his place beside the operator.
Corporal Breen, returning from an errand to
one of the sentry-posts at the rear of the position,
paused for a moment in front of the shack before
going in. Ahead of him, as he stood in the path
with his back to the door, a brush-covered knoll
ascended steeply to a height several yards above
the roof of the shack. The soldiers had dug and
chopped into the side of this knoll to form a
shallow shelter from the shrapnel with which the
Bolos daily combed the woods in search of their
hiding places. Sandbags filled with the earth
from this excavation were piled on the roof and
against the forward wall of the shack as protection from a chance hit. The path to the left
forked to straddle a clump of thick bushes and
led off to the machine gun nests on the left
flank. To the right, it curved around the base
of the knoll and zigzagged up to the listening
post on the bluff.
Corporal Breen, reflecting on the awesome
stillness of the woods, commented to himself that
it was about time for the Bolos to begin their:   S:




THE RAID              329
—.   -~ ---i '-w- -— ~~
morning artillery diversion. He heard someone
in the shack back of him drop a chunk of wood
on the fire. Then he heard something else-or
imagined that he heard it...
A scuffling sound... the snapping of
twigs... the cocking of a rifle... a man's
grunt, and stifled voices... a single shot.
What was causing this racket from the direction
of the bluff. The Corporal started toward it,
then halted to listen again.
The sound did not recur, so he went into
the guardhouse. It was strange that the sentries
should make such a racket without some sign
of action from the other side. Corporal Breen
had just left the post five minutes earlier.
He noticed as he opened the door that Lieutenant Burns was shouting into the telephone,
trying to reestablish a connection.
"Hello, Evans!... Hellol... Hello..1" Burns called urgently.
He left the telephone abruptly and pushed
through the crowded room to the door.
"Come with me, Corporal," he said to Breen
who was still standing at the entrance.
"Something funny about that," Butch Taylor
commented. "01' Coon Dog ain't ringin' that
phone cause he's lonesome."
"What the hell happened? I didn't hear




330


SNOW TRENCHES


nothin' but 'hello, hello' in this damn phone."
"Nobody could hear what Evans said, but he
must of hollered for help, cause the Lieutenant
got so excited."
"Christ! I hope it ain't another attackl"
"You know damn well it ain't an attack, or
John Bolo'd be shellin' hell out of us right
now."
"Prob'ly Williams got a cramp, the poor fish."
"Yeh, or fell over the bluff."
"I'm glad ol' Coon Dog's got to put up with
that bird, an' not me."
"Nutsl You're worse than he is."
"Who is?"
"You heard me!"
"I don't see no medals on you... "
"Well, anyway, there ain't nothin' wrong with
Evans."
"You tell 'em, buddy. The best crap-shooter
in the regiment, an' the best scout in the whole
damn army. He ain't afraid of war or women,
he's a cheerful cuss, an' he'd go to hell fer a pal."
Within two minutes Burns burst back into
the room, leaving the door standing open. Every
man could see his agitation. Bewilderment and
shock controlled his features.  He shoved his
cap off his forehead with a nervous gesture. Distress stared from his eyes. Two paces within the




TE RAID


3a3


— v —W MP-W- v-                     -
room, he checked himself, swaying as though at
the edge of a precipice. Breen lumbered into the
doorway many seconds later.
"They're gone!" Burns panted. "The Bolos
got 'em!"
The dingy, drab layer of bodies at his feet
surged into motion. A clamor of questions interrupted. Burns shuffled a step forward, and
hitched at his pistol-belt. He raised a clenched
fist shoulder high.
"Listen!" he yelled. "We're going after them!
I want twelve volunteers!... Quick, damn it!
Who's coming?"
Out of a jabber of offers a tired voice drawled,
"Take yer pick, Lieutenant!"
"Here! This bunch nearest the door, and you,
Corporal Breen. Grab your rifles and grenades!
Quick! Follow me!... Sergeant! Take
charge! If we're not back in half an hour, let
Kitza know.... Better phone them now that
we're going out in front."
In single file, Burns leading, the little party
went swiftly along the path to the left, followed
the first jog to the front, and stopped at the
machine gun post that covered the road to
Vistavka. The rest of the patrol waited in the
path; Burns pushed into the clump of bushes
that concealed the men and the guns.




