Delay in starting due to necessity for telephoning to Pinega in regard to rations and sleighs. Some error in calculations. They had sleighs waiting us at Gbach this morning instead of tomorrow morning. Snow falling as we start on the river road at 8:25. We find it glada (level) nearly all the way but drifty and hard walking. Nevertheless we arrive at end of our twenty-one verst march at 1:25. Met by friendly villagers and well quartered. These people need phone and a guard the same as at Verkne Palenga. Find that people here view the villages of Ostrov and Kuzomen with distrust. Kulikoff, a prominent leader in the Bolo Northern army, hails from one of these villages. Spent an hour with the village schoolmaster. Had a big audience of men and boys. Sgt. Young and interpreter came through from Pinega to untangle the sleigh situation. We find that it is again all set here for an early start with one hundred sleighs. A spoiled can of M. & V. makes headquarters party desperately sick.
TO PINEGA—TENTH DAY, DECEMBER 27TH
Hard to get up this morning. Horses and sleighs came early as promised. Put one man and his barrack bag and equipment into each sleigh and in many sleighs added a light piece of freight to lighten our regular convoy sleds. Got away at 9:00 a. m. Nice day for driving. The Russian sleigh runs smoothly and takes the bumps gracefully. It is the first time these solders have ridden in sleighs. Urgency impels us. Light ball snow falls. Much hay cut along this valley. We meet the genial Red Cross man who passes out cigarettes and good cheer to all the men.
Arrive at Soyla at noon. Some mistake made. The hundred horses left yesterday and the headman goes out to get them again for us to go on this evening. Seventeen sleighs got away at 3:00 p. m. Twenty-five more at 7:00 p. m. At 9:30 we got away with the remainder of company. Have a good sleigh and can sleep. Here is Yural and I must awake and telephone to Pinega to see how situation stands. Loafer in telegraph office informs us of the battle today resulting in defeat of White Guards, the volunteers of Pinega who were supporting the hundred Americans. Bad news. It is desperately cold. No more sleeping. The river road is bleak. We arrive at last—3:00 a. m. In the frosty night the hulks of boats and the bluffs of Pinega loom large. So endeth diary of the remarkable march.
No group of healthy men anywhere in the world, no matter what the danger and hardships, will long forego play. It is the safety valve. It may be expressed in outdoor sports, or indoor games, or in hunting, fishing or in some simple diversion. It may be in a tramp or a ride into some new scenery to drink in beauty, or what not, even to getting the view-points of strange peoples. What soldier will ever forget the ride up to the old three-hundred-year-old monastery and the simple feed that the monks set out for them. Or who will forget the dark night at Kodish when the orator called out to the Americans and they joshed him back with great merriment.
Often the soldier on the great line of communication duty whiled away an hour helping some native with her chores. “Her” is the right word, for in that area nearly every able-bodied man was either in the army, driving transport, working in warehouses, or working on construction, or old and disabled. Practically never was a strong man found at home except on furlough or connected with the common job of the peasants, keeping the Bolo out of the district.
For a matter of several weeks in weather averaging twenty-four degrees below zero three American soldiers were responsible for the patrol of seven versts of trail leading out from a village on the line of communication toward a Bolo position which was threatening it. One or all of them made this patrol by sleigh every six or eight hours, inspecting a cross-trail and a rest shack which Bolo patrols might use. Their plan was never to disturb the snow except on the path taken by themselves, so that any other tracks could be easily detected. One day there were suspicious signs and one of the men tramped a circle around the shack inspecting it from all sides before entering it.
Next morning, before daylight, another one of the trio made the patrol and being informed of the circle about the shack, saw what he took to be additional tracks leading out and into the shack and proceeded to burn the shack as his orders were, if the shack were ever visited and promised to be of use to the enemy. Later by daylight a comrade making the patrol came back with the joke on his buddie who in the darkness had mistaken a huge snowshoe rabbit’s tracks, made out of curiosity smelling out the man’s tracks. Often the patrol sled would travel for hours through a fairy land. The snow-laden trees would be interlaced over the trail, so that the sled travelled in a wonderful crystal, grey, green and golden tunnel. Filtering beams of sunlight ahead of it. A mist of disturbed snow behind it. No sound save from the lightly galloping pony, the ooh-chee-chee of the driver or the bump of the sleigh against a tree or a root, or the occasional thunder of a rabchik or wild turkey in partridge-like flight. Beside the trail or crossing might be seen the tracks of fox and wolf and in rare instances of reindeer.
Or on the open road in the night: solemn again the mood of the doughboy as he recollects some of those lonely night rides. Here on his back in the hay of the little sled he reclines muffled in blankets and robes, his driver hidden in his great bearskin parki, or greatcoat, hidden all but his two piercing eyes, his nose and whiskers that turned up to shield his face. With a jerk the fiery little pony pulls out, sending the two gleaming sled tracks to running rearward in distant meeting points, the woods to flying past the sleigh and the snow to squealing faintly under the runners; sending the great starry heavens to sweep through the tops of the pine forest and sending the doughboy to long thoughts and solemn as he looks up at the North Star right above him and thinks of what his father said when he left home:
“Son, you look at the North Star and I’ll look at it and every time we will think of one another while you are away, and if you never come back, I’ll look at the North Star and know that it is looking down at your grave where you went with a purpose as fixed as the great star and a motive as pure as its white light.” Oh, those wonderful night heavens to the thoughtful man!