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The American five dollar bill which was approximately worth fifty roubles in this "pegged" rouble money on the market when an American ship was in the harbor, would bring one hundred to one hundred and fifty roubles. No wonder the doughboy who was stationed around Archangel or Bakaritza found it possible to stretch his money a good way.
Needless to say, these troops were at their best when they were in active work on the lines. Rest camp and security from attack quickly reduced their morale. And the next time they were sent up to the forward posts they were likely to prove undependable. In doing the ordinary drudgery of camp life the Russian soldier as the doughboy saw him was very unsatisfactory.
Many a doughboy whose wife or mother was in need at home because of the rapidly mounting prices put up by the slackers in the shops and the slackers in the marts of trade, now saw his little pay check shrink up in exchange value. He felt that his superior officers in the war department had hardly looked after his interests as well as they might have done.
In the city the doughboy found the steaming bahnya or bathhouse, and at the "cootie mill" turned in his shirt to rid himself of the "seam squirrels." All cleaned up, with little gifts and cheery words he sought his buddies who were in hospital sick or wounded. He got books and records and gramaphones and other things at the Red Cross and "Y" to take back to the company.
The Convalescent Hospital was the best place, bar none, in Russia, to eat in winter of 1918-19. The commanding officer was fortunate to have as a patient the mess sergeant of Company "D." That resourceful doughboy took the rations issued by the British and by systematic bartering with the natives he built up a famous mess. Below is a verbatim extract from Captain Greenleaf's report.
Below is reproduced one of Thomas' cartoons from The Detroit News, which shows the doughboy sitting in a Toulgas trench or a Kodish, or Shred Makrenga, or Pinega, or Chekuevo, or Railroad trench.
It was at this town that the girls slept in a German-dug cave, in which our boys had captured seven hundred Germans, the commanding officer of whom said that according to his rank in Germany he ought to have a car to take him to the rear. However, he was compelled to leg it at the point of an American bayonet in the hands of an American doughboy.
He came on the little stage, first as a swaggering general, then as an admiral, last as a real doughboy of the United States Army. Dancing, bowing, and waving the flag, he won generous applause. Later, he came on as Cupid with bow and arrow, and made some fine shots into a target representing a heart. His song number was appropriate to this act.
The men thought they themselves were earning their pay, but as the women in Russia do most of the back-breaking, stooping work anyway, they just caught on to those American shovels and to the astonishment of the American doughboy who superintended the work they did twice as much as the men for just half the pay and with half the bossing.
He had seen too many wounded men brought into field-hospitals not to realize how easy it is to lose a blouse. Recovering from the bullet-wound and unable to tell anything about himself, he had apparently passed under the name of Robert Green. Stratton wondered with a touch of grim amusement whether this christening was not the result of doughboy humor.
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