332


SNOW TRENCHES


"A Bolo patrol has just picked up Evans and
Williams," he told the gunners.
"Picked 'em up?"
"Yes! Captured 'eml Raided that listening
post on the bluff and took 'em back with 'em."
"Holy Jeez!"
"We're going after them. You men watch
this trail, and don't shoot unless you know where
we are. We may need your guns if we get
chased back in."
"We got you, Lieutenant. Leave it to us."
For a moment he leaned forward into the gap
in the foliage that exposed the front. There
was not an inch of that shell-pitted clearing that
he did not know, but he had no idea as to the
size of whereabouts of the force they were pursuing.
Part of the defensive strength of the forward
position was its location, with the bluff on the
right, and this clearing which made a surprise
assault impossible from the front. The clearing
was covered by the artillery of both sides, and
by snipers and machine guns hidden among the
trees. Burns' patrol was obliged to cross it now,
because the road intersected the path the Bolos
had taken along the bluff, and it would save time.
The first heat of Burns' impetuous resolve to
lead a counter-raid to rescue Evans and Williams




T"E RAID


333


was giving way to a rational survey of its possibilities. From the jumping-off point of this outpost it looked a foolhardy and impossible enterprise. Still, these men must be alive, or the
Bolos would not have carried them off. It was
too late to turn back now. How quickly his men
had answered his call! They were not hankering
for that patrol any more than he was-overworked, badly-fed men, jaded and disillusioned,
fighting long after the Armistice; who daily
prayed to be withdrawn from this mad campaign,
and whose hopes were entirely on living through
each assignment to the front without exposing
themselves to any needless risk. Burns knew in
his heart that some of them at least would not
come back to the forward position. He realized
that he was wasting precious seconds. He backed
out into the path.
"Good luck, Lieutenant," the gunners called.
"We'll need itl Remember what I told youl"
— 3
"Follow me, now," Burns said to his men,
"and keep close together. We'll have to move
fast."




334


SNOW TRENC ES


They went at a rapid trot out into the open.
They needed no urging to keep together; no
man relished the thought of being left behind,
or of supplying an individual target. Although
there was no concealment, they crouched low as
they ran, their rounded backs above the snow
along the path appearing to the men in the outpost like a procession of fast-moving turtles. All
along this open stretch, Burns studied the shapes
of the snow-hidden trees and bushes to the right,
through which ran the path from the listening
post. Up ahead, closer now, it joined their own
trail. It was likely that the Bolo raiders had already passed this junction of the trails, but it
would be dangerous to stumble upon them unseeing.
Quickly they reached the woods on the other
side of the clearing. Burns halted them by
raising his hand. He was frankly puzzled as to
how to proceed.
The obvious method, of dashing forward until
they overtook the Bolos, and trusting to speed
and surprise to turn the trick, was supremely
risky. Yet any more cautious advance would permit the raiders to reach Vistavka before his
patrol could catch them. He reasoned that the
Bolo party would return directly to that village
with their prisoners. If it were a small party,




TH:E RAID
-I_V_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ W-0 -0-W


335


the daring of their counter-raid might frighten
them into surrender without a fight. If it were
a large party, or if other Bolo patrols were in
this part of the woods... at the thought of
this contingency, Burns' impulsive enthusiasm
clouded over. Was it right for him to risk the
lives of these thirteen men in such a hopeless
venture? He had felt, as he stumbled into their
empty listening post, and pictured to himself the
probable fate of the two men who had cried to
him for help, that his own life was worth little,
compared to the chance of saving them. The
tragic, desperate urgency of Evans' voice over
the phone still rang in his ears.... Coon Dog
would have walked into two Bolo patrols, if
Burns had needed him.
The cold claws of fear clutched suddenly at
Burns' heart. Again he knew that weakening,
hesitating sensation he had felt on the patrol in
front of Ust Padenga. Then, his yearning for
Nadya had made him fearful of not coming back
to her; he had been doubly cautious on her account. Now, Nadya was gone-why fear death?
What had he to lose but hardship and unhappiness? Oh, where was Nadya? How clearly he
could see her in times like these! He could never
face her if he turned yellow. This thought stirred
him as though she were watching him..1




