During those weary ice-bound months it was a problem to keep warm. Poor management by high American and British officers at one time, to the writer’s knowledge, suffered American soldiers at Smolny to be actually endangered in health. As far as proper heating of quarters was concerned men at the front provided better for themselves than did the commander at Smolny, Major Young, provide for those fighters in from the fighting front for rest. And that might be said too for his battalion mess. No wonder the doughboy set out to help himself in these things.
Strange to the American soldiers was the fact that at Archangel, a city of saw-mills, sitting in a nick of a great forest that extended for hundreds of miles south, east and west, there was such difficulty in getting supplies of fuel. A desperate sergeant took a detail of men and salvaged a lot of logs lying near the river’s edge, borrowed some Russki saws with a few cigarettes, commandeered some carts and brought to the cook’s kitchen and to the big stoves in the barracks a fine supply of wood. But the joke of it was that the watchful Russian owner of the logs sent in his bill for the wood to the British G. H. Q. And a ream of correspondence was started between Major Young and G. H. Q., the typewriter controversy continuing long, like Katy-did and Katy-didn’t, long after the sergeant with diplomacy, partial restoration, and sugar had appeased the complaining Russian.
At American headquarters in the Technical Institute was held many a pleasant entertainment to while away the winter hours. The auditorium possessed a stage and a good dance floor. The moving picture machine and the band were there. Seated on the backless wooden benches soldiers looked at the pictures or listened to the orchestra or to their own doughboy talent showing his art at vaudeville or minstrelsy.
Or on officers’ entertainment night they and their guests chosen from charming Russian families, joyfully danced or watched the antics of Douglas Fairbanks, Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, and even our dear deceased old John Bunnie. Not a silver lining but has its cloudy surface, and many were the uncomfortable moments when the American officer found himself wishing he could explain to his fair guest the meaning of the scene. More than rumor spread through that North country, attributing wonderful powers to the Americans based on some Douglas Fairbanks exploit. Can it be that the enemy heard some of these rumors and were unwilling at times to go against the Americans?
Enlisted men’s entertainments by the “Y” and their own efforts to battle ennui with minstrel show and burlesque and dances have already been mentioned. The great high Gorka built by the American engineers in the heart of the city afforded a half-verst slide, a rush of clinging men and women as their toboggan coursed laughing and screaming in merriment down to the river where it pitched swiftly again down to the ice. Here at the Gorka as at “the merry-go-round,” the promenade near Sabornya, the doughboy learned how to put the right persuasion into his voice as he said Mozhna, barishna, meaning: Will you take a slide or walk with me, little girl? At Christmas, New Year’s and St. Patrick’s Day, they had special entertainments. Late in March “I” Company three times repeated its grand minstrel show.
Many a doughboy in Archangel, Kholmogora, Yemetskoe, Onega or Pinega, at one time or another during the long winter, got a chance to ride with the Russian Eskimo and his reindeer. Doughboys who were supporting the artillery the day that the enemy moved on Chertkva and threatened Peligorskaya, can recall seeing the double sled teams of reindeer that came flashing up through the lines with the American commanding officer who had been urgently called for by the Russian officer at Peligorskaya. Sergeant Kant will never forget that wild ride. He sat on the rear sled, or rather he clung to the top of it during that hour’s ride of twelve miles. The wise old buck reindeer who was hitched as a rudder to the rear of his sled would brace and pull back to keep the sergeant’s sled from snapping the whip at the turns, and that would lift the sled clear from the surface. And when the old buck was not steering the sled but trotting with leaping strides behind the sled then the bumps in the road bounced the sled high. Out in front the reindeer team of three strained against their simple harness and supplied the rapid succession of jerks that flew the sleds along toward the embattled artillery. The reindeer travelled with tongues hanging out as if in distress; they panted; they steamed and coated with frost; they thrust their muzzles into the cooling snow to slake their thirst; but they were enjoying the wild run; they fairly skimmed over the snow trail. The Eskimo driver called his peculiar moaning cry to urge them on, slapped his lead reindeer with the single rein that was fastened to his left antler, or prodded his team on the haunches with the long pole which he carried for that purpose and for steering his light sled, and with surprising nimbleness leaped on and off his sled as he guided the sled past or over obstructions. A snow-covered log across the trail caused no delay. A leap of three antlered forms, twelve grey legs flashing in the air, a bump of the light sled that volplanes an instant in a shower of snow, a quick leap and a grab for position back on the sled, the thrilling act is over, and the Eskimo has not shown a sign of excitement in his Indian-like stoic face. On we skim at unbroken pace. We soon reach the place.
One of the views shown in this volume is that of a characteristic reindeer team and sled. Another shows the home of the North Russian branch of the Eskimo family. The writer vividly recalls the sight of a semi-wild herd of reindeer feeding in the dense pine and spruce woods. They were digging down through the deep snow to get the succulent reindeer moss. We approached on our Russian ponies with our, to them, strange-looking dress. What a thrill it gave us to see them, as if at signal of some sentry, raise their heads in one concerted, obedient look for signal of some leader, and then with great bounds go leaping away to safety, flashing through the dark stems of the trees like a flight of grey arrows discharged from a single bow. Further on we came upon the tented domiciles of the owners of this herd. Our red-headed Russian guide appeased the clamors of the innumerable dogs who bow-wowed out from all sides of the wigwam-like tents of these North Russian nomad homes, while we Americans looked on in wonder. Here was the very counterpart of the American Indian buck and squaw home that our grandads had seen in Michigan. The women at last appeared and rebuked the ragged half-dressed children for their precipitate rushing out to see the strangers. For a little tobacco they became somewhat talkative and willingly enough gave our guide information about the location of the hidden still we were going to visit, where pine pitch was baked out and barrelled for use in repairing the steamboats and many fishing boats of the area. We studied this aborigine woman and questioned our guide later about these people. Like our Indians they are. Pagans they are and in this volume is a picture of one of their totem poles. Untouched by the progress of civilization, they live in the great Slavic ocean of people that has rolled over them in wave after wave, but has not changed them a bit. Space can not be afforded for the numerous interesting anecdotes that are now in the mind of the writer and the doughboy reader who so many times saw the reindeer and their Russian Eskimo owners in their wilds or in Archangel or other cities and villages where they appear in their annual winter migrations.
Probably the one most interesting spot in the frozen port city was the American expeditionary post-office. Here at irregular intervals, at first via ice-breaker, which battled its way up to the edge of the ice crusted coast north of Economia, came our mail bags from home. Later those bags came in hundreds of miles over the winter snow roads, hauled by shaggy ponies driven by hairy, weather-beaten moujiks. Mail-letters, papers, little things from home, the word still connotes pleasure to us. Mail days were boon days, and at the mail-place a detail always arrived early and cheerful.
