The first day's march went well enough, though it covered no more than a few miles. At night they camped upon great squares of tarpaulin and in the morning resumed their webfooted way. But the night had not proved restful, for over the edges of every tarpaulin the eager grass had thrust impatient runners and when the time came to decamp more than half the canvases had been left in possession of the weed. The second day's progress was slower than the first and it was clear to the observers the men were tiring unduly. More than one threw away his rifle to make the marching easier, some freed themselves of their snowshoes and so after a few yards sank, inextricably tangled into the grass; others lay down exhausted, to rise no more. The men in the balloons could see by the way the feet were raised that the inquisitive stolons were more and more entangling themselves in the webbing.
Still the Soviet command poured fresh troops onto the grass. Profiting perhaps by the American example, they transported new supplies to the army by dirigibles, replacing the lost tarpaulins and rifles, daringly sending whole divisions of snowshoers by parachute almost to the eastern edge. This last experiment proved too reckless, for enough of these adventurers were located to permit their annihilation by longrange artillery.
"Their endurance is incredible, magnificent," eulogized General Thario enthusiastically. "They are contending not only with the prospect of meeting fresh, unworn troops on our side, but against a tireless enemy who cannot be awed or hurt and even more against their own feelings of fear and despair which must come upon them constantly as they get farther into this green desert, farther from natural surroundings, deeper into the silence and mystery of the abnormal barrier they have undertaken to cross. They are supermen and only supernatural means will defeat them."
But there was plenty of evidence that the general credited the foe with a stronger spirit than they possessed. Their spirit was undoubtedly high, but it could not stand up against the relentless harassment of the grass. The weary, sodden advance went on, slower and slower; the toll higher and higher. There were signs of dissatisfaction, mutiny and madness. Some units turned about to be shot down by those behind, some wandered off helplessly until lost forever. The dwindling of the great army accelerated, airborne replacements dependent on such erratic transport failed to fill the gaps.
The marchers no longer fired at the airships overhead; they moved their feet slowly, hopelessly, stood stockstill for hours or faltered aimlessly. Occasional improvised white flags could be seen, held apathetically up toward the balloonists. Long after their brave start the crazed and starving survivors began trickling into the American lines where they surrendered. They were dull and listless except for one strange manifestation: they shied away fearfully from every living plant or growth, but did they see a bare patch of soil, a boulder or stretch of sand, they clutched, kissed, mumbled and wept over it in a very frenzy.
45. But the catastrophic loss of their great armies was not all the enemy had to endure. As the grass had stood our ally and swallowed the attackers, helping us in a negative fashion as it were, it now turned and became a positive force in our relief. Unnoticed for months, it had crept northwestward, filching precious mile after mile of the hostile foothold. Now it spurted ahead as it had sometimes done before, at a furious pace, to take over the coast as far north as the Russian River, which now doubled the irony of its name, and added thousands of square miles to its area at the enemy's expense. It surged directly westward too, making what was left of the invader's foothold precarious in the extreme.
The stockmarket boomed and the country went wild with joy at the news of the Soviet defeats. At the darkest moment we had been delivered by forces outside ourselves, but still indubitably American. Hymns of praise were sung to the grass as the savior of the nation and in a burst of gratitude it was declared a National Park, forever inviolate. Rationing restrictions were eased and many industries were sensibly returned to private ownership. Good old Uncle Sam was unbeatable afterall.
But if the Americans were jubilant, the Russians were cast into deepest gloom. Accustomed to tremendous wartime losses of manpower, they had at first taken the news stoically, interpreting it as just another defeat to be later redeemed by pouring fresh troops and then more fresh troops after those which had gone down. But when they realized they had lost not divisions but whole armies, that they had suffered a greater blow than any in their history, that their reserve power was little greater than the armies remaining to the Americans, and finally that the grass, the foe which had dealt all these grievous blows, was rapidly wiping out what remained of their bridgehead, they began to murmur against the war itself.
"Under our dear little Uncle Stalin," they said, "this would never have taken place. Our sons and brothers would not have been sent to die so far away from Holy Mother Russia. Down with the enemies of Stalin. Down with the warmongering bureaucracy."
The Kremlin hastened to assure the population it was carrying out the wishes of the sainted Stalin. It convinced them of the purity of its motives by machinegunning all demonstrators and executing after public trials all Trotskyite-fascist-American saboteurs and traitors. For some reason these arguments failed to win over the people and on November 7 a new slogan was heard, "Long live Stalin and Trotsky," which proved so popular that in a short time the entire bureaucracy was liquidated, the Soviet Union declared an unequivocal workers' state, the army replaced by Redguards, the selling of Soviet bonds decreed a contravention of socialist economy, wages of all were equalized, and the word stakhanovism erased from all Russian dictionaries.