336


SNOW TRENCHES


No alternative but to make the dash...
His men stood in a compact bunch, looking
about them apprehensively.
"All right," Burns mustered a confident tone.
"Let's go!"
Swiftly he led along the path. Scuffling feet
and panting breath followed. The trail curved
like a snake, cutting their vision to the front into
short, narrow strips. Along the sides of the trail,
crude, brush-lined shelters for Bolo riflemen
showed recent use. Signal wires ran in tangled
strands beside them. Abruptly the trees on the
right broke away and were succeeded by the
wind-swept rim of the bluff.
There, less than a quarter of a mile away, still
in the open run of the path, was the Bolo raiding
party.
Again Burns halted his patrol; they could not
cross that bare strip until the Bolos passed out
of sight.
Their task was now cut out for them. More
than a dozen men were in that party, and they
could see a horse and sleigh in the middle of the
formation. Burns beckoned his men into a close
huddle around him.
"As soon as they are out of sight," he told
them, "we'll run like hell after them. If we can
get within thirty or forty yards of them, we'll




ATHE RAID              337
tear right in and stick 'em up. We may not even
have to fire. Taylor, you grab the horse and
head him around to the rear. Don't holler, but
run right at 'em with your rifles pointed. And
watch me for signals."
At the other side of the bare space, they slowed
down a bit, and took up a fast, crouching walk.
The trail angled to the left, then back again. It
dipped sharply to cross a creek-bed. They ran
down the slope and climbed the other side. As
Burns' eyes rose to the level of the path beyond,
they caught the movement of a man at the next
turning, about sixty yards distant.
"They're just ahead!" he whispered hoarsely
over his shoulder.
Collecting themselves for a moment at the top
of the gully, they dashed along the short straightaway... and around the bend.
The Bolos had reached the next turn; were
half-way around it. They heard the sounds of
pursuit, and faced about, questioningly.
"Stoy*! Stoy!" Burns shouted, without slowing
down.
The six or eight men in the rear of the sleigh,
flung down their rifles and held up their hands
in surrender, but the men in front scurried into
the trees. Coon Dog and Williams lay in the
*Halt.




338         SNOW TRENCHES'
-IV- — II- -W- WIP,- -VI     -Wbottom of the sleigh, bound hand and foot, and
lashed together. Taylor secured the horse's reins
and swung the sleigh around to face the rear.
Burns motioned with his pistol for the Bolo
prisoners to line up behind the sleigh, and directed his men to pick up the discarded rifles and
lay them in the sleigh.
Crack! A hot, stabbing pain cut into Burns'
leg just above the knee. Crackl Crackl Two
more rifles barked from among the trees where
the other Bolos had disappeared.
"Get that sleigh out of sight!" Burns screamed.
"Get under coverl"
Hobbling away from the middle of the path,
he tried to keep track of his men. The Bolos
who had been disarmed made a dive for their
rifles in the sleigh, but the first two were shot
down. The rest fled into the trees. All was confusion. The Bolos commenced to advance on the
floundering patrol in Indian-fashion, jumping
from tree to tree. Then Burns' party began to
settle down. Their rifles answered back, as they
sniped at the green-gray uniforms. Two of the
Americans were killed in the first short exchange
of shots. Then they lay low and picked off their
men. Corporal Breen knelt behind a small pine
tree two or three yards to the left of Burns.
Taylor had untied Williams and Evans, add



THE RAID


339


ing two more to the strength of their patrol.
They needed them; they found that the Bolos
had twice their number. The surprise appearance of five of these together on the flank put
Burns and Corporal Breen in instant peril.
Savagely the Bolos rushed toward them. They
fell back to new cover, but the Reds kept on
coming. The Americans retired slowly, working
closer together so as to support one another.
Their whole desire now was to make their way
back to their own lines without losing another
man.
Burns found it painful and difficult to move.
Again he shifted his position to the rear, dragging his wounded leg. Breen kept close to him.
The other men withdrew slowly and carefully,
firing at any of the Reds that showed themselves.
Most of them had made further progress to the
rear than Burns and Breen-they could move
faster. The two who had been killed at the
start lay unattended in the trail behind the
advancing enemy.
Burns hobbled backward again, so as not to
delay the rest. He headed for a pine tree. of
protecting width. Breen moved toward it from
the other side. It was not large enough to cover
both. Burns backed away toward another.
"This way, Lieutenantt" the Corporal shouted.




?IQ4


SRnw qVPVVVmnRES


2l                  - - - or


"Keep down, Breen! I can make it!"
The five Bolos who had been crowding them
leaped forward again; their rifles blazed at him.
The Bolos' fierce yell, topping the rifle-blast,
filled his ears, then died in oblivion. All perception faded. He sagged forward into the snow.
Like demons, the Reds closed in to finish their
work. Like heroes, Burns' game little patrol
met them. Hand to hand, they fought over his
body in the trampled, blood-streaked snow....
But the Bolo spirit could not match the inspired savagery of the American's assault.
Breen worked his rifle until they were too
close; then strode into the open, with it clubbed
in two powerful fists.  Twelve other veteran
fighters whirled into action beside him. They
knew how to handle this kind of brawl. Firing
when they could, stabbing, slashing, swinging
heavy rifle-butts, they slammed their way into
the Red pack. The Bolos fell back.
Coon Dog Evans and Taylor lifted Burns up
off his face. Hooking an arm under each of his,
they dragged him back to the sleigh, and laid
him carefully on his back on the straw-covered
bottom.
Corporal Breen caught a pistol bullet in the
throat and said a choked good-bye on a pillow
of crimson snow.




THE RAID


341


__ 4_


"Come onl Kick that horse into a trot! We
gotta get outa here!"
"He won't go!"
"He's gotta go! Lam hell out of him! Stick
him with yer bay'net!"
Evans stumbled along the path behind the
sleigh, trying to steady it and ease it over the
rough spots. Butch Taylor leaned over it for a
little, peering down into Burns' upturned face.
"Is he dead?" Coon Dog asked.
"I don't know."
"God, I hope he ain't dead!"
"You ought to! You an' Williams."
"Where'd he get it?" inquired Williams.
"In the guts."
"Well, I won't believe it until the Doc says
so. Somehow I can't imagine him bein' bumped
off. I damn near keeled over myself, when I
seen him drop."
"At that, it's just the way he'd like to check
out-helpin' some guy."
"You know, it's seemed to me the Lieutenant's
been actin' funny lately... don't seem to be
hisself. He ain't got the same ol' pep."




342         SNOW TRENCHES
"I noticed the same thing. He's got something
on his mind."
"Yeah, an' it's more than that. The night we
left Shenkursk, he acted like he was dopey. The
top sergeant had to tell him three times where
his platoon was."
"He musta got some bad news in the mail."
"Mail, helll He ain't had a letter since we
been over here. If it was any other guy I'd say
it was a skirt."
"Maybe it is."
"Shut up, you guys, an' step on itl" cut in
Butch Taylor. "We don't want them Bolos on
our tail again."
The patrol was moving too fast for conversation. It reached the clearing; crossed it; pulled
in beside the guardhouse.
When the sergeant had phoned Kitza about
the patrol, Lieutenant Donninger, the medical
officer in charge of the dressing station there,
had hurried out to the forward position to give
first aid. He came out of the guardhouse when
the patrol arrived, and made a hasty examination of Lieutenant Burns' wounds. The rest of
the patrol watched him anxiously.
"He's breathing," the doctor announced.
"Shall we carry him inside, Lieutenant?"
"No. We can get him back to the hospital




THE RAID


343


in a few minutes. There isn't much we could
do out here."
He called to his medical orderlies, then
turned to the others.
"How about the rest of you men? Anybody
else hurt?"
"Just some scratches an' bumps... except
for the Corporal, an' Konard an' Elkins. We
lost them."
"I'll leave a man out here that can patch up
any small stuff. But we'll have to hurry back
with the Lieutenant."
At Kitza, in the crude, lamp-lit dressing station, they cleaned his wounds, bandaged them,
wrapped him warmly in blankets, and started
him back under the care of a medical sergeant
to Bereznik. A critical operation would be necessary to save his life, and they hadn't the skill or
equipment at Kitza to attempt it.
Long into the cold, starry night, stopping
only to change horses at Ust Vaga, the single
sleigh forced the pace to arrive in time.




