“Sometimes, about once or twice every now and then, copies of The Stars and Stripes find their way up here to No Woman’s Land and are instantly devoured by the news-hungry gang, searching for information regarding their comrades and general conditions in France, where we belong, but through Fate were sent up to this part of the world to quell Bolshevism and guard the Northern Lights.
“We are so far north that the doggone sun works only when it feels inclined to do so, and in that way it is like everything else in Russia. The moon isn’t so particular, and comes up, usually backwards, at any time of the day or night, in any part of the sky, it having no set schedule, and often it will get lost and still be on the job at noon. Yes, we are so far north that 30 degrees below will soon be tropical weather to us, and they will have to build fires around both cows before they can milk them. Probably about next month at this time some one will come around and say we will be pulling out of here in a day or so, but then, the days will be six months long.
“In our issue of your very popular paper we noticed a cartoon, “Pity the boys in Siberia,” but what about us, Ed? Now, up here in this tough town there are 269,83l. inhabitants, of which 61,329 are human beings and 208,502 are dogs. Dogs of every description from the poodle to the St. Bernard and from the wolfhound to the half-breed dachshund, which is half German and half Bolshevik and looks the part.
“The wind whistles across the Dvina River like the Twentieth Century Limited passing Podunk, and snowflakes are as numerous as retreating Germans were in France a few weeks ago. We have good quarters when we are here, thank fortune for that, and good food, when it comes up. If we can stand the winter we will be all jake, for a Yank can accustom himself to anything if he wants to. But just the same, we would like to see your artists busy on “The Boys in Northern Russia” and tell them not to leave out the word “Northern.”
“We also read in The Stars and Stripes that the boys in Italy had some tongue twisters and brain worriers, but listen to this: Centimes and sous and francs may be hard to count, but did you ever hear of a rouble or a kopec? A kopec is worth a tenth of a cent and there are a hundred of them in a rouble. As you will see, that makes a rouble worth a dime, and to make matters worse all the money is paper, coins having gone out of circulation since the beginning of the mix-up. A kopec is the size of a postage stamp, a rouble looks like a United Cigar Store’s Certificate, a 25-rouble note resembles a porous plaster and a 100-rouble note the Declaration of Independence.
“When a soldier in search of a meal enters a restaurant, he says to the waitress, ‘Barishna, kakajectyeh bifstek, pozhalysta,’ which means ‘An order of beefsteak, lady, please: You see, you always say to a woman ‘barishna’ and she is always addressed in that manner. She will answer the hungry customer with, ‘Yah ochen sojalaylu, shto unaus nyet yestnik prepasov siechas’ (a simple home cure for lockjaw), meaning, “I am very sorry, but we are right out of food today.’ He will try several other places, and if he is lucky he is apt to stumble across a place where he can get something to eat, but when he looks at the bill of fare and learns that it cost him about $7.50 for a sandwich and a cup of coffee, he beats it back to the barracks.
“Every time you get on a street car (‘dramvay’) you have to count out 60 kopecs for your fare, and most of us would rather walk than be jammed in the two-by-four buses and fish for the money. Before boarding a car each passenger usually hunts up a couple of five gallon milk cans, a market basket or two and a bag of smoked herring, so they will get their kopec’s worth out of the ride, besides making the atmosphere nice and pleasant for the rest of the passengers. If you should see a soldier walking down the street with his nose turned up and his mouth puckered in apparent contempt, you would be wrong in thinking he was conceited, for if the truth be known he has probably just got his shirt back from the washwoman, and she has used fish-oil instead of soap and he is trying to escape the fumes. When you take your clothes to have them laundered and tell the woman to please omit the odor, she’ll tell you that she has no soap and if you want them washed to your satisfaction please send in a cake. Anything in the world to keep your clothes from smelling of fish-oil, so you double-time back and get her the soap, and then she gives the kids a bath, and that’s the end of your soap.
“When a Russian meets another man he knows on the street, both lift hats and flirt with each other. If they stop to talk, they always shake hands, even if they haven’t seen each other for fully twenty minutes. Then they simply must shake hands again when they leave. When a man meets a lady friend he usually kisses her hand and shows her how far he can bend over without breaking his suspenders. ‘Ah,’ he will say, ‘yah ochen rrad vasveedyat, kak vui pazhavaetye?’ which in the United States means ‘How do you do?’ to which she will reply, ‘Blogadaru vas, yah ochen korosho,’ or ‘very well, thank you.’ It is the knockout. A fellow has to shake hands so much that some of them are getting the habit around the company.
“And another thing, Ed, are they really holding a separate war up here for our benefit? Just because we weren’t in on the big doings in France is no reason why they should run a post-season series especially for us. We appreciate the kindness and honor and all that, but what we want to know is where everybody gets that stuff. Believe me, after all the dope we got on the trenches, about pianos and wooden floors, steam heat, and other conveniences, when we see ourselves on outpost duty with one blanket and a poncho, sleeping (not on duty, of course) in twenty-eight inches of pure ooooozy mud, which before we awaken turns into thin, fine ice, it makes us want to cry out and ask the universe what we have done to deserve this exile.
“Now don’t think, dear old Ed. that we are kicking. American soldiers never do. We just wanted to have something to write you about, to remind you that we ARE a part of the American E. F., although ‘isolated.’