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Familiar sights in the streets of winter Archangel were the working parties composed of Bolshevik prisoners of war. Except for the doughboy guard it might have been difficult to tell them from a free working party. They all looked alike. In fact, many a scowling face on a passing sled would have matched the Bolo clothes better than some of those boyish faces under guard.
The mock-American fought like a devil unchained, cursing Duchemin fluently in the purest and foulest argot of Belleville which is not in the French vocabulary of the doughboy. The animals at the pole caught fire of this madness and ran away in good earnest, that wretched barouche rolled and pitched like a rudderless shell in a crazy sea, the two men floundered in its well like fish in a pail.
The American soldier and the priest and his pitiful people had really begun to spin out threads of sympathy which were to be woven later into a fabric of friendliness. The doughboy always respected the honest peasant's religious customs. The writers have an idea that the veterans of the North Russian Expedition would like a short, up-to-date chapter on Bolshevism.
There were some figs and a handful of black licorice drops and a few nuts. Boys kept coming in and demanding cookies. Cookies there were none, but there was hope ahead. If the Brigadier managed to get in to-night with the fliv, there might be cookies. "Just our luck," said some morose doughboy, "if a shell hit the fliv. It's a hell of a road "
Yet the doughboy only swore softly and shined his rifle barrel. He could not get information straight from home. He was sore. But why fret? Before passing to the story of the dark winter's fighting we must notice one remaining unit of the American forces, hitherto only mentioned.
To the doughboy or medic or engineer who stood there at bay those three invincible days, Bolsheozerki means deep snow, bitter cold, cheerless tents, whiz-bangs, high explosive, shrap, rat-tat-tat interminable, roar and crash, and zipp and pop of explosive bullet, with catch-as-catch-can at eats, arms lugged off with cases of ammunition, constant tension, that all ended up with luck to the plucky.
This sounds conceited, and possibly is, but the explanation seems to be that the Russian understood American candor and cordial democracy, the actual sympathetic assistance offered by the doughboy to the Russian soldier or laborer and took it at par value.
Then one day the "Stars and Stripes," the organ of the American Army, printed the following poem about the lassie who labored so far forward that she had to wear a tin hat: "Home is where the heart is" Thus the poet sang; But "home is where the pie is" For the doughboy gang! Crullers in the craters, Pastry in abris This Salvation Army lass Sure knows how to please! Tin hat for a halo! Ah!
The writers of this history of the expedition think the doughboy had much to justify his feeling.
"There's a doughboy sergeant out there, sir, as says he's ordered to take Dandy to the quartermaster's stables, an' I told him to go to blazes, an' whin he shtepped by me an' into the paddock an' began untyin' him, I told him he had a right to shpake to you furrst, an' he said he'd slap me into the gyard-house if I gave him any lip, and I turned the kay on him, sir, an' here it is.
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