long,
long lines of communication, spread wide like the fingers of a great
hand that sought seemingly to cover as much of North Russia as possible
with Allied military protection.

In the winter, in the long, long nights and black, howling forests and
frozen trenches, with ever-deepening snows and sinking thermometer, with
the rivers and the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean solid ice fifteen feet
thick, these same soldiers now seen disembarking from the troopships,
were to find their enemy greatly increasing his forces every month at
all points on the Allied line. Stern defense everywhere on that
far-flung trench and blockhouse and fortified-village battle line. They
were to feel the overwhelming pressure of superior artillery and
superior equipment and transportation controlled by the enemy and
especially the crushing odds of four to ten times the number of men on
the battle lines. And with it they were to feel the dogged sense of the
grim necessity of fighting for every verst of frozen ground. Their very
lives were to depend upon the stubbornness of their holding retreat.
There could be no retreating beyond Archangel, for the ships were frozen
in the harbor. Indeed a retreat to the city of Archangel itself was
dangerous. It might lead to revulsion of temper among the populace and
enable the Red Guards to secure aid from within the lines so as to carry
out Trotsky's threat of pushing the foreign bayonets all under the ice
of the White Sea. And in that remarkable winter defense these American
soldiers were to make history for American arms, exhibiting courage and
fortitude and heroism, the stories of which are to embellish the annals
of American martial exploits. They were destined, a handful of them
here, a handful there, to successfully baffle the Bolshevik hordes in
their savage drives.

In the spring the great ice crunching up in the rivers and the sea was
to behold those same veteran Yanks still fighting the Red Guard armies
and doing their bit to keep the state of Archangel, the North Russian
Republic, safe, and their own skins whole. The warming sun and bursting
green were to see the olive-drab uniform, tattered and torn as it was,
covering a wearied and hungry and homesick but nevertheless fearless and
valiant American soldier. With deadly effect they were to meet the
onrushing swarms of Bolos on all fronts and slaughter them on their wire
with rifle and machine gun fire and smash up their reserves with
artille