XVII
Bereznik.
M
W       HEN NADYA AND COLONEL ERISTOFF
had dashed into the forest to follow an
unknown trail across the arctic wilderness to
the Dvina, they knew they were facing a peril
as real as bullet or knife. For an hour or two,
the exhilaration of winning past the sentry
buoyed their hope and spirit. Then their weakness and the cold and hardship of the trail bore
down and the torturing struggle began. They
could not even be sure of their direction. The
harassing fear of pursuit assailed them. Time
and distance thrust it aside, but their weakness
and suffering grew. With waning strength they
urged their floundering horse to his best gait.
Wind-carried, the distant howl of wolves
reached them from behind. Nadya remembered
the Bolo sentry they had left in the snow beside
the path, and shuddered. Their horse heard it,
too, and strained ahead with all his meager
strength. They passed beyond hearing of it and
it came no more. After daylight, they had to
make frequent stops to rest their exhausted




BEREZNIIK             345
beast, and to stretch and move about a bit themselves. Noon came, bringing a pale, brief exposure of the sun-they could verify their direction, and a momentary optimism returned. The
gloom of dusk followed. To their enemies of
frost-bite, fatigue, and fear now were added
hunger and thirst, and the rapid failing of their
horse. Estimating their speed at about four
versts an hour, they expected to reach Touglas
early that evening.
The tired horse lapsed into the listless,
meandering gait of a sleep-walker. Repeatedly
he stumbled blindly into some bushy thicket.
When this happened, he would breathe deeply,
shift the weight off his left hind leg, and settle
down for a rest. Then Nadya would have to
clamber out of the sleigh, wade through the
deep snow to his head, lead him back to the
trail opening, and crowd in beside her uncle
again, snow-covered and colder than before. The
Colonel muttered ceaseless complaints between
snatches of sleep, selfishly forgetting the brave
struggle the girl was making. Forgetting that her
sufferings were as cruel as his own, in spite of his
wound; ignoring her gallant sacrifice in remaining in Shenkursk to take care of him.
"In God's name, don't let that horse stop
again! We'll never get therel"




346


SNOW TRENCHES


"Poor horse! He's nearly dead!"
"I'm nearly dead, tool Make him trot! He's
got plenty of pull left."
"Please try to sleep again; it can't be far now."
The old horse was giving all he had, but
lagged wearily into another halt. The Colonel
resumed his nagging.
"This cursed beast will leave us here to die.... Nadya, we'll never make it..."
"Of course we will! Don't talk like that!
Surely, it isn't much further."
"Just think of itl After coming through the
war and a thousand greater dangers, we have
to perish alone in this Christ-forgotten forestl... Nadya!" His voice took on a petulant,
childish tone, as though uncontrolled by a
normal brain. "Nadya! Make that horse hurry!
Beat him... "
"Oh, please!" She was near hysteria herself,
and his whining weakened her. "Please keep
still! It's hard enough without your acting like
a baby. You're not a child!" Then her sympathy checked her, and she laid her hand on his
head. "We'll be all rightl See, he's started."
The Colonel kept silent for a while. Nadya
fell asleep. She awoke to find them halted again;
her companion talking to himself in a strange,
uncanny chant. It affected her more nervously




BEREZNIK3


347


than his querulous grumblings.... He was
praying to a little ikon in his hand.
-2 -

"Wait a minute, you guys! Don't shootl It's
just a sleigh. Don't even look like there's anybody in it."
The dusk patrol from Toulgas halted in the
trail for the sleigh to come up to them. Its
progress was so uncertain and slow that they set
out again to meet it. The horse stopped when
the corporal laid his hand on the bridle. The
four men of the patrol walked up to the sleigh
to investigate.
They saw a man and woman almost hidden
by robes and wraps, who were apparently asleep
when they came up. The girl opened her eyes
first, and sat up in alarm.
"Where are we?"
"Who are you," the corporal countered.
"This is Colonel Eristoff, commander of a detachment of Cossacks assigned to Vaga Column,
and I am his niece. We have escaped from the
Bolsheviki in Shenkursk. We are trying to reach
the nearest Allied position on the Dvina."




348


SNOW TRENCHES


"Don't tell me you've come all the way from
Shenkursk in that sleigh."
"Yesl" she faltered. "How far is it to Toulgas?"
"'Bout two miles."
"Will you let us go?"
"Sure! You may be Bolos, but they can find
that out at headquarters.... Gordon, you go
back with them; we got to go on a piece."
Nadya and the Colonel had to be assisted into
the orderly room to see Major Brady of the
Canadian artillery, in command of Toulgas. The
Major was quickly touched by their obvious distress. Colonel Eristoff's bandaged head and
glassy eyes; the pallor of Nayda's lovely face
showing ruddy signals of fever below her great
dark eyes. He poured out a stiff drink of
whiskey to stimulate them. Without difficulty,
he verified the truth of their story, and offered
his help.
"We need only to sleep, now," Nadya said
smiling weakly.
"I think a cot in the hospital is the best place
for both of you. Your uncle certainly needs
medical attention, and you'll have a breakdown
yourself, if you are not careful."
For nearly -a week Nadya was confined to her
bed in an effort to throw off the deep-seated ef



BEREZNIK


349


- - -     — Nr"
fects of her exposure. Her uncle was up and
about within two days of their arrival, and had
already gone on to Bereznik to get news of his
outfit. Finally the medical officer consented to let
her attempt the trip herself. She left with the
next convoy.
But the trip was too strenuous for her depleted strength; she reached Bereznik in dangerous condition, feverish and delirious. Bereznik Hospital took her in, and Captain Homrne,
who had been in charge of the hospital at Shenkursk, examined her.
"It's pneumonia, all right," he told the nurse,
Olga, across the low cot.
"I was afraid so... will you let me stay
with her, doctor? This poor girl is all alone and
she was so sweet to everyone in the wards at
Shenkursk. She hasn't a friend... although I
believe she was very fond of one of the American
officers."
"You may stay for a while, unless we get
shorthanded."
3 -Nadya came back for a momeht from the
distant, painless fields of fancy where her hot,




350


SNOW TRENCHES


throbbing brain had carried her. There were
pleasant vistas where she had been, far from the
rumbling guns, the cold, relentless forest, the
cruel sordidness of war, and her inescapable
loneliness and misery-for Peter had been there
beside her. Clean and fresh and untired, she
had seen him. She had discovered charming new
qualities in him,-a fine restraint, a maturer
poise, all awkardness and timidity gone. That
difficult self-consciousness that parried tenderness had resolved into a frank eagerness. Arm
in arm into the romantic future her love-starved
fancy had led her... Then the vividness and
reality of her vision faded away, and she lost
control of even these fancies and floated a while
in space among saffron and lavender clouds;
grayness came; all color left; consciousness returned.
The pattern of the walls to Nadya's opening
eyes symbolized the drab hopelessness of reality.
Gray rough plaster walls, seen first in two dimensions: height and width. Then the light
from a hanging lamp, half concealed by a towel
wrapped around to dim it, disclosed a corner
and patch of ceiling. Planes of light and shadow,
distinguishable only by the weak color the lamplight daubed against them, spread beyond. Her
eyes roved toward the light; her head tilted




ABE REZ  SK            351
slowly to the side. She seemed to be alone in
the room. But the nurse, Olga, sitting on the
opposite side of the bed, noticed the movement,
and came on silent feet around the foot of the
cot to attend her. Fearing to disturb her, she
stood looking into Nadya's shadowed face. She
saw that her eyes were open, and smiled gently.
Nadya became conscious that the nurse was at
her side. She, too, tried to smile.
"Could I have some water, please?"
"Surely."
"How long have I been here?" she inquired,
as she turned away from the drinking tube.
"Not long, dear. You arrived last night."
"I mustn't stay here long. I have to hurry
back to the Vaga Column.... Where are they
now?"
"They're at Kitza, I believe. But you must
not be impatient; you must get your strength
back, first."
"I'll be better soon, but... Oh, I'm so
weak...."
In a moment she spoke again, her voice faint,
but determined.
"Nurse!... Will you write a letter for me?"
"Certainly, dear. Just a second, I'll go and
get some paper."
The nurse came right back. She took down




352


SNOW TRENCHES


rthe lamp and set it on a stool beside the cot,
leaning a basin against a pitcher to shield the
glare from Nadya's eyes. She pulled up another
stool and sat down with the pad on her knee.
"Who shall-I write to, dear."
"Lieutenant Peter Burns." Her voice was low
and tender. She proceeded slowly. "He is with
the Americans on the Vaga.. "
Nurse Olga looked up from the paper. She
caught her lower lip between her teeth.
"Lieutenant Burns is here, Nadya."
"Here?"
"Yes!"
"In Bereznik?"
"Yes, dear."
"Oh, ask him to come and see me. Send for
him now, can't you?"
"He's here, my poor darling... Right here
in this hospital... But he can't come..."
"Oh." It was more like a sob, a mere catch of
the breath, than any articulate word. "He is
wounded?"
The nurse was instantly distressed by the utter
pathos of Nadya's tone. She blamed herself for
not foreseeing the risk of telling this poor girl
that her lover was lying wounded, within a few
yards of her own cot. She realized that she
should have taken the letter and pretended to
X




BEREZNIK


353


deliver it. Nadya could stand the truth when she
was stronger. Nadya's great appealing eyes besought her for more news. It was too late now to
pretend.
"Yes. He was wounded...."
"Badly?" she demanded. "Tell me, Nurse!
Don't be afraid! It's worse not to know."
"Rather badly, I'm afraid. But don't worry,
dear, I am sure he will be up again in no time."
Nadya hardly seemed to hear her.
"Peter, here... wounded...."
Nadya's burning temples throbbed. Her weakness almost overcame her. She felt herself on the
brink of another descent into oblivion. Then, as
though borne on great soft feathery wings, she
was swept into it....
Nurse Olga hung up the lamp again, and
turned its wick down to the barest whisper of
flame.
Through the rest of the night her patient slept.
At seven o'clock in the morning, a day nurse relieved her. Captain Home, the medical officer,
called a little later. Nadya missed Nurse Olga;
this other nurse could tell her nothing of Lieutenant Burns. Nadya could think of nothing else;
wondering, worrying, sometimes sleeping, sometimes tossing restlessly about, she passed the tire



354


SNOW TRENCHES


some, endlessly long day. Nurse Olga returned
when it was time to light the lamp again.
She came into the room quietly, saw that her
patient was lying there with closed eyes, and
went outside to study her chart. "Not much
change," she commented to herself. "We are not
going to have an easy time of it, though. Vitality
is too low...she doesn't seem to have the will
to fight it either... unless there is really something back of this interest in Lieutenant Burns."
"Nurse!" Nadya's voice came to her strained
and muffled as she entered the room. "When will
my night nurse be here?"
"Right now, dear. I'm your night nurse. What
do you want?"
"Come over closer, please, where I can see
you."
The nurse leaned over the head of the bed
and laid her cool fingertips on Nadya's forehead.
"You're looking better this evening, Nadya.
How do you feel?"
"Oh, I don't know! I've been wretched all
day. Listen, nurse! Please tell me something."
"Of course, dear. What is it?"
Nadya's eyes, pitifully eager, looked searchingly into hers.
"Tell me about Lieutenant Burns. How long




1RZRMNTUTT


a..Pr


has he been here? How badly is he hurt?..
Is he getting better?"
"They brought him here from Kitza three days
ago. I believe he had gunshot wounds in the legs
and abdomen. But you mustn't fret about it,
dear. The doctor is giving him every care."
"How is he now?... Why don't you tell me?
Isn't he getting better?"
"Of course he is! I saw him shortly after he
came in. He was terribly weak, and suffering a
good deal. I haven't heard anything today. But
lots of men more seriously wounded than he is,
pull through in fine shape."
"You don't want to tell mel" Nadya was near
to tears. "Never mindl I can understand." Then
suddenly she pleaded, "Please, Nurse, go and ask
the doctor for me.... Ask him if I can see him
-just for a minute."
"Oh, you couldn't see him. It would be impossible."
"Why would it?"
"It would be bad for both of you. But," she
relented, "I'll ask the doctor just how he is getting along."
The nurse delayed her return, in the hope that
Nadya might fall asleep, but the patient stirred
at the first light sound of her footfalls in the
room. She decided to tell Nadya the truth,




356


SNOW TRENCHES


rather than have her imagine something more
disturbing. After all, Nadya herself needed the
incentive of hope.
"Come a little closer, please," Nadya whispered.
"Listen, Nadya," Nurse Olga said distinctly,
"if you will promise not to become frightened.
or to do anything foolish, I'll tell you exactly
what the doctor said."
"Tell mel I promise!"
"You'll promise to be brave, no matter what I
tell you? The doctor is going to tell him you are
here. For his sake, you must be strong."
"Oh, tell me! Don't be afraid for me!"
"This young lieutenant is in critical condition.
His abdominal wounds are quite serious. The
doctors thought at first that they would not have
to operate, but they've decided that it's his only
chance. They are sure they can save him; he's in
such splendid physical condition.... There,
now-tomorrow I'll tell you all about it."
Nadya's body had been twisting nervously
under the covers during the telling, while her
moist hands crumpled and tugged at the pillow.
"Tomorrow?... When are they going to
operate?"
"Tonight, dear. In about an hour."
Nadya would not have been surprised if her




BEREZNIK35
____________


357


heart had stopped beating, just then; it did seem
disembodied. It seemed to leave her to seek the
pain-racked heart of her lover. If he were to die,
death could take her also. She turned her trembling lips and tear-brimming eyes away. The
nurse saw with alarm the sudden baring of a soul
face to face with a fact greater than death. Death
itself, complicated by forces as unexplainable as
immortality. She went around to the other side
of the cot, where she could face Nadya again.
She touched her hair caressingly, and bent over
close.
"Do you love him so much, dear?" she asked
softly.
The head on the pillow nodded.
"There, dear, don't worry about it. You can't
make it better by worrying. Try to go to sleep,
and when you wake up in the morning everything will be all right."
Deliberately Nadya turned over, and put her
arms outside the covers. She spoke with quiet
determination.
"You must let me see him! Now! Before they
operatel"
"You can see him tomorrow. Now go to sleep.
See, I'll turn the lamp down low."
"I must see him!" Nadya's low-voiced insist



358


SNOW TRENCHES


ence brushed aside the nurse's evasion. "You can
bring me right back here."
"Nadya Ivanovna, it's impossible!" said Nurse
Olga firmly. "You couldn't stand it, even if the
doctor would allow it."
"We can take a wheel-chair."
"Lieutenant Burns could not stand it, either.
Already they're preparing him for the operation.
Come, dear, you promised to be brave."
"Then bring the doctor here! You can't refuse me!"
"It would be insane! I know he'd refuse...."
"He can't refuse...." From a strain so intense, Nadya wilted back against the pillow, murmuring, "Oh, nurse, please..."
"I'll ask him."
"Bless you... 1"
The doctor came back with her. They brought
a wheel-chair. With wise, sympathetic understanding, the doctor helped Nurse Olga arrange
cushions and blankets and lift Nadya tenderly
into the chair. They put a rich, colorful shawl
around her shoulders. The nurse's eyes were wet
as she brushed the heavy, tousled hair. Nadya
tried to smile.
"Are you all right?" the doctor inquired. He
felt her racing pulse.




BEREZNIK


359


"Yes! Oh, yes!"
Slowly they wheeled her into the corridor.
- 4
A stretcher was waiting beside the Lieutenant's
door, and several orderlies. The doctor swung
the door noiselessly inward and beckoned the
nurse to wheel the chair inside. Nadya gripped
the nurse's arm.
"Help me to sit up," she whispered. "He
mustn't see me like this."
They were within a few feet of the cot. Burns
was facing away. Slowly he twisted his head
toward them. Supported by the nurse's arm,
Nadya rose toward him as his glance reached
them. She clung to the nurse and actually got
to her feet.... The terrible, ghastly pallor of
Peter's drawn face told them all of the gallant,
hopeless struggle he was making. His left hand
lay closed against a fold of cloth at his breast.
When he stretched it toward them, Nadya saw
that it had been clutching the silver token she
had given him. A transforming light came into
his eyes when he saw Nadya. Some spiritual
inner fire transfigured him. This vivid vision of




360


SNOW TRENCHES


Nadya was enough to stir him, even though it
were unreal, as he supposed. She reached his
bedside, still supported by the nurse. She searched
for his hand.
"Oh, sweetheart, I've finally found you...."
"Nadya! Nadya, dearest. I was afraid I would
never see you again."
"I'll be right here beside you, dear."
"I can't believe it's really you."
"It really is, dear. I've come to take care of
you.
His fingers pressed hers weakly.
"You must hurry and get well. It's been so
long since... Shenkursk!"
"When I lost you..."
"We must write the rest of our love-story,
Peter."
A faint, sad smile touched his lips.
"I'm afraid it's too late, sweetheart. Isn't it,
Doc? Doc'll tell you."
"That depends on you, Pete," said Captain
Horne.
Nadya swayed.
"It's not too late, darling. Our love-story is
just starting. We've only finished the introduction."
Nadya's drooping weight on the nurse's arm




BEREZNIK


361


showed her faintness. The nurse signalled to the
doctor. He came over to Nadya's side.
"It's time to go," he said. "We mustn't tire
him."
Nadya leaned over and kissed Peter's cheek.
"Good night, sweetheart," she said. "I'll be
waiting for you. I'll be right here."




I YIRST SKtR4ISH WITH
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0-       FalLIGHTI OF INADY'A
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0-0- s.- oUitEoviro mx~uxato1.


BOLO
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