The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki | Page 9

Obozerskaya when
two companies of Americans, "I" and "L", proceeded' up the railroad
track in column of twos and halted in ranks before the tall station
building, with their battalion commander holding officers call at
command of the bugle. An excited little French officer popped out of
his dugout and pointed at the shell holes in the ground and in the station
and spoke a terse phrase in French to the British field staff officer who
was gnawing his mustache. The latter overcame his embarrassment
enough to tell Major Young that the French officer feared the Bolo any
minute would reopen artillery fire. Then we realized we were in the
fighting zone. The major shouted orders out and shooed the platoons
off into the woods.
Later into the woods the French officers led the Americans who
relieved them of their circle of fortified outposts. Some few in the
vicinity of the scattered village made use of buildings, but most of the

men stood guard in the drizzly rain in water up to their knees and
between listening post tricks labored to cut branches enough to build up
a dry platform for rest. The veteran French soldier had built him a fire
at each post to dry his socks and breeches legs, but "the strict old
disciplinarian," Major Young, ordered "No fires on the outpost."
And this was war. Far up the railroad track "at the military crest" an
outpost trench was dug in strict accordance with army book plans. The
first night we had a casualty, a painful wound in a doughboy's leg from
the rifle of a sentry who cried halt and fired at the same time. An
officer and party on a handcar had been rattling in from a visit to the
front outguard. All the surrounding roads and trails were patrolled.
Armed escorts went with British intelligence officers to outlying
villages to assemble the peasants and tell them why the soldiers were
coming into North Russia and enlist their civil co-operation and inspire
them to enlist their young men in the Slavo-British Allied Legion, that
is to put on brass buttoned khaki, eat British army rations, and drill for
the day when they should go with the Allies to clear the country of the
detested Bolsheviki. To the American doughboys it did not seem as
though the peasants' wearied-of-war countenances showed much
elation nor much inclination to join up.
The inhabitants of Obozerskaya had fled for the most part before the
Reds. Some of the men and women had been forced to go with the Red
Guards. They now crept back into their villages, stolidly accepted the
occupancy of their homes by the Americans, hunted up their horses
which they had driven into the wilderness to save them from the
plundering Bolo, greased up their funny looking little droskies, or carts,
and began hauling supplies for the Allied command and begging
tobacco from the American soldiers.
Captain Donoghue with two platoons of "K" Company, the other two
having been dropped temporarily at Issaka Gorka to guard that railroad
repair shop and wireless station, now moved right out by order of
Colonel Guard, on September seventh, on a trail leading off toward
Tiogra and Seletskoe. Somewhere in the wilds he would find traces of
or might succor the handful of American sailors and Scots who, under

Col. Hazelden, a British officer, had been cornered by the Red Guards.
"Reece, reece," said the excited drosky driver as he greedily accepted
his handful of driver's rations. He had not seen rice for three years.
Thankfully he took the food. His family left at home would also learn
how to barter with the generous doughboy for his tobacco and bully
beef and crackers, which at times, very rarely of course, in the
advanced sectors, he was lucky enough to exchange for handfuls of
vegetables that the old women plucked out of their caches in the rich
black mould of the small garden, or from a cellar-like hole under a
loose board in the log house.
"Guard duty at Archangel" was aiming now to be a real war, on a small
scale but intensive. Obozerskaya, about one hundred miles south of
Archangel, in a few days took on the appearance of an active field base
for aggressive advance on the enemy. Here were the rapid assembling
of fighting units; of transport and supply units; of railroad repairing
crews, Russian, under British officers; of signals; of armored
automobile, our nearest approach to a tank, which stuck in the mud and
broke through the frail Russki bridges and was useless; of the feverish
clearing and smoothing of a landing field near the station for our supply
of spavined air-planes that had already done their bit on the Western
Front; of the improvement of our ferocious-looking armored