But it was decided to burn Upper Toulgas, which was a constant menace to our security, as we had no men to occupy it with sufficient numbers to make a defense and the small outposts there were tempting morsels for the enemy to devour. Many were reluctant to stay there, and it was nervous work on the black nights when the wind, dismal and weird, moaned through the encompassing forest, every shadow a crouching Bolshevik. Often the order came through to the main village to “stand to,” because some fidgety sentinel in Upper Toulgas had seen battalions, conjured by the black night. So it was determined to burn the upper village and a guard was thrown around it, for we feared word would be passed and the Bolos would try to prevent us from accomplishing our purpose. The inhabitants were given three hours to vacate. It was a pitiful sight to see them turned out of the dwellings where most of them had spent their whole simple, not unhappy lives, their meagre possessions scattered awry upon the ground.
The first snow floated down from a dark foreboding sky, dread announcer of a cruel Arctic winter. Soon the houses were roaring flames. The women sat upon hand-fashioned crates wherein were all their most prized household goods, and abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of weeping despair, while the children shrieked stridently, victim of all the realistic horrors that only childhood can conjure. Most of the men looked on in silence, uncomprehending resignation on their faces, mute, pathetic figures. Poor moujiks! They didn’t understand, but they took all uncomplainingly. Nitchevoo, fate had decreed that they should suffer this burden, and so they accepted it without question.
But when we thought of the brave chaps whose lives had been taken from those flaming homes, for our casualties had been very heavy, nearly one hundred men killed and wounded, we stifled our compassion and looked on the blazing scene as a jubilant bonfire. All night long the burning village was red against the black sky, and in the morning where had stood Upper Toulgas was now a smoking, dirty smudge upon the plain.
We took many prisoners in this second fight of Toulgas. It was a trick of the Bolos to sham death until a searching party, bent on examining the bodies for information, would approach them, when suddenly they would spring to life and deliver themselves up. These said that only by this method could they escape the tyranny of the Bolsheviki. They declared that never had they any sympathy with the Soviet cause. They didn’t understand it. They had been forced into the Red Army at the point of a gun, and were kept in it by the same persuasive argument. Others said they had joined the Bolshevik military forces to escape starvation.
There was only one of the thirty prisoners who admitted being an ardent follower of the cause, and a believer in the Soviet articles of political doctrine, and this was an admission that took a great deal of courage, for it was instilled universally in the Bolos that we showed no mercy, and if they fell into the hands of the cruel Angliskis and Americanskis there was nothing but a hideous death for them.
Of course our High Command had tried to feed our troops the same kind of propaganda. Lenine, himself, said that of every one hundred Bolsheviks fifty were knaves, forty were fools, and probably one in the hundred a sincere believer. Once a Bolshevik commander who gave himself up to us said that the great majority of officers in the Soviet forces had been conscripted from the Imperial Army and were kept in order by threats to massacre their families if they showed the slightest tendency towards desertion. The same officer told me the Bolshevik party was hopelessly in the minority, that its adherents numbered only about three and a half in every hundred Russians, that it had gained ascendancy and held power only because Lenine and Trotsky inaugurated their revolution by seizing every machine gun in Russia and steadfastly holding on to them. He said that every respectable person looked upon the Bolsheviks as a gang of cutthroats and ruffians, but all were bullied into passive submission.
We heard him wonderingly. We tried to fancy America ever being brow-beaten and cowed by an insignificant minority, her commercial life prostrated, her industries ravished, and we gave the speculation up as an unworthy reflection upon our country. But this was Russia, Russia who inspired the world by her courage and fortitude in the great war, and while it was at its most critical stage, fresh with the memories of millions slain on Gallician fields, concluded the shameful treaty of Brest Litovsk, betraying everything for which those millions had died. Russia, following the visionary Kerensky from disorder to chaos, and eventually wallowing in the mire of Bolshevism. Yes, one can expect anything in Russia.
They were a hardboiled looking lot, those Bolo prisoners. They wore no regulation uniform, but were clad in much the same attire as an ordinary moujik—knee leather boots and high hats of gray and black curled fur. No one could distinguish them from a distance, and every peasant could be Bolshevik. Who knew? In fact, we had reason to believe that many of them were Bolshevik in sympathy. The Bolos had an uncanny knowledge of our strength and the state of our defenses, and although no one except soldiers were allowed beyond the village we knew that despite the closest vigilance there was working unceasingly a system of enemy espionage with which we could never hope to cope.
Some of the prisoners were mere boys seventeen and eighteen years old. Others men of advanced years. Nearly all of them were hopelessly ignorant, likely material for a fiery tongued orator and plausible propagandist. They thought the Americans were supporting the British in an invasion of Russia to suppress all democratic government, and to return a Romanoff to the throne.
That was the story that was given out to the moujiks, and, of course, they firmly believed it, and after all why should they not, judging by appearances? We quote here from an American officer who fought at Toulgas: