Doughboys at Seletskoe tell of equally heartless treatment. There at 20 degrees below zero they were required one day to form sick call line outside of the British medical officer’s nice warm office. This was not necessary and he was compelled to accede to the firm insistence of the American company commander that his sick men should not stand out in the cold. That was only one of many such outrageous incidents. And the doughboys unfortunately did not always have a sturdy American officer present to protect them as in this case.
Corporal Simon Bogacheff states that he left Archangel December 8th or 9th with seventy-three other wounded men and “flu” victims. After fifteen days the “Stephen” landed at Dundee after a very rough voyage in the pitching old boat. He had to buy stuff on the side from the cooks as he could not bear the British rations. Men were obliged to steal raw potatoes and buy lard and fry them. The corporal, who could talk the Serbian language, fraternized with them and gained entrance to a place where he could see English sergeants’ mess. Steaks and vegetables for them and cases of beer.
Alfred Starikoff of Detroit states that he was sent out of Archangel in early winter suffering from an incurable running sore in his ear. He boarded an ice-breaker at the edge of the frozen White Sea. After a four-hour struggle they cleared the icebound shore and made the open sea, which was not open but filled with a great floe of polar ice. At Murmansk he was transferred to a hospital ship and then without examination of his ear trouble was sent to shore. There he put in five protesting weeks doing orderly work at British officers’ quarters. Finally he was allowed to proceed to England, Leith, Liverpool, Southampton, London, Notty Ash, and thence to Brest, thence to the U. S. in May to Ford Hospital. The delay in Murmansk did him no good. American veterans of the campaign know that this is not the only case of where sick and wounded doughboys were delayed at Murmansk, once merely to make room for British officers who were neither wounded nor sick. Let Uncle Sam remember this in his next partnership war.
ROULEAU
Hot Summer Day at Pinega Before War.
DOUD
Dvina River Ice Jam.