The enemy sustained great losses in these battles of Bolshie Ozerki, upwards of two thousand casualties, many of them from the frost, for the villages could shelter but a fraction of the large forces, and many had to live in such makeshift quarters as could be devised.
Time was of the essence in this undertaking of the Bolshevik commander, and he had paused when he should have struck out with every man in his control, but by his dalliance, spring joined the league of his enemies. Soon the freezing clutch of winter would be broken in the warm sun, and, unless he hastened to withdraw to the south, his artillery would be mired in the yielding roads.
In June, the new, conscripted, Russian soldiers came to take Onega's posts, and the heavily-tired Americans went back to assembly at Archangel, buoyant and bright-eyed at the prospect of home, till they met on the city streets a few invalided Category B Scots going back to the battle lines, because the Bolo droves were gathering again and every man was needed there. Then the light smile passed from the lips of the Americans, a blush came to their cheek, home was forgotten and all thought of home; for there was a man's work out in the forest swamps far to the south—where death lurked and misery waited; and hardly a man who would not have chosen the swamps with their physical suffering and their ambushed death than escape and bear the stinging reproach of deserting a mate in distress. Better to play the wretched game through to the uttermost end than to be faithless to the traditions of one's blood, to quit the field with the honor of a nation stained and shamed in burning disgrace.
For was this such a flagitious, disgraceful brawl in which their mates had bled their manhood blood away that American soldiers should sneak from it thus, like cuffed and beaten mongrel curs?
Time, soothing time, will smooth with gentle, cooling fingers, the harsh lines of fretful hardship, the distressful burdens of campaign and trying vigils of sleepless peril, and even burn a purple halo of romance about this miserable, petty, little war, but some hurts the assuaging balm of time can never heal.
Many had cast off at the call of country and given all with generous unstinting affection, and those who were coming back did not begrudge the sacrifice; but rankling deep forever in the living consciousness of every Archangel soldier is the thought of this ignoble quitting and the weak abandonment by his country of everything to which he had pledged his manhood faith.—The causelessness of it all—Alarming, unbalancing reflections, a moral devastation that will not be quieted—Corroding grief for those who flushed with promise were "taken from life when life and love were young" in a shabby brawl for nothing.—A dangerous cynical bitterness is with the soldier of North Russia, mordant and enduring, that grows ever more bitter with the years.
KODISH
January 30, 1919.
MEMORANDUM FOR COLONEL HOUSE.