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In the north Field Marshal von Hindenburg's efforts to divert the Russian activities in the south by a general offensive along the Dvina line had not developed beyond increased artillery bombardments which apparently exerted no influence on the movements of the Russian armies in Volhynia, Galicia and the Bukowina.
It was well known that the snows would melt and ice would loosen on the distant southern river valley heights and as customary the river from Kotlas to Toulgas would be open to the Red gunboats several days before the ice would be released in the lower river stretches, necessary to permit the Allied fleets of gunboats to come in from the Arctic Ocean and go up to help defend the advanced positions on the Dvina and Vaga upper river fronts.
December 18. The trail was an improved government road. The sun was on our right hand but very low. The fire station of Smolny at last dropped out of the rearward view. The road ran crooked, like the Dvina along whose hilly banks it wound. A treat to our boys to see rolling, cleared country. Fish towns and lumber towns on the right. Hay stacks and fields on the left, backed by forests.
Even more than the Russian Bolshevik the American democrat regards wealth with suspicion, and its too eager amassment with a bilious eye. Here alone, west of the Dvina, rich men are ipso facto scoundrels and feræ naturæ, with no rights that any slanderer is bound to respect.
They are never curried, are left standing in the open for hours, and usually in spots exposed to cruel winds when there is a semblance of shelter available within a few feet. The peasants do not believe in 'mollycoddling' their animals, nor themselves. "On the return trip from Dvina I had a fine animal killed almost instantly by his breaking his neck.
American troops reach the German border. British troops land at Gallipoli. American troops defeat bolshevik forces at Fulka, on the river Dvina. United States government takes over German insurance companies' agencies in America to be sold by the Custodian of alien property. November 29 The President announced names of commissioners to represent the United States at peace conference.
As one of the boys who was upon the Dvina front writes: "We would have given anything we owned and mortgaged our every expectation to have been one of that great delirious, riotous mob that surged over Paris on Armistice Day; and we thought we had something of a title to have been there for we claimed the army of Pershing for our own, even though we had been sent to the Arctic Circle; and now that the whole show was over we wanted to have our share in the shouting."
From the location of our troops here, several hundred miles and more from our base on the Dvina and with long drawn out lines of communication, some of the stations forty miles or so apart, it was apparent that if attacked by a large force, we would have to give way.
The troopships "Somali," "Tydeus," and "Nagoya" rubbed the Bakaritza and Smolny quays sullenly and listed heavily to port. The American doughboys grimly marched down the gangplanks and set their feet on the soil of Russia, September 5th, 1918. The dark waters of the Dvina River were beaten into fury by the opposing north wind and ocean tide.
Von Buelow was still, however, to be reckoned with, and he was the substantial danger. On 28 August he began his movement against the Dvina, which would, if successful, cut off all the Russian armies from direct communication with Petrograd.
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