Where a mill flaps its awkward wings
This was the furthermost point of the advance, for soon General Ironside assumed the office of Commander-in-Chief, and the "offensive war" was heard of no more. The campaign became a stalemate, each side awaiting the opponent's next move, and not till November did the Bolsheviks become aggressive again. Then they stormed the positions with great determination, but all posts held and they were thrown back with frightful loss.
The succeeding month, it was decided by the Allied Command to capture Plesetskaya, so that the enemy might be denied a base for winter movement, and the divergent Allied forces of the Railway brought together. But the effort failed. The Russian contingent that was to go on skis around the left, fifteen miles to Emtsa, floundered helplessly, became exhausted and funked out in the deep snow many miles from their objective; also the auxiliary force at Shred Mekrenga could not gain its ground; but most of all, the failure was caused by the members of the Slavo-British Allied Legion, who faithlessly deserted in large numbers and went over to their countrymen, the Bolsheviks, with full information of the Allied plans.
This marked the collapse of the invasion of Archangel, and when the cold of winter had settled, the Red leaders set busily about the task of planning the destruction of the over-extended Allied lines on six unsupported fronts, which could neither retire beyond Archangel, nor be reinforced until the remote coming of spring. It looked as if the great military machine which Trotsky assembled, would speedily crush Ironside's men, and the Moscow newspapers announced that a million Red bayonets would hurl the foreigners to the White Sea, and into it (although the sea was then solid ice), but inexplicably strange, after the failure of Plesetskaya, there were few stirring, winter days on the Railway Front, except once, when a daring Bolshevik raiding excursion on skis snatched one of the rear guns from the French (who had been shamed into returning to the front), destroyed it, and got away in the snow.
Major J. B. Nichols was at this Railway Front, a civilian officer, and the only one of the Americans in senior authority who appeared to possess a heart, and courage, and unfogged discernment. He early grasped the vain futility of the whole campaign and no cajoling or flattery or threats from Archangel could sway his refusal to engage a single man in unavailing patrols through the ambushed forests or in hazardous "blow-offs" between the contested lines, that accomplished nothing save the sacrifice of life. So for the most part the winter defense was a routine of work on the defenses, the dugouts and the fortifications, and necessary reconnaissance parties over the trails, to watch the flank approaches and to keep an eye on dangerous Bolshie Ozerki.
With ready methods of quick transportation, and an increase in the garrison by the coming of the King's Own Liverpools, it became possible to arrange spells of relief, and in March the Americans went back to Archangel.
At the front it was different. There was a tautness, a hushed, dread expectancy in the air, and life, an uncertain thing, was to be lived, like the Hedonist, for the day; there was no time to analyze the causes of one's misery or even to be more than dully conscious of it; pressing urgencies, actual or imaginary, were always occurring, and they crowded out all opportunities for contemplation and introspection.
But there was no pressure in careless Archangel, where harrowing care and disgusting, swinelike filth vanished with a wave of fairy wand and lo, the war with Russia became a magical heroic pageant. Large numbers of unemployed officers strolled the Troitsky Prospect, very merry and bright, an array of bright, varicolored ribbons, like flower gardens, flourishing on their well-arched military